The Ideological Struggle And The PD

B T Ranadive

Excerpts from an article “The Ideological Struggle And The PD” by Comrade B T Ranadive published in People’s Democracy, June 30, 1985.

THE twenty years of PD have been years of rapid development in our country. They saw the rise of authoritarian tendencies ending in the emergency, the semi-fascist terror in West Bengal, the break-up of the ruling party, the challenge of divisive forces and the imperialist conspiracy against our country ending in the gruesome assassination of Indira Gandhi.

In these two decades the People’s Democracy played the role of the tribune of the Indian people relentlessly exposing the authoritarian policies of the ruling party, raising its voice in defence of national unity against the challenge of divisive forces and imperialist conspiracies and calling for the unity of the Left forces to meet these dangers.

In advocating Left unity it correctly placed the role of Left Front, described them as the advance outposts of India’s democratic forces. Simultaneously it called for the broadest mobilisation of forces from all sections to defeat the authoritarian challenge and protect the federal character of the Indian Constitution which was being daily undermined by greater concentration of power at the Centre. There is no doubt that the People’s Democracy discharged its responsibilities in defending the people, national unity and democratic rights in a manner worthy of our Party organ.

CHANGING SITUATION

But these years also witnessed quick and important changes in the world situation, with the danger of nuclear war approaching the world. They were years of deep and sharp differences in the world Communist movement, which shook the unity of the movement and gave rise to diversionary tendencies totally at variance with the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism. The Communist movement in India also split in this period and People’s Democracy was born in the midst of the struggle of conflicting tendencies. Its role and work, therefore, have to be estimated in the light of the tasks that it faced as the leading mouth-piece of the Communist Party of India (Marxist); how it stood its ground against the deviationist tendencies assailing the world Communist movement; how it upheld the banner of world communist unity and defended the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism.

People’s Democracy was started in a period when differences in the Communist movement were very sharp and they continued to be sharp till very recently. The polemics between the two big parties the CPC and the CPSU were so intense that it was difficult for almost all parties not to side with the one or the other. In this situation also the People’s Democracy refused to take a position of equidistance, but continued to defend Communist unity on the basis of accepted principles and the accepted understanding of the world situation as given in the 1957 and 1961 documents, adopted by a conference of Communist Parties. These documents taught that the formation of a Socialist camp was the biggest achievement of a hundred years of the world working class movement and had its mortal enemy in US imperialism, the gendarme of world reaction.

DEFENDING COMMON UNDERSTANDING  

Rejecting the position of equidistance between two contrary deviating view points, the PD defended the common world understanding, the existence of the Socialist camp and called for a common fight against the US imperialists. It rejected the revisionist and Left deviations of the world revolutionary process and the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and judged all parties by their adherence to the commonly accepted documents.

It refused to accept that the historic achievements of the revolution in the Soviet Union and China, namely the establishment of the Socialist system had been obliterated in these countries and gave a rebuff to the revisionism from the Right and the Left. It also sharply criticised the parties who talked of two super-powers, who would not see any difference between the NATO and Warsaw alliance and surrendered to bourgeois nationalist pressures in their countries. In this respect it sharply criticised the outlook of those who discovered Euro-communism.

The confidence of PD that the world Communist movement would overcome its differences was justified. This is proved by recent developments.

PD taking into consideration the changing international condition and the response of the Communist Parties to it, noted that the sharpened conflict in the world between war and peace, between imperialism and Third World countries and the nearness of the danger of the war were putting their imprint on the policies of the Communist Parties.

It noted that notwithstanding the glib talk about two superpowers, some Communist Parties in Europe had to take the lead in organising mass campaigns against the siting of US Pershing and Cruise missiles in their countries. They had to come out with wholesale condemnation of the US activities in Central America, its policies towards the Third World countries and its high interest rates which jeopardised the economic recovery of their countries. The two super powers outlook did not conform to the reality and their fire had to be concentrated against the US.

ACCENT ON PEACE   

The PD further understood that peace and nuclear disarmament were being stressed more and more in the foreign policy statements of People’s China. In a recent statement before the UN General Assembly China’s foreign minister said: “For the sake of reducing the threat of nuclear war and showing good faith in nuclear disarmament all nuclear states should undertake not to be the first to use nuclear weapons and unconditionally pledge not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear States and nuclear free zones, and should reach agreement on mutual non-use of nuclear weapons.”

The PD very correctly noted that the differences in the communist movement started on the question of the role of peaceful coexistence, the peaceful or revolutionary path for achieving Socialism, the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, all related to basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism. It noted in time that they were being overshadowed by the common danger of nuclear war, necessitating a gradual change in the outlook of the Communist parties, starting the process of bringing them together to face the challenge of war. It therefore welcomed and underlined every step in this direction taken by any Party while the revisionists and others in our country continued to only harp upon the differences and refused to note the changes in People’s China. They reduced every meeting for peace to an anti-China meeting denouncing the Washington-Beijing  Islamabad axis.

But things turned out as PD had been expecting. In the past critical year in particular the situation in the communist movement especially in the relationship between the CPSU and the CPC, showed signs of further improvement. A recent article in Pravda very well sums up what PD has been writing for a number of years. “In the present involved international situation which has been strained by imperialism, relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union affect not only the basic interest of the Soviet Union and the Chinese people as a whole, but the world situation as whole, and appreciably tell on the alignment of class forces worldwide. A normalisation of Soviet-Chinese relations would no doubt make for establishing the situation not only in Asia but throughout the rest of the world.”

PD, therefore, since the beginning has been ardently advocating the unity of the Communist movement on the basis of Marxist – Leninist principles, welcoming every step, every manifestation in that direction.

PD has played a notable role in educating the Party ranks and our people, on the importance of Communist unity, the differences that affect the movement and the principled basis for its unity. While dealing with these differences it upheld the banner of proletarian unity, it wrote and criticised in a manner which did not undermine the weight of the achievements of Socialist countries nor the basic traditions and truths of Marxism-Leninism. It was able to do this because it did not take a partisan attitude towards either deviation, nor adopt a line of equidistance.