THE LESSONS OF KERALA
"The peaceful road to socialism," the reformist illusions spread about this subject at the XXth Congress of the CP SU and especially at the last congress of the CP of India, have received at Kerala the answer that might have been foreseen. Profiting by an agitation of the Church against a moderate project for a reform in teaching, Mr Nehru's central government eliminated the "communist" government of Kerala State and established presidential power there while awaiting new elections. Thus ends one of the most lamentable chapters in the history of Indian Stalinism, which has nevertheless been rich in opportunist ups-and-downs.
In the last parliamentary elections, the CP had become - in number of seats - the No 1 opposition party in India. It had at the same time won the absolute majority in one of the economically poorest and culturally most advanced states: Kerala. The Stalinists celebrated this event as a great victory. There was offered then and there the opportunity of comparing the administration of the Congress Party with that of the CP, they stated. At the same time they swore to remain strictly within the limits of the Constitution. And, like old Social-Democratic reformists, they hoped that after Kerala other states in India would, one after another, elect a "communist" government.
That is not the way things turned out. The dialectic of the elass struggle proved to be stronger than reformist logic. The poor masses had elected a Communist government because they wanted a radical change in their utter poverty. But when that government, out of "respect for the Constitution" and parliamentary cretinism, had hes neice fire on santa no restabith order ass, had its police fire on strikers "to restablish order," disorganized the trade-union movement, there was widespread popular disaffection towards it. That was the moment the bourgeoisie and the Nehru government had been lying in wait for in order to finish it off. The occasion was quickly found. It is significant that, faced
"street violence," the CP scarcely dreamed of organizing powerful popular counter-demonstrations; it was satisfied with police interventions and the arrest of demonstrators. Mr Nehru then took it on himself to reëstablish order in his own way.
Even from a purely electoral point of view, this reformist policy has proved not to pay off. If, by daring reforms, the CP had succeeded in ensuring a broac popular base for itself, Nehru would have had to hesitate before intervening: he would not have wanted to suppress the "communist" government only to see it triumphantly reëlected a vear later. But the C P's administration of Kerala was so disastrous that this risk scarcely existed. Nobody believes that the CP will win back the absolute majority at the next elections.
Granted, it is not only the reformist policy of the
6 Indian Stalinists that has gone bankrupt. The legend of the "mild" and "just" Mr Nehru, guardian of abstract democracy, has also received a smashing denial. At the moment of the crisis, Mr Nehru revealed himself as what he has always been: a clever and cynical servitor of the bourgeois class. But instead of drawing at least this conclusion from the Kerala affair, the Indian Stalinists accuse him of - undermining confidence in the Constitution! They are really incorrigible.
From the viewpoint of the working class, the replace. nent of the "communist" government by a presidentia a bourgeois campaign for the overthrow of the govern-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL ment of another workers' party, however culpable its policy may have been. But at the same time they must use the example of Kerala to carry revolutionary, Leninist, criticism into the ranks of the CP, which will unquestionably experience a grave internal crisis atter the collapse of the Kerala government. The overall reformist premisses of the policy of the Indian CP must be subjected to revolutionary criticism. If they undertake this work in a class spirit, which never wipes out the fundamental difference between bourgeois and petty-bourgeois criticism and revolutionary Marxist criticism, the Indian Trotskyists will be able to make great advances in the coming months.