Left ferment

Call it a new pragmatism or an unusual willingness to re-examine and debate old shibboleths and hitherto well-established doctrinal theses, ...

Call it a new pragmatism or an unusual willingness to re-examine and debate old shibboleths and hitherto well-established doctrinal theses, but the CPM today is actively engaging with the new realities that are suddenly confronting it as a political entity. This grappling with ideas was very evident in the deliberations of the recent 18th Party Congress in New Delhi and, once again, in a recent article in the Social Scientist 8212; tellingly titled 8216;The Communists and the Present8217; 8212; written by Marxist economist Prabhat Patnaik, who has long been regarded as an economic mentor of leaders like Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury, as indeed CPM8217;s cadres in general.

Patnaik8217;s argument has been interpreted in sharply differing ways, both within the party and outside it, but it is interesting precisely because it attempts to shed some of the Stalinist baggage associated with the CPM and its once-staunch espousal of one-party rule. Patnaik believes that the party in India must be committed to multi-party democracy, unlike its Chinese counterpart. Multi-party democracy would, in fact, allow the party to showcase its own political worth, vis-a-vis other parties. There is a similar realism when it comes to viewing the role of once-problematic concepts like 8220;private enterprise8221; and 8220;FDI8221; within a communist order in today8217;s world.

There are at least two important reasons for these significant shifts. From being a party of the Opposition, it has become a party in power 8212; not just for over 25 years in West Bengal under a pragmatic chief minister like Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, but at the Centre, albeit at one remove. This has forced it to shift from being a party in permanent reactive mode to one that does not fear the exercise of power and the confronting of the realities of power. Of course, political circumstances will continue to decide how the CPM views the world 8212; the Kerala wing, for instance, would prefer to appear more doctrinaire and militant because it is to face an assembly election next year 8212; but, clearly, there is no denying a new mood of engagement within the party.