CRITICAL SUPPORT TO LEFT CP [The following item is from the February issue of Marxist Outlook, the monthly Journal of the Socialist Workers party of India, the organization of the Indian Trotskyists.*
* * * During the recent visit of Comrade E.M.S. Namboodiripad, leader of the CPI (Marx-
* A one-year subscription to the magazine is £1 to Britain, 12 NF to France, $2.25 to the U.S. and Canada. The address is Marxist Outlook, 414 Cleveland Road, Worli, Bombay 18, India.
ists),*° to Baroda in connection with the election campaign of his party, an "open letter" was addressed to him jointly by Comrade Magan Desai, secretary of the Gujarat Organising Committee of the Socialist Workers Party and Comrade P. Mohamed, secretary. of the Baroda City Committee of the SWP. In the letter Comrade Magan Desai welcomed . Comrade Namboodiripad as a former member’ of the Left CPI t0: Gujarat after a long period.
The letter, however, made a sharp criticism of ‘the opportunistic ‘electoral alliances reached by the Left GPT with the various other opposition parties but said the SWP in Gujarat would vote for the Left CPI and other working class parties' candidates against the candidates of the Congress, Swatantra.and other capitalist parties. .
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These are some of the excerpts from the "open letter, which was issued in Gujarati:
"You were the Chief Minister of the Communist Ministry during 1957-58 in Kerala. The so-called 'socialist' Nehru Government dissolved your Ministry in an unconstitutional and undemocratic way, just in the interest of the exploiters of Indian masses. In that unholy act, the Nehru Government secured the support of the reactionary communal forces of Kerala. The so-called democratic parties supported this action of Nehru Government under the excuse of freeing Kerala from the 'clutches of communism.' ‘Progressive' Nehru forged an alliance with reactionaries like priest Vadakkan, Mannath Padmanabhan and Bafahky Thangal against ‘communism. '. ;
"During the mid-election of the year. 1965, your party secured more seats, indeed on the basis of an unprincipled alliance with the communal Muslim League. In spite of the fact that, you emerged as the largest single party in the Legislature, the Shastri Government did not permit you to form a Ministry. We hoped that as a. good theoretician you would draw necessary conclusions from this defeat. "
Discussing about the coming general elections, the- open letter said: "Tt appears that.the chief aim of your party is to defeat.the Congress in the election. For this purpose the main slogan of your party is-to form an anti-Congress front. To. achieve this object you have gone to the extent of including the Muslim League in an alliance. It appears. that you have promised Chief Ministership tq the Muslim League. You have made an alliance..with undesirable: elements of the DMK Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] in Tamilnad . who are supported by regional reactionary capitalists to oust Congress from the seat of power in that state. oe . .
"Do you. think ‘that. ‘even if you win elections. ‘by forming united fronts with reactionaries the capitalist structure. of the Indian society can be changed? The ‘policy of the so-called united front is not new. As reported in the Times of India (28-12-1966), you propose to establish a ‘coalition government. to save the country from grave disas— ters.' In reality this is meaningless. By advancing such an idea you have tried to subordinate the. fundamental issue of class struggle to bourgeois parliamentarism. You remember that the initiator of the concept of 'popular fronts' based on the theory of class collaboration was Stalin himself. Popular front governments were formed before and after second world war in different countries and they have demonstrated that multiclass coalitions within the capitalist. framework are totally incapable of solving any vital ~ issue of the suffering masses. .
"In Indonesia a coalition Government.came into existence under Sukarno and it included. the PKI. [Partai Kommunis Indonesia] members. But it did not liquidate the capitalist system and install a socialist system. Not. only that but it gave a new span of life to worn-out capitalist system which in the end led to the massacre of thousands of communists. The main reason for the big debacle in Indonesia was the | failure of the PKI to establish a Government of Workers and Peasants. . .
“There is a vast difference between the united front you are building and the united front built by Lenin. He never permitted an alliance with reactionaries and communalists. Ideologically and theoretically you had opposed Khrushchev's revisionism but it is sad. that in practice you follow the..same revisionism.
"A revolutionary working party should not forget class struggle and its socialist aims even during the. elections..Such a party cannot shelve the fundamental issue of class struggle and form united front with reactionaries and communalists. . "We would like to draw your attention to what.William Liebknecht who was an inspirer of Lenin wrote in his small pamphlet on election alliances for which Lenin wrote
* There are two Communist parties in India, the "left" CP which supports Peking and the "pight" CP which supports Moscow in the Sino-Soviet conflict.
a preface. Summing up his views’ Lenin had-established three criteria of such alliances: (1) whether‘ the 'ally' is not_an enemy in disguise whom it would be particularly dangerous to admit to our ranks; (2) whether and in what way he actually fights against the common enemy; (3) whether agreement while being useful as a means of obtaining a larger number of seats in parliament, is not detrimental to the more permanent and more profound aims of the proletarian party. (Collected Works, Moscow, pp. 402, Vol. II.)
"Comrade Namboodiripad, we shall perform our duty by asking the conscious voters in Gujarat to vote for the Left CPI candidates. But at the same time, we shall place before the voters our criticism of the opportunistic illusions entertained by your party about bourgeois parliamentarisn."
The letter ends with: "Long live authentic Leninism. Red Salute."