PART II OF THE POLITICAL ORGANISATIONAL REPORT

CPI(M)’s Approach On Certain Policy Matters-II

Sitaram Yechury

IN order to advance this struggle for socialism, the Political Organisational Report states the following:

“The struggle for an alternative socialist order has to be based on the revolutionary transformation of the existing order.  This, in turn, needs an engagement (i.e., joining issues) of the revolutionary forces with the existing world realities with the sole objective of changing the correlation of forces in favour of socialism. This process of revolutionary transformation has to be based on such an engagement and not on the wishful thinking of escaping from the existing realities. The entire history of the revolutionary movement led by the working class is the history of such an engagement with the existing realities in order to shape the material force required to establish the alternative in socialism”.

This, first, recognises that there is no other world than the real world that exists. It is this real world that has to be transformed. Such a transformation needs to be undertaken by joining issues with the existing reality in order to sharpen the class struggle. Such an engagement with the existing reality is to create through the process of confronting and joining issues with the real world that material force --- popular people’s upsurge under the leadership of the working class --- which can bring about a revolutionary social transformation. Further, it recollects the fact that the history of the working class movement is based on joining issues with the existing reality in order to change it through a revolutionary transformation.

There are two important points to be noted here. Firstly, the revolutionary forces join issues with the existing realities with the objective not of surrendering or succumbing to these realities (often referred to, in today’s context, as the TINA – there is no alternative – factor). Such joining of issues and confronting the realities is with the specific purpose of sharpening the class struggle to strengthen the material force that will affect the revolutionary transformation.

Secondly, a revolutionary cannot be a wishful thinker escaping from the existing reality since he/she rejects the existing reality and its accompanying exploitation, misery etc etc. It is this real world that needs to be transformed. The emergence of the socialist alternative is also the product of such a confrontation with the existing realities.

Marx and Engels did not compose the Communist Manifesto because of any divine intervention or inspiration. The entire Marxist world outlook and its revolutionary content emerges with the constant interaction and confrontation that Marx, alongwith Engels and later Lenin and other Marxists, had undertaken to change the existing realities. 

Such joining of issues has, in fact, been the basis for the development and growth of the working class movement itself. For instance, Marx, in his analysis of capitalism, tells us that there is a tendency for the immerserisation of the workers. In their urge to maximise profits, the capitalists seek to continuously depress wages, thus, impoverishing further the working class. Capitalism maintains a vast reserved army of labour in order to depress the wage levels. However, once this tendency is reorganised, then the working class organises itself in order to bargain for better wages. Thus emerged the trade union movement and the concept of collective bargaining. 

Marx, in Wages, Prices and Profit which actually was his report to the General Council of the First International in June 1865, lashes out at one John Weston who advanced the wages fund theory. Weston argued that the sum total of wages under capitalism is fixed. Therefore, trade union activity for higher wages can succeed only at the expense of workers in other industries. He, hence, concluded that trade union activity was actually detrimental to worker’s interests. Marx, severely criticising this position and also that of  Lassaleans who were preaching passivity and submissiveness of workers, maintained that the organised strength of the working class can improve the situation  and sharpen the class struggle.

Marx and Engels, both, in fact, argued that the First International, which consisted mainly of the worker’s organisations, needs to be transformed by the workers organising their own political parties. This was necessary to wage political struggles (for instance, to organise the reserved army of labour to launch struggles and movements for employment, thus, sharpening the class struggle etc). Thus was born the Second International, which consisted of communist and workers parties.

Similarly, from the other side, one can also see the capitalist response and how they engage with the existing realities. Marx had also shown that there is a tendency of the falling rate of profit under capitalism. Once this tendency is recognised, the capitalist responds by countering this through changes in the organic composition of capital which, in the first place, creates this tendency. The organic composition of capital is the ratio of constant capital (Eg, machinery etc) to variable capital (Eg, wages, rawmaterials etc). Any increase in the organic composition of capital leads to the fall in the rate of profit. Therefore, in order to maintain or increase the rate of profit, the capitalists will have to lower the organic composition of capital. This, they do, by reducing the variable capital. In today’s world, we see this expressing itself (amongst many others) in the erosion of permanent job security into the increasingly rising contract and casual labour. The whole concept of outsourcing or shifting “call centers” from advanced countries to developing countries is nothing else but the means to reduce the wage cost, i.e., variable capital.

Thus, in any given situation, it is the sharpening of the class struggle and the strength of the working class-led people’s movement, which determines the content and the intensity of the movement for revolutionary transformation.

Thus, it would be ridiculous to argue that since Communists and revolutionaries are opposed to capitalism, there shall be nothing to do with it.  Taken to absurd levels, this can mean the following – the raison d’etre of capitalism is maximising profits. Profits are generated through the surplus value creating in the production process. Surplus value is created by the exploitation of labour power. In other words, if the workers do not work, then the capitalists can never make any profit. The revolutionary, surely, is not going to give a call to the workers to stop working and starve them to death because that is one way capitalism can be destroyed.

On the contrary, a revolutionary will strengthen the people’s struggles against exploitation under capitalism and, through that process, build and strengthen the material force that can destroy capitalism and, in its place, establish the socialist alternative.

It is with this perspective that this political organisational report of 18th congress joins forces with existing realities in order, to repeat once again, to strengthen the material force for a social transformation. 

Those who apprehend that such an approach will dilute or weaken the revolutionary forces must remember that the process of engaging with existing realities does have a danger of slipping into revisionism or diluting the revolutionary character and content of the working class-led people’s movement. In fact, the first revisionist in the international Communist movement, Bernstein, argued that there is no need to overthrow capitalism but reforming capitalism can make it a non-exploitative social order. He was seeking to revise Marx. Hence the word `revisionism.’

Marxists and revolutionaries, on the contrary, combating such revisionist tendencies argue that exploitation under capitalism does not happen because the workers are “cheated” by being paid lower wages, for instance. No amount of reform can erase the exploitative character under capitalism because exploitation occurs in its production process itself. It does not arise because of unequal exchange. It arises because there exists one commodity – labour power – which has a peculiar characteristic. Its use itself creates a value that is larger than what it commands in the market, i.e., the labour required for the reproduction of this commodity, labour power, is less than the value this commodity creates in producing another commodity. Exploitation, therefore, takes place not in the market but in the production process itself. Surplus value is generated not in the market because the workers are cheated, but in the production process. Exploitation under capitalism is not there because of cheating or unequal exchange. Therefore, overthrowing capitalism to end exploitation, it is not only a moral question. Exploitation under capitalism is inherent in its dynamics. If exploitation has to be ended, then the system which exploits the worker in the production process – this production process itself needs to be overthrown.

Therefore, those who apprehend a muting or diluting class struggle in this process of confronting the existing realities must recollect revolutionary fire and class hatred alone cannot bring about a successful revolution. In this context, it is necessary to recollect what Lenin had said about Marxism: “The irresistible attraction of this theory, which draws to itself the socialists of all countries lies precisely in the fact that it combines the quality of being strictly and supremely scientific (being the last word in social sciences) with that of being revolutionary. It does not combine them accidentally and not only because the founder of the doctrine combined in his own person the qualities of a scientist and revolutionary, but does so intrinsically and inseparably”. The failure to grasp this essence leads to distortions, deviations and consequent derailment of the revolutionary movement.

Emphasising only the revolutionary character of Marxism while ignoring its supremely scientific character has the danger of sliding into a Left adventurist deviation. The other way around, by emphasising the scientific character and ignoring its revolutionary content has the danger of sliding into a revisionist deviation. The CPI(M) was born in a bitter struggle against revisionism. Subsequently, it was steeled in a bitter struggle against Left adventurism. The CPI(M) is constantly vigilant  on this score and shall never lower its guard in the ideological  struggles against all such deviations to uphold the revolutionary content of Marxism and its emancipatory potential.

It is with this approach that this understanding of the Political Organisational Report sets down the CPI(M)’s approach and guidelines on important issues of the existing reality that we need to confront.  

(To be continued)