On CPI’s Draft Party Programme

COMMUNICATION

The Draft of the Party Programme of the Communist Party of India sets the task of completing the Democratic Revolution (Introductory Note) or New Democratic Revolution (12.4) and this is repeatedly mentioned in the Draft. Obviously it means that the Revolution is already underway and the CPI has to fulfil the task of taking it forward for its completion. But who started it and how it got going is nowhere clear in the Draft. It has been, however, asserted that ‘it will not be .........the old type of bourgeois democratic revolution’. (9.1) Also ‘it will complete the national democratic tasks while going through the people’s democratic tasks of the revolution’. (9.2) So the New Democratic Revolution falls somewhere in between the National Democratic Revolution, as envisaged earlier by the CPI, and the People’s Democratic Revolution by the CPI-M. It will be neither of the two and it will assimilate the elements of both in its core. So far so good. What about the content of such a Revolution? The answer is: It has to be ‘anti-feudal, anti-imperialist and anti-monopolist’. (9.1)

According to the Draft, ‘the classes and sections of people that are in action for carrying out these tasks of the democratic revolution, whether spontaneously or consciously, are the working class, the rural proletariat, the working peasantry, the progressive democratic and secular intelligentsia and the revolutionary section of the middle class ............and eventually they can lead the country ........by replacing the big bourgeoisie from the leadership. This is to be done around a firm worker-peasant alliance.’ (9.1)

However, at another place the Draft talks about the Left Democratic Front. It reads: ‘The CPI should reach out to the sections behind them (regional parties) and eventually draw them towards the Left Democratic Front.’ (9.11) The regional parties, according to the Draft, ‘represent and voice the urges and demands of vital sections of the people in the particular state/region.’(9.11) Clearly it does not matter whether these parties are ‘anti-feudal, anti-imperialist and anti-monopolist’ or not, whereas the Draft mentions that ‘this development has given rise to big sections of the regional bourgeoisie and landlord elements in some States ........’ (7.8) Of course they are the props of these parties. The contradictions are so glaring that they negate the very essence of the New Democratic Revolution. Similarly at another place, the Draft talks of the ‘United Front tactics and the unity of the Communist Parties as essential for which the ground has been prepared through joint action of the two major Communist Parties’. (13.3) It is also stressed that ‘only a strong Communist Party will be capable of such tasks’. (13.3)

According to the Draft, ‘The state in India is the organ of the class rule of the bourgeoisie .......’ (7.1) Then where is the need of including ‘anti-feudal’ as one of the elements in the content of the New Democratic Revolution or Democratic Revolution?

As a matter of fact, the tasks of the CPI boil down to rope in anybody and everybody barring the two main bourgeois parties—the Congress and BJP. According to the Draft, ‘The two main bourgeois parties are the Congress and the BJP’. (9.9) It does not deny the existence of other bourgeois parties which do exist at the regional level as noted above.

From the Draft it is abundantly clear that the CPI would be a part of or support any alternative Front excluding the UPA and NDA without bothering about its credentials of being anti-feudal, anti-imperialist and anti-mono-polist—the core values of the New Democratic Revolution. Thus the much talked of New Democratic Revolution in the Draft, which itself is a whimsical concept, is lost somewhere in the Draft itself.

Hargopal Singh

[Member,
Political Committee,
United Communist Party of India
Email: hargopalsingh98@gmail.com ]