The "Withering away" of the Communist Party!

One of the key aspects of the development of Communism is that the state has to "wither away". This is the most utopian idea associated with the Communist dogma and it was also the most preached in the erstwhile Soviet Union. I recently read a collection of speeches made by Lenin on Socialist Democracy and he emphatically states that the state will "wither away" in the revolutionary process initiated by the Communists in Russia. I hate to admit it because these kind of statements are historically not innocent. This became evident with Stalin taking over later in the Soviet Russia.

When Lenin was impulsively talking about the state every time, he was equally aware of the blunder that he was committing but since he gave everything to the revolution, upto the point of not coming back, he had no other option but to stick to the dogma.  This led him into advocating a 'Centralized Socialist system' which resulted in the great 'Lenin versus Rosa Luxemburg dialogue'. Well, analysing things now in the 21st Century, we now know it was not the state that has actually "withered away" in Soviet Russia but the party itself. This is what I am trying to focus here in this piece - 'the withering effect!'

In a novel named 'The Syndicate' by the popular Malayalam Satirist Novelist, VKN, he says that it was actually Nehru who corrupted the Communists in India. By giving them the forbidden fruit of democracy, Nehru cleverly took away the revolutionary spirit of the Comrades. But for many, Nehru saved the Communist party by giving it a chance to rise above the dogma and accept the "bourgeois democracy". From popular viewpoint, this compromise infact saved the party from the "withering away" effect which it had to undergo in Soviet Russia.

If I am to make it simple, this means that the communist party actually had to become 'uncommunist' (I'm not sure if there is a word) to save itself from the "withering away" effect. This brings us to a joke (not really a joke) that I read from Slavoj Zizek. Zizek says, "We all know the old joke referring to the enigma of who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays: “Not William Shakespeare, but someone else with the same name.” This is what Lacan means by the “decentered subject”; this is how a subject relates to the name that fixes its symbolic identity: John Smith is (always, by definition, in its very notion) not John Smith, but someone else with the same name. As Shakespeare’s Juliet knew, I am never “that name”—the John Smith who really thinks he is John Smith is a psychotic."

This is a joke that establishes my point directly, i.e, being a Communist is about not being a Communist. Anybody believing the opposite is psychotic. Let's look at the Communist party we have in Kerala. If we are to analyse the various party leaders over the years, from EMS to Pinarayi Vijayan, we see how and why this 'decentering' works. Anyone who had heard the speeches of EMS knows that the guy just couldn't stop preaching Marxism, not that it is a good thing or a bad thing. But now when we look at Pinarayi Vijayan, the most missed words in his repertoire is Marxism/Communism. This is no accidental stuff, he knowingly ignores it. For the same reason he is also called as a practical politician (we will see about that).

There is a brilliant observation made by the Asianet News Channel Editor, MG Radhakrishnan in 2016 when Pinarayi Vijayan appointed the world famous Neoliberal Economist 'Gita Gopinath' as his Financial Advisor. He said, "Can anything be more metaphoric? “Gita” the wise counsel being imparted by Gopinath (aka Krishna) to Vijayan (aka Arjuna) exhorting him to shed all inhibitions to fight against all his (Marxist) elders and gurus to discharge his karma in the great war of Kurukshetra!"

Vijayan clearly pursues neoliberal policies because there is no ideological standard to go by in the party. These days one can become a communist only by joining a communist party and one also ceases to be a communist, the very minute he leaves the party. This is best resonated in a joke (not really a joke) popularised by Jacques Lacan. He says, “My fiancée never misses an appointment with me because the moment she misses one, she is no longer my fiancée".

One may find this as "the withering away" of the party as VKN thought, which is exactly my perspective too. Today many think that being a Leftie is all about being associated with the Communist Party. This is stupid as the party itself is not left in its traditional sense. Today, many in the Left are abused just because they are against the policies of the party. And when they criticise the party, they are met with abuses and slander which show great stupidity within the ecosystem that the Communist Party built and which it still maintains. As a result, the people in the left who are not part of the communist party are branded as apolitical.

As a matter of fact, following a political ideology is completely different from blindly following a political party and the former doesn't make one apolitical. Just like BJP, the communist party goes to bed with the neoliberalists and they do it under the cover of Communism (nothing more dialectical than this). These are the state of affairs which make one believe that the party is on the path of "withering away".

Well, not completely! What can save the party from the brink of extinction is something which Trotsky stood for - 'Revisionism'. Again, keeping Trotsky in mind one shouldn't also forget how this Communist party of Kerala handled VKN, OV Vijayan or MN Vijayan for their criticism.

This takes me close to the heart and soul of the party - the workers. With the current state of affairs, the party's "withering away" has gifted the party a great number of nincompoops. Whenever I see one, I never fail to recognize one. They are the real reason for the "withering away" that is happening. I have nothing else than a popular Groucho Marx joke to express my feelings whenever I talk with one of them - “This man may look like an idiot and act like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you—he really is an idiot!” Nothing more underscores my frustration in dealing with these 'revolutionaries' on social media or real life. One can afford to be blindsided by the weight of the ideology but not by the petty politics of today!

So my message to you 'comrades' is 'Long Live Revisionism!'