By Harsh Thakor
In my view Lenin had an even more democratic approach than Mao but was not left with time to abide to implement. With his theoretical mastery I would have envisaged Lenin to even reach more democratic depths than Chairman Mao. Comrade Ajith also raises issues of personality cult but fails to understand that it is not the deliberate fostering of personality cult of Stalin or Mao but weaknesses inherent in the Leninist party or ideology not even overcome by Maoism. Exaggerating personality cult undermines the mass line and credibility of the erstwhile Socialist countries ,particularly in Mao's China. Stalin's era was to give no proper vent to dissent and wrongly concluding that the bourgeoisie was totally wiped out with no need to further democratize the society. In spite of taking revolutionary democracy to heights never reached before in history Chairman Mao in practice could not defeat revisionism at its very roots which was testified by rise of Lin Biao, dismantling of revolutionary Committees and ultimate victory of capitalist roaders. To me Chairman Sison has a most mature analysis in his defense of the former Socialist Societies and negating personality cult. I staunchly disagree that morally the Maoist party is a rupture from the Leninist one with concept of continuous revolution under dictatorship of the proletariat a discovery of Maoism ,but still a continuity of Leninism. Still we must credit Ajith with taking on very pertinent questions and praise Sison for making such a staunch ideological defense of Communist Societies and the roots of Leninism in Maoism. No doubt still we need to develop any even more democratic party than the Leninist-Maoist one which indirectly Comrade Ajith touches upon and must be given credit. However he fails to touch upon the mass line aspect which is the root cause of any trend of personality cult and dose no reflect on the problems Stalin and Mao have to face in building a Socialist Society. Through his comprehensive critique we understand why Chairman Sison is such an outstanding Marxist-Leninist-Maoist who defends the essence of the ideology to the very core. Further investigation has to be done on the reversal of the Shanghai Commune in Mao's China and why mass organizations were brought to a standstill. Ajith is no doubt creative and positive but in his analysis fails to defend the roots of Leninism in Maoism
[The following essay was originally published by the Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) Naxalbari before its merger with the CPI
(Maoist), written by comrade Ajith, one of their foremost
cadre and spokesmen internationally. The essay aims to explore the historical
development of the Maoist party, its axioms and relationship to the development
of communist parties in the Comintern era. Biting back against dogmatism,
comrade Ajith makes it clear that the vanguard party, in no way compromising
the mass line or democratic centralism, must conform to local conditions, as
well as historically specific tasks which do not lend themselves to cookie-cutter
reproduction of historic party formations. As communists, we must always be
prepared to confront new realities, lest they swallow us, or worse, render us
irrelevant. Those of us in the belly of the beast ought to study this document,
and ask ourselves what forms, given our specific historical tasks and the
peculiar position of revolutionaries at the center of global parasitism, the
struggle and its organs will take. As always, the following has been made
available here for the purposes of study and struggle.]
What
should be the qualities of an organisation to become the vanguard of a new
society and humans, what should be the methods of party building corresponding
to this, what should be the position of the party within the dictatorship of
the proletariat? Can a proletarian party retain its communist qualities today
without becoming a Maoist party? Is the Maoist party just another name for
communist party? Or does it contain something new, in its very nature and
methods of work?
In
the capitalist age, classes (or sections within them) express and realise their
interests mainly through the instrument of political party (a social
organisation). Marx posed the necessity for the proletariat to form its own
party in order to achieve its aims, contending with enemy classes. This was
developed as a scientific theory, verified and established through practice, by
Lenin. The core of the Leninist party concept are professional revolutionaries;
those who devote themselves completely to revolutionary activity, who make this
their profession. It has been criticised that this leads to an elite who lord
over the proletariat. Further, Lenin’s viewpoint that workers cannot, on their
own, arrive at the ideology guiding their liberation, his proposition that it
must be reached to them from outside, have been remarked as a celebration of
elitism. The Leninist party concept is accused of being the concrete expression
of this mindset, one that undervalues the potential of the workers. Some argue
that while the evils of this party concept were held in check by Lenin’s
personal qualities so long as he was alive, they broke out in a monstrous death
dance under Stalin. (Pearson, Mathrubhumi – 87/3, March 29, 2009)
Let
us first acquaint ourselves with the ideological struggles that took place on
this issue, during the period in which the Leninist party concept took form.
Its starting point was the debate in the Second Congress of the undivided
Russian Communist Party (then known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party) on the matter of the party constitution. The Rightists (Trotsky too was
part of this) accused Lenin’s draft statutes of promoting ultra-centralisation.
Even his insistence on membership criteria that made it mandatory to join a
party committee and participate in its practice was, in their view, an example
of unwanted centralisation. Their counter-proposal would allow anyone who
helped the party be its member. They would thus make it a loose organisation of
spare-time activists. This was the crux of the difference between Lenin and his
adversaries.
Lenin
clearly realised the need for an organisation of those prepared to be frontline
activists in a revolutionary movement aimed at seizing power, those who devoted
their whole lives to this task and thus acquired the necessary leadership
qualities and skills. His party concept evolved from this vision. The specific
situation in Czarist Russia, which ruled out all open activity and made it
imperative to constantly evade the secret police, certainly was a major
influencing factor in this. The weight of such specificities can be seen in
Lenin’s insistence on the total centralisation to be enjoyed by the party’s
leading body and the strict division of tasks – almost like the division of
labour in a modern factory – among different party committees and members of
the committees. But is must also be noted that a departure from the 2nd
International’s party concept was implicit in this approach, though the
immediate context it addressed was the Russian situation. This is where Lenin separates
from his contemporaries on the party question. Leaving aside diehard Rightist
attacks, let us elaborate this by getting into the criticisms made by Rosa
Luxembourg, and also Trotsky (who was in the revolutionary camp for a while).
Lenin
did not deny the voluntary nature of party centralisation. It is not imposed,
but voluntarily acceded to; consciously taken up by all with the interests of
revolution in mind. This is Lenin’s concept of voluntary centralisation.
Contrary to Luxembourg’s ‘tendency’, which must be realised through the course
of struggles, for Lenin, the methods of a centralised party, including its
division of tasks, is something to be consciously established and trained in
from the very beginning. Yet this does not negate the positiveness of
revolutionary spontaneity.
To
repeat, Lenin’s point of departure was the type of organisation needed to
organise and carry out revolution. He arrived at a solution by assessing the
concrete situation of the enemy and the people, rather than starting out from
some preconceived notion of revolution, or of the proletariat and its
development. Thus, during the revolutionary upheaval of 1905, in place of the
strictest centralisation and guarded recruitment he had been favouring till
then, Lenin argued for forms of organisation capable of incorporating the
greatest number of militant working class masses. (New Tasks and New Forces,
Volume 8, pages 209-220)
This
was not a case of Lenin going against Leninism, it WAS Leninism. In this
instance, he was guided by the assessment that the revolutionary zeal of the
masses, seen in that situation, would to a large extent make up for their
ideological, political weaknesses. This displayed deep faith in the masses and
a dialectical grasp of the relation between conscious steps and spontaneity
within a revolutionary movement. Without doubt, Leninist centralisation and
organisational principles are not some absolutes meant to be implemented
‘regardless of the stage’. Its work division does not abandon the task of
raising the consciousness of the whole party membership and the widest possible
mass.
Did
the later day international communist movement loose Lenin’s exemplary,
dialectical, handling of the vanguard concept and organisational methods
formulated by him? It would be far more profitable to pay attention to such
differences rather than running after individual traits of leaders as Pearson
does. Lenin was concerned about the dangers posed by universalising Bolshevik
party statutes, regardless of time and place. In a report to the Communist
International (Comintern), Lenin observed that its organisational principles
have a strong Russian flavor, and doubted whether comrades from other countries
would be able to grasp it properly (Report to the Fourth Congress of the
Communist International, Volume 33, pages 415-432). In those days of haste to
rupture from the loose organisational methods of the 2nd International this concern
didn’t draw attention. Meanwhile, stricter centralisation was demanded of the
Russian Communist Party, which had by this time become a ruling party. The iron
unity of the party was of critical importance for the very existence of the
revolutionary state. This was the context in which the 10th Congress of the
Russian party decided to end all groups within the party and their
publications, departing from its existent practice. Later it became part of the
foundations of communist party organisational principles.
Throughout
this period, Lenin, the Russian Party and the Comintern were of the view that a
revolutionary advance was imminent in Western Europe .
Political developments in various countries testified to this. The immediacy of
this situation must certainly have influenced the formulation of organisational
principles. However, the revolutionary situation that was forming up
dissipated. At this point Lenin drew attention to the need for a thorough
evaluation in order to work out future steps, in the situation of ebb. But
before he could grapple with this he was bedridden by an assassin’s bullets and
died. It is not known whether the party concept and its organisational
principles were among the issues he had in mind for review. At any rate this is
not what was seen later. Statutes and methods of work adopted in a particular
situation were later theorised in a very mechanical manner.
Stalin’s
concept of monolithic party was prominent among his mechanical errors. This was
the model followed by the international communist movement – till it was
criticised by Mao. An outlook of worshiping the party as a power that could not
be questioned and was always correct got strengthened. The influence of
mechanical thinking, which denied internal contradictions and class struggle in
socialism, was evident in Stalin’s party concept. It was not grasped as a space
of active contradictions, as an organic entity which must continually renew its
leadership position and relevance in society by grappling with external and
internal contradictions. Ideological struggle became formal. Democratic
centralism froze up into relations of domination and subservience. As could be
expected, there was a difference in this between parties in power and those
struggling for it. In the latter case, the necessities of sustaining under
enemy suppression compelled greater reliance on the people. Self-criticism,
rectification and ideological struggles over such issues livened up the
atmosphere in the party. Yet, the constrictions of the monolithic party concept
were ever present. Purging of membership gained prominence, compared to
ideological rectification. So long as the party maintained its Marxist-Leninist
orientation this usually meant removal of those who had lost their communist
qualities. But even then, ideology took a back seat in the whole process; the
organisational aspect stood out.
Mao
broke away from this negative tradition and the mechanical thinking underlying
it. This was literally a re-construction of the vanguard concept. And it opened
up the way to a deeper, richer, understanding of the proletariat’s leading role
and the Leninist party. Mao’s departure from existent thinking on the party
concept can be seen right from the very beginning. His report on the Hunan
Though
other classes and social sections will be important partners in the historical
movement to destroy capitalism (its highest stage of imperialism) they cannot
provide leadership. In each instance the issue of liberation is specific – land
in the case of landless peasants, caste oppression for Dalits, male chauvinism
for women, ethnic oppression for Adivasis, national oppression for oppressed
people, religious persecution for minorities and so on. Being specific they are
also partial, in the context of the whole revolutionary project. But this is
not the situation of the proletariat. Capitalist bondage is different from
earlier exploiting systems like caste-feudalism. It imposes no other compulsion
on the workers other than the pangs of hunger. And since, in principle, they are
free, there can be no specific liberation suiting them. Every form of
exploitation and oppression must be ended. Thus the emancipation of the whole
of humanity becomes a precondition for the liberation of this class. The
leading role of the proletariat derives from this objective social position. It
obliges the proletariat to continue the revolution all the way up till
realising a world rid of exploitation.
If
this Marxist understanding of proletarian leadership is absolutised it would
certainly lead to reification. (Sandeepan, Munnaniporali, 131) Both the history
and present of the international communist movement illustrate how this emerges
with mechanical equations, where proletariat = revolution and communist party =
vanguard. On the other hand, economist impulses often seen in the upper strata
of the proletariat, social passivity engendered by revisionist, reformist
politics that strengthen this economism, and changes seen in the nature of
labour and work places, have given rise to views that abandon the proletarian
leadership concept. Carried away in the tide of identity politics, they believe
that, in future, these movements will give leadership to social change.
Thus
we have the two. At one end, reification of the proletariat and the communist
party, selfishness that hoists this banner to justify fleeting necessities as
common interests. At the other, the lethargic plea to reduce our sights to the
partial, to abandon the noble task of an exploitation free world since it is a
mere myth. Maoism cuts through this vicious circle. The leading role of the
proletariat and the vanguard position of its communist party are potentialities
contained in historical circumstances. They can only be realised through
creative intervention in the historical moment of a specific society. Similar
to other phenomena, this too is a unity of opposites. This was the import of
Mao’s warning in the Hunan
One
sees the continuity with this in Mao’s observation, made some 50 years later,
“the bourgeoisie is within the party itself”. He arrived at this conclusion
through the experiences of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union
and the Cultural Revolution unleashed in China
This
poses yet another dialectic of the communist party’s position as vanguard. The
main source of the potential hazard we saw above does not lie with external
influences. It is contained in the revolution it led, in the society thus
created, in other words, in the emergent unity of opposites brought up by its
successful venture of being a vanguard. This potential is the mirror opposite
of that of leading the advance to communism. Which of them will be realised in a
given socialist society is a matter to be settled by the class struggle taking
place within the party and society in each concrete historical moment. Grasping
the party as a unity of opposites – this is the point of rupture to firmly
establish the Maoist party concept in both theory and practice.
Taking
lessons from the Chinese revolution and the international communist movement
Mao elaborated a number of propositions on the party. One theme consistently
stressed throughout is that of firmly building up the communist consciousness
of serving the people, by checking attitudes of superiority in the relations
between the party and the people, and leadership and ranks. This does not deny
the role or importance of leadership. Mao was contradicting an outlook that
absolutised leadership, and made the masses and ranks into disciples, passive
instruments. He reminded communists that no matter how necessary cadres are, it
is the masses that carry out things and therefore it wouldn’t do to exaggerate
the role of cadres. He persists with this in the relation between the central
committee and lower committees and that between the socialist state and the
people. In the absence of information from the lower levels the central
leadership cannot arrive at correct decisions. At times a solution may be
arrived at in the lower level itself, in which case the task of the central
committee is to propagate this throughout the country. Such observations of Mao
topple any idea of infallible leadership. They also helped in bringing out the
relation between the organisation principle of democratic centralism and the
Marxist theory of knowledge. Mao pointed out that the struggle against the
bourgeoisie was not the only element in class struggle under socialism. It
included contradictions between the socialist state and people, and between the
party and the people. Right in the 1950s itself he warned that the people would
teach those who thought they could lord over them, now that power was seized.
He advocated the right of the people to strike and protest saying that the
communist party needs to learn a lesson. (‘Combat Bourgeois Ideas in the
Party’, ‘Speech at the Second Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee
of the Communist Party of China
What
is striking here is the importance he placed on struggle from below, the
spontaneous initiative of the people. This grasp of the dialectical relation
between conscious intervention from above and spontaneous pressure from below,
this Leninist understanding lost by the international communist movement in the
interregnum, was not just retaken by Mao. He took it to a new height by
applying it in the Cultural Revolution, in the struggle against the danger of
capitalist restoration. Mao thus developed the party concept and established it
on new foundations; not on some individual behavioural traits, but solid
ideological-political principles.
To
what extent could the Communist Party of China led by Mao imbibe this newness?
This is a relevant question. It serves as an entry for assessing the extent to
which the international movement that emerged in the 1960s inspired by Mao
Tsetung Thought, or the Maoists who laid claim to deeper clarity in the 1990s,
have incorporated and actualised the Maoist party concept. The Chinese party
was forged in the Cominternist mould. This aspect, as well as its background of
having functioned for long with its methods and style, must be kept in mind
while seeking an answer to our question. As we noted, Mao had started to break
away from this model from the very beginning. But his new approach would really
be established only through the Cultural Revolution. In fact, Mao’s teachings
on the party were systematically compiled only in 1973, in the Shanghai
But
it wouldn’t be enough to mark this limit imposed by conditions. There is also
the matter of an incomplete rupture from the Comintern approach. Among them,
the cult built up around Mao deserves special attention. This business of
personality cult was initiated by Stalin in total opposition to Lenin’s
outlook. When the then Soviet leader Khrushchev prepared ideological grounds
for capitalist restoration by negating Stalin totally, under the guise of
rejecting this cult, Mao took up the defence of Stalin. But this was done with
Marxist criticism on Stalin’s errors, differentiating between what is to be
adopted and what rejected. We need to think over whether this was complete.
Personality cults can never be justified in Marxism. But instead of totally
rejecting them Mao limited himself to criticising their extreme manifestations.
Though this is sought to be justified by appealing to the complex situation of
the class struggle in China
In
general, how far have the Maoists succeeded in rupturing from the Cominternist
party concept? How much Maoist are the parties they are building up and
leading? Though no one would theorise, and thus legitimise, a shift from
staying with the masses and serving them to lording over them, this can already
be seen in a number of instances. Blind faith in the party in the place of
party loyalty centered on politics, blind belief in the infallibility of the
leadership and cult worship, intolerance of opposition and criticism,
pragmatism that sanctions any method if they are “for the party and revolution”
– such Cominternist influences are commonly seen in methods of work and
approach. The term Cominternist is used because these were not errors of Stalin
alone. Moreover, they contain problems of a whole period in the history of the
international communist movement. We must add, there were problems of outlook
and growth. Because this was a time in which communist ideology was spread
throughout the world, formation of communist parties was promoted, and a truly
international revolutionary proletarian movement was given form to. One of the
great leaps achieved by Maoism is its rupture from bad traditions of the
Comintern period, without in the least minimising its positive role. This must
be further deepened. Today’s Maoist parties are, without doubt, continuators of
yesteryear communist parties. But their foundations must be the heights
attained by Maoism in the vanguard concept, not the outlook or methods of their
past.
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