Tag Archives: New Socialist Praxis

Jayaprakash, New Socialist Praxis

(This paper has been submitted by Com. Jayaprakash of New Socialist Praxis from Andhra Pradesh. It is a response to an article written by V. Srinivasa Rao of CPM against the program of socialist revolution. The editorial team found this to be a very pertinent intervention in the debate on the program of Indian revolution. Therefore, we are publishing the article. We hope readers find it enlightening. – Editor)

The State Secretary of CPM, Andhra Pradesh Committee, Comrade V Srinivasa Rao has recently written a piece titled, “People’s Democratic Revolution or Socialist Revolution?” (referred to as PDR in article from here onwards) in the party’s Telugu journal, ‘Marxistu’. This is a welcome development. In the backdrop of 100 years of ebbs and flows, this is one of the most important debates that needs to happen within the Indian Communist Movement as well as among Marxist-Leninist individuals. It is only through this debate that the following questions can be answered – What is the dominant mode of production in India? What is the nature of the Indian state? Who will be the allies and enemies of the working class in its class struggle to reach the next historical stage? It is only the answers to these questions that will help us rightly determine the stage of revolution in India today. Revolutionary Left politics that ignore these fundamental questions will meander without much use to the proletarian struggle against capital, and will, in fact, turn into opportunism. This is precisely why it is an immediate necessity to engage in this debate. ‘New Socialist Praxis’ firmly believes that India is in the stage of socialist revolution and, therefore, appreciates the initiation of this debate.
However, let us make this clear at the very outset as to why we are giving a point-by-point rebuttal to the article of Mr. Rao. We have no doubt whatsoever that CPM is a social-democratic and revisionist party and as Marxist-Leninists know, the program of revolution, for a revisionist party, is as good as something to be put in the cold storage. However, we are still responding to each and every point raised by Mr. Rao and demonstrating the complete ignorance of theory as well as history displayed by his article, for a couple of reasons. First, we believe that there are many genuine young revolutionary activists at the grass-root level of CPM and other social-democratic parties who have joined CPM either owing to the lack of understanding regarding the distinction between revolutionary Marxism and revisionism made by Lenin and Leninists (an understanding which the CPM leadership consciously prevents from developing among its cadre) or due to the lack of any effective revolutionary alternative. We are not too optimistic about converting the leadership of the CPM to revolutionary Marxism (!), but we are certainly hopeful that these genuine revolutionary elements will realize the programmatic bankruptcy of CPM and also realize that at the root of this bankruptcy lies the revisionism and social-democracy of CPM. The second reason as to why we are giving this detailed response to article of Mr. Rao is that the question of program remains unresolved even in the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist movement of India, a part of which degenerated into “left”-adventurism and revolutionary terrorism, abandoning revolutionary massline, along with their programmatic dogmatism, while the other remains imprisoned in, not only outmoded and outdated, but incorrect formulation of India as a semi-feudal semi-colonial country. The present article allows us to clear the fog regarding the basic yardsticks of determination of the character of the relations of production, the mode of production and that of the bourgeoisie in a country, thanks to Mr. Rao!
The world capitalism is at a critical juncture today. A general crisis that has gripped capitalist economies, world over, since 2008, the burgeoning inequalities that have forced even the bourgeois intellectuals to express concern, and the environmental crisis that is worsening everyday owing to the capitalist exploitation and plunder, are only a few of the reflections of this situation. The rising disgruntlement with capitalism and a renewed interest in Marxism are clearly visible around us. At a time when we need to progress towards an anti-capitalist socialist revolution in India, will not the adamant refusal to believe the reality of capitalist society harm the proletarian struggle? At a time when the task at hand is to build a socialist revolution against the current capitalist society, will not the delusional efforts to better it by means of class collaboration (with rich farmers and non-monopoly capitalists) harm the workers’ movement? It is precisely because of these reasons that this debate on the program of revolution is one of the most important and central problem that revolutionary communists in India need to resolve. Against this background, let us now examine the aforementioned essay, even though CPM is certainly not a revolutionary communist party.
Before embarking upon a discussion on the particular points pertaining to the question of program, let us make a brief but necessary remark. Mr. Rao has tried to clumsily hide the real difference between the Marxist-Leninist parties on the one hand and CPM on the other by claiming that all of them believe in the stage of democratic revolution and the only difference lies in the path of revolution. This is a travesty and mockery of the fact. Even though most of the ML organizations are still stuck in the framework of New or People’s Democratic Revolution and some of them have degenerated into “left”-adventurism, the basic difference between them and CPM is not that of path of revolution! It is the difference between revolutionary Marxism and revisionism. The dispute on path of revolution is regarding the question whether a party believes in protracted people’s war or in the path of general insurrection and this dispute stems directly from the question of program itself. What does CPM believe in? The People’s war or general insurrection? Well, to be accurate, CPM believes in none! It believes, not in the tactical use of bourgeois elections and parliament and assemblies, but in the strategic use of bourgeois elections and parliament and assemblies. This is not simply a question of ‘path of revolution’ as Mr. Rao wants us to believe! This is a fundamental question of difference between revisionism and revolutionary Marxism! However, Mr. Rao tries to brush aside this difference of principle and theory by trivializing these into a mere question of ‘path of revolution’, a quite clumsy sleight of hand one must admit!
Marx and Engels made a crucial amendment to the ‘Communist Manifesto’, in the preface of June 1872, after the fall of the Paris Commune. Learning from the experience of the Commune, they spelt it out clearly that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” Later, Lenin explained this profoundly in his fundamental treatise ‘The State and Revolution’. Lenin concludes that the precondition for every real people’s revolution is the smashing, the destruction of the ready-made state machinery. Only after this will the proletariat be able to build a classless society devoid of exploitation. Social-democratic parties of the past had deviated from this fundamental Marxist understanding and as a result got stuck in the quagmire of revisionism. Both Marx and Engels fought against such tendencies in their lifetime. Later, Lenin took this struggle forward in a principled manner. By renouncing the task of changing the Indian society through the means of revolution, CPM, too, revealed its revisionist and social democratic character in the very beginning. By renouncing the revolutionary path and choosing the parliamentary path to work for reforms in the society, it chose to be a social democratic party from its very inception, though a more “left” one than the CPI! Revolutionary communists, too, do not reject tactical participation in the bourgeois elections and parliaments nor do they reject the necessity of fight for reforms; however, for them, these are only tactics for furthering the aim of the strategy of revolution, which is smashing of the bourgeois state through a revolution and hence not an end in themselves.
The Indian Communist Movement has suffered a serious problem of theoretical weakness since inception. This resulted in the faulty program of CPM and its clear-cut revisionist character right since its inception, even though it attracted most of the revolutionary cadre from CPI when the latter degenerated into revisionism and reformism and became a lackey of Nehru’s Congress. It is only a matter of time that any communist party descends into revisionism if their understanding of revolutionary Marxist theory and program are faulty. In fact, a revisionist party that has forsaken the revolutionary path has nothing to do with its program, as we pointed out earlier. CPM, as a party, has long forgotten to make its members read the party’s program! Today, the same party raising the curtains for a debate on the stage of revolution (people’s democratic or socialist) in the country is ironic. However, given the importance of the debate, it is well worth anybody’s time to engage in the discussion and find answers.
CPM’s historical role as a tail-ending partner to bourgeois parties in the country is visible for everybody to see. Honestly, any other expectations from a party that has filled its program, in letter and spirit, with class collaboration would only lead to disappointment. While CPIM as a party has descended into the morass of revisionism, it has in its ranks, numerous comrades who still possess a genuine faith in revolution, as we pointed out above. They are sacrificing their lives for the dream of a new society that is free from exploitation and oppression. Lack of effort from the party’s side (in fact, its active discouragement) has deprived them of even the basic understanding of the fundamentals of the Marxist theory which consequently has left them clueless with no clear path in sight. Yet, they are working dedicatedly for the cause of the red flag. We believe that it is important for this debate to reach out to all such comrades. It is against this background that we have decided to share our critique of the ‘Marxistu’ article.
Now let us move to the particular question of the bankruptcy of CPM’s programmatic thinking, as revealed by the article of ‘Marxistu’.

What is the Basis for “People’s Democratic Revolution”?

Marxism is a scientific theory. Communists are those who work for revolutionary social change under the leadership of the proletariat in the light of this theory. Marxism is the only tool that the working class has at its disposal to understand the historical progress of society and based on this to determine their historical tasks. In this context, answers to the questions on the dominant mode of production and the stage of revolution in a country can be found only in the light of Marxism. Instead of this, if one tries to answer these questions based on subjective factors like one’s own biases, inherited opinions, immediate interests of a party, or the level of consciousness among the working class, it will only lead to the further straying away from the Marxist path. This is the central problem in the article being discussed.
(i) The article in question states that, “based on the level of development of productive forces and productive relations in the country,” CPM has come to a conclusion that there needs to be an intermediate stage (the stage of people’s democratic revolution) between the current society and socialism. What are the dominant relations of production in India today? On what basis did CPIM come to this conclusion about the intermediate stage? (ii) The article also mentions CPM’s analysis of the nature of state in India. It says that “the present Indian state is the organ of the class rule of the bourgeoisie and landlords led by the big bourgeoisie, who are increasingly collaborating with foreign finance capital in pursuit of the capitalist path of development.” What then is the nature of the landlord class that is part of the ruling class? Is it a capitalist landlord class or a feudal landlord class? How does one determine this? (iii) The article also argues that the development of capitalist relations in agriculture is still in a quantitative phase and has not yet reached the qualitative phase. It goes on to say that only those who are unable to understand this difference are getting confused with this. Before we begin determining whether capitalist relations in agriculture are in a quantitative or a qualitative phase, should not we first understand whether there are capitalist relations in agriculture? When do we say that capitalist relations have been firmly established in agriculture? The ‘Marxistu’ article shies away from a scientific discussion on these fundamental questions. There is a single common thread connecting all the above questions – whether capitalist agriculture is being practised or not. There is only one way the above questions can be answered correctly and that is by understanding the capitalist agriculture in the light of Marxism.

Key Issues

It is on the subject of capitalist agriculture that the ‘Marxistu’ article majorly falters. One will not understand capitalist agriculture without clarity on what capitalist production relations are. It is impossible to tell the difference between a capitalist landlord and a feudal landlord, when one does not understand the essence of capitalist relations in agriculture. Drawing incorrect conclusions based on incorrect understanding of these issues will only lead to confusion about the current society, the future society that needs to be built, and the nature of the state. Only the answer to the question of the stage of revolution (people’s democratic revolution or socialist revolution) will help communists decide who the allies and enemies of the proletariat are. If wrong conclusions are drawn, enemies will become allies. In fact, the ‘Marxistu’ article does not even mention the class analysis that needs to be made based on answers to the question of the stage of revolution. This is another glaring gap in the article. The article also misrepresents and distorts a lot of ideas and concepts of revolutionary Marxism as well as history. Neither Marx and Engels’ ideas, nor Lenin’s theory on capitalist agriculture were spared by these misrepresentations. The article paints a distorted picture of Soviet Russia’s policies and even attempts to portray today’s China as a socialist country that has found its path despite Mao’s mistakes! Against this backdrop, let us closely examine the issues mentioned in the article in three parts:

1. Capitalist agriculture and the character of the Indian society and the state;
2. Class analysis – the dangers of the incorrect program of People’s Democratic Revolution in the present Indian situation;
3. Distortion of Marxist theory and the history of socialist countries.

Since these are fundamental issues concerning Marxist theory and revolutionary program, a detailed discussion has become inevitable.

1. Capitalist Agriculture and the Character of the Indian Society and its State

The character of a society – whether it is feudal or capitalist – is determined based on the character of the state, the dominant mode of production and production relations prevalent in that society. The class character of state in that society is understood based on the classes that are in control of the state. Based on the character of the state and the character of the society, the stage of revolution (people’s democratic revolution or socialist revolution) in a country is determined. This is the scientific Marxist method. There is no scope for a difference of opinion here. In the wake of the ‘Marxistu’ article, the real discussion needs to be about the scientific method that helps in determining the mode of production of a society. More importantly, whether agriculture in the country is feudal or capitalist is the crucial question that needs to be settled first.

A. What is Capitalist Agriculture?

“Monopoly on land still lies in the hands of landlords. It has not yet been transferred to the corporates. Once the capitalist system takes its complete shape, Middle class artisans, peasants, manufacturers, and business units will disappear. A complete corporate monopoly in agriculture will emerge. Peasants, agricultural workers, and tenants who lost their land will turn into farm workers and permanent workers will be working on these mega farms. If such a stage comes into existence, the nature of revolution that is needed in the country will change. Then, the necessity of fighting for a socialist revolution instead of people’s democratic revolution will emerge.” These are the last lines in Mr. V Srinivasa Rao’s PDR article. There is no relation whatsoever between Marxism and the said lines. At one point, the article reads, “even though social structures of the past continue to be part of agrarian relations in India, the extent and severity of capitalist development has increased in agriculture.” The same article declares at another place that the qualitative change in capitalist agriculture can be said to have happened only if corporate agriculture comes into being and all changes that happen in agriculture until then will only be quantitative. The article can boast of many such contradictory statements. The declaration that “Once the capitalist system takes complete shape… the necessity of fighting for a socialist revolution instead of a people’s democratic revolution will emerge onto the scene,” is very crucial to this debate. When do we say that capitalist relations have taken complete shape? For that, we first need to examine what capitalist agriculture actually is. Based on that, we shall first explain why agriculture in India is capitalist and later, why we are at the stage of socialist revolution.
Marxist theory has discussed in depth about capitalist agriculture and capitalist farmers. Marx discusses how ‘capitalist farmers’ in England came into being as early as the late 16th century in Capital, Volume 1 (Chapter 29 titled “Genesis of the capitalist farmer”). The discussion about capitalist farming and capitalist ground rent can be found in Capital, Volume 3 (Part 6, Chapter 37 to Chapter 47). Even a basic study of these chapters will clear any doubts on capitalist agriculture. Lenin speaks in detail about capitalist agriculture in his book ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’. He talks of how capitalist relations have attained dominance even during the Tsar’s reign (one does not have to specifically mention that corporate farming did not exist at the time!). Engels, too, in his work ‘The Peasant Question in France and Germany’, very lucidly explains capitalist agriculture, class differentiation in the countryside, the inevitable ruination of the small peasants, and the tasks of the communists in this regard. The real issue is that we have had very few debates on capitalist agriculture and capitalist farmer within the left movement in India. Even the term “capitalist farmer” is a rarity in the left movement in India. How often is the term “capitalist farmer” even uttered in the struggles and propaganda of Indian communist parties?
Capitalist agriculture is a socio-economic development. Feudal agriculture involves a feudal landlord class that is in absolute control of land. This class, which is a parcel of the state and has, de facto, the executive, legislative and judicial power, makes the dependent peasants and serfs, the direct producers, to cultivate the land under its control and extracts the entire surplus labour in the form of feudal rent, that can assume the form of labour rent, rent in kind and towards the twilight of feudalism, the form of money rent. There is no class of entrepreneurial farmer between the direct producers, that is, the peasants and the feudal landlord. Entire surplus labour is appropriated by the feudal lord. When capitalist farmer appears on the scene, considerable part of direct producers are transformed into wage labour, the character of rent changes from feudal ground-rent to capitalist ground-rent. Now, the entire surplus labour of the direct producers is not appropriated by the landlord, but it assumes the form of surplus value and is distributed between the capitalist farmer and landlord as entrepreneurial profit and capitalist ground-rent. The principal sign of the emergence of capitalist ground-rent can be found in the emergence of the class of entrepreneurial farmer between the landowner and the transformation of the direct producer, the peasant, into wage-labourers. The class of capitalist farmers invests capital in agriculture and appropriates the surplus labour of the direct producers in the form of surplus value by exploiting wage labour. The average profit remains with the capitalist farmer as entrepreneurial profit whereas the surplus profit over and above average profit goes to the landlord who has now become capitalist landlord. If the capitalist farmer does not get at least average profit, he will invest his capital in some other branch of production where he can get at least average profit and if the capitalist landlord does not get the surplus profit over and above average profit, then he will not give his land on rent to the capitalist farmer. The dynamics of market ensures that the capitalist farmer gets at least average profit and the surplus profit is transformed into capitalist ground-rent and is pocketed by the capitalist landlord. There is surplus profit in agriculture due to the lower organic composition of capital in agriculture and this surplus profit is transformed into capitalist ground-rent because there is private monopoly ownership of a non-produced natural resource, namely, land, in the hands of the class of capitalist landlords. These are the basics of determining the character of ground-rent (feudal or capitalist). In nutshell, one can broadly determine the nature of agriculture as capitalist with the help of the following yardsticks. (i) Capitalist ground-rent replaces feudal ground-rent (ii) Dominance of production for the market by investing capital and exploiting wage labour (iii) Class differentiation among peasants, and conversion of bulk of peasantry into wage-labourers and proletariat becoming the most important class in the countryside, though not necessarily the majority of the agrarian population.
Capitalist agriculture generally involves the classes of capitalist farmer landlords, capitalist rentier landlords, capitalist tenant farmers, agricultural wage-labourers as well as a class of small and middle peasants, who are involved in simple commodity production and are increasingly transformed into semi-proletariat. Similar to industrial capitalists in their firms, capitalist farmers invest in agriculture – they invest on their land to produce commodities for the market and extract surplus value by exploiting wage labour in the process. Capitalist farmers can be tenant farmers or owner farmers. If they are tenant farmers they appropriate the part of surplus value equal to average profit and hand over the surplus profit to the capitalist landlords in the form of capitalist ground-rent. If they are capitalist farmer landlords owning the land, then the surplus profit, too, is pocketed by them as extra-ordinary profit. Those who simply own agricultural land but do not play the role of an entrepreneurial farmer and extract a part of the surplus value as ground-rent are capitalist landlords. Today, most of those regarded as rich farmers are capitalist tenant farmers and capitalist owner farmers. Then there is the class of capitalist rentier landlords, who simply own the land, have nothing to do with production and only appropriate rent from a part of the surplus value produced in agriculture, namely, the surplus profit over and above the average profit. The class of middle and lower peasants does not employ wage labour on a regular basis and depend mainly on their family labour. They are involved in simple commodity production. Among them too, there are owner peasants and tenant peasants. The tenant peasants are exploited by capitalist landlords through ground-rent, which has not properly assumed capitalist form, but it is also not feudal rent, because these peasants are not under feudal bondage. It is a transitional form. They are also exploited by rich capitalist farmers (the upper and upper-middle farmers) through contract farming and commercial profit because these small peasants do not have access to the market. Moreover, the small tenant farmers as well as owner farmers are also exploited by the rich capitalist farmers and landlords through usury, because the small peasants do not have access to institutional credit. Thus, all small peasants are exploited by the rich capitalist farmers and landlords through commercial profit and interest and the small tenant peasants are also exploited through rent. As a result, a large part of these small peasants are heavily indebted (not to corporates, but rich capitalist farmers and landlords!) and are being rapidly proletarianized. Already, more than 75 per cent of their income comes from wage labour because they cannot run their households on the basis of cultivation and have to rely principally on wage labour. In other words, more than 80 per cent of small peasants have already transformed into semi-proletariat. They are not at all feudal peasants and are certainly a part of capitalist agricultural system.
The higher strata of middle farmers, that is, the upper-middle farmers are essentially capitalist farmers as they regularly employ and exploit wage labour. Even though other middle peasants also sometimes employ wage labour, most of the labour expended on their farms is family labour. Small and marginal farmers, however, end up exploiting themselves (in their effort to remain as peasants, they end up working more and more). Unable to meet their needs with the income from crop production, they resort to selling their labour-power. That is why, the majority of small and marginal farmers exist as semi-proletariat in villages. Agricultural workers are completely dependent on selling their labour-power for their livelihood. It is mainly by exploitation of their labour-power that surplus value is created in the countryside. The numbers of this proletarian class is always on the rise compared to that of farmers in capitalist agriculture. All the general laws of capitalist accumulation applicable to the industrial sector are applicable to capitalist agriculture. Therefore, it would only be foolishness to deny the capitalist nature of agriculture in today’s India, citing the ruination of small agricultural capital by big agricultural capital, or the desperate state of poor peasantry. These phenomena, in fact, demonstrate the capitalist nature of agriculture in a country much more clearly. This is, in essence, a broad picture of capitalist agriculture. To put it simply, when a capitalist farmer class comes into existence, when agricultural production processes are dominated by wage labour, when capitalist commodity production takes precedence over subsistence production in agriculture, it means that feudal rent has been transformed into capitalist ground-rent, and that feudal agriculture has given way to capitalist agriculture. These phenomena in Indian agriculture are very clearly present.
Therefore, there should not be any hesitation on one’s part in accepting that the dominant mode of production in agriculture in India today is capitalist mode of production. Ignoring these tools provided to us by Marxist political economy and using any other measures to gauge the nature of agricultural production would not only be unscientific but would amount to utopianism and unforgivable stubbornness. Let us now examine Mr. Rao’s argument that owing to specific processes and particular conditions, agriculture in India cannot be considered capitalistic.

B. Are Indian Conditions Special?

There are arguments claiming that capitalist societies can only be built on top of a bourgeois revolutionary struggle (from below) against feudal order and that capitalist agriculture can exist only in societies that went through such struggles. Sadly, such theorisations can only be appreciated for their enthusiasm to prove their ignorance of history and Marxism. There are a number of countries around the world, where capitalism took root as a result of gradual and incremental processes from above. The cases of Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia exemplify the development of capitalism without any democratic revolution or revolutionary democratic struggles on the part of those countries’ bourgeoisie. In post-independent India as well, the bourgeois ruling class, through legislations and pressure from popular peasant struggles and revolts, transformed feudal agriculture into a capitalist one in a gradual process. Through the Zamindari Abolition Act, Land Ceiling Acts and other legislations, it gave the feudal landlords an opportunity to transform themselves into capitalist landlords. Those who could not transform got ruined.
In later stages, it gave impetus to further capitalist transformation of agriculture through measures like the ‘Green Revolution’, which gave material incentive to the rising class of capitalist entrepreneurial farmers for undertaking rapid capitalist development of agriculture, first in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Western UP and parts of Rajasthan and then to many other states of India. An important point to note here is that the CPM is in agreement with these points. “After independence, instead of abolishing landlordism, the Congress rulers adopted agrarian policies to transform the semi-feudal landlords into capitalist landlords and develop a stratum of rich peasants.” (CPM Program, Para 3.16) We have seen that it is this rich peasantry that constitutes the capitalist farmer class. However, CPM never concretely says this out loud. It repeatedly uses the phrase, “bourgeois-landlord rulers,” but does not specify that the landlords being referred to here are actually capitalist landlords. This inconsistency is plain and simple opportunism. Even CPM’s program itself proves that the claim “capitalist agriculture takes complete shape only with the emergence of corporate farming,” is laughable. “…the development of capitalist relations in agriculture is clearly the major all India trend, it is equally evident that agrarian relations are marked by greater regional and sub-regional diversity and by unevenness in the development of capitalist relations of production and exchange.” (CPM Program, Para 3.19) Despite the absence of corporate farming, CPM recognised the dominance of capitalist relations in agriculture, that too, 22 years ago. With changes that have happened over the past two decades, it has only become clearer to an honest observer that the agriculture in India is capitalist.
The existence of diversity in agrarian relations in some parts of the country does not disprove the capitalist nature of Indian agriculture, especially when capitalist agriculture, as CPM’s program rightly observes, is the major all-India trend. If it was a major all-India trend 22 years ago, has not it become established as the dominant character of Indian agriculture today? Moreover, even before 1990, the Indian agriculture had already become predominantly capitalist since the 1950s itself. The backwardness of productive forces in agriculture is not a proof of its feudal character. The existence of some pre-capitalist relations in some pockets of India, too, has been on the wane and today they are not more than negligible remnants. Moreover, the existence of pre-capitalist relations in some parts of the country does not negate the fact that the agrarian relations in the country are primarily and predominantly capitalist. Today, the aforementioned pre-capitalist relations are only nominal and are increasingly being subsumed by capitalist relations. Just because there exists “unevenness in the development of capitalist relations of production and exchange,” it is plain wrong and delusional to reject the reality of capitalist agriculture. In fact, unevenness is the norm of the capitalist mode of production. These delusions can only be explained by some utopian idealistic notions regarding capitalism.
The argument that the existence of small holdings is antithetical to capitalism is also unscientific. In his seminal work, ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, Lenin himself made a case against these arguments. Kautsky’s ‘The Agrarian Question’, also explains why small holdings continue to exist for a long time in backward capitalist countries. (If CPM disregards Kautsky’s views because Lenin called him a renegade, not much help can be extended. It will be helpful to note that by the time ‘The Agrarian Question’ was published, Kautksy had not yet become a renegade and Lenin had highly praised this book of Kautsky as a major contribution to Marxist political economy). Moreover, Marx himself had pointed out to the existence of transitional forms in agriculture after the capitalist relations have established themselves firmly in chapter 47 of ‘Capital’, Volume 3, where he talks about the persistence of sharecropping and small peasant production and calls them as “transitional forms” which are no more feudal and are yet to become properly capitalist. Moreover, today’s small peasantry is not even like the “small peasant production” of Marx’s time, which was mainly subsistence production! Even for small peasants, the bulk of production is production for market and they have been transformed into semi-proletariat.
Now let us look at some hard facts that reveal the complete inanity of the above argument of Mr. Rao.
According to data from 2013, there were a total of 1,11,740 smallholdings of area less than two hectares in France. They were all cultivated and owned by households that were primarily dependent on family labour. Out of all holdings in the European Union, 50 per cent are in the hands of small farmers who owned less than two hectares each. (Source: ‘The Number, Size and Distribution of Farms and Family Farms Worldwide’ by S.K. Lowder, J. Skoet, and Terri Raney, FAO of UN, Rome, Italy) Just because smallholdings continue to exist in Italy, France and Germany in considerable numbers, should we be saying that democratic tasks in these countries have not been fulfilled or the agriculture has not become qualitatively capitalist? Should we be declaring that these countries are at the stage of a people’s democratic revolution? In fact, it is theoretically possible to practise capitalist agriculture in as small a landholding as 2 hectares depending on the level of development of productive forces.
In this manner, any honest evaluation of agriculture in India will make it clear that it is capitalist agriculture that is being practised in the country. According to the 2011 Census, the non-agricultural population has surpassed the agricultural population in rural India. Even among the agricultural population, agricultural workers outnumber the peasants. Out of the 26 crore agrarian populace, nearly 15 crore are agricultural workers while approximately 11 crore are farmers. Among these farmers, while approximately a crore and a half are capitalist farmers, the rest are marginal, small, and lower-middle peasants who own less than 2 hectares of land. The Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India, conducted by the National Statistical Office (NSO) in 2019 (NSS Report No. 587) shows that the majority of the income earned by small and marginal farmers came from wage labour. This report clearly shows the intensification of wage exploitation in capitalist agriculture and class differentiation among peasantry in the Indian countryside. Continuing to say that capitalist agriculture has not entered the qualitative phase by ignoring the fundamentals of Marxist political economy and visible realities of the day is nothing short of a tragedy.

C. CPM Puts Aside its Own Study Report!

In 2015, CPM published a report (‘The Report of Study Group on Agrarian Classes’) after studying the changes that have occurred in India’s agriculture. This report has in no uncertain terms stated that agriculture in India today is capitalist in nature. This point was half-heartedly mentioned in the PDR article. However, much more important points that the report has brought forth were excluded in the article. The report has, in fact, shown mirror to the problems in CPM program and its practice. That is probably why the report has been relegated to the shelves.

• “Landlord households — now almost entirely capitalist landlords — own the most land and generally the best land in most Indian villages.” (Point 17 in ‘ The Report of Study Group on Agrarian Classes’)
• “There is a second, and newer, constituent part of the ruling class in rural India. Big capitalist farmers also do not participate in the major manual operations on the land. The main difference between them and landlords is that the former did not traditionally belong to the class of landlords. Some of them came from rich peasant or middle peasant families that had a tradition of family labour, whose members, in fact, actually worked at major manual tasks even in the present or previous generation. Such families have been beneficiaries of post-Independence agricultural and rural policy and have been at the gaining end of the process of post-Independence differentiation in general.” (Point 18 in the report)
• “This segment (big capitalist farmer class) is in the process of fusing (or, indeed, has fused) with the landlord class to form, in their unity, the chief rural exploiting class in the countryside… they may now be considered a single pillar of the state in rural India.” (Point 20 in the report)
• “In short, we need fresh thinking on how to fight a class enemy of this type.” (Point 31 in the report)

This report holds mirror to the confusion and opportunism in CPM regarding the agrarian question. Two All-India congresses have passed since the report was published, but CPM is yet to make amendments to its program to reflect the realities mentioned in the report. The party is yet to figure out what this “fresh thinking” is! Perhaps, recognising the reality of this country’s transformation into a capitalist country and on that basis accepting that we are in the socialist stage of revolution, declaring that the rich peasantry has actually been an enemy for very long and fundamentally altering its program by incorporating all these points could be the necessary “fresh thinking”. As quoted above, CPM uses neo-rich, rich peasantry and big capitalist farmers interchangeably and according to political convenience. Sometimes differentiates rich peasantry from big capitalist farmers. In his article, Mr. VSR mentions that “a class of the neo-rich has come into power in the countryside. Old type of landlords and the new capitalist rich have fused together to take this form.” Why is it that the learned comrade still uses the old terms when his party’s report has once and for all clarified that there is no old-type of landlords left in the village? The report has given the nice name of “big capitalist farmers” to this “neo-rich”. Why is CPM hesitant to use it? Because, recognising the presence of capitalist farmers within the peasantry would entail accepting that the party, in many areas, is being led by these capitalist farmers and following the typical revisionist line of class collaborationism with small and medium capitalist class. That is why!

D. This is Capitalist Social Oppression

The PDR article mentions that discrimination on the basis of caste, gender, religion and region is still persistent in the countryside, and therefore declares that capitalist relations in agriculture have not reached a qualitative phase! This, sadly, is also a grossly unscientific understanding of historical processes. Severe oppression of the Blacks is still a reality in capitalist USA. Gender discrimination is rife in every capitalist country. Several European nations are witnessing a rise in xenophobia. Regional differences in development and regional oppression are present in every capitalist country. Are all these feudal characteristics in and by themselves? By that logic, should not we be declaring that the development of capitalist relations in these countries has not reached a qualitative phase? In India’s case, all the above-mentioned forms of oppression are joined by another peculiar form of social oppression, namely, caste-based oppression. Ruling classes of new societies will inevitably make use of the values and forms of oppression that came into existence in the older societies for their own ends. They will transform, articulate, adapt and sublate many of these forms of oppression to suit their needs. More importantly, they will actively promote some of these values, in so far as they are not in contradiction with the capitalist mode of production itself. For instance, the caste system in India today is not the caste system that existed in the later-Vedic period, or Gupta period or the Turkish or Mughal rule. The registers of caste that were in contradiction with capitalist mode of production are on decline for example, commensal prejudices, untouchability, and hereditary division of labour, but capitalist system has co-opted caste endogamy because this has no contradiction with capitalism; on the contrary, it makes private property even more sacred than the bourgeoisie would have imagined! That is why, caste endogamy is the one register of caste system that not only persists but is consolidated, whereas the other elements which were a hindrance to capitalist mode of production are on decline. This is how every new mode of production adopts, adapts, articulates, adjusts and sublates every form of social oppression that came into existence before its own advent. In that way, all forms of oppression that we see around us today are capitalist forms of oppression. What we witness today is a capitalist patriarchy, a capitalist caste system, a capitalist communalism, a capitalist regionalism, a capitalist xenophobia. Everywhere in the world, including India, oppression of the women existed even in pre-feudal times. Similarly, caste-based oppression also has been in existence since before feudalism. It was later during the Gupta period that it was co-opted and sublated by the feudal state. It is in the same way that caste continues to exist today. Therefore, it is important to try and understand how every society based on exploitation protects, sublates and reproduces various forms of oppression, rather than blindly labelling those forms of oppression as belonging to specific modes of production. Otherwise we would have to proclaim that every country in the world today is in the stage of democratic revolution! This will become much clearer when seen from a political perspective. CPM’s study report on agrarian classes states that it would not be possible to “…achieve the basic tasks of development for the people, and an end to the worst forms of class, caste, gender and other forms of social oppression and of socio-economic deprivation without destroying the class power of the landlords and big capitalist farmers..” (Point 31 in the report) At the same time, CPM’s program claims that the rich peasantry in the countryside will be an ally in the proletarian struggle! Unless and until CPM accepts that the dominant mode of production in India today is capitalism and that the stage of revolution is socialist, there is no way that this contradiction of the party program can at least be formally resolved because for a social democratic party, resolution of this contradiction will always remain formal and superficial. It will not be possible to mount a meaningful struggle against caste oppression, without fighting the rural capitalist class that reproduces caste oppression and class exploitation.
Let us look at another gem from Mr. Rao’s article: “There is a difference between the way a capitalist exploits an industrial wage-labourer and the way a landlord exploits an agricultural wage-labourer. Caste, gender discrimination, regional disparity in development are reflected in the latter form of exploitation.” This is another baseless argument that was brought forth in the PDR article. To prove its point, the article should have first given some examples of that idealized capitalist system where women and people from less-developed regions are also paid equal wages for equal work without discrimination on the basis of caste, gender or region. It is plainly visible for any perceptive individual that caste discrimination is very much present in capitalist factories and offices. Even “celebrated” spaces like universities are rife with this form of oppression.
And yet again: “One cannot say that an agricultural labourer is ‘free’ like the industrial labourer… an agricultural labourer works on different farms, and for different people on different days. They work for daily wages, wages change with seasons. When work is scarce, they migrate. When there is no work, they remain hungry, they borrow money. To pay it back, they work for lower wages during the work season.” This is another meaningless set of words that figured in the PDR piece. Are not workers in the urban unorganised sector working for different employers on different days? Do not the wages of industrial and unorganised sector workers vary with seasons? Are not lakhs of industrial workers migrating in search of work? Are not they borrowing money to feed themselves during lean periods? Are not they working for lower wages to repay their loans? How will one answer these questions? Which system do these problems and forms of exploitation belong to?

E. Ideal Capitalist System: A Hallucination

The article’s views on industrial development in India and the bourgeois rule in India are also far from truth. Citing a CPM resolution from 1967, the PDR piece claims that the Indian bourgeoisie has “no industrial base.” At another place, the article says that “it is true that our economy has developed post Neoliberal reforms in 1991, but this development is due to foreign capital that has entered the country in search of profit. Development will only be stable if it is built on the base of agriculture and industries. The service sector that grew with the help of foreign capital failed in creating employment. Whatever new employment is being created is unstable. Neither the wages nor the wealth of people increased. Only a few people have benefited from this development and have become billionaires.” It is important that we observe two things here. First is the problem with the understanding of development of capitalism in the country. Post-independence, state power in India was transferred to the politically-independent bourgeoisie. Capitalism prospered under the auspices of the new state, with the help of public sector investments, import-substitution and the support of protectionist policies. The article ignores the fact that the Indian bourgeoisie had an industrial base from even before independence. Even until 1991, industrial development progressed mainly with the help of domestic capital. Post-reforms, too, foreign capital never played the pre-dominant role in industrial development without domestic big capital. Many studies, Marxist and otherwise, conducted before and even after the independence have repeatedly proven this. Even some pro-CPM left-Keynesians like Jayati Ghosh and C. P. Chandrashekhar accept that the post-independent industrial development of India was based on state-led industrialization, strict protectionism and import-substitution and they reminisce about it with teary-eyed nostalgia and yearn for a return to that period! Even Prabhat Patnaik sounds like that many a times! Even the 1991 reforms were a result of the necessity of the Indian capitalist class and the condition in which it had found itself after four and a half decades of state-regulated accumulation. The Indian industrial bourgeoisie itself wanted liberalization and it had been rooting for it since the early 1980s itself. It was not simply due to the pressure of and arm-twisting by imperialism or capitulation to foreign capital. It is not really difficult to understand these phenomena if we keep in mind that within the ruling bourgeoisie of the country, there exist multiple strata, and that their respective interests can often come into conflict.
Second, illusions about service sector in particular and capitalist development in general. Deeming the service sector, as a whole, an unproductive sector has nothing to do whatsoever with Marx and Marxist political economy. One needs to remember Marx’s words “a commodity can also be a useful effect or a service”. In fact, it is the service sector that contributes a major share of the GDP of a number of advanced capitalist countries including the US. Does it mean that the capitalist development in these countries is also dependent on foreign capital? Does it mean that those countries are in the stage of democratic revolution? Another illusion that presents itself in the PDR article is that development based on domestic capital would be stable. If that is true, why is the development in the US and Europe stagnant? Why is there a crisis brewing in their economies? The wages are not increasing in these countries either. The process of informalization and contractualization is at height in these countries as well and there, too, the jobs and incomes of bulk of the working class have become precarious and insecure. A small section of the rich are becoming billionaires. Does that mean the capitalist system in these countries also has not reached the phase of qualitative change? Should the stage of revolution be proclaimed democratic? Bourgeois nationalist imaginations and idealistic illusions about capitalism that have nothing to do with Marxist theory are the reasons behind arguments such as these. This fact becomes much clearer by reading the following sentences – “It would be a mistake to conflate the expansion of the international finance capital with capitalist development. This capital is not stable. Neither does it have the notions of patriotism or nationality. It will fly wherever it can find profit. It will have no qualms about leaving its motherland and collaborating with even enemy nations. Declaring that feudalism has been vanquished and that capitalist development has reached a qualitative phase by looking at this unstable capital would be a mistake.” We have already discussed the role of domestic and foreign capital in industrial growth. Now, let us take a look at patriotism, nationalism and profit motive. Domestic or foreign, will there ever be capital with no intention of extracting profit? What powers capital – profit or patriotism? Is it because of American capital’s lack of patriotism that most commodities consumed in the US, today, are being produced in China and other so-called “Third Word” countries and most of the US capital has disinvested from the US national economy and has migrated to the Global South? Or is it because of its patriotism? Is it because of his patriotism that Adani is investing in Australia? Capital, be it Indian or American, will fly to any corner of the world in search of profit. What kind of Marxism is to falsely attribute patriotism to capital? And Nationalism? Yes, capital is nationalist (!) and its flight to areas with cheaper labour and cheaper raw material is precisely what constitutes its nationalism, rather than negating it! As Marx said, the nationalism of bourgeoisie originates in the market. The competition between the capitalists of different nations and even the capitalists of the same nation for domestic and international markets needs to be understood solely from a Marxist perspective. Who in India, today, is deciding which country is an ally or an enemy of the working class? Does the proletariat of a class society have allies or enemies in countries? Once the ideas of liberalism and nationalism are lapped up, where in your minds will Marxism find place? It is only profit that capital seeks. And its path to profit is filled with competition and instability. What is the point of expecting stability and altruism from any form of capital? What kind of Marxism proves the existence of feudalism by showing proofs of unstable and profit-seeking capitalist growth? Similar sort of blunders can be seen being committed by some ML parties.
Today, it is the capitalist class that controls the state power. Naturally, the state performs the task of negotiating and co-ordinating the interests of various strata of the capitalist class, while giving primacy to the interests of big capitalists. The function of the state is to collectivize the long-term collective class interests of the bourgeoisie. The state’s mandate is to safeguard the capitalist mode of production and reproduce the capitalist relations of production without interruptions. Any policy, domestic or international, will be dictated by this sole purpose. When the state is controlled by a politically-independent bourgeoisie and capitalist mode of production is the dominant mode of production across the economy, including agriculture, the stage of revolution in that country will undoubtedly be socialist. The contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat will be the principal contradiction.

2. The Dangers of the Incorrect Program of People’s Democratic Revolution in the Present Indian Situation

There will not be any meaning to debate on the question of dominant mode of production unless it is discussed in conjunction with class struggle. Even bourgeois intellectuals engage in discussions on development of capitalism. However, the task of the communists is to change the society fundamentally through class struggle. Identifying the allies and enemies of the proletariat is the most crucial aspect of this task. The one and only reason for communists to engage in the mode of production debate is to make this class analysis. Allies and enemies of the proletariat change based on the stage of revolution. If the stage of revolution is determined incorrectly, we end up making enemy classes our allies. We have so far analysed why determining the stage of revolution as people’s democratic revolution is a mistake, based on the current concrete conditions in the country. We shall now examine how this mistake in properly determining the stage of revolution could prove harmful to our practice.

A. For CPM, Enemy is the Ally!

According to CPM’s understanding, certain democratic tasks have not been fulfilled and capitalism in India has not reached the phase of qualitative change. As a result, only imperialist forces, monopoly capitalist forces and feudal forces are its enemies. All other classes are either allies or those who might join its struggle for revolution. CPM’s program states that “The nature of our revolution in the present stage of its development is essentially anti-feudal, anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly and democratic.” (CPM program, point 7.2) To simply put it, CPM is not opposed to the capitalist class as a whole. It is only opposed to the imperialist bourgeoisie and the monopoly capitalist class in India! Para 7.11 in the party’s program explains how the non-monopoly capitalist class can join hands with the proletariat for revolution. The next paragraph clearly reflects CPM’s class collaboration with the bourgeoisie. It says that “Every effort must be made to win them to the democratic front by a diligent and concrete study of their problems. No opportunity should be lost by the working class to render them support in all their struggles against both the Indian monopolists and foreign imperialist competitors.” This paragraph clearly states CPM’s position with regards to collaborating with the capitalists. The proletariat should carefully study the problems of the bourgeoisie and support them! Very well! The party’s leaders have on multiple occasions proudly claimed that it is only based on this understanding that they have allied with the regional bourgeois parties. Para 7.8 in the program explains that the rich peasantry in the countryside is also a possible ally that could join the democratic front. The report on agrarian classes (2015) spoke completely opposite of this. We have already seen how the report said that it is this rich peasantry that is the capitalist farmer class and without fighting them class struggle would not progress in the countryside. Evidently, when one performs ridiculous somersaults to force-fit the hard realities within the framework of social-democratic politics, contradictions abound!
At a time when one needs to work against capitalism and all strata of capitalists, CPM’s program calls for the proletariat to work with urban and rural capitalist class and study their problems! This is the most harmful aspect of the People’s Democratic Revolution program in the current Indian situation. This is plain and simple class collaborationism written into the party’s program. It is according to this understanding that the party is, in practice, revelling in its service to the capitalist farmer class while ignoring the interests of the proletariat. Instead of fighting capitalist exploitation, it is trying to reconcile the interests of the bourgeoisie and proletariat by way of reforms and efforts at building better capitalism, which are doomed to fail even before their beginning. If one comes to the conclusion that the dominant mode of production in India is capitalism, only poor peasantry and lower-middle peasantry will remain allies to the proletariat along with the urban middle-middle and lower-middle class. There will not be the slightest chance of collaboration with capitalist farmers and other factions of non-monopoly bourgeoisie.

B. Building Capitalism under the Leadership of the Proletariat!

CPM’s program dictates that the proletariat should build a better capitalist system once people’s democratic revolution succeeds. “…the people’s democratic government play a decisive role through public ownership in the key sectors of the economy and the State performing a regulatory and guiding role in other sectors. The people’s democratic economy will be a multi-structural one with various forms of ownership, with the public sector having a dominating position.” (CPM program, point 6.5) The state led by the proletariat will regulate capital and guide it! The program also discusses the supposed good that happens to various classes from achieving a people’s democratic revolution in the country. Let us look at what the working class stands to specifically gain.

• “Ensure adequate wages, social security measures and living conditions for agricultural workers.” (CPM Program, 6.4 (v))
• “Improve radically the living standards of workers by: a) fixing a living wage, b) progressive reduction of working hours; c) social insurance against every kind of disability and unemployment; d) provision of housing for workers; e) recognition of trade unions by secret ballot and their rights of collective bargaining as well as right to strike; and f) abolition of child labour.” (6.6 (vi))

This is what the working class will receive after leading a revolution! According to CPM, the working class should lead a “revolution” and in return be happy with social security benefits, better living conditions, the right to form unions to bargain with capitalists! And lest you forget! For the revolution to succeed the proletariat should make every effort to “diligently study” the problems of the bourgeoisie.

C. ‘People’s Democratic Revolution’ – Disappeared in Action

The result of codifying class collaboration in its program is clearly visible in CPM’s practice. In its long journey with bourgeois political parties and forces, it has even forgotten its (mistaken and formal) goal of ‘people’s democratic revolution’. Today, the slogan of people’s democratic revolution is nowhere to be seen in the party’s propaganda or political struggles. It is not mentioned even for humour’s sake in the party’s theoretical pieces or discussions. CPM’s only revolutionary program, today, is to help one bourgeois party win against the other and vice versa. “Change in governments, change in government policies,” is its sole revolutionary slogan. In the era of capitalist agriculture, slogans like “land to the tiller” inspire only ridicule. That is why CPM had to put this crucial slogan present in its program in cold storage. Capitalist agriculture makes each living day worse for small and marginal farmers. That is why poor peasantry has increasingly been growing averse to farming. They are slowly moving towards depending on wage labour for livelihood and are transforming into proletariat. In this context, what is the value of the “land to the tiller” slogan? What meaning remains of the theorisation that agricultural revolution is the axis of people’s democratic revolution? When you have decided that the capitalist farmer class is an ally, how will you redistribute the imaginary land gathered from imaginary feudal lords? This is how a path full of anti-Marxist theorisations and anti-Marxist conclusions has led to further degeneration of CPM as a revisionist party.

3. Distortion of Marxist Theory and History of Socialist Countries

In the effort to prove that the current mode of production in India is not capitalist and the stage of revolution is not socialist, the ‘Marxistu’ article of Mr. Rao sadly had to distort the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin and the revolutionary histories of Russia and China. Let us examine these one by one.

A. Distortion of the Works of Marx and Engels

“In his essays about India, Marx said that the British rule is destroying the old society in India but has not built a new one.” This is a clear distortion of what Marx originally wrote. “England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing.” – This is what Marx said in his June 1853 essay, “British Rule in India”. As it can be noticed, the article was written during company’s rule in India and that the crown’s direct rule followed for another 90 years after that. In the same essay, Marx says that England has caused a social revolution in India and in doing so, “whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.” Importantly in another essay titled “The Future Results of British Rule in India,” written after a month in July 1853, Marx clearly says that British are turning the tables and reconstituting India by way of building irrigation, railways and other infrastructural facilities. “The ruling classes of Great Britain have had, till now, but an accidental, transitory and exceptional interest in the progress of India. The aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to plunder it, and the millocracy to undersell it. But now the tables are turned. The millocracy have discovered that the transformation of India into a reproductive country has become of vital importance to them, and that, to that end, it is necessary, above all, to gift her with means of irrigation and of internal communication. They intend now drawing a net of railroads over India. And they will do it. The results must be inappreciable.” says Marx in the essay. As is clear, Marx clearly appreciated the dual role of colonialism in India, the destructive one and the creative one. Most of Marxist historians and scholars of Indian history (some of them even associated with the CPM!) are well-aware of this fact! However, ironically, Mr. Rao is completely ignorant of it.
In fact, there is no relation whatsoever between Marx’s comments in 1853 and today’s discussion about the dominant mode of production in India. Similarly, there is no relation between Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation of capital and the opinions expressed in the PDR article in that concept’s name. Big industry devouring smaller ones, farmers’ lands being bought away through land acquisitions, privatising government undertakings are common occurrences in most capitalist countries. There is no relation between these phenomena and Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation of capital. Engels’ comments about democratic republic in Germany have also been mentioned in the wrong context. When Engels supported the demand for a democratic republic in Germany, the bourgeois democratic tasks, mainly, the task pertaining to the question of state, were still incomplete. There was no republic, no universal franchise, no freedom of expression, no right to assemble, no freedom of press, that is, the basic political democratic tasks were yet unfinished and no democratic economic rights were available to the workers. Needless to say, that even when the tasks of political democracy are completed, the bourgeois democracy does not become “the Garden of Eden” before the “original sin”. However, still, these bourgeois democratic political tasks are important for proletariat because bourgeois democracy (even in the worst condition and form!) is a better ground for the proletariat to wage class struggle. That is one of the basic teachings of Lenin. That is not the situation in India today. The question in Germany pertained to establishment of a unified German democratic republic with universal franchise, doing away with feudal relations (that is why ‘The Demands of Communist Party in Germany’ written in March 1848 says “All feudal burdens, all fees, labour services, tithes, etc. which have previously oppressed the peasantry shall be abolished without any compensation” and “all baronical and other feudal estates, all mines, pits, etc. shall be converted into state property (nationalization)”). Since, these basic democratic tasks were yet to be fulfilled, 1891 Erfurt Program also demanded “Universal, equal and direct suffrage with secret ballot in all elections”, “freedom of association”, “8 hour workday”, “self-determination and self-government of people”, etc. Are these the questions that we face in India today? There is no point in justifying the people’s democratic revolution program by equating India of 2022 with Bismarck’s Germany or even the pre-Bismarckian Germany.

B. Distortion of Lenin and the History of the Russian Revolution

Along with Lenin’s works, PDR the essay completely distorts the policies of Soviet Russia and then of the USSR. In his ‘Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution’, written in 1905, Lenin speaks about the stage of socialist revolution as well. This fact was conveniently ignored in the PDR article by Mr. Rao. Lenin took a clear and consistent position that Russia would enter the stage of socialist revolution immediately after the Tsar-led feudal monarchy was replaced by a democratic state. Lenin made it clear time and again that the capitalist relations had already become the dominant production relations in Russia. By 1908, that is, the period of Stolypin reforms, the capitalist relations were developed beyond question in Russian agriculture, even though pre-capitalist remnants remained. However, since the state power was concentrated in the hands of the feudal Tsar representing the collaboration of aristocratic landlords (who were slowly being transformed into capitalist landlords) and big bourgeoisie, and since the basic democratic tasks like constitution of a republic, universal franchise and other political democratic rights were not fulfilled, Lenin argued for the stage of democratic revolution, where the proletariat, as the leader, would ally with the entire peasantry together and consummate the democratic tasks and then would split the peasantry and ally with the poor and middle peasantry against the bourgeoisie (including the rich farmers!) to move towards socialist revolution. This situation changed with the February revolution of 1917. And that is why in March-April 1917 itself, Lenin began to argue that Russia was already in the stage of socialist revolution. Obviously, Mr. Rao would not put forth such an outrageous proposition that capitalism in Russia suddenly and magically developed within the 8 months between the February Revolution and October Revolution and cause his further ridicule! In the letters that he wrote after this revolution (the famous ‘Letters from Afar’) and in his ‘April Theses’, Lenin made it very clear that Russia has entered the stage of socialist revolution. However, these facts were all missing in the ‘Marxistu’ article by Mr. Rao. In this way, the piece distorted Lenin’s work to imply that the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was in fact a democratic revolution.
The history of Socialist Russia has also been distorted in the piece. The piece claims that “land was not nationalized and own cultivation was allowed to exist,” in Soviet Russia. This is a big fat lie. The first decree issued by the Socialist government after the success of the Bolshevik revolution in fact nationalized all land in the country. Evidently, Mr. Rao has confused nationalization of land (which is radical bourgeois demand!) with collectivization of agriculture (that is a socialist demand)! It is true that collectivization on mass scale was not immediately carried out in Soviet Russia and it was done between 1930 and 1936 under the able leadership of Stalin. In Russia, as Lenin had pointed out, the bulk of small and middle peasantry was immediately politically and ideologically prepared only for a radical bourgeois land program owing to the influence of the Narodinks, that is, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SR Party). Secondly, Engels had already made it clear in ‘The Peasant Question in France and Germany’ that even in the socialist revolution, the communists will not force the small and middle peasants to join collective socialist agriculture and will convince them and persuade them through leading by example and ideological-political motivation in a gradual process. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did the same. They nationalized the land and prohibited exploitation of wage labour to prevent development of bourgeois tendencies but did not immediately collectivize the agriculture and after 12 years the movement of collectivization was started when the Bolsheviks had won over the majority of small and middle peasantry against the new Kulaks which had emerged during the NEP years. This does not mean that land was not nationalized, as Mr. Rao believes. In fact, it is important here to note that the Soviet government began socialist relations of production by abolishing wage labour in agriculture immediately after the revolution.
The article continues its distortions by claiming that only monopoly capital was abolished after the revolution. The truth is that on 28th June 1918, the Soviet state, under Lenin’s leadership, nationalized all basic industries and by November 1920, all industries involving up to 5 workers and mechanical power were nationalized. During NEP, only the smallest workshops were denationalized for some period and it is noteworthy that Lenin called NEP “a strategic retreat” and a period to prepare for the next “strategic offensive” which began from 1929 under the leadership of Stalin. It is understandable why CPM and its intellectuals like Prabhat Patnaik are in love with the “strategic retreat” of NEP which the Bolsheviks had to make owing to the complications that arose during the period of “War Communism”! Because it suits their revisionist politics and they want to remain in a state of “strategic retreat” perpetually, forever! That is why CPM tried to justify its policies in Nandigram and Singur as example of Lenin’s policy of NEP, even though what CPM did in Nandigram and Singur had nothing whatsoever to do with Lenin’s temporary “strategic retreat” of NEP!
More than anything else there is no similarity between the conditions of Russia in 1917 and the conditions of India in 2022. However, might one try and distort history, the revolution achieved in Russia was a socialist revolution. Similarly, it is socialist revolution that has to happen in India, too, even though India is at a qualitatively different historical juncture as compared to Russia of 1917 and objectively and historically speaking, the balance of class forces is much more clearly in favour of socialist revolution in India today. This is not to argue that consummating socialist revolution in India is easier than it was in the Russia more than a century ago. On the contrary, it is more challenging. However, once established, a socialist system will have a larger social base and it would be much more sustainable because unlike Russia, the proletariat in India is not just 10 per cent of the population, rather, it is nearly 50 per cent. The peasant population is not more than 10 per cent and out of that, the capitalist farmers are only one-tenth; the rest of the peasant population has been transformed into semi-proletariat; the agriculture workers by far outnumber the population of peasants.
Citing a Comintern resolution that was issued when India was a colony to argue for a people’s democratic revolution is laughable. When the resolution was passed in 1928, India was still a colony and was undoubtedly in the stage of national democratic revolution. But what is the point of mentioning this resolution while ignoring the independence that came in 1947 and the development of capitalist relations in the following decades!? Had the writer been sleeping through the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2010s and 2020s, historically speaking?

C. Distortion of Chinese History – Support to Today’s Capitalist China in the Name of “Socialism”!

At the time of revolution in 1949, China was actually in the stage of democratic revolution. The Chinese society existed as a semi-feudal semi-colony. Dominant agrarian relations at the time were undoubtedly feudal. A number of regions in the country were Japanese colonies. In that context, the stage of revolution in China was democratic. Instead of dealing with these truths, the article says that “post-revolution, a new democratic system was built in China by vanquishing feudalism. This is also an intermediate step before socialism. Compared to Lenin, Mao took a clearer position in this regard.” In this manner, the article distorts Lenin’s positions and hides the truth that Mao precisely applied Leninist line in the concrete conditions of China. Mr. Rao tries here to draw a wedge between Lenin and Mao! It ignores the differences between the China of the 1940s and India of 2022 as also tries to justify CPM’s people’s democratic revolution theory.
Within a few years after the revolution, led by Mao, the construction of a socialist system began in China through collective agriculture (which had started in the liberated areas even before 1949 Revolution), nationalization of industry (which began in a step-by-step manner since the late-1950s itself) and other measures. The PDR article incorrectly paints these efforts as a mistake. “The attempt to artificially force advanced production relations on a society before it could develop its productive forces, resulted in a crisis,” the article says, parroting capitalist and especially the revisionist and social-democratic formulations of Kautsky and Mensheviks instead of revolutionary Marxism. Lenin responded precisely to this criticism of Kautsky in his excellent work, ‘The Proletarian Revolution and The Renegade Kautsky’, as Kautsky levelled the same charge against the Bolsheviks that they were forcing socialist production relations, whereas the productive forces were quite undeveloped in Russia! And it was precisely against this “productive forces theory” and “productivism” of Chinese revisionists and capitalist-roaders like Liu Shao Chi and Deng Tsiao Ping that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) was launched under Mao’s leadership. The PDR article distorts this history. It celebrates the capitalist restoration that took place under the leadership of Deng and lectures us to “learn from these experiences.”! What can be more brazen than such revisionist sermons! Today, China’s growth as a strong capitalist country is visible for anybody to see. It is churning out billionaires in competition with the US while at the same time reproducing the misery of millions of working masses. The Chinese state is intensively exploiting the working class while denying even the most basic democratic rights to the workers. World over, Chinese capital is today in an intense hunt for profits, cheap labour and cheap raw materials. It is trying to create its economic neo-colonies in Africa, supporting WTO and the World Bank while at the same time competing with them with its own plan of establishing an international bank (!), and is pushing forth policies of globalization more than any other country. The capitalist development taking place in China is similar to the development that happened and is happening in all capitalist countries. Publicizing the working class’s exploitation by the billionaires, dire living conditions of the working class and service being rendered to capitalism under the garb of the Red Flag as “socialism” is nothing but naked and shameless opportunism. Perhaps Mr. Rao sees the recent revolt of Foxconn workers and highest number of mining disaster deaths of workers as signs of “socialism” in China today and that it why they replicated similar models of repression in West Bengal when they were in power! CPM’s deceit in claiming that all that was happening in Russia until the Soviet Union fell in 1991 was socialism is a fact that cannot be hidden in history. Is it not plain and simple dishonesty to later slyly make resolutions stating that Soviet Union saw capitalist restoration post-Stalin? What happened in Nandigram, Lalgarh, and Singur and how did it clearly demonstrate CPM’s social-democratic nature and its deceit? What else can one expect from a party that has idolised the “socialism” of revisionist and social fascist China! That is probably why the party is unable to see the struggles and resistance of workers in China!

D. Theory of “Permanent Revolution” is Plain Wrong

The article also tries to misrepresent all the forces speaking of socialist revolution as entities cut from the same cloth. The socialist revolution being talked about by parties like RSP and SUCI has no basis in Marxism. The dominant mode of production is a non-issue for these parties and they also fail to understand the complexities regarding the character of bourgeois state immediately after Independence. They unscientifically declare that any revolution that happens under the leadership of the proletariat will be a socialist revolution. Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” is the basis for this kind of understanding. So, even if they do not say it out loud, they are doubtlessly Trotskyite organizations. Trotsky argued that even if the character of the state is feudal and even if the mode of production has not become capitalist, if the revolution takes place under the leadership of the communist party and the proletariat, it will directly be a socialist revolution. In other words, Trotsky talked about skipping the stage of democratic revolution.
Unlike these Trotskyite and ex-Trotskyite organizations, we do not and have never argued that democratic stage of revolution does not exist. We are instead saying that the fundamental tasks of democratic revolution were completed in India by the bourgeoisie in a gradual historical process and in a non-revolutionary way which is very much possible in the case of capitalist transformation but not in the case of socialist transformation. The reason is that in the case of transition from feudalism to capitalism, one exploitative and oppressive ruling class replaces another exploitative and oppressive ruling class. However, in transition from capitalism to socialism, it is for the first time in history that an exploited revolutionary class replaces an exploitative ruling class from power and that it why it cannot simply lay hold of the readymade bourgeois state apparatus and precisely that is why it must smash it in order to establish its own class dictatorship and build socialism. Lenin understood it and later Marxists have written about it in detail, which the CPM leadership has conveniently glossed over in order to create space for its class collaborationism with the bourgeoisie. Capitalism has developed in India in a gradual process and the main democratic tasks, too, have been fulfilled in an incremental process, howsoever weak and fragile this bourgeois democracy is, and, the present stage of revolution in India is socialist. Making declarations while ignoring the realities will lead to no good. We have discussed the class differentiation among peasantry in the previous sections. However, even today, SUCI runs a single united farmers-agricultural workers organization for all classes of farmers and agricultural workers! Such is the poverty of their theory and practice! Therefore, denying the reality of stage of the socialist revolution by demonstrating incorrect examples is nothing but pure opportunism.

Socialist Revolution is the Only Solution

NSP believes that the task of communists in India is to understand and realize the fact that the dominance of capitalist relations in the society has been firmly established and therefore to strive for organizing the working masses for the socialist revolution. It is also our strong belief that it will be impossible for the revolutionary left movement to move forward without taking up this task. We appeal to all the revolutionary communist forces to come forward to fulfil this task in the light of Marxist theory. What needs to happen in the 21st century is a new kind of socialist revolution. The present conditions in the world and India are very different from the conditions that existed at the time of Russian and Chinese revolutions. We have the experiences and lessons of those great revolutions in front of us today. It is by learning from these experiences can our praxis pave the path for the socialist revolution that we need. This is the belief of ‘New Socialist Praxis’. Even though we have no such hope regarding the ideological and political leadership of the CPM, we do hope that the genuine revolutionary elements among the grass-root cadre within the CPM and elsewhere will understand the gravity of this task, strengthen themselves in revolutionary Marxist theory in order to reveal the revisionist and social-democratic character of CPM, apply revolutionary Marxist theory to the concrete conditions of present-day India and come together in order to fulfil these fundamental tasks.

(Translated from Telugu- Sujan)