CPI(M) must be more pragmatic
It has not reinvented itself to compete with other parties
Karl Marx once said, “Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form”. This would seem to be the dilemma that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) faces today. Part of it sees the reason in forming an alliance with the party closest in ideology to it, the Congress; but the other unreasonable part feels that such a move would dilute the core values of the party. So, at the latest meeting of the Central Committee of the CPI(M), general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s proposal of aligning with the Congress was brushed aside by the faction led by the former general secretary Prakash Karat.
The pragmatic Yechury realises that the party has in recent times, with its historic defeat in West Bengal, been sliding into national irrelevance with governments only in Kerala and Tripura. Once sought after as an ally by many political formations, it is today a marginal force. The shortsightedness of Karat’s line has been in evidence earlier too. Former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu was twice asked to be prime minister, once by Rajiv Gandhi and later by Mulayam Singh Yadav but the party led by Karat prevented this, leading Somnath Chatterjee to describe this as a historic blunder and a weird example of democratic centralism. The Left today is floundering with no real ideology. Marxist shibboleths no longer resonate with a young aspirational class. In Kerala, the state party leadership has, through fancy political footwork, cast itself in a centrist mould. The problem in the CPI(M) is compounded by the fact that the top leadership is not on the same page, the theoretician Karat refusing to come to any accommodation with other political formations which could offer the party a lifeline.
If a third front were to come about, the Left wouldhave ideological problems with many of its likely constituents. If, as the party says, the main aim is to defeat the BJP, then it has to show much more accommodation than it has so far, presuming that it is welcome on board. The party’s ultimate aim is to become politically viable nationally once again. In which it should heed the advice of Niccolò Machiavelli that the ‘ends justify the means.’