Unlearning 'Communism'

It is always quite a surprise to start a month with the news of something historic and gladly it was the Centenary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on July 1, 2021. Of course, this is no mean feat especially if the party in question is able to continue in power over all these years. This obviously should make us ask again - what should we celebrate?, the continuous evasion of the Chinese state from the 'Bourgeois Democracy' or the continuous persistence of the 'Bourgeois Revolution' in China!

Recently, I happened to see how people who identify themselves as 'leftists' defend Joseph Stalin on Twitter. According to them the whole idea of Stalin being the Stalin we know was 'Western propaganda'. As a person who breathes the air of this world, I understand when other people accuses the West (America) of propaganda. America is quite notorious for that thing but then with Stalin, the accusation of propaganda doesn't hold water. Thus, denying Stalin's excesses is not something anyone in the right mind should do. But that is the ordinary people I am talking about, what about the party members? One just can't know what the Communist parties in different parts of the world would want its members to believe. 

I know the title for this piece Unlearning Communism obviously might've sounded like the opposite of what I am going to write. So if you are someone who expected a 'Jordan Petersonisque' critique of Communism, here is your cue, you can stop reading and leave! Others who see themselves as people belonging to the left, especially Marxists, they should stay and read. This is largely regarding the mistake that some of the leftists have been doing.

I recently read a book titled Unlearning Marx: Why the Soviet Failure was a Triumph for Marx by Steve Paxton. Like the title of this piece, the title of the book can also be misleading (especially the first part). This book fundamentally deals with the same concerns that I've spoken above. Obviously, if you've studied Marxism, its quite obvious for you that the Soviet Union was a system which advanced Capitalism in Russia. It was a 'bourgeois revolution' to further the economic structure from Feudalism to Capitalism (except that the revolutionaries didn't know it was a bourgeois revolution. quite fancy, right?)

So, The Soviet Union was not 'Communist'! I know this is not news to many but believe me, it is for some. Well, then again one should admit that some of the policies of the party were Socialist. Other than that, it was all about advancing Capitalism in Russia. What Steve Paxton tries to do in his work is establishing this fact by stressing on the Historical materialism aspect of Marxism. This is the same analysis that works for China too. China was also stepping into Capitalism with the revolution. So the Communism we have been ascribing to both these systems weren't really Communism, its Capitalism with a 'not-so' friendly face.

Now lets come back to China. Justifying China's human rights abuses on the grounds of it being Communist was something that we saw from the Party secretaries of the communist party in India on July 1. Sitaram Yechury was happy enough to write editorials for newspapers. Till then I haven't had any issue with the party comrades justifying China because I thought it was an issue with their understanding of how things really are. But it was on July 1 that I finally understood that the communist parties (their official actors) are completely clueless with the repercussions of their statements. If you look at it, its clear that the term Communism itself has been taken apart by this people for so long that they themselves along with many are amnesiac about how far the word has come and lost its meaning. The audacity to feel proud of a regime which has continuously disregarded human rights, murdered its own citizens and activists leaves us - the democratic citizens - to think how deep into the made-up context that the word - communism - has been situated. It should be put back to its context and I believe this duty falls on all Marxists and leftists out there.

As Ben Burgis writes in his latest work Cancelling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary Left, "Stalin’s reign of terror stands as an indictment of the Soviet system for the same reason that Caligula’s reign of terror stands as an indictment of the Roman Empire. These systems created the possibility of Stalins and Caligulas by concentrating immense power at the top with no democratic accountability or constitutional restraints." This is exactly true in the case of China too! Burgis writes, "The accurate thing to say is that exactly one attempt at replacing capitalism with a socialist democracy ended with authoritarianism. Subsequent transitions to communism in countries like China, Vietnam, and the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe weren’t attempts to create socialist democracy. They were self-conscious attempts to recreate what existed in the Soviet Union initiated by Communist parties whose leaders were ideologically committed to that model." So if we hear a Communist party's official representative belonging to a democratic country saying he felt proud of what China has achieved, its deplorable and they should be ashamed if they see themselves as part of the democratic system in this country. In fact, they are suffering from a serious disease, 'The Overidentification with the Left parties' according to Ben Burgis.

Also, this doesn't mean that everything is bad with China. Of course, there is the good and the bad. Ben Burgis notes, "We don’t need to reduce the whole experience of capital-C Communism to a cartoonish caricature entirely defined by bread lines and gulags in order to be critical of that system. But we should be critical of it, both because those regimes objectively deserve criticism and because failure to make a clear distinction between what existed in a society like East Germany and what we advocate now would be fatal to the prospects for winning majority support for socialism."

What should be condemned has to be condemned. I don't see how Sitaram Yechuri cannot acknowledge Tiananmen Square and still call what happened at JNU, 'fascistic'. This act of justifying everything that the party is doing only makes them look like fools, same as that of the right wing conservatives. This is exactly the problem in Kerala these days as anyone criticizing the party is often attacked and abused online; be it academicians, or Ambedkarites. This is not something to be proud of but it seems that official representatives of the party itself see this as something to be proud of. At least the members of the party should educate themselves to take back and place the word 'Communism' in its context to internalize its meaning or its a lost cause. So it basically comes down to learning Communism and as learning is often followed by unlearning, it is the unlearning part that most will have to do!