This is a reply to Apporvanand’s article on Lenin titled ‘Lenin is not a figure to look up to at a time when we want more democracy, not less’ in Indian Express. This article was in response to an article written by D Raja titled ‘Learning from Lenin: At 150, the leader of the October Revolution has lessons for a post-COVID world’ which was published in the same paper.
The present article shall be a critique of Apporvanand’s articles. With a proletariat perspective, it seeks to argue that democracy can never be in the abstract; instead, it is the political manifestation of a specific social-economic relation, and hence democracy always represents the concrete material interest of the particular class. The imagination of the post-COVID world will have to recognize the intensifying class struggle that has the prospectus of paving the way for a radical rupture from the present ruling class dictatorship. Further, the article is also a call to throw into the dustbin the class pacifists landlord theory that has appeared before us in the garb of the liberal intelligentsia.
Both these articles have been written from a landlord and big bourgeoisie class perspective. But they have one difference. As D Raja is ashamed of presenting himself in alignment with the ruling class order, he mentions proletariat leaders like Lenin and Marx, while Apporvanand has nakedly presented himself as a saviour for the state of big landlord and big bourgeoisie. He stooped to the level of slandering Lenin. By doing this, he has clearly expressed his class position. The contemporary work by the state apparatus to produces intellectuals that shall work for the ideological reproduction of ruling class material interest is visible in the person of Apporvanand.
India: A Dictatorship Of The Big Bourgeoisie And Big Landlords
To begin Apporvanands says, “We must say that Lenin is the wrong port of call for us not only at this juncture in history but at all times. We need plenty of democracy in this hour, diverse voices, and criticism of the government and the state to thrive. But Lenin, like many of the politicians’, Raja and his party are fighting today, found democracy superfluous and turned Russia, later the USSR, into a one-party state.” Apporvanand, at first, denies the class character of democracy and imagines a universal abstract democracy. There can be only the democracy of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat type.
Lenin, in Proletariat Revolution and Renegade Kautsky, said that “If we are not to mock at common sense and history, it is obvious that we cannot speak of “pure democracy” as long as different classes exist; we can only speak of class democracy. (Let us say in parenthesis that “pure democracy” is not only an ignorant phrase, revealing a lack of understanding both of the class struggles and of the nature of the state, but also a thrice-empty phrase, since in communist society democracy will wither away in the process of changing and becoming a habit, but will never be “pure” democracy.) “Pure democracy” is the mendacious phrase of a liberal who wants to fool the workers. History knows of bourgeois democracy, which takes the place of feudalism, and of proletarian democracy, which takes the place of bourgeois democracy.”
India has not seen a bourgeoisie democratic revolution and is thus a society that has feudalism along with a particular kind of capitalist development that is subservient to imperialism. This has created a semi-feudal semi-colonial productive relation in our country. The state has to be seen as the managing apparatus of the ruling class in society. Logically follows from this that the Indian state cannot be democratic; it is autocratic from the very beginning. Still, the need for the imperial capital to create a market for the realization of capital has brought a need for bourgeoisie democracy, but this is not due to the development of democratic consciousness of the masses, on the contrary, it is something that restricts their democratic aspiration by limiting them in their struggle against feudalism.
The so-called democracy of the present kind in India is a dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and big landlords that is subservient to imperialism. Democracy, even in a highly developed capitalist country, is a façade in its present form. It has dictatorship by the bourgeoisie in its essence. Democracy for the vast many is the only real and new democracy. And that is possible only when broad masses of proletariat rule over the tiny majority of the present ruling class.
Apporvanand’s craving for ‘plenty of democracy’ is a petty bourgeoisie cry for the feudal privilege and the freedom which the market occupied by imperial and big comprador bourgeoise has to give. This is a cry by a consumer who wants more multinationals to open up so that he has a choice to select and buy more things. The dictatorship of the present ruling class can not be equated with the dictatorship by the proletariat state. Anyone who attempts to do so is an apologist of the present ruling order, is an ideological army man in the dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and big landlord against the vast masses of Indian people.
Challenging And Breaking The Status Quo
The only way to break the present status quo is the forcible overthrow of the existing social, economic, and political order. The force that shall accomplish this task is the most advanced class known to the humankind, i.e., the proletariat, under its leadership, it shall ensure that the feudal bondage is thrown into ashes, ushering into a new democratic society that shall pave the way for a socialist society and finally shall create a classless and stateless society. The professor completely ignores this role of the proletariat in creating a classless and oppression free society.
Similarly, his idea of freedom is the ideological manifestation of the pretentious bourgeoisie democracy part, which the Indian state has. The freedom to criticize will remain a mere bourgeoisie reformist slogan if it doesn’t provide a ground for the preparedness for the overthrow of the parasitic productive relations. In the hand of Apporvanand, the weapon of `freedom to criticize’ is the cry for reform and not a revolutionary call to overthrow the exploitative regime. Freedom, in its real sense, is not possible in a class society; freedom, as defined by Marx, is the recognition of necessity that can be achieved only when class society is abolished.
In the present stage of the Indian revolution, freedom is the liberation of productive force from the semi-feudal semi-colonial production relation. Professor’s conception of freedom is the freedom by the present ruling class in India to exploit and oppress the people; at best, what he wishes is the reform in the intensity of exploitation and oppression. This is what can be logically drawn from his argument where he says, “Nothing can be more ironical than to talk about the ‘October Revolution’ in glorious terms and celebrate it. It was the beginning of the end of freedom in Russia. It has been well researched, documented how Lenin presided over the dissolution of what was then called the Constituent Assembly. A majority of its members called themselves revolutionary socialists. Lenin forced it to close after it had sat only for a day. What happened to the dissenters?”
Here, he shows his real pacifist role. Marxist, like Louis Althusser, has warned us that the university function is an ideological extension of state apparatus. And so here, we have a professor, a so-called intellectual, who has burnt all the oil in his lamp to take out phrases from his ‘Grants’ to defend and protect the monopoly over the violence of the state. His abhorrence over violence is only because the state and its various apparatus can perpetuate routine structural and physical violence over oppressed masses of people.
October Revolution is the very first time when the proletariat got state power, and it is but natural that the bourgeoisie and their various lackeys would conspire against it. Professor, this is a class struggle, we are into a class war, and it is not we that have created this, but it is the material condition that has created such an order. This can only be done away by the proletariat; the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary to end all forms of exploitation and oppression.
Finally, I shall say that the reactionary section of petty bourgeoise has no hope in the camp of the ruling class. Their interest can only be satisfied if they are with the proletariat so I can understand the wavering nature of yours, it becomes very clear why you at one time seems to be with people. In contrast, at the other time, you are in the enemy camp. Besides, he also talked about purging, which I think is a mere slandering and needs no mention.