“The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.”—— V.I. Lenin (Imperialism, The Highest Stage Of Capitalism)
IN April this year, while the Political and Organizational Report (POR) was being debated in the 18 th Congress of the CPI(M), the discussions on Part-II of the Report, dealing with certain crucial policy issues, remained unresolved and had to be shelved for the time being purportedly to avoid bitter division in the Congress. The issues involved were:
Party’s approach towards globalisation in general;
International capital flows (including finance and industrial capital);
Public sector;
CPI(M)-led state government’s approach towards foreign loans;
Withdrawal of the state from meeting social obligations;
CPI(M)’s stand on NGOs; and
CPI(M)’s attitude towards the self-help groups.
The Central Committee finalized Part-II of the POR in its meeting held in Kolkata on June 3 and 4. It has been candidly acknowledged by the party in its central organ People’s Democracy (henceforth PD) in its June 13-19, 2005 issue that the urgency of the task of addressing these issues in the Congress and adopting an appropriate stand was prompted by the fact that there were certain talks in the media and other quarters about the doublespeak of the party on these issues inasmuch as they follow two different standards while dealing with the government at the centre and while running the state governments in West Bengal and Tripura.
The crux of Part-II of the POR has been excerpted by PD in these words: “The struggle for an alternative socialist order has to be based on the revolutionary transformation of the existing order. This, in turn, needs an engagement (i.e. joining issues) of the revolutionary forces with the existing world realities with the sole objective of changing the correlation of forces in favour of socialism.” So the new catchword is ‘engagement’, a euphemism for sheer compromise and conformism.
Let us see how the CPI(M) proposes to ‘engage’ with the world realities of liberalization and globalization. We will restrict our discussion only to two issues, viz., foreign investment and foreign loan. As regards CPI(M)’s stand on the flow of foreign capital into the country, the POR says (PD, June19), “...the flow of foreign capital into our country, in the present conditions, must be regulated by stipulating the following conditions:
a) such capital should augment the existing productive capacities in our economy;
b) such foreign capital must upgrade the Indian economy technologically; and
c) such capital must lead to employment generation.
While foreign capital will seek to exploit our natural resources and labour to garner super profits, the struggle for imposition of these conditions will, apart from making the resistance to the task of eroding national sovereignty more effective, render some benefit to the Indian economy and the people” (emphasis ours). The plea is quite loud and clear, but the phrases used are full of chicanery.
We are tempted to quote here a sentence from Lenin (Marxism and Revisionism): “ To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interest of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment –such is the policy of revisionism.” Please compare the phrase used in the POR (‘engaging with the existing world realities’) with the words used by Lenin (‘to adapt itself to the events of the day’). Similar is the identity between the POR phrase ‘benefit to the Indian economy and the people’ and Lenin’s words ‘real or assumed advantages of the moment’. Perspective changes, but reformists do not.
For whom these prescriptions, after all, are meant? The central government or the CPI(M)-led state governments? Not a word about how these conditions fit into the cases of FDI in West Bengal . Who will wage the so-called struggle for imposition of these conditions, against whom and how? Not a word. The CPI(M) has already picked up the culture of ‘regulatory authorities’ whose job it is to regulate (overrule) ‘objections’ and facilitate the free flow of foreign capital.
And what do these regulations really add up to? Take the example of Enron. Did it not satisfy, at least on paper, the CPI(M) criteria of augmentation of productive capacity, technological upgradation and employment generation? Why was then still such a huge uproar in the country from different quarters, including the CPI(M), to the Enron deal? The country had rightly opposed the conditions associated with the deal, especially the provision of counter-guarantee and the exorbitant tariffs involved. The Maharashtra Government and successive central governments did not heed the voice of protest and we all know what the outcome has been. Enron has got away with huge super profits while the country still awaits the much promised Enron-style em‘power’ment.
In fact the whole premise on which the formulations of the POR are based is misplaced. CPI(M)’s fond dream of imperialist capital increasing the productive capacity of the country does not conform to Lenin’s idea of imperialism whose ‘characteristic feature is not industrial but finance capital’. Lenin adds, “…imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries…Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by “clipping coupons”, who take no part in any enterprise whatsoever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies” (emphasis ours).
The Indian experience clearly corroborates this fact. The central government’s Economic Survey for the year 2004-05 informs that the aggregate foreign investment flows experienced a rapid phenomenal rise of 255% during 2003-04 and while foreign direct investment (FDI) flows (net) increased only marginally (by around US$200 million), portfolio flows (net) witnessed an eleven-fold increase, accounting for nearly 77 per cent of net foreign investment inflows. It is everybody’s knowledge that the present bullish trend in the stock market is triggered exclusively by the Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), who have pumped in a huge 18-20 billion dollars in the market. The natural tendency of international finance capital is to choose the speculative route to garner maximum profit and it will not tolerate imposition of any condition on its way of fulfilling that objective. The bulk of the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial manipulation in the era of imperialism.
The essential character of capital is to maximize profit by increasing productivity through induction of technology and thus converting variable capital into fixed capital. Maximization of profit on capital is inextricably linked with substitution of labour by technology. This is an inherent law of capitalism. So imperialist capital will bring in technology, not to oblige anybody else but to maximize its own profit. And super profit presupposes replacement of labour by technology. Upgradation of technology and generation of employment are mutually inconsistent and simultaneous achievement of both is at best a pipedream.
Next comes the issue of foreign aid and foreign loans. The POR tries to make out a case in defense of West Bengal government’s acceptance of loans/aids from foreign agencies like the World Bank, ADB, DFID, JBIC etc. The rational is, ‘neo-liberal policies under globalization to reduce state governments to extreme penury, by reducing central transfers to them, by charging usurious interest rates on loans given to them and by precipitating recessionary conditions and peasant distress’. We are told that ‘imperialist agencies come with “aid packages” to the state governments to “help them out” of their fiscal predicaments’. Can anybody conceive of a more benevolent imperialism? The POR adds, if the communist-led state governments accept these packages, then they are projected by the ‘media’ as compromisers or pragmatists. If they do not, they remain bogged down within fiscal constraints; have to reduce expenditure on people’s welfare and thus jeopardize the existence of these governments. What a dilemma!
This dilemma is sought to be resolved by the POR by setting out so-called guidelines for accepting such loans couched in opportunistically drafted language. It lays down that ‘these governments may accept aid for development projects, but …there should be no conditionalities’ which are against the basic interests and policies of these governments. ‘In no case should we go in for loans which involve structural adjustment programmes’, which ‘entail conditionalities like privatization of certain sectors, downsizing of staff, cutting of subsidies and fiscal conditionalities’, the report asserts. What a philanthropic imperialist aid indeed! No conditionalities, no dictates as regards structural adjustments! Only helping out the distressed state governments! Who will object to such aid or loan?
Are these aids/loans really as innocuous as claimed in the POR? At least the experience of Andhra Pradesh as suffered by the people and revealed quite tellingly in the report of ‘Christian Aid’ (see article by Subhashis Gupta) does not suggest so. The invisible string attached to such aids/loans and its disastrous effect on the people of Andhra Pradesh has been quite elaborately laid bare in that report. It is highly improbable that the DFID loans granted to the government of West Bengal to fund the revival/winding up packages of the sick industrial undertakings under the state government will be free from similar conditionalities.
In fact, the undisclosed conditionalities are no more than a secret wish list of the governments that hire the consultancies and contract the loans. While the agencies grant these wishes and the governments gleefully implement them in the name of following ‘professional and expert advice’ (which by definition have an air of ‘realism’ and ‘freedom from politics’) and enjoy any amount of bourgeois acclaim, there is one wish no imperialism can grant. All state governments implementing these packages have had to pay for the consequences of the reforms. Chandrababu Naidu and Digvijay Singh have already paid up, Navin Patnaik and Buddhadev Bhattacharya are awaiting their turns.