A particular Marxist critique in a debate on which political strand is the most just looks at history from a psycho cultural standpoint as a bystander of apartheid, one of the finest systems of oppression as being reduced to a Museum, he advocated the future having a ‘Museum of Capitalism’. But what society would that put him in? A simple answer for him was Communism.
The problem with that is the fact that we’re living in a late stage Capitalist, post modern fantasy, where Museums of Communism exist. (Citing one in Budapest, which is famous for its Stalin candles – and the infantile pleasure of watching one of the worst Marxist ‘dictators’ burn to wax.)
What replaces Communism in a Capitalist Democracy (the word being the incompatible reality of our times) is Fascism. What started at the gates of the Western European inter war period is at its full complexity today. The Left (Communists) was severely handicapped in analyzing this phenomenon concretely because globally it had concretized its own variant of fascism, otherwise known as social fascism. To understand how “social fascism” or fascism that operates by virtue of being in a Social Democracy, that runs on lines of Imperialism and Capital Accumulation, we must look at the curios case of the Soviet Union and present day Russia
Radionov, Russia’s former Foreign Minister is one of the many who believe helping Hitler fight Jews was a noble endeavour to fight fascism, even though the death toll (largely controlled and manufactured) in Ukraine was around 7 million where Soviets cut tongues, pulled out nails and perforated skulls of their victims.
Before the USSR split, Trotsky cited openly Stalin’s anti-Semitism. Stalin then sent a secret agent to Mexico who smashed Trotsky’s head with an axe. The latter fought for life for 2 days and died of agonising pain. In Stalin’s time, critics of the Kremlin were not argued with, they were killed.
World War 2 left 27 million dead. Communist party always tried to decrease that number. USSR was perhaps the only regime that treated its war dead with impunity – removed their tags so that they were unidentifiable (and the global destruction could be blamed on Hitler)
In 1945, Stalin defeated Hitler in order to gain good ground in the public eye.
The USSR still kept the concentration chambers. It also Violated the Geneva convention that prohibits transfer of civilians into occupied countries & transferred ethnic Russians to Germany.
After Nazism was defeated and memorials made to its victims, concentration camps were still a post war reality. Horrific experiments were laid out using Hitler’s logics of “eugenics”. Ethnic cleansing in the Baltics; Estonians, Latvians deported to Siberia is something that the world history has forgotten to attribute to the extreme left.
The RSS & CPI(M) clash in India, both being indomitable brands of the Far Right & Left, is nothing but two dominant versions of twentieth century fascism at loggerheads – national socialism and social fascism – could be reconciled to basically be one and the same variants of fascism in a country with glaring diversity of ideology.
In another case, Kerala state BJP calls for statewide strike over murder of an RSS worker in Thiruvananthapuram’s Sreekaryam. One must absolutely condemn the killing, any act of violence on a citizen is to be abhorred and hope there’s swift action against the perpetrators. I stand with BJP’s quick decision to draw attention to the matter. However, this forced me to question the party’s stoic silence and aversion to protests when those murdered were not their kin? This shows just how ideological divide runs thicker than blood.
It is a give-and-take relationship between the social fascists on the Left and national socialists on the Right, more prominently displayed in identical organizational forms. These organizational forms cover the cadre system and police, the army of radicalists and internet warriors alike.
What is the problem then? Are we willing to identify Late Stage Capitalism as the precursor to Fascism? Even if we do, what will replace it? The Left has no answers, like the Right and blind aficionados on both sides fail to critique current political and social economy as being a gigantic experiment in the hands of Social Democracy at the behest of which lies Capitalism – a force that makes people’s rule a sick masquerade.
The game is beyond political spectrums. Democracy today has metastasised into something dangerous by fusing itself with crony capitalism. While the Indian Left had the Tatas as a comprador to Global Imperialist Markets, the Right prides on Adani. Old wine, newer bottles. Everything from Wars, Nuclear energy, to jails and life saving medicines becomes a supposed profiteering gimmick in the hands of the global bourgeoise, and this stands true in any part of the world, under any government.
Japan, salvaging the sales of Nuclear Weapons to countries with least potential for Disaster Management pervades the anti-social nature of Global free markets. The fact of the matter being about economic recovery of the heavy costs for R&D which the taxpayer who wants peace has to reimburse.
The Indian State prides itself on the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty, and inspite of long standing public outrage, the Left supported USSR sponsored Koodankulam plant in Tamil Nadu.
I ask again – Whose interest is it serving anyway? Apologists of Late Stage Capitalism may reverberate with “it’s about progress”, “do you have an alternate model”, but for once let us not forget the population size of the Displaced Communities in India is larger than the size of Nordic countries.
For an alternate model to exist we need to ask – Are we willing to recognise the real elephant in the room? Are we willing to make peace with Greed? JNU’s Professor Makarand Paranjape makes a similar case when he pushes for diatropic intermediation between the Far Left & the Extreme Right. Even though his views were widely contested, it pushes us to think : Does the Left really have answers?
This post is a part of my series #PoliticalIsPersonal on Youth Ki Awaaz that explores how an innocuous act like opening your house gates to someone has immense political echoes across the system. I plan on understanding the link between political thought and personal liberty and how the two almost always are at loggerheads.