It has been a long time since i have written anything at all. Words are being ejaculated like bits of phlegm from a smoker's cough. A year or two ago i always had something to say, mostly i think, because i had an air of superiority brought on by some watered down version of leftist idealism. The idealism is being chipped away at by a score of events, mostly to do with the way 'the party' has shamed itself. I wish more ever that it was something worth believing in and fighting for. Now when it lies on the cusp of losing what power it had, i would like nothing more than to submit myself to it. The maoists cannot fill that void, at least for me. Firstly, because they are not (unlike the CPM) at their core an upper class elitist party. And more importantly, i would hope, i have engendered in myself a faith, not unlike that of american girls in unicorns and homo-erotic vampires, in the Indian state. I cannot believe that all it has done is wholly undesirable and cannot go to war against it. Lately, having 'sold out' on a massive scale, the small material benefits, and the large ones do in many cases seem to be what people desire. Social upliftment as defined by the liberal capitalist good life seems to be what they want. And while i have my own opinions on how and why they desire what they do and articulate it as they do, i no longer have the courage of conviction to call that opinion knowledge.
So now i do something i enjoy, and am suitably ashamed of enjoying, among people whom i would never interact with had my life taken the trajectory it was supposed to. In addition i am now unable to write. I shall learn again.
why equate the idea with the party? left politics is wider than just a party,no.just like ur criticism of individual parties like the congress etc who function within the framework of electoral democracy doesnt make you suspicious of ur basic belief in the state.why not give left politics the same leverage.
ReplyDeletealso. '..they are not at their core an upper class elitist party'...confuses me.is this left politics or a politics hegemonized by cpm's idea of left politics?
just stumbled on this and couldnt resist.
the independent left is a myth. scientific socialism occurs only within and from the party. The idea, in and of itself without founding is a schoolgirl fantasy.
ReplyDeleteThey are at their core an elitist party because they are run by over-educated uppercastes. the only conceivable idea of left politics is revolutionary. Everything else is a conciliatory gesture, which people like me are only to willing to make
i dont agree with the certainity with which you say that the independent left is a myth.thats thinking from within the idea of the parliamentary left.and the failure of the cpm indicates, if nothing else, then just that these entrenched ideas need to be questioned.the acceptance of the uppercasteness/upperclassness of the party is the starting point of the problems with the way the parliamentary left has functioned in india.
ReplyDeletebut what i was trying to say was that it is interesting that one tends to see the right as an ideology and not just constrained by a party, but one doesnt do that to the left.it is the dominant ideology of our times which benefits from such an appropriation of looking at the left.even for a believer in parlimentary left, the failure of a party, need not question one's basic beliefs and politics.it only underlines the stubborness of what one is up against,which is so powerful that the left itself starts functioning as what it is opposing.it only means one needs a firmer left,both parliamentary and what from a parliamentary perspective is 'independent'left.
Not the democratic left, the revolutionary left. it is precisely because of the pervasive nature of capital that anti-establishment forces need to be organized and concerted. The party represents the transition to superior stage of social organization.
ReplyDeleteAnything outside it, is by definition against it and therefore against progress. Anything outside it is appropriated by the liberal-capitalist complex. There is no such thing as an independent left. They are just tools of justification
all this of course is traditional doctrine, none of which i am sure of anymore, to say the least.
however, the indian left has long since been appropriated. As for the upper casteness of the leadership, that is another discussion, far more layered than one might imagine.