Considered reassertion

Published : Oct 28, 2000 00:00 IST

Leaders articulate the factors that have shaped the party's approach and tactics.

R. KRISHNAKUMAR in Thiruvananthapuram

KERALA'S capital city donned the colour red on October 23 as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) marked the successful conclusion of a historic exercise of updating its party programme, the guiding policy document, with a massive rally of party worker s and supporters. And party leaders utilised the opportunity to make a call to other political parties to regroup for the formation of a third alternative against the "BJP primarily, and the Congress(I) too."

A public meeting at Comrade EMS Nagar, in the bustling centre of the city, was addressed by the top leaders of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau, including general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Chief Ministers Jyoti Basu, E. K. Nayanar and Manik Sarkar.

The conference was an occasion for the CPI(M) to review major international events of the past few decades, especially those in the socialist countries and in the world communist movement, and the major economic, social and political changes that have ta ken place in India after 1964, and to re-set its sights firmly on its goal of 'People's Democracy' and the building of a socialist society.

Addressing the public meeting, Surjeet said: "With this exercise of updating the programme the CPI(M) has sorted out all the issues that had been raised in the recent past. All questions raised by our opponents will be answered by the updated party progr amme." He said that the programme will give the party contemporary guidance to formulate the right tactics to fight forces bent on disrupting communal amity and national unity and against the aggressive attacks of imperialism-driven globalisation which t hreatens India's economic sovereignty and spells ruin for the people's livelihood.

Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury said that among the major issues discussed by the conference was the overall approach to a multi-party system and a multi-structural economy during the transitional phase to People's Democracy, th e question of provision of compensation when landlordism is abolished under People's Democracy and ways to ensure public ownership of the means of production. He said that the CPI(M) considers the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the setbacks suffered in Eastern Europe as the results of distortions that had occurred in the practice of Marxism-Leninism, which does not negate the validity of the ideology.

Surjeet told a press conference at the conclusion of the three-day event that the party has not made any changes in the core of the 1964 programme with regard to the stage of the revolution, the character of the Indian state and the class alliance necess ary for a people's democratic revolution. The CPI(M) continues to believe that the alternative to imperialism is socialism and that capitalism is incapable of solving the basic problems of humanity, despite the rapid strides made in the fields of science and technology and in developing productive forces, he said.

In his address to the special conference, Polit Bureau member and West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu said that as against the bourgeoisie-landlord policies followed by the Congress and BJP governments, which have failed to raise the standards of livin g of the people and have intensified class and social exploitation and strained the bonds of national unity, the CPI(M)'s updated programme, sets forth an alternative path.

Jyoti Basu said: "The programme of People's Democracy will implement thorough-going land reforms, develop and strengthen the public sector in key areas while giving opportunities for the private sector to contribute to the country's development, restruct ure Centre-State relations and uphold the majesty of federalism, ensuring the equality of all Indian languages and democratise the state structure by decentralisation and devolution of powers to the States and local bodies and mobilise resources from hom e and abroad for balanced development without passing on the burden to the people."

Significantly, Basu said that while the CPI(M) was committed to striving for social transformation by mobilising workers, peasants, the middle class, women, youth, students and other sections of the working people and building a powerful movement, it is also conscious of the immediate tasks on hand before it reached its eventual goal - of building an alternative to the communal BJP at the Centre and of effecting a change from the policies which the Congress(I) pursued for more than four decades in power . Basu said the forces which had fallen into disarray in the last three years are regrouping again, in the background of the threat posed by communalism and the attacks on the people's economic interests.

Prakash Karat, member of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau, who presented the party's Central Committee report on the amendments received to the draft, said that the number of amendments and suggestions/comments that were received on the draft showed the intense i nterest within the party in discussing the programme.

He said that the CPI(M) has revised its understanding about how to go about building a society which moves towards socialism. "We have self-critically accepted that building socialism is a more complex, protracted process than earlier envisaged, that it has to go through a number of stages. Keeping that in mind and the level of development of Indian society including the nature of capitalist development in India, we have selected a more sophisticated and realistic assessment of the direction the economy will move under People's Democracy, that is, if we really come to power."

Prakash Karat added: "On the one hand we have talked about abolition of landlordism, but we do not say now that all landlords will not be compensated for the land being taken over. Because we see that in a country like India with its great diversity ther e are a large number of small property owners. The issue of compensation, and so on will be discussed at the appropriate time depending on the concrete circumstances at that point of time. Similarly, we once felt that the only way to ensure socialisation of the means of production was the nationalisation of industries. We now say that there can be other forms of public holdings, including collective enterprises owned by the workers and employees of that enterprise, cooperative forms or joint ventures in which the state has a decisive stake. So there are other forms which we are going to consider and experiment with."

The party programme, which stood the CPI(M) in good stead for this long, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union which had shaken many other Communist parties in the world, was updated as the CPI(M) understood that there is no single model for social ism and that each country has to find its own model. With this updated programme the CPI(M) has adapted the science of Marxism to the Indian context, the general secretary said. Asked whether a decisive say in policy was a precondition for the CPI(M) to join a government Surjeet said at the concluding press conference: "If we have a decisive say, why should we stay out of a government?"

The other question that was raised was whether the CPI(M) would be willing to join hands with the Congress(I) in order to dislodge the BJP from power or to form an alternative government. Rashtriya Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav, who was in town to participate in a key seminar on Centre-State relations organised as part of the conference, had stated at a press conference that he welcomed the CPI(M)'s call for a third alternative, but said that any combination to fight the BJP and the RSS should be ready to have the Congress(I) as an ally.

At his press briefing, in reply to questions, Surjeet characterised Laloo's comments about the Congress(I) being an ally as those shaped by "his domestic political compulsions". The CPI(M)'s stand was clear, he said. It was against the communal BJP; it w as against the policies of the Congress(I), especially the policies of liberalisation and globalisation, which the BJP has taken up even more enthusiastically.

At the public meeting, Surjeet was highly critical of the Congress(I)'s record of secularism. He pointed out that the Congress would always pretend to have a principled stand but the party had a "history of betrayal", at crucial moments, the significant instance being the way it allowed the Babri Masjid to be demolished. "It is incapable of taking a principled position regarding secularism. Why? Because it has something in common with the BJP - its policy of liberalisation."

In tandem with the special conference, the CPI(M) organised a series of seminars on the implications for the people of the new economic policies. Significantly, one of the resolutions passed by the conference was against the growing assaults being mounte d on the secular, democratic and self-reliant foundation of India and on the living conditions of the vast majority of people by the Vajpayee government. Sitaram Yechury, who moved the resolution, said that the CPI(M) had decided to launch an all-India m ovement against the economic policies which adversely affected the people, along with other Left forces in particular and other secular democratic forces. This would culminate in militant action during the next session of Parliament.

The special conference had 401 delegates from 23 States. The CPI(M), which has 7.5 lakh party members and a membership of 37.2 million in its mass organisations, had undertaken the massive exercise of updating the programme through discussion of its draf t in all the party units, from the local branch level to the Central Committee. E.K. Nayanar, who was chairman of the organising committee, said: "Such a massive democratic exercise has never been undertaken by any other party for giving shape to its pro gramme."

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