Factionalism:
Not
so long after the SNC Lavalin controversy
the Kerala unit of the Communist party of India- Marxist (CPI-M) have recently
seen new depths in their long running factional struggle after the cold
blooded, allegedly political murder of the former CPI (M)party dissenter and
the founder leader of Revolutionary
Marxist Party (RMP) T.P. Chandrasekharan.
For nearly a decade, the high profile ‘political factionalism’
in the Kerala state CPI (M) between V.
S. Achuthanandan and Pinarayi Vijayan, which is in essence a power struggle,
have taken its course predominantly to assert their own zone of influence in
that supposedly workers’ party. Nonetheless, the thousands of CPI (M) members,
cadres and sympathisers were been told otherwise by the popular media and the CPI
(M) state and central committee leadership along with their polit-bureau, in
their own, unique and consciously misleading ways. The ‘official’ or Pinarayi
Vijayan’s faction, the dominant faction in the party versus the V.S. Achuthanandan
and his followers is now a wholesome entertainment for most of the politically
mindful, Malayali households. The contrasting role and characterisation were
been put on to the warring factions by the media, particularly the news
channels who are principally sensational rather informational.
Pinarayi Vijayan, currently a politburo member and the state
secretary of Kerala State Committee of CPI (M) for a record fourth consecutive
time, often dubbed as autocratic by the media and also by the dissenters of the
likes of, the late T. P. Chandrasekharan, a party organiser with strong links among the
rank and file of Onchium, a traditional CPI
(M) stronghold known for its bloodshed history of class struggles and
uprisings. On the other hand V.S. Achuthanandan, a veteran politician, founder
member of the CPI (M), was the Secretary
of the Kerala State Committee between 1980 and 1992 and since 1985 he is the
member of the CPI (M) Polit Bureau, re-elected again recently in 2008, at the
19th Congress Coimbatore, until June 2009,
when he was removed from Polit Bureau, during the SNC Lavalin controversy row, as
the comments passed by V.S. Achuthanandan were not towing up with the official
party line of CPI (M) leadership, to completely defend Pinarayi Vijayan against the SNC Lavlin corruption
allegations.
This article will from now purposefully avoid duplicating
the efforts of the mainstream media in just simply reporting the ongoing events
of the split and will also reflect on the objective causes behind these crises
in a workers’ party which are based on distorted as well as a crude
understanding of Marxism along with a dogmatic approach regarding the course of
the class struggle obviously inheriting the Stalinist legacy from the Communist
Party of India (CPI) from which the CPI (M) split during 1964. If we analyse the nature and the elements of
the split, the feud between the two factions and the ongoing crises in the CPI(M), it is apparent that
they are not rooted on any ideological or theoretical basis and also not even
in the programmes or the policy line of the party to start with.
The ideological dimensions like democratic centralism including
the popped up factors of morality like anti corruption which were championed in a well orchestrated way by V.S.
Achuthanandan, and the importance of party discipline put forth by the
‘dominant’ Pinarayi faction, are all cropping up as the consequence of the
power struggle and for political
returns. In actual fact, following the
death of the then party secretary Chadayan Govindan in 1998, Pinarayi Vijayan
was appointed to that post as a nominee of V.S.Achuthanandan, who himself was a
secretary of the Kerala State Committee between 1980 and 1992.
This less tortuous and straighter forward course of the
split though traces itself markedly during 2005, the CPI (M) members who were
considered sided along with Achuthanandan, including S.Sarma and M. Chandran,
have been dropped from the CPI (M) secretariat in Kerala, constituted after the
State party conference in Malappuram. Around a dozen of Achuthanandan’s clique lost
the election to the state committee after provoking the leadership by
contesting. Pinarayi Vijayan has also removed Achuthanandan of his post as
editor of the party newspaper, Desabhimani, the third-largest daily in Kerala,
a very influential party responsibility. The split and the allegations of
factional activities was not only reviewed by the State committee lead by
Pinarayi Vijayan, but was also acknowledged by the organisational report at the
18th CPI (M) party congress expressing “serious concern at the persisting
disunity and factional tendencies in Kerala,”.
Polarisation between the factions were becoming more
apparent, as Pinarayi Vijayan, the shrewd political organiser, successfully
exerted his power of influence with the help of his strong hold in Kannur
district, considered as CPI(M) bastion in the Malabar region in Northern
Kerala. Pinarayi faction dominated Kerala state party apparatus, and
subsequently the CPI (M) politbureau leadership decided not to field V.S.
Achuthanandan for the 2006 Kerala Assembly elections. Strangely enough, those who are aware of
Kerala politics knew without any qualms that V.S. Achuthanandan was widely
considered by that time as a chief minister in ‘waiting’, even from 1996, although
the media was consistently parodying his unsuccessful attempts for the chief
minster post, mainly because of him loosing the 1996 assembly election in
Mararikkulam, a
CPI (M) stronghold. Suspicions of Pinarayi faction architected that
extraordinary electoral upset did arise.
Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan, popularly called V .S.,
not only commands cadre loyalty at the grassroots but also have a great support
from the people, which he accumulated during his tenure as the leader of
opposition particularly during 2001-2006, during which he was clearly seen donning
the cap of an anti corruption crusader, consciously flaunted his clean personal
image while he was sternly exposing the scandalous United Democratic Front
(UDF) government of Kerala.
Even during his Chief ministerial tenure, V.S.Achuthanandan
was perceived fighting corruption, scams and scandals both in the society and
within the party itself, which apparently have not left the kind of void for
that Anna Hazare and his popular right wing backed anti corruption campaign
enjoyed elsewhere in India. His confrontation of the global monopolies like
Coke and Microsoft, forcing the corruption ridden and corporate friendly
government in the centre for a nationwide ban on endosulfan pesticide, have all
garnered V.S.Achuthanandan popular support among the rank and file of the party
and the people alike.
The factionalism was given an ideological element, by the
media and the public, as it was more than obvious to them from various
allegations on the ‘official’ or the ‘Pinarayi faction’ of the CPI (M) Kerala
state unit, including flaunting a reformist agenda, supporting corporate
interests , globalisation and neo-liberal policies. In effect the businesses
ventures owned by the CPI (M) is functioning no different other the capitalists
owned initiatives. The business empire owned by CPI(M) worth RS. 4000 crores,
which incorporate amusement Parks, TV Channels, rubber cooperatives – allegedly
funded from foreign capital, super-specialty hospitals, supermarkets and IT
parks. These explicit moves towards neo- liberalism are a thorn in the flesh of
many party loyalists especially among the rank and file and also among the old
guards, high up in the party ranks. V.S. Achuthanandhan and his in-group deemed
widely as old guards never ignored any opportunities especially from the news
channel media to tactfully, discredit the ‘Pinarayi’ faction of corruption or
of ‘revisionism’. Prof MN Vijayan, the former President of the pro CPI (M)
organisations like Purogamana Kala Sahitya Sangham (Progressive Association for
Art and Letters) and Adhinivesha Prathirodha Samithi (Council for Resisting
Imperialist Globalisation), criticised the prominent members of the ‘Pinarayi’
faction in the CPI(M) openly of social democratic deviation and also of
diluting the party’s class character.
On the other hand, V.S. Achuthanadan was the party State
secretary in the 1980 -92, the longest tenure in that office, till recently
when Pinarayi Vijayan surpassed it. Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president
Ramesh Chennithala, have in fact pointed out the various allegations of
political murders stemmed up in the CPI (M)are during the 1980’s. Recently in a
political meeting, the Idukki CPI (M) district secretary M.M. Mani declared
publicly (In front of the media) the list of 13 persons to be killed was
arranged by the party during the early 1980s and also acknowledged that out of
them three were killed. Nevertheless, a fragment of the prevailing rumours
still uphold that this could be a desperate attempt of the opposing Pinarayi
faction to discredit the image of V.S.
However all of those attempted and executed political
murders do reveal a rogue trend which would potentially alienate them from the people. Encouraging the use of violence for plain
political gains and repression of dissidents were all the indications of an
active process of further degeneration in this so called workers’ party.
Not many have to dump themselves in to the archives to prove
the existence of the trend where the individual power struggle developing into
factional infighting regrettably in a workers’ party. Working class activism is
not about the concentration of political power and influence but taking up the roles
and responsibilities to represent the needs of the ordinary working people and
toilers, with a true sense of solidarity and Comradeship. We can only speculate that the power
struggle, if there was anything else behind the expulsion of K.R.Gowri Amma, a
prominent women leader of CPI (M), the Revenue Minister in the government 1957,
headed by E. M. S. Namboodiripad (EMS) of the undivided Communist party (CPI). The pinnacle behind political legend of K.R.Gowri
Amma, a well known conspiracy of that time, is the lost opportunity of the
chief ministerial post to E.K.Nayanar. The longest serving Chief Minister of
Kerala, E.K.Nayanar was in fact supported by the strong Malabar lobby and was
capable of manoeuvring the power clutches of the party. This was also contemplated
as one the reasons behind Gowri Amma’s disenchantment with the CPI(M)
leadership and her eventual ousting from the party in 1994, who then floated
her own party Janathipathiya Samrakshana Samithy (Association for Defence of Democracy), only to join the right wing United Democratic Front (UDF) alliance.
The crisis in
Kerala State unit of CPI(M):
The uninterrupted expulsions of members on charges of anti
party activities does not reveal clearly the underlying causes or reasons
behind the expulsions of very experienced members of the CPI (M). This leaves
us wondering how the CPI (M) members like M.V.Raghavan, was a prominent CPI(M)
leader; Sindhu Joy, was the party
district committee member and former Students' Federation of India State
president; Abdulla Kutty, was a CPI(M)
Member of Parliament for Kannur Lok
Sabha constituency of Kerala, all of those who are climbed up in party
organisational structures, many of them who spent a substantial portion of
their lives representing CPI(M), could then join the right wing United
Democratic Front (UDF), evidently collaborating against the class interests for
which they seemingly have struggled for all their lives. In fact A. P. Abdullakutty,
expressed an opinion against the industrial action of the workers, therefore
attacking the important rights of workers including the right to withdraw their
labour, an awful criticism from the leader of the so called workers’ party. It
also questions the basic functioning of the largest and influential workers’
party in India, which is to empower and educate their members to be the
revolutionary organisers and the teachers of the working people –the
proletariat. The recent expulsion of the high ranking CPI(M) members and the
following shameful defection to the United Democratic Front (UDF) either by
forming their own party, or directly joining in one of the parties of the UDF
itself was appalling not only to the rank and file of the CPI(M) but also to
the workers and farmers in general, leaving them disillusioned and thereby creating
a space, where the reactionary and communal political forces could foster.
In the 2011 assembly elections, one of the closely contested
elections in Kerala, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a political outfit
with reactionary leadership based on pro Muslim communal politics, bagged 20
seats causing an electoral upset in many of the crucial seats of the Left
Democratic Front (LDF) of which the CPI(M) is the leading entity. The Indian
Union Muslim League (IUML) won the majority of its seats from the Malappuram
district, a Muslim majority district in Kerala.
In Neyyattinkara, the 2012 assembly by election, held
recently due to the resignation of the CPI (M) R. Selvaraj from his Member of
Legislative Assembly (MLA) post, after surprisingly winning that seat from the
Congress. R. Selvaraj also resigned his membership on the CPI(M) district
committee, only to be expelled from the primary membership of the party. He
then joined the Indian National Congress and contested on the Hand symbol, subsequently
winning the by elections to become the United Democratic Front (UDF) MLA of
Neyyattinkara. However, the by-election results also showed the growing support
for Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate O. Rajagopal. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), again a
reactionary political force with its roots organisations embedded in Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) which are organisations
advocating Hindu fundamentalism.
Stalinism:
The factions and the crises in the CPI-M are gushing out like
always from the logic of the objective situation, which is the adherence of
CPI(M) to the Stalinist legacy it carried on from the Communist party of India
(CPI) – at an early stage aspired to be a workers’ party. After the Stalinist
influence and the control of the Comintern in the mid and the late 1920’s onwards,
CPI was devoted itself to the two stage theory/ stagism unyieldingly since
their course of action was dictated by the despotic Stalinist leadership in
Moscow. Stalinism, a gross deviation from Marxism, espoused the stage theory
importantly to safeguard the interests of the bureaucracy to anchor itself in
the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was evolved from the 1917 October revolution
when workers’ took power, a magnificent event in the history of human kind. Socialism,
in which an important element is the workers’ taking control of production and distribution,
was distorted by the rise of Stalinist bureaucracy. Stalinism, which had risen into
prominence due to the objective circumstances eventually lead to widespread persecution
of dissidents, including the assassination of many Bolshevik leaders including
Leon Trotsky, who along with Vladimir Lenin provided theoretical and organisational
leadership to the October Revolution of 1917.
The theory of socialism in one country, betraying the
internationalist spirit of the Marxism, persecution of the dissidents, lack of
democratic centralism, parliamentarianism, non ideological factionalism and
even the power struggle are all the symptoms or outcome of stagism, the essence
of Stalinism. The mainstream workers’ parties in India, the CPI and CPI (M) are
all based on the frame work of the two stage theory advocating the necessity of
a bourgeois (capitalist) democracy before moving to a socialist stage set into
somewhere in the distant future. Consequently their programs and understanding
of class struggle and their collaboration with bourgeois parties like Indian
National Congress and other regional parties in India. Thus the CPI & CPI
(M) both have not only failed to provide a genuine socialist alternative but
they are completely succumbing to the short fall of the parliamentary system,
which is all about the influential posts, seat sharing and gradually integrating
themselves with the ruling class, and slowly getting alienated from the
ordinary working people. Stalinist legacy have also taken the toll of
independent trade unionism and student activism in India as the most prominent
trade unions and student unions today are the fronts of the CPI (M) and CPI.
The dynamics of this present crisis and factionalism in CPI
(M) are on the foundational basis of stagism. Therefore to adopt bourgeoisie
democracy and the consequential emphasis on parliamentary mudslinging politics,
instead of organising workers, agricultural workers and peasants and van
guarding them for a socialist society. The mainstream media and the public
portray CPI (M) cadres being involved by the leadership in what is being
mentioned as ‘organised crime’ to purely safeguard its power relations and
electoral influence, again a consequence of its perverse theoretical
orientation which is conveniently called by the party members and the media for
their own interests and purposes as ‘Marxist’. Events like ruthless killing of
former CPI(M) party member and Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader T.P.
Chandrasekharan conform the line of action often.
On April 11, 1964, 32 Council members at a CPI National Council
meeting, walked out in protest, accusing then CPI Chairman Shripad Amrit Dange,
a Stalinist hardliner and his supporters of "anti-unity and anti-Communist
policies. V S Achuthanandan, one of those 32 council members recently said ‘ Pinarayi
Vijayan will meet Dange's fate’. What V.S. failed to mention was how these S.A.
Danges’ are evolved and how these Stalinist parties including the CPI (M) are
increasingly becoming irrelevant in the lives of ordinary working people,
farmers and students.
We need
- - A new workers party accountable to its rank and
file, with its programs and policies based on transitional demands for a
socialist society under the control of agricultural and industrial working
people.
- - Independent trade unions and student unions.
