Buddhadeva Bhattacharya
'From National Revolutionary Politics to Nonconformist Marxism' was originally published in The Calcutta Journal of Political Studies, journal of the Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta, 1(1) and was reproduced in The Call, organ of the RSP, XXXI (1-2 & 3-4). The paper was based on an earlier oral presentation made at the seminar on 'Nationalism in Bengal 1850-1950,' Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta, September 1979. I am grateful to the Editor of The Calcutta Journal for permitting me to publish the paper, in a slightly revised form, as a separate monograph. I express my sincere gratitude to Comrade Tridib Chaudhuri MP, General Secretary, RSP, for writing a foreword to the present brochure. Sri Nabadwip Basak has done a friends job in undertaking the responsibility of publishing this tract. Much I owe to him.
B.B.
Calcutta
17 November 1982
The Present Brochure by Dr. Buddhadeva Bhattacharyya is an important contribution towards the understanding of the historical process of the transformation of the anti- imperialist national revolutionary movement of India ideologically and politically into a Marxist-oriented toiling people's revolutionary mass movement with the goal not only of overthrowing imperialist rule in India but also effecting a radical change in the existing socio-economic structure of the country and establishing a socialist order of society. This process began on a notable scale in the later part of the 1930s mostly in the jails and detention camps of India where revolutionary political prisoners and detenus were concentrated in large numbers. A communist working class movement had already come into existence in the country in the early years of the previous decade of the 1920s thanks to the efforts of the Communist International (Third International) and began to attract the political allegiance of left-wing youth and intelligentsia. But it had yet to gather strength and build up a properly centralized party organization
Comintern emissaries sent by M. N. Roy tried to contact Indian revolutionary groups about that time. The other well-known Indian revolutionary, Abani Mukherjee himself also came to India from Moscow secretly round about 1922-23 and went to Dacca to establish direct liaison with the leaders of the Anushilan Party in a bid to politically link up the Indian nationalist revolutionary movement against British imperialism with the international communist headquarters in Moscow. Soon afterwards a communist- oriented working class movement mainly based on the militant trade union movement in the major industrial centres like Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur, etc. also came up. The Kanpur (Bolshevik) Conspiracy Case of 1924 and the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929 instituted by the Government testified to the fact that the British rulers were on their part very much alive to the threat posed by the spread of a Moscow inspired communist movement to the imperialist domination of India. But for various reasons, the early phase of the movement did not attract many recruits in the 20s from the ranks of the underground national revolutionary parties and groups to swell the ranks of its adherents.
The process of ideological and political change in the national revolutionary movement in the direction of marxism- leninism and communism really began in a big way after the new spurt in the armed revolutionary movement and terroristic activities, which had manifested in the wake of the Chittagong armed uprising of 1930, subsided. Most of the revolutionary leaders and the rank and file had by that time been arrested by the police and thrown into various jails and concentration camps in the country or were transported to the Andamans. Long spells of prison terms provided an opportunity to the revolutionaries to engage in political studies and to review and reconsider the limitations of their previous methods of underground work and a purely romanticized nationalist ideology in the light of the experience of new political developments and mass movements within the country and abroad. The experience of the phenomenal growth of the anti-imperialist mass movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress and the spectacular successes of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the new Soviet state in the construction of socialism naturally came to influence the thinking of the revolutionaries in a big way — Years of study, ideological and political discussions inside the prisons and a realization of the limitations of earlier methods and political stands inevitably brought about a transformation in the outlook of the revolutionaries in the direction of mass action and class struggle based on marxism-leninism and communism.
There were two broad currents in this process of marxist transformation of the nationalist revolutionaries. The first was represented by the large-scale conversion of old revolutionaries to the 'official' communist ideology and programme as expounded by the Communist International (round about 1935 and the Seventh World Congress of Third International) and by the leadership of CPSU as the leading party of the Comintern. Quite a sizeable section of the nationalist revolutionaries, who came over ideologically to marxist communism, broke away from the old nationalist parties and groups to which they belonged earlier and readily decided to join the Communist Party of India, as a logical sequel to their acceptance of communism. The CPI was regarded by these new revolutionary converts as the sole authoritative exponent of marxism-leninism and champions of the correct strategy and tactics of the international communist movement in India. The CPI functioned in those days as the recognized national section of the Third International, the leading organ of world communism with its headquarters in Moscow. The Third International had not yet come to be dissolved by Stalin (the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 was a later development and was brought about by the exigencies of wartime alliance of Soviet Union with US and western imperialist powers). Acceptance of communist ideology at that time therefore naturally led many of the Indian revolutionaries to join the CPI.
But side by side with this trend of veering towards the Communist Party of India and towards 'official' communism as interpreted by the CPSU-led Comintern, there was another parallel second trend among Indian revolutionary converts to marxism-leninism who had serious misgivings and reservations about the patently reformist deviations of the new Cornintern and CPSU line from the revolutionary internationalist line of classical marxism-leninism, since the adoption in 1935 of the strategy of collaboration with bourgeois democratic parties in the name of building up 'United Popular Fronts' for resistance against Fascism.
They sought to follow an alternative revolutionary marxist-leninist path in India in the light of the objective historical necessities of the anti-imperialist mass movement and toiling people's movement within the country. This parallel marxist trend amongst the Indian revolutionaries was represented by the marxist Anushilan Party which grew into an independent marxist-leninist party outside the organizational discipline of the Comintern and the CPI with a distinctly separate interpretation of marxist-leninist strategy for India and an alternative marxist programme and platform of action. This alternative trend eventually culminated in the formation of the Revolutionary Socialist Party by the Anushilan marxists in March 1940 at the time of Ramgarh Session of the Indian National Congress and the 'Anti-Compromise' Conference convened by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose,
Comrade Buddhadeva Bhattacharyya's brochure throws considerable light on the origins of the RSP from the Anusliilan Samiti and the transformation of the Anushilan from an anti-imperialist national revolutionary party into a party of 'non-conformist marxism' in 1940 as contrasted to the CPI, the party of 'conformist' marxism of the pro- CPSU and Comintern brand. It does not purport to present a complete history of the evolution of the RSP as a separate and distinctive marxist-leninist Party or of the transformation of Anushilan into the RSP. But it clearly points out the distinct line of ideological and political thinking of the RSP as a marxist-leninist party and the causes that led the Party to follow a different kind of political strategy in the anti-imperialist struggle from that of the undivided Communist Party of India of those days. As noted above the CPI was then regarded as the only authoritative mouthpiece of 'official' communist line as endorsed by the CPSU and the Communist International. As the RSP had significant differences with the 'official' communist line, it is the distinctive line of ideological and political thinking of the RSP in terms of marxism, which is defined by Comrade Bhattacharyya in this brochure as 'non-conformist marxism'—as distinguished from the 'official' or 'conformist' marxism of the Soviet-dominated Comintern and the CPSU leadership from which the CPI drew its ideological inspiration.
Since the first open political and ideological split in the CPSU-led world communist movement between the stalinist CPSU and titoist CP of Yugoslavia in 1948 and more so, since the much bigger split in the next decade and half (1959-61) between the CPSU and maoist CP of China, we have now grown used to a multipolarity in the international communist movement and in the interpretation of marxism- leninism. Even in the CPSU'-led international communist movement the idea of ideological and political monolithism, which prevailed in the stalinist era, received a rude shock after the historic denigration of Stalin by Khrushchov in the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. — Since then the previous notion of communist monolithism, guided and directed from a common international revolutionary centre like Moscow, has come to be discarded and replaced by what late Palmiro Togliatti (leader of the Italian CP) sought to describe as communist 'polycentrism.' That is to say, there is no commonly accepted single political centre for the guidance of the world communist movement today; nor unchallengeable interpretation of marxist-leninist strategy. Different communist-ruled countries and different national centres of the communist movement have their own separate interpretation of the marxist-leninist ideology and programme.
It should not be forgotten that even in the stalinist decades when Stalin ruthlessly dominated the world communist movement, there were in existence two rival and alternative international communist lines represented by Stalin ('Socialism in one country alone' ; 'peaceful coexistence of socialism and capitalism' and so on) and by Trotsky ('Permanent revolution'). After the demise of Stalin and jettisoning of his 'cult of personality' in CPSU itself, the notion of monolithism' in the international communist movement with one commonly accepted infallible interpretation of marxism-leninism has ceased to hold sway. The open outburst of Sino-Soviet ideological and political differences with two leading countries of world commnunism openly challenging each other's interpretation of the correct marxist- leninist line, the subsequent rise and fall of maoist Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, the emergence of the frankly revisionist ideology of Eurocommunism amongst the leading Communist Parties of Western Europe (Italy, France and Spain) — setting their face against the leninist concept of 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' and his advocacy of 'revolutionary mass insurrection by the working people' — combined with the absence for nearly last 3 to 4 decades now of any commonly recognized centre of international communism like the Comintern (Third International 1919-43) or the Cominform (1947-56) has inevitably led to the erosion of faith in any single interpretation, of the marxist-leninist doctrine and communist strategy being regarded as unchallengeable. There is no universally accepted formulation of the marxist-leninist line today, emanating from a common international centre like Moscow as in the decades of the 1920s, 30s or early 40s. The launching of the Cominform in 1947 seemed to revive the notion of one commonly accepted marxist-leninist line for all countries for a time, at least for Communist parties of stalinist orientation accepting joint Sino-Soviet leadership. But with the emergence of the Sino-Soviet ideological split in the 60s and subsequent proliferation of political divisions and splits in the world communist movement, we have now become used to more than one interpretation of marxism-leninism. Each communist or marxist-leninist party formulates its own specific interpretation of the marxist-leninist theory and programme according to its own understanding.
The term 'non-conformist marxism' has, therefore, largely lost its relevance in the current context of the world communist or marxist-leninist movement in different countries. As here used by Comrade Bhattacharyya the term 'non conformist' marxism has however to be understood in the older monolithic context of the Soviet-dominated world communist movement of the 1930s when most of the CPs in different countries including India accepted the 'official' interpretation of the marxist-leninist ideological and political line by the CPSU and the Comintern as the only correct or true interpretation of marxism. The CPI was an undivided party in those days and ideologically followed the CPSU and the Comintern line. As the RSP line of marxism in India differed in important respects from the CPI and the Comintern line, it could be regarded in those days as a 'non-conformist' line. Keeping that context in view Comrade Bhattacharyya traces how the RSP came to develop its distinctive interpretation of marxism-leninism in the background of anti-imperialist movement of the late 30s.
As stated above it is not a complete history of the evolution of the old Anushilan Party into a marxist-leninist toiling people's party with communist aims, as the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP). But the outlines which Comrade Bhattacharyya's brochure provides in regard to the evolution of Anushilan into the RSP would surely go a long way to enable us to understand the broader process of the historical transformation of the older underground revolutionary movement in India from a petty-bourgeois national revolutionary anti-imperialist political current fighting against British colonial rule into a proletarian revolutionary mass-current and a toiling people's revolutionary movement with socialist aims and guided by the ideology of scientific socialism or communism.
TRIDIB CHADHURI
New Delhi
21 October 1982