Arindam Sen
Like Lula in Brazil , Buddhadev Bhattacharya (BB) in Bengal is performing this role extremely well and that explains why national and international ideologues of imperialist globalisation – from team Manmohan to top officials of World Bank and other multilateral agencies to the present US ambassador to India – are so tireless in praising him. Thanks to his 'communist' image, BB is today big capital's best bait for legitimising the otherwise discredited neo-liberal reform programme in India .
Progress in human civilisation – they tell us, citing the examples of developed countries – naturally entails a shift of emphasis from agriculture to industry. Well, if there is an element of truth in this statement, it is that the full development of productive forces in agriculture (to the extent possible in the given mode of production), creates conditions for industry (and then services) to emerge as the leading sector(s) of the economy. At least this has been the usual course of capitalist development so far. Has West Bengal , with nearly 4500 villages languishing in destitution (as Bhattacharya himself had admitted some time ago, during a discussion on starvation deaths in Amlasol), achieved this development? A peasant becomes a doorkeeper, with hardly any job security, in an apartment that rises on the land he owned and cultivated till last year – do we call that progress?
We must get rid of dogmas and accept the reality of globalisation – Sri Bhattacharya retorts whenever he faces questions or issues raised from a Marxist or broadly pro-poor perspective, such as resistance to eviction, struggle against imperialist penetration or class struggle and class outlook generally. In a recent interview to a leading Bengali daily, he candidly remarked that even revolutionary poetry – including poems by Sukanta Bhattacharya, Bengal 's most popular Marxist poet of the late British period who also happened to be the uncle of BB – no longer inspire him. Marxism itself is now a disgusting dogma for this darling of the bourgeoisie, who has emerged as the most authentic mouthpiece and salesman, within the left movement, of neo-liberal dogmas like investment as a panacea, investment above everything else.
And yet, since they cannot afford to abandon the communist/Socialist signboard altogether, Bengali leaders of CPI(M) now routinely cite the current Chinese praxis in support of theirs. Leaving apart the pros and cons of the Chinese trajectory, one could hardly think of a more ahistoric comparison. While discussing the New Economic Policy (NEP) that entailed many concessions to foreign and indigenous capital, Lenin remarked in 1921 that a victorious revolution "creates such a 'reserve of strength' that it is possible to hold out even in a forced retreat, hold out both materially and morally... in such way as to stop the retreat in time and revert to the offensive." (The Importance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism). State power in the hands of communist party, continuing public ownership of major means of production, economic foundations built up by decades of self-reliant development – in China you have all these and more that enable comrades there to interact with imperialist capital from a position of strength unthinkable in our context.
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