--- On Sat, 30/5/09, C.K. Vishwanath <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: C.K. Vishwanath <[email protected]>
> Subject: [GreenYouth] Re: Sadanand Menon: What 'reality' did the Left lose
> touch with?
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Saturday, 30 May, 2009, 5:23 PM
>
>
> i have to add here-
> labour aristocracy and petty bourgeoise is the reactionary
> element in the working class movement.embourgeoisement is
> the dream of this section.k.marx and engels are far off
> from this dream world.
> working class base is shrinking to such a large
> extent,where class formation is in the imagination of
> leadership rather than in concrete reality.
the political imagination and its idealogical understanding from th e roots of
third international reaveals the ultimate truth of working class imancipation
has been an open conflict with liberal democracy.Party vs constituional
authority.
>
>
> --- On Fri, 29/5/09, damodar prasad <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > From: damodar prasad <[email protected]>
> > Subject: [GreenYouth] Sadanand Menon: What 'reality'
> did the Left lose touch with?
> > To: "[email protected]"
> <[email protected]>,
> "Green Youth Movement" <[email protected]>
> > Date: Friday, 29 May, 2009, 12:04 PM
> > The Left might have become the
> > laughing stock of the nation post elections, but laugh
> is
> > the last thing we should be doing. It is a matter of
> > tremendous concern that a country with such a vast
> pool of
> > industrial and agricultural proletariat has just 24
> Members
> > in Parliament to speak on their behalf.
> >
> >
> > This is the lowest ever since the first Parliament of
> > 1952, during which time the strength of the Left on
> the
> > floor was matched by their extra-parliamentary
> strength in
> > the field with representative control over peasant
> and
> > worker organisations and syndicates. Not like at
> present
> > when the low numbers in Parliament is matched by a
> > drastically shrunk base in representative bodies of
> working
> > class interests.
> >
> > So is the Left leadership worried in any way? From
> the
> > tone of the inner party stock-taking going on in the
> CPI(M),
> > in Kolkata, Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram; and the
> preambles
> > to the forthcoming June 6 meeting of the CPI in
> Coimbatore,
> > it certainly does not seem like any lessons have been
> learnt
> > or any yardsticks for evaluation have been evolved.
> All one
> > hears are strident and arrogant sounds indulging in
> mutual
> > slanging, just looking for scapegoats to apportion
> > blame.
> >
> > The question arises, what are the criteria for
> > self-evaluation that Left parties should be laying
> down? Is
> > it at all a ‘political’ evaluation to propose (as
> in
> > Kerala, for example) that the Left was drubbed due to
> its
> > poor alliance strategies (particularly with the
> communal
> > People’s Democratic Party of Madhani) or due to the
> whiff
> > of a financial scam that enveloped it in the wake of
> the SNC
> > Lavalin case. How ‘political’ is it to lay the
> reason
> > for their setback at the door of something as silly
> as
> > inner-party dog-fights (in this case, the prolonged
> spat
> > between Chief Minster V S Achuthanandan and the CPI(M)
> party
> > Secretary Pinrayi Vijayan)?
> >
> > In other words, these are mere day-to-day events in
> the
> > life of any party and stuff on which their electoral
> > strategies are built. But what should distinguish
> ‘Left’
> > evaluation from the rest? Is it enough for them to be
> stuck
> > in the rut of the ‘tactics and strategies’
> discourse? Or
> > is it important that they embark on the route of a
> > theoretical evaluation which tries to find answers to
> a
> > whole range of new questions?
> >
> > Some of the questions that demand answers in a public
> > sense need enumeration. Like, why is it that in this
> time
> > and age, the Left is splintered into three — the
> CPI,
> > CPI(M) and the CPI(ML)? It has been a good twenty-five
> years
> > since anyone has even bothered to analyse what the
> > ideological divisions between these three and their
> various
> > off-shoots are. Besides delivering the conventional
> gyan
> > than the two big CPs are parliamentary and believe in
> the
> > ballot-box while the ML are extra-parliamentary and
> profess
> > the line of ‘armed revolution’, we really have not
> had
> > either a serious theoretical analysis nor a
> theoretical
> > debate on the reasons for the continued fractiousness
> of the
> > Left or why it is so impossible for the splinters to
> fuse
> > together into a common front.
> >
> > It’s not now enough to admit, like a few senior
> > leaders of the CPI(M) did, that the party has lost
> touch
> > with ‘reality’. We also need to hear what that
> idea of
> > ‘reality’ is with which they feel distanced. Is
> it
> > possible that the organised Left has steadily been
> losing
> > touch with newly-developing realities, regionally,
> > nationally and internationally?
> >
> > One has not heard party leaders telling us
> > about, say, climate change or why caste is
> consolidating in
> > India or how they understand emerging issues of
> gender,
> > ecology or culture. We have not heard from Left
> parties on
> > why they stand opposed to opponents of mega-projects
> like
> > dams, SEZs or nuclear programmes who have been taking
> up the
> > cause of millions of internally displaced people. We
> have
> > not heard from them on issues of human rights abuses
> in
> > India; for example, neither the parties nor
> individuals
> > within it even made a token noise against the
> treatment of
> > someone like Binayak Sen. Even after the initial
> absurd
> > justifications for what happened in Nandigram, they
> seemed
> > to lack the courage to face the truth. They have not
> been
> > able to explain why they need to wait for a global
> > capitalist like Tata to develop West Bengal
> industrially
> > before obtaining the ideal conditions for a
> proletarian
> > revolution in the state.
> >
> > The Left parties have not been able to explain their
> > holier-than-thou posture, when it is clear that they
> have
> > devolved into a conservative, inflexible,
> intellectually
> > moribund club, mortally scared of both self-critique
> or
> > external evaluation. But one would like to offer a
> critique
> > from the outside here. It is from Karl
> > Marx who warned us (in ‘The 18th Brumaire of Louis
> > Bonaparte’) against “doctrinaire socialism”
> which
> > “surrenders this socialism to the petty
> bourgeoisie.”
> > This is the ‘reality’ the Left needs to
> > ponder.
> >
> >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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>
> >
>
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