[MLL]The Communist Manifesto

[Sanjay Singhvi]

Comrades,     I must confess that this discussion has been throughout too pedantic and mechanical for my liking. We can never be Marxists if our theorisation takes as its base only what Marx or Engels or Lenin or others have written in their books without relating the same to the practical problems of the revolution that require a solution. In any case, in the hope that this will not lead to more mastication of the living theory of Marxism-Leninism, I try to put forward my objections to Com. Alan's premises.     At the outset I must confess that though I had started off by reading this thread of discussion seriously, I got overwhelmed by the theoretical intensity of the debate and have not read Com. Dover's elucidation of the contradiction between the manifesto and the "preface". My objection however is to the fact that com. Dover seems to feel that the very fact that the socialist countries retreated shows that they were never "socialist" in the first place. As he poses the question "That is, could the socialist mode of production be overthrown by a decadent class from a previous epoch of society, and their moribund epoch of social production be restored? The obvious answer to this latter must be an emphatic no, on the basis of the dialectical and  materialist conception of history."     What is the point Alan? Are you saying that a more advanced form of society can never be overrun by a more primitive form? Then what have you to say about the Huns who overran the Roman empire? Or of the Aryans who overran the Dravidian city states of Mohenjo-daro and Harrappa in India? Or of the enthronement of William of Orange more than 50 years after the Cromwellian parliamentary revolution in England? history is replete with such instances of a more primitive peoples destroying a more advanced civilisation.     The fact is that history never moves in a straight line. Even Giambattista Vico a precursor to the Marxian concept that history is not a mere series of accidents had recognised this fact. The first bourgeois revolution  (Cromwell's) had to wait for over a hundred years before the next occurred (the American and the French) during which time it suffered many reverses. Even there it would not be accurate to describe the Cromwellian revolution as the "first" bourgeois revolution. There were precursors to it upto a thousand years ago such as the Gupta empire in India and many other nascent burgs in Europe. I am not saying that they were developed capitalist societies but did embody to some extent the dictatorship of the mercantile class (More or less like the Paris Commune in relation to socialism). Even after the French and American revolutions, it took over another hundred years before the capitalist system could finally defeat feudalism on a world scale and become a world system around the early 1900s. The Bonapartist period in France could be seen as a setback to the Bourgeois revolution there.     On the one hand we can expect that the transition from capitalism to socialism the world over will take a smaller time. However, the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat are the first classes in history to have a knowledge of science and therefore to be able to advance their tools, organisation, instruments and weapons at a much faster pace than ever known in hitherto history. Therefore it would be unwise to draw a time scale for the ultimate victory of socialism on the basis of the time taken by earlier societies to overcome their precursors.     As things stand today, the gap between the first socialist state (I insist on calling it that!) and the next revolution was a mere 30 years or so. By the early fifties, around 1/3rd of the world's population and 1/4th of its land mass was under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is true that the next 50 years have seen us retreat. It is equally true that we must seek the reasons for such retreat. However, that is another story.     Comrade, when you seem to say that the USSR was never socialist, I think you move from the realm of harmless speculation to the realm of revisionism. You are depriving the conscious working class of its most potent weapon to fight the ennui and hopelessness that Imperialism and its active media seek to daily thrust upon us. You remove the one strand of proof that provides hope that an alternative is possible. Otherwise the most common argument for not struggling against the system is "There is no alternative." There is no alternative to the IMF-WB-WTO. There is no alternative to imperialism. There is no alternative to Tories or Labour. There is no alternative to Democrats or Republicans. etc.     To my mind socialism means the dictatorship of the proletariat. It encompasses within itself many different types of societies with a larger or lesser degree of bourgeois right. Social conditions in different places may require the pursuit of different policies for building up socialism. That by itself will not make a state or a society more or less socialist. Dictatorship of the proletariat can only be excercised by a Bolshevik style party representing the proletariat of that country. We can only call a nation socialist or otherwise on the basis of the party that rules there.     The reason for the setback of the communist have to be sought in the concrete conditions in which this setback took place. I find it quite fantastic to postulate that the setback took place because Stalin had no notion of the "contradiction" between the Manifesto and the "formulations". Today we can see clearly that imperialism changed from the colonial form to the neo-colonial form at the same time that the setbacks started. It set up the IMF, WB and GATT around the same time to bolster this neo-colonial system. We can also see that the communist movement has failed to recognise this concrete change till very recently. I feel that the real reason for the setback has to be sought in this concrete condition.     Comrade, political texts are written in a concrete context. It is quite possible that emphasis may vary from time to time to the extent that two statements, read out of context, may even sound contradictory. Besides, Marxism-Leninism is not in the nature of a physical science like physics, chemistry or mathematics. You cannot weigh, measure and predict results to any required degree of tolerance. The science of society has too many unknowns and too few equations. Even physical sciences are not exact (Ref Heisenberg's principle and Godel's theorem). You can hardly expect exactitude from a social science like Marxism-Leninism.     Hoping that I have made my position clear. Your comrade, Sanjay