Left rolls out red carpet for Chavez

‘‘Yes, Chavez is coming,’’ said CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechury, adding, ‘‘yes, he might visit West Bengal.’’ But he wouldn’t be drawn into further conversation on the subject at this stage. ‘‘The confirmation can only come from the MEA,’’ he said.

Gradually acquiring the stature of Cuban leader Fidel Castro among Left activists worldwide, Chavez’s visit is symbolic in more ways than one. It comes exactly a month ahead of the CPM’s 18th party congress beginning in the second week of April.

The party is at its most powerful since the Communist split in 1964. It has shown how it is possible for a democratically functioning Communist party to survive even 15 years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. And after the 2004 elections, it is in a position to influence policies in a huge democracy like India. International Communists are watching how far the CPM is able to influence policies in a liberalised economy and become a stakeholder in the ruling dispensation.

Of course, the CPM’s survival skills and long history have also lent it a degree of elitism among Communist parties. Over 15 years ago, its sheer size was admired, but no one thought it could give ideological direction because Left parties shaped their attitudes based on directions from Moscow and Beijing.

Over the past few years, there has been the hint of a regrouping of the Communist movements the world over. Radical views regarding the war in Iraq have gone a long way in renewing faith in, if not Communism, at least the socialist alternative.

In Europe, where the democratically functioning Euro-Communists lost their support base after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Communist parties have a growing membership once again in France, Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal. And Chavez has become an icon, not just in Latin America but even outside.

So much so that at the recent ‘‘World Meeting of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity’’ that he hosted in Caracas, the long list of visitors included Left gurus the world over. Among them were American novelist Alice Walker, Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal (his poem on Marilyn Monroe has been widely discussed in literary circles), Spanish musician Manu Chao, Tariq Ali, Brazilian economists Attilio Baran and Dos Santos, even Fidel Castro’s nuclear physicist son, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, and former US attorney general and peace organiser Robin Blackburn. Incidentally, senior CPM politburo member Prakash Karat featured prominently in that list.

Chavez’s interaction with India’s Marxists will be part of a process of churning that the Communists are going through at the moment. The CPM has to decide how far it will allow itself to move away from Stalinism in the classical sense.