People's Democracy

Sukomal Sen

THE learning that takes place in our day-to-day lives through practical struggles and developing  social consciousness advances the workers' revolutionary consciousness. Revolutionary ideological development often best begins on the basis of people's resistance to injustices. It is important to acknowledge that injustices can and do occur during the transitional period despite the State's attempts to eliminate them. Clearly, it is important to distinguish between those who exploit existing problems in order to mobilise criticism against the State (counter revolutionaries) and ordinary people with legitimate grievances. The content and form of the latter can, when informed by Marxist methodology, serve as a means of learning from experience while simultaneously learning to make criticism conscious and con­structive, thereby minimising destructive social unrest and engaging people in decision-making processes pertinent to those issues that affect their lives.

Going through the entire process contributes to the formation of socialist consciousness not only among the advanced section of the working class, but also among many fighters from other sections of the society. The development of consciousness for a radical change of the society provided a favourable ideological background for socialist revolution which occurred in Russia in October, 1917.

Marx’s concept of proletarian dictatorship was further elaborated in the light of the events in France from 1848 to 1852. But his view of a new state under the leadership of the working class - the state of the socialist revolution, and the functions of such a state - was modified and made concrete by the example of the Paris Commune of 1871. He regarded the short-lived Paris Commune as the first form of a workers’ government, which by its practical actions and the measures it adopted had proved that the transition to socialism is bound up with a fundamentally new state system. Such a state system is no longer a state in the old sense of the word, because, after the smashing of the old state apparatus, it develops forms of popular control over the executive and the bureaucracy which correspond to the vision of the abolition of all central political power. We read in The Civil War in France, which appeared directly after the defeat of the Paris Commune, that the nineteenth century saw the development of “centralised State power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy and judicature” - a power whose origins went back to the Middle Ages. With the intensification of class antagonism between capital and labour the State power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labour, of a public force organised for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism. After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of the State power stands out in bolder and bolder relief.

CONTINUOUS

DEVELOPMENT

The Marxian historical framework undergoes development with the change of time. Marx was writing in the middle of the nineteenth century and died in 1883. Things have changed immeasurably since that time. The tendencies of transformation which we have witnessed in the recent past, with their roots going back to the first few decades of our century, are of such a character that Marx could not even dream about them. Above all, this concerns the way in which the capital system could adjust and renew itself, so as to postpone the unfolding and maturation of its antagonistic contradictions. Marx was not in a situation in which he could have assessed the various modalities and the ultimate limitations of state intervention in prolonging the lifespan of the capital system. A key figure in twentieth century economic development is John Maynard Keynes. Keynes’ fundamental aim was precisely to save the system through the injection of massive state funds for the benefit of private capitalist enterprise, so as to regulate on a permanent basis within the framework of undisturbed capital accumulation the overall reproduction process.

Now, more recently “monetarism” and “neo-liberalism” have pushed Keynes aside and indulged in the fantasy of doing away with state intervention altogether, envisaging the “rolling back the boundaries of the state” in a most absurd way. Naturally, in reality nothing could correspond to such self-serving fantasies. In fact the role of the state in the contemporary capitalist system is greater than ever before, including the time of the postwar two and a half decades of Keynesian developments in the capitalistically most advanced countries. The present crisis of world capitalism which began on September 15, 2008 confirms this aspect. This kind of development is totally new as compared to Marx’s lifetime. And the fact is that from Marx’s lifetime to our present conditions there has been a massive historical change.

The State sanctifies acquired wealth and privilege, defending them against the communist tradition of earlier societies and creating conditions in which private fortunes and inequality increase. ‘Because the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but because it arose, at the same time, amid the conflict of these classes, it is a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which through the medium of the state, becomes also politically dominant, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class.’ (Fredrick Engels, Origin of Family, Private Property and State Chapter IX)

The implication of Engel’s analysis here is that any government whatever may be its complexion, if it seeks to limit class struggle or oppose workers’ militant strike, it ultimately helps the capitalists to protect its privilege of property and its valid exploitation of the workers.

Moreover, any government depending too much on the bureaucratic state machine, whatever may be the political intention of that government ultimately serves the interests of the capitalists.   

It happened earlier in bourgeois society, as Marx observed in connection with Louis Napoleon’s coup d’etat, that the bureaucratic machine asserts its independence of the class it serves. But such situations can also be explained by class interests. The bourgeoisie may give up parliamentary power and entrust the direct exercise of political authority to an automised bureaucracy, if this is necessary to maintain its own economic position as a class.

In a radical social transformation, the new mode of controlling the social metabolism must penetrate into every segment of society. It is in that sense that the concept of revolution remains valid; indeed, in the light of our historical experience, more valid than ever before. A revolution, in this sense, not only eradicates but also implants. The eradication is as much a part of this process as what we put in the place of what has been eradicated. Marx says that the meaning of “radical” is “to grasp matters at their roots.” That is the literal meaning of being radical, and it retains its validity in the social revolution in the just mentioned sense of eradicating and implanting.

This entire Marxist concept of social revolution assumes all-round relevance in the revolutionary struggle in India also. Any deviation from this concept is bound to boomerang. This is the lesson to-day after the success of Soviet Socialist revolution and its ultimate downfall in 1991.

Finally, after Soviet set-back in 1991, the world communist movement was put into an ideological bewilderment and many communist parties are still recovering from that shock. The result is the process of social democratisation of some of the parties, opposing or disliking class conflict believing in ‘enlightened capitalism’, or ‘globalisation with human face’. In fact, it means hindering the revolutionary developments and in the end serving the interests of capital, even at a time when world capitalism is tottering on its feet under the grave shock of unprecedented crisis.

Thus the lesson of November Revolution in today’s world is to unwaveringly adhere to the Marxist concept of social revolution and advance the revolutionary struggles in the respective countries and to achieve the historical goal, assimilation of socialist consciousness by the working class and by the  advanced sections of the workers, which are basic and indispensable requirements. 

(Concluded)