Our national and international experience indicates that the mindset of the Left which was shaped in the Soviet era demands a major change. Internationally, the leading communist parties of the West have lost their hold. In India, after the 18th Lok Sabha polls (2024) the Left has gained primarily in those states where it had alliance with INDIA group partners. Does it mean that people are not ready to vote for the Left as an independent political force but only as the partner of a grand alliance? In other words, does it indicate that people are not prepared to accept the Left in its present form but in a different form altogether?

While all major parties of the INDIA alliance have gained politically (Samajwadi Party, DMK, Congress, TMC, RJD etc), the Left’s performance has been dismal. The biggest gain has been made by the Congress but its intolerant attitude towards the communist parties on the question of seat allocation definitely weakened the Left’s position. This, however, does not mean that in electoral politics the Left should shun its relation with the Congress. Against the BJP, electoral alliance with the Congress is necessary and efforts should be made to involve them in the struggle on different issues but not at the cost of the Left.

What will be the core of the anti-Right coalition ? The Left or non-Left bourgeois parties, especially the Congress? It has to be admitted that the non-Left parties cannot really fight the RSS and BJP, because of their poor ideological orientation. All of them have a weakness for soft Hindutva and are ultimately not at all reliable forces who can fight the Right consistently. Here the role of the Left becomes crucial, because the Left alone can fight the Right organizationally as well as ideologically. Therefore, it is the Left which has to emerge as the core of the anti-Right coalition.

But if the Left has to emerge as the core then the most important condition is the consolidation of the Left under a Common Minimum Programme (CMP). But this is not an easy task. So what is necessary is Left consolidation through a coordinating mechanism on the basis of a CMP.

In the Soviet era, when international communist movement, with all its pitfalls, was a global force, the Left could project before the masses an alternative of capitalism. Today since this is not possible, it is the Right which is setting up the agenda and projecting the idea of an alternative India which has caught the imagination of a large section of the masses, and it is this strategy which has given them political dividends.

In this national and international situation when the rightist forces are on ascendency in 2024, what will be the tasks of the Left? To start with, many ideas of the Soviet era Marxism have to be seriously reconsidered. Uncritical universalization of the Soviet model, against which Lenin himself warned, demands rethinking. At least three such issues can be identified.

One: While accepting in principle the concept of democratic centralism, the problem that remains unaddressed is: the minority voices do not reach out to the bottom level of the Party and what gets lost is the spirit of democracy. The party members get the false impression that all decisions at the higher level have been taken unanimously and that there is no disagreement anywhere at any level.

Two: The concept of vanguard party demands rethinking. In today’s world as the struggle of the working masses is becoming increasingly multidimensional, in the case of India, class identity is becoming secondary in many cases. Communist parties are thus becoming partners in a broader alliance but not as a vanguard. In many cases, struggles are becoming issue-based and spontaneous, being launched under the banner of civil society organizations and not any party. But here a problem arises. As historical experience tells us, these spontaneous protest movements ultimately fizzle out, if there is no political-organizational–ideological leadership. So, how to resolve this contradiction — this is a new challenge before the Left.

Three: Many off the questions involving what went wrong with socialism were addressed by leaders who represented an alternative current of Marxism. This was different from the Soviet model of party-oriented socialism and failure to understand this difference made the Communist Parties blissfully unaware of the importance of democracy, pluralism and humanism and alienated them from the masses.

In a country like India, if the communist parties have to make themselves acceptable to the masses, then issues like religion and morality need to be addressed in proper perspective. The hallmark of a good communist is modesty and in personal life, they need to be guided by norms and standards of communist morality. Only then the communist Left can win over the masses intellectually and morally.

The communist parties have paid very little attention to the question of tradition. The way BJP and RSS are hijacking and distorting some of the leading figures of the Indian tradition, namely, Gandhi, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Subhas Chandra, Tagore and many others and presenting them as symbols of Hindutva, is a major challenge for the Left. In India Marxism cannot appeal to the working masses unless it integrates its teachings with the positive elements in our tradition, while critiquing the conservative elements. RSS is doing just the opposite, and thereby confusing and misleading the masses..The Left has to come out with an alternative narrative on the understanding of religion and traditions to take back the common Hindu masses from the stranglehold of RSS type Hindutva. (IPA Service)