Parties, political theory and shifts in civil society and state: some methodological and theoretical problems

(Paper for Workshop on India’s Path to Socialism, 27-30 December 2011, Hyderabad)

Anil Rajimwale

The most distinguishing nature of Indian parliamentary system/democracy is its emphatic nature. It is the first country in the world to have conferred voting rights to the entire adult eligible population without exception at one stroke. Indian Constitution and the first general elections did not discriminate between the literate and illiterate, propertied and non-propertied, religions, sexes, classes, castes etc. The poor and downtrodden received the voting rights as did the rich and the privileged at the same time. This is in contrast to the American, British, European constitutional parliamentary evolution, as also to the socialist countries.

This crucial fact is missed both by Indian political parties and the political theorists; as such they fail to properly determine the coordinates of Indian politics.

Complication imparted by colonialism: dialectics of state and civil society

In India, parties are natural product of civil-political movement before and after independence, and not some kind of imposition. They have also not evolved out of natural capitalist/bourgeois development, as in the west. Parties here emerged in the course of the freedom and national liberation movement. And this is a very crucial factor of the Indian polity. The Congress, CPI and some others are the carriers of that heritage and its structures. Congress party founded in 1885 was not a party in real sense of term but a kind of a broad coalition of forces, a loose united front. It is interesting to note that the CPI, founded in 1925, also had a different structural origin, and it is moot point whether that structure should have been persisted with.

In India it is not capitalism as such that has fashioned the nature of parties, but rather the lack of it. In our country, the-politicat parties developed int. nfrontation with colonialism, and therefore ~ they were unlike those in the west. Struggling for democracy they have lot of cultural, social and reform aspects. They display a constant conflict between the political and the social. The state and the parties are a unique tension of the west and the local. During the British colonial rule, the state was colonial, but could not work without local institutions, which were consequently grossly distorted.

Indian state

The vast Indian state is not a fully political being, and keeps swinging between the political and the non-political poles. The local administrations, traditions, castes, community, family, modernity and social structures constitute the Indian state, in addition to the political.  In fact, here we have to use the word ‘political’ in the broadest possible sense, and in this endeavour we have to take the help of postmodernist methods, which uses ‘politics’ considerably differently from the existing modernist lexicon. But even without that the state peculiarly inter- penetrates with the social being. Massive migrations add to the complexity and broad nature of socio-political institutions. Informality co-exists comfortably with formality, and latter often become a method to rule.

In India, there is no clear borderline between the state and the society, the civil and the political. Hence the dilemma of the political parties and institutions. The increasingly result-oriented pressure of the people has often forced the state to act social. Consequently, the existing institutions are getting filled with significant content of the future.

Revolution means change, and in India the parliamentary institutions have evolved long way with a wide network that threaten tradition and reaction. It is precisely for these reasons that rightwing and leftwing extremism are out of tune with and subversive of the prolonged democratic and revolutionary process that India is going through. The content of institutions is  transforming against itself, against its own origin and limited purpose. Therefore, a unique revolution is underway with mass participation with democracy as their most potent weapon. Today, India consists of governances down to lowest level, with political colours of the widest possible range. It is a unity against itself, and therefore fulfills the task of dialectical negation continuously towards consensual democracy.

Class, mass and democracy

It was a colonial legacy that class political nature was sought to be imparted much before classes ‘really’ were formed. Here the warning by Lenin is relevant against premature formation of ‘Communist’ parties in colonial countries. The colonial (and anti-colonial) consciousness has played a big role in the party political activities, not only of the leaders but also of the masses. In that sense the Indian leaders are yet to understand ‘politics’ with the exception of a few like Gandhi and Dange. Politics cannot be ‘done or practised’; it has to evolve out of the social being, which is vast and complicated reality.

How do we characterize the parties that have emerged in the recent decades in different parts of the country? Are they really ‘parties’? There is serious doubt. They are more pressure lobbies, groups and socio-political associations, pushed into the corridors of power or trying to get there. This is a non-traditional politics, and combined with the STR, threaten to destabilize the current concepts and notions of the modernity.

In certain senses, India has arrived before the west in a postmodern arena of political conflicts between parties. Parties began to crystallize as the social differentiation proceeded and social movements took roots. They were essentially products of growing social structures discharging complex functions.

It can be objected that it was the parties that led the freedom movements in India as in other colonized countries. But they were more like broad organizations, fronts, movements and compromises than parties.-Congress, CSP, WPP and many others belong to this category. Even- the Communist party had to protect itself from this environment and had to develop/participate in various ‘mass organisations’.

Capitalism create conditions for the development of parties, but its uneven development in countries such India leads to emergence of organizations that are not really parties in strict sense. Where should we place SP, BSP, TDP, AIADMK, DMK, RJD, JD and so on with series of initials?! They are more like transitional formations yet to find their identity. The political theorists and academicians unfortunately are paying little attention.

The great socialist experiment: state and civil society

The Soviet Union and other socialist countries experimented with ‘construction’ of socialism. It turned out to be a case of giant social engineering. Can we engineer societies? And can we and should we ‘experiment’ with socialism or whatever? That is another moot question needing a separate treatment. Experiments and ‘engineering’ in society resurrect utopianism.

But here we will be dealing with an interesting fall-out of the socialist experiments. These experiments imparted a lot of genuine idealism, utopianism and impracticability in almost all the Indian political parties and organizations. It was a case of ‘idealism based on materialism’! And it was at the cost of dialectical method or science. The parties, including the communist and ‘scientific’ revolutionary parties often took off from unreal, utopian and mechanical, schematic and abstract grounds. The theoretical contribution of the Indian parties often shies away from the real into the unreal, and they make unique blunders, playing havoc with the lives of the people. It is only through events, elections, defeats and wins that the political policy, and to an extent political theory, breaks out on to even grounds.

At the same time, there is political direction in the sense that the nation needs to find its own bearing, or in Hegelian terms, discover its own ‘being’. This being is highly volatile and transitional, and therefore source of political and social upheavals of no direction. Hence, time to time we settle down to be normal to be able to move forward. Politics has philosophy, tradition we  and utopia as its escape. But we forget that politics is always concrete. When we do suddenly find this out, we are apt to disrupt the very Parliament, for the creation of which we struggled so long and even laid down our lives. Parliament becomes no different from ‘mobocracy’, and mobs on certain stages and dais try to usurp the role of the elected bodies.

This is a dangerous gamble threatening to undo our gains.

It has become absolutely essential to root the parliamentary democracy deeper. Much homework is necessary, for democracy is the greatest guarantee of transition to higher democracy and socialism. India has a vast store and potential of democracy and democratic institutions. But the basic unit of this system, the party, should not behave irresponsibly, and a group irresponsible people should not usurp the elected institutions and the civil society.

Indian democracy has extraordinary potential in the sense that it has reached a stage of historic compromise in terms of maintaining maximum consent on minimum of points in the course of its social motion. Dialectics here being so complex, it produces constant socio-economic and political/ideological consent, and right to dissent within that framework.

After all, political theory is the practice of building a stable political structure for the present and the future; in other words it is political praxis.

The Indian political parties have been applying British/European or Soviet/Chinese theories, but do not seem inclined too much to discover the Indian realities.

This certainly does not mean that they have not contributed anything or that they are simply aping the west. But it certainly mean that a lot is yet to be done in the field of political theory rooted in Indian realities.

Another factor is that this theory has also take into account, and increasingly so, the growing impact of STR and ICR. Here the parties have failed completely. Politics has accelerated due to these factors, it is in rapid transition now, and this has to be seen realized and assimilated. Political theory, intelligentsia and leaders

India has a vast pool of intellectuals and social theorists. They have contributed a lot to academic work. There is no denying they’stand among the foremost in the world. -

Yet, it has to be pointed out that somehow, for some reasons, the Indian political aiid social thought largely revolves round the readymade formulas from the west, be it Western Europe or America or the socialist countries. The intellectual class is largely busy interpreting what already exists, except in some fields, and is not able to develop original concepts lately. This is because it is afraid of confronting new theories and realities. It is also because it is tied down to and follows readymade concepts from this political camp or that. One is surprised why, for example, the STR should not become a starting point for new lines of theoretical and practical investigations. So the crisis of theory and obsoleteness is not confined only tot ech communist and left parties but extends very much to the larger political and intellectual class.

The political theory and conceptualization is in crisis.

Democracy, political theory and civil society

The formation of constitutional, electoral and parliamentary system, with many Indian characteristics, is an assertion of the civil society and the labouring masses. The civil and the political thought inter-penetrate each other to the extent they are inseparable. Therefore, the Indian state represents the whole of the civil society, within which there are continuous shifts of power, and thus politics a particular popular form. It is typical of India that a party recently formed by some prominent person, even if from film world or ay other becomes a mass force. This is something that does not fit in with the traditional and classical nature of party. Yet the phenomenon is part and parcel of the Indian political and parliamentary life. 

Without the vast network of social, religious, political, parliamentary and democratic processes and structures, nothing can be done in India. Here India is a separate category. Its inner being is represented by the huge amount of social-political energy that lies hidden, driving the society. State and government are two different institutions in India. On the one hand people have direct contacts with the vast network of state-civil institutions. On the other, they want such political formations, combinations and parties ‘in power’ which can get the things done. So it is a question of continuous practical as well as long term work process, which is summed up in social results.

Common people and the individuals have never been disillusioned about the political and social system in our country; they certainly have been disappointed on occasions. It is political parties which time to time get disillusioned! And that is the strength of the Indian system. The parties have been brought back to mainstream repeatedly. The parties get disillusioned, and spread this feeling, because they schemes separate and at disjuncture with the masses. The people, the masses in India are most positive and potent force, having full faith in the potentials of the present system. The parties should take note of this fact, including the left parties. Disillusionment leads to attempts to break up the system, which is the most absurd act in our conditions. The issue of disillusionment has largely been brought into the civil society by and through politico-social ideology as an illogical act. Maoist, JPite and Anna-ite ideologies in particular do not fit into the system of Indian democracy, by way of example. 

Such ideologies invite the state to act against them and thus to act as the state, instead of using it and thus to prevent it being and becoming state. This is a novel conflict that has beset the Indian social being.

There is a formal logic to Indian society and there is an inherent one, which is very strong. The political forces will have to evolve political theory in order to reveal the inner being of Indian democracy.

People, state and individual and democracy

“People’ is a much misused word; so also ‘democracy’. The political parties treat people as ‘something’ given, fixed, sacred and unchanging. But they are in fact highly mobile and often far ahead of political consciousness. They are developing, collectively as well as individually, new and special relations with the Indian state whose roots go deep down to the village levels. ‘People’ are not to be invoked, as gods, they are to be moved to the positions of active participants of developing democracy. They are to be ‘pitied’ and so on. Of course, here the political consciousness shows double face by at the same time ignoring their immediate needs. People are not outside market, religion, ideology, politics, civil edifice, culture and so on, but inside and part of them. Therefore, they are not statin but mobile. Hence they do not totally deny the benefits of consumer society, liberalization and internationalization (mis-represented by the imperialist ideology as ‘globalisation’).

There is no ‘market socialism’; it is wrong poser. There cannot in fact be socialism without market and democracy. Such a market is to be democratized, not destroyed.

Parties replicate society: conflict between state and government

Parties have been playing the role of participants in the state as governing organizations. What does it mean? Over decades there has been a change in the role and nature of parties. There was a time when it was thought necessary to ’overthrow’ the state and create a new one. That was the classical theory of revolution.

But over time, reality has undergone a change. The state cannot be ‘overthrown’ in the sense we understand. There is an all-round change, including even in the outlook of the bourgeois parties. There is a greater recognition of the state as an independent structure by almost all the parties, a kind of ‘dedication’ to it. Governments change but the state basically remains the same, which has to be ruled over, controlled and run by a party or set of parties. One can say, politics is becoming more Kautskyian with growing emphasis on state.

It does not mean that there should not be shifts in the state. In fact the struggle is for basic power-shifts in the state in a more democratic direction. Democratic struggles and democratic revolution today mean increasingly this, as evidenced by the Latin American events. The powerful Latin American state/s are being governed more by a left-oriented governments, which also lead to a certain shift in the state.

In India, the problem of democratic revolution pertains to step by step shifts in the balance of power within the state structure. That is possible only when the party and class balance change in favour of people.

Parties should try to govern or rule better and evolve into good and efficient managing bodies/organizations. Only then, the electoral system will elect them to govern the state. So, the struggle here to rule better than others. That is the essence of democracy.

The civil society treats them as such. It is the source of democratic polity, which has to be progressively strengthened. An interesting tendency in the last few decades has arisen in the society. Barring the fascist forces, generally, the various parties and groups do not seek to ‘destroy’ each other. In this sense, the idea of “contending classes’ and a fight to finish has become more remote. It is because of the vast and complicated development of the civil society, whose growth would be harmed in the event of a ‘fight to finish’.

A certain consensus is spreading, which seeks solution to common issues together. Fewer forces oppose such consensus, which basically are the extreme rightwing of the society. 

We also have to grapple with the problem whether, in view of such developments, politics is to an extent acquiring certain postmodern features.

That question needs a separate treatment.