People's Democracy

 Thinking Together

Concerning Sitaram Yechury’s article “CPI(M) and the WSF” which appeared in People’s Democracy, Dec. 28, 2003: 
Your words on the authority of Mao: You ask the question: when people mobilise their united strength against imperialist globalisation should we be mocking at them from behind? But, it is clear from your own quotation that, Mao posed a similar question, when there was an "unprecedented upsurge sweeping the entire Central, Southern and Northern China, with millions of peasants marching and rising as a typhoon, that could be stopped by no power on earth.." True, you have insured yourself from possible criticisms by adding a few saving clauses here and there. Despite these reservations, it was atrocious on your part to have compared the massive epoch making upsurge of Chinese peasantry with the Mumbai congregation of WSF, mobilised by liberal intelligentsia of the world and supported by global finance.

K. Vijayachandran, Kerala

The charge that you make is indeed atrocious.

The quotation from Mao is prefaced thus in the article, “speaking in an entirely different context, Mao had said:” Following the quotation it is stated “Though the contexts are different between China on the eve of the revolution and the anti-globalisation movements today, the central issue that Mao was talking is similar: when people are willing to come together and lend their might against imperialist globalisation, do we communists stand back and gesticulate?

“We of the CPI(M) are clear. We shall join the ideological debates, we shall oppose the efforts to obfuscate the only alternative to imperialist globalisation being socialism and we shall thus strengthen this struggle against imperialism.”

This is the moot point. When people, for whatever reasons, are out on the streets in protest it is the job of a communist to intervene to prevent these people from either being misled or if they are misled then to try and bring them back into the fold of the progressive movement. Bedroom sloganeering instead of active intervention will only facilitate those forces who seek to obfuscate the real issues and mislead the people. The CPI(M) shall in no way  allow such efforts to go uncontested. For, in the ultimate analysis it is always the people through their struggles that bring about a social change. Distancing oneself and indulging in isolated revolutionary slogan mongering will only assist the status quoists.