Commemorating Comrade SN Tagore

 

    Comrade Saumyendranath Tagore (8th October 1901 – 22nd September 1974) understood well that fascism cannot be replaced with liberalism. In the ‘Preface’ to his book Fascism, he wrote, “In any previous epoch of human history, there had never been such a profound binary division within the human race as what we witness in our current era. The people within these two distinct camps can broadly be classified as either communists or bourgeoisie, and we can demonstrate this division through these two definitions. Those who aspire to dismantle the decaying capitalist society and are committed to establishing a new societal order are called communists. On the other hand, those who seek to preserve the foundation of the capitalist society, either for their self-interests or class interests, fall into the bourgeoisie category. Even though the bourgeoisie may consist of multiple parties, there exists no fundamental disparity among them; all these parties share the common objective of upholding capitalism. As the workers’ revolution draws nearer, these parties are bound to disintegrate and form fascist parties. The era of the liberal bourgeoisie safeguarding capitalism has long passed. They have no alternative but to discard the facade of liberal democracy and employ the police and the military to preserve capitalism. When imperialism is falling, and the workers’ revolution is developing, those inclined to protect capitalism must adopt the guise of fascism.”

    In another work, “The People’s Front or the Front Against the People,” he wrote, “The bourgeoisie can no longer be democratic and democracy can no longer be bourgeois. Democracy can exist and blossom only in its proletarian form.”

    From Lenin, Trotsky, and Gramsci, we must learn what fascism is and how to fight it. As Gramsci famously wrote in his “Neither Fascism nor Liberalism: Sovietism,” “The liquidation of fascism must be the liquidation of the bourgeoisie that created it.”

    We commemorate Comrade Saumyendranath Tagore on his death anniversary.

State Organising Committee of RCPI formed in Telangana

    A State Organising Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party was formed in Telangana on 30th October 2022 in the presence of Comrade Mihir Bain, a CC member of the party. The newly formed committee comprises 18 members with Comrade V. Baswaiah (alias Agrasen) as its secretary. More than 110 people have applied for membership in the party as of now.

Commemorating Comrade Saumyendranath Tagore on his 121st Birth Anniversary

    “According to us, it is bourgeois democracy which has helped Fascism to come to power. The bourgeoisie has given all the privileges of bourgeois democracy to Fascism, has suppressed the proletariat by dint of bourgeois democracy and has ultimately replaced the bourgeois democratic form of its state with the Fascist form of state. What the Fascists are attacking is not bourgeois democracy but those rights which the proletariat has won from the bourgeois democracy and which can thus be considered the democratic pre-requisites of the proletarian revolution. Rights earned by fighting against the bourgeoisie, by pouring out its heart’s blood, by no means, form a part of the bourgeois-democratic rights because democracy in this epoch has already outgrown its bourgeois character. The bourgeoisie can no longer be democratic and democracy can no longer be bourgeois. Democracy can exist and blossom only in its proletarian form.” (“The People’s Front or the Front Against the People?”, August 1940)

On the 88th Foundation Day of the RCPI

     On this 88th foundation day of our party, we, the Revolutionary Communists, pay our tribute to all the foot-soldiers of the socialist revolution who have been working under the banner of the RCPI selflessly for the establishment of socialism. Many of our comrades have also lost their lives in their struggle for communism. We pay our sincere homage to those martyrs. The party has experienced many ups and downs throughout these decades.

     The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the impotence of the capitalist system in providing free medical facilities to the people. With the increase in the number of positive cases, private hospitals have enormously maximised their profits. They are even selling vaccines. It exposes the nature of capitalism that capitalism commodifies even the primal needs of the people.

     It is more than necessary to replace this system with socialism. We invite the people of India to join our party en masse to fight for the establishment of socialism. The days of capitalism are numbered. It must be overthrown for the greater interest of the people. The revolution that has to take place now is a socialist revolution. The teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and our party's founder members will inspire us to accomplish our historical task.

Long Live the Revolution!

Long Live the Revolutionary Communist Party of India!

Comrade Diptabhanu Mitra is no more

Comrade Diptabhanu Mitra is no more. He succumbed to COVID-19 yesterday. He was a member of the Central Committee of the RCPI. It is indeed a great loss to our party. He was one of the most studious comrades we have ever had. His revolutionary ideas and knowledge that he shared with us will always inspire us. He will be alive in our struggles.

We pay our deep condolences to his family. Red Salute to Comrade Diptabhanu Mitra. কমরেড দিপ্তভানু মিত্রকে লাল সেলাম।

Greetings to the Workers of the World on their day!

          The Revolutionary Communist Party of India salutes the working class of the world on their historic day. The international working class has already identified its class enemies. Therefore, being the only genuinely revolutionary class, it has to overthrow the ruling elites and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. The class struggle has already begun. The world proletariat must march forward to establish a classless society. It must remember that its aim is World Socialism.

Revolutionary Greetings to the workers of the world!

Workers of the world, unite!

Commemorating Comrade Lenin on his birth anniversary

April is a significant month for all Marxist-Leninists. Firstly, because Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, popularly known as Comrade Lenin, was born this month in 1870. And secondly, because his April Theses were published this month.

Marx and Engels, of course, played a vital role in creating the international workers’ movement. They were the greatest theoreticians of the world socialist movement. But Lenin, along with his intellect, was also a dedicated builder of the revolutionary party. It was Lenin, after all, who made a socialist revolution possible in Russia.

Lenin in 1917 (Source: Marxists Internet Archive)

A Socialist Revolutionary

In early 1917, while a majority of the Bolshevik leaders, in Lenin’s words, “the Old Bolsheviks”, were in favour of the provisional government led by Kerensky, Lenin’s appeal was to overthrow it. Although Russia was at that time a backward country, it was never Lenin’s opinion that the revolution had to be led by the bourgeoisie. Following Marx and Engels, Lenin recognised the proletariat as the genuinely revolutionary class. He appealed to the people of Russia and the Bolsheviks several times to overthrow this Provisional Government. He expressed his ideas in his Letters from Afar. Out of the five letters written by him, only the first was published by Pravda. The second, third and fourth were not published. And the fifth letter was left unfinished by Lenin himself. The basic ideas that Lenin wanted to express through these letters were later written in his Letters on Tactics, April Theses and The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution.

What Lenin talked about in these letters was that another revolution was needed to overthrow the Provisional Government enthroned by the February Revolution. And the revolution that Lenin and Trotsky were planning now was a socialist one. This contrasts with the Menshevik idea of a two-stage revolution, which was later adopted by Stalin.

Lenin writes in his The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky:

“Things have turned out just as we said they would. The course taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our reasoning. First, with the “whole” of the peasantry against the monarchy, against the landlords, against the medieval regime (and to that extent, the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then, with the poor peasants, with the semi-proletarians, with all the exploited, against capitalism, including the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the revolution becomes a socialist one. To attempt to raise an artificial Chinese Wall between the first and second, to separate them by anything else than the degree of preparedness of the proletariat and the degree of its unity with the poor peasants, means monstrously to distort Marxism, to vulgarize it, to substitute liberalism in its place.”

Lenin’s words are strictly in opposition to the two-stage theory that was later adopted by the Third International after Lenin and under Stalin. The two-stage theory, contrary to Leninism, says that at first there has to be a bourgeois revolution in alliance with the bourgeoisie, and then, a socialist revolution (if possible). The Stalinist two-stage theory thus brings a “Chinese Wall” between the bourgeois and socialist revolutions which Lenin had warned us against. But revolutionary Leninism says that the unfinished tasks of the bourgeois revolution must be completed by the socialist revolution alone.

Lenin in November 1918 (Source: Marxists Internet Archive)

The Significance of his April Theses

It was Lenin’s April Theses that changed the course of the Russian Revolution. Initially, the Bolsheviks were in support of the Provisional Government. However, after Lenin arrived in Russia from exile and his announcement of his April Theses, the Bolsheviks were forced to withdraw their support from the government. In his Theses, Lenin raised 10 points:

1. That “without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war [World War I] by a truly democratic peace”. Lenin had said the same thing in his lecture War and Revolution: “Until there is a workers’ revolution in several countries the war cannot be stopped, because the people who want that war are still in power.”

2. That Russia is “passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.” Here, Lenin emphasises the point that the first stage of the revolution, i.e. placing the power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, was only a result of “insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat”, and hence, not a compulsory stage of the revolution.

3. “No support for the Provisional Government.”

4. That instead of tailing the bourgeois Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks, being in the minority, should “carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors” of the government, and “preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies”.

5. That the Bolsheviks should fight for “a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country”, and that “to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step”. Lenin also called for the abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy, and demanded that the salaries of all officials should not exceed the average wage of a competent worker. At the same time, he also mentioned that these officials are elective and displaceable at any time.

6. “Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.”

7. “The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.”

8. That socialism could not be introduced immediately, but social production and the distribution of products should be brought under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.

9. Then he emphasises some of the party tasks: (A) Immediate convocation of a Party congress; (B) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly: (i) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war, (ii) On the attitude towards the state and the demand for a “commune state”; (iii) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme; (C) Change of the Party’s name, resulting in the change of the party name from “Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)” to “Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” in 1918.

10. A new International. This led to the foundation of the Communist International in March 1919, which was disbanded by Stalin in 1943 to impress his bourgeois allies.

Lenin in August 1922 (Source: Marxists Internet Archive)

A World-Socialist Revolutionary: An Avowed Internationalist

Never could Lenin imagine that socialism can be built or survive in one country. Several times did he emphasise the need for a world socialist revolution to strengthen the socialist revolution of Russia. The October Revolution was nothing but the beginning of the world socialist revolution, according to Lenin.

On  July 23, 1918, Lenin said: “Aware of the isolation of its revolution, the Russian proletariat clearly realises that an essential condition and prime requisite for its victory is the united action of the workers of the whole world, or of several capitalistically advanced countries.” (Report Delivered at a Moscow Gubernia Conference of Factory Committees, July 23, 1918)

On November 8, 1918, he said: “The complete victory of the socialist revolution in one country alone is inconceivable and demands the most active co-operation of at least several advanced countries, which do not include Russia.” (Speech On The International Situation at the Extraordinary Sixth All-Russia Congress Of Soviets Of Workers’, Peasants’, Cossacks’and Red Army Deputies, November 6-9, 1918)

In late February 1922, Lenin wrote: “[W]e have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism—that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism.” (Notes of a Publicist)

Lenin could never recognise the possibility of the socialist revolution in Russia without the joint efforts of the workers of the advanced countries. This is why he emphasised the world socialist revolution several times. Socialism is something that cannot be confined to one single country, particularly in a country like Russia.

Of course, Marxism is nothing without internationalism. Marx and Engels urged the workers of the world—not those of some selected countries—to unite. Lenin, therefore, could not give up the idea of emancipation of the workers of the world. This is why he founded the Third International or the Communist International. By founding the new international, he wanted to spread the revolution of Russia throughout the world. He said on the foundation of the new International: “[T]he world revolution is beginning and growing in intensity everywhere.”

Just because Lenin had recognised the need for the internationalisation of the socialist revolution, he was expecting a revolution in Germany. Emphasising the importance of a socialist revolution in Germany, Lenin said in March 1918, “[W]ithout a German revolution we are doomed. ... [I]f the German revolution does not come, we are doomed.” It was of course not Lenin’s underestimation of the proletariat of Russia, but a practical outlook to safeguard the socialist revolution in Russia. Such was Lenin’s internationalism. He never had high expectations from the country where he made a revolution. Rather he analysed the situation dialectically.

He had previously talked about sacrificing even the revolution of Russia for the German revolution: “If we believe that the German movement can develop immediately, in the event of an interruption of the peace negotiations, then we must sacrifice ourselves, for the German revolution will have a force much greater than ours.” Such was the internationalism of Comrade Lenin.

On this 151st birth anniversary of Comrade V.I. Lenin, we, the revolutionary communists, commemorate his revolutionary legacy. May his revolutionary ideas inspire the people to revolutionise the world.