Price Of Smugness: Lessons From The Fall Of The Left

Left has been the most prominent four-letter word in the political discourse of our times. In India, it is reviled and ridiculed in equal measure. Across the world, the ascendant Right justifies its own existence in juxtaposition to it. In fact, the idea of the Right, a bundle of several incompatible strands of thought, finds an important point of convergence in the demonisation of the Left. The intensity of it such that it would appear that if there was no Left in the world there would be no Right. It is a convenient cuss word for those trying to present a reasoned point of view of issues instead of an emotional, and the popular, one.

What did the Left do to deserve this?

Its last true bastion, the Soviet Union, officially collapsed in 1991. China exists more as an aberration to the core ideology, with a clear gap between its form and spirit. Its footprint has progressively weakened across India over the decades. The BJP ecosystem may have declared it as the enemy number one and vowed to finish it, but it’s actually the Congress which made the Left irrelevant as a political force in the country. Whatever the case, the point is the ideology of the latter continues to evoke strong reaction even now and drives our politics in some way. It does so globally too. There must be something inherently abominable when an ideology claiming to have people at its core is rebuffed by them in such a manner.

All the charges against the Left ideology are valid to some degree. To begin with, the context of its origin and growth was specific to the industrial revolution in the later half of the 19th century. The circumstances in labour-capital equations shifted over time, but the ideology refused to accommodate the new reality. Second, it did not render itself to easy transplantation in varied social conditions. India, for example, presented a socio-economic backdrop too different from that of European nations. Third, it sought to reduce humans largely into economic entities. It failed to, or refused to, treat them as complex creatures responding to several other stimuli around as social beings. Fourth, capitalism created space for aspiration and social mobility while the ideology of the Left stayed in denial of both. Fifth, while firming up its position through capture of institutions and organisations, it alienated the other intellectual view ruthlessly. The current vitriolic reaction to it reflects the depth of resentment in a vast swathe of the elite. The wholesale defection of the traditional mass support base in West Bengal and Tripura to other parties stand as testimony to its failure at the grassroots level.

In short, the ideology was a work of imagination that outlived the reason for its existence. Also, we must add that along with the other great work of human imagination — religion — it has been one of the biggest killers of mankind.
Both are designed to manipulate and control the mind. Both can programme people to kill, and both can quell moral qualms about the act through elaborate justification. However, unlike religion, which is more humane, it had a strong criminal streak. Communist regimes have been the worst in terms of supressing dissent and eliminating perceived enemies.

As we have mentioned earlier, our series aims at understanding the sense of alienation among people from what appeared an integral part of their existence. There’s certain viciousness to the separation from the past; it shows in all walks of life, and the media in particular. At this point, our society is in a churn. Change in the political sphere is only one expression of it. A study of the developments of the past could be a good guide to the shape of the future.

Coming back to the decline of the Left, ironically it happens at a time when it should have been most relevant. Wealth inequality is getting starker worldwide, the population of have-nots has swelled unimaginably, big capital is expanding control over politics, the middle class has stopped growing, opportunities for social mobility is getting more and more constricted, and land and labour issues are acute. The blame for it should rest squarely on the thought leaders and bandmasters of the ideology. They sought to fit the world into the ideology instead of fitting ideology into the world. Warning signals all-around, including the sharp erosion in the core support base, failed to stir them into action.

The ideology is restricted to academic circles these days. A few teachers and students in institutions such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University still repeat the songs, slogans and ideas well past their use-by date. Call it intellectual arrogance or sheer foolishness, they are yet to acknowledge that they are addressing to empty stands. The audience is long gone. They are called anti-national and nobody sheds a tear. Sad indeed! It is an ideology that has natural traction among the spirited young and the idealistic.

Will it revive? It depends. It has to begin with introspection. There is no sign of it yet. Till then it will suffer the indignity of a four-letter word.