Why Intellectuals Need The Party? : Submissions To Makrand Paranjpe

By Mithilesh Kumar

13 March, 2016
Countercurrents.org

 

The open lectures on nationalism in JNU is in the best traditions of intellectual activism. It is where the learning, teaching and production of knowledge processes are occurring amidst a struggle against the state and a majoritarian idea of nationhood. Someday all these lectures which are available on you tube should be transcribed and compiled in a book as a document of this movement. This is essential to not only preserve the memory of this struggle but to also preserve and perpetuate the immense intellectual production that has happened as a result of this struggle which will guide future movements because rest assured the fight has just begun and we need all the arsenal, intellectual and organizational, at our disposal.

It is one of the high points of these struggle that it has allowed new questions to emerge or old questions to be looked in a new paradigm. It is true in the case of nationalism, state violence etc. but it is also true in the case of some questions which were thought to be settled or dead or both. That it happened in an instance of polemics is no surprise at all. I am referring to lecture no. 15 of Prof. Makrand Paranjpe. Before this lecture all the speakers who gave the lecture as well as the students were on the same side of a system of thought broadly except perhaps for Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav but even he spoke in support. In case of Paranjpe it was the contrarian who was going to speak. For the first time in the lecture series a voice was to question the assumption of the organizers. The stage was set for an intellectual confrontation and the spectacle or as Paranjpe said, the performativity, lived up to the billing. Paranjpe spoke about Tagore and Gandhi and brought up the problematic relationship that the Communist Party of India had with the freedom struggle. In between he baited the people on the left by making a numerical comparison between Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini and who killed and imprisoned how many. In between his lecture there were boos which showed that Paranjpe’s provocations were working. All this led to a promising denouement when the session of question and answers began.

As has been the case recently the first salvo was fired by the JNUSU president. He made the point that although Paranjpe has critiqued the Communist Party of India and its role in the freedom struggle Paranjpe himself has to come clean on which party he belonged. To my mind, and I am saying this with all humility, this was not the correct question. Paranjpe, instead, should have been asked as to why he does not belong to a party. In fact, Paranjpe pounced upon the question and declared, to some cheer, that he does not belong to any party. He went on to suggest that there is a need to invert Gramsci and reject the idea of party and organic intellectual. It was important, Paranjpe insisted, that the intellectual thinks independently of the party. I might be incorrect in interpreting Paranjpe but I think he got his interpretation of Gramsci a little on the tangent. Organic intellectual is organic to the class and not the party. There is a difference. I will assume, then, that he meant an intellectual should independently of the party but not independent of the class. Even if, in the case, he wants to be independent of both class and party my argument, hopefully, will remain unaffected. By party, I mean here in essence a communist party because the nature of a bourgeois party is so antithetical to the former that it is safe to assume that if Paranjpe meant a bourgeois party he would have mentioned it.

It is important that we understand the importance of the upside down question by the JNUSU president and the new role of intellectual that Paranjpe has charted out. The relationship between the intellectuals and the party has been a prickly one especially before and after the high and low of 1968 France and closer home the Naxalbari struggle in India. One only has to read the letter written by Louis Althusser in 1966 to the PCF where he makes no attempt to hide his unease with the party. On the question of a resolution passed by the PCF he says that he considers it “doubtful, poorly grounded, or seriously off the mark when viewed from the standpoint of Marxist-Leninist principles” (italics in original). This period in the history of intellectuals and the party is replete with instances of breaking up with the party, denouncing the party, becoming dormant or defending it. However, one cannot deny that this confrontation between the intellectual and the party in Europe entirely redefined the whole epistemological terrain of the intellectual plane the influence of which we are still experiencing and are certainly not independent of it. One can very easily ask if Postmodernist thinking was indeed possible without this confrontation. For this reason alone one can that intellectuals need the party and the occasional mutual era-defining confrontations between them. However, there is a more fundamental reason for the intellectual to be in need of a party but before that a lesson in etymology.

The word “Party” comes from old French partie which means “side, part, portion, share, separation or division” and it literally means “that which is divided.” This is also related to “part” which derives from latin partem which means “a part, a piece, a share, a division.” For our analysis another word which is important and related is “Partisan.” This word is derived from Italian partezan which means “member of a faction, partner.” This should come as a bit of a surprise that what we think of as a closed, hermetically sealed and homogeneous political entity is actually, fundamentally, an entity that cannot stay together. No wonder parties split and merge with alacrity all over the world. Thus, instead of being smug about why communist parties cannot stay together for long one should investigate how they operate, politically, ideologically and organizationally. At least, none can bring the accusation of being unidimensional on them. Who knows this very fragmentary nature is the real ontology of a party. After all, there were many groups in the Paris Commune, many parties claiming absolute authority on Marxism on the eve of the Russian Revolution. One should also not grudge that there will be one party which can have a hegemony over the others. This story, though, is for some other time. This assertion of factions is not a novel argument. Communist Parties themselves were aware of this phenomenon to split. It is evident in the writings of Lenin and Mao. It should also be noted that all other forms of collectivity namely, association, assembly, collective, council etc. assume several people who have come together for one single purpose. If an accusation of homogenization of ideas have to be brought these forms should be the first ones to be accused. In the case of parties there are divisions on every single point from the party program to its strategy and tactics.

The point I am trying to make here is that the form of a party and its need in a radical and revolutionary struggle came at a certain historical moment. If Paranjpe does not feel any need to be associated with a party he has to also demonstrate that the historical moment of party is now over. The task would then be to think about these new forms and see if the new forms are actually novel or are they simply old or a hybrid. This is one way of understanding the transition in politics that we are witnessing now. Intellectuals, like all professional groups albeit unique from other such groups, have formed collectivities of different types since the time that profession has emerged. Greeks had their schools and professors these days have their universities and the union other kind of intellectuals like journalists, artists etc. have their own associative formations. This need for collectivity is not only for protection of their economic rights or the ability to form a pressure group there is something more fundamental at play here. This is to do with the ontology of the intellectual itself and her role in society.

We have to understand what an intellectual is and how they are different from workers or even other professionals. Hindi has very good descriptive words to describe a worker and intellectual. For worker it is shramjeevi , one who earns her living by labour and for intellectual it is buddhijeevi , one who earns her living through brains. But not all kind of brain work makes someone an intellectual. It is a very definite kind of work which is indicated here. If one has to say what has been the essential role intellectual have taken upon themselves I think it can be safely classified in two: one, they tell the rulers how to rule and govern and second, they propose a utopia against the existing system of producing, living and thinking. Let us begin from the modern period and who better to start than with Machiavelli, followed by Thomas More, Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the list can go on. One can add Marx and Lenin in this list too but I do not want it to color too much with red as it might be said against the argument that here goes another Leninist apologia. In any case, it is better to refute an argument from the same assumptions that the original argument is made.

As has been mentioned above an intellectual has to perform that dual role. Performing just one role will not make them an intellectual otherwise every bureaucrat who designs policies will become an intellectual or a lone worker at his house dreaming of liberation from his work and misery will become an intellectual. But how does this dual task of being an intellectual achieved. This is exactly where Lenin made the party so important, in fact, absolutely crucial. It is only the party that ensures an intellectual could both analyze, understand and critique the existing system and present both the conception and the means to deliver an alternative. It is this which makes a vanguard and no inherent superiority on the part of the intellectual and disdain towards the workers as some people allege. Party and its various branches are the ways in which a simple academic professional transforms herself into a public intellectual. This arrangement is both cohesive and disruptive. Let us take the case of JNU lectures. Could it have been possible without the exceptional labor of the students’ organizations and organizers? Majority of them could be traced to some party or the other. Whether party structure is bureaucratic or it becomes autocratic after the revolution is in the nature of functional question. A party like any other organization can degenerate but that does not diminishes what its basic philosophy is.

Lastly, Paranjpe said that intellectuals have to do independent thinking. It, of course, meant independent from the party and also, presumably, the state. As my final submission, is it possible to think independently of the state if you are thinking of not only finding ways to rule and govern for the state but also to think about the alternative? Will the state allow such independent thinking and not use its repressive status? What are the options then? I think they come down to only two: the state overwhelms or you align with the state. As an intellectual and public one at that the state can and will attack but then there is always this possibility that you will write poetry like the following which will inspire generations of public intellectuals.

shaam ke pecho-kham sitaron se
Zeena-zeena utar rahi hai raat
Yoon saba paas se guzarti hai
Jaise keh di kisi ne pyaar ki baat.
Sahne-zinda ke be-vatan ashjar
Sarnigun mahav hain banane mein
Daman-e-aasman pe nakshe-nigaar

Shaana-e-baam par damakta hai
Meherban chand ka dast-e-jameel
Khaak mein dhul gayi hai aab-e-najoom
Noor mein dhul gaya hai arsh ka neel.
Sabz goshon mein neelgoon saaye
Lahlahate hain jis tarah dil mein
Mauj-e-dard-e-phirak-e-yaar aaye.

Dil se paiham khayal kahta hai
Itni shireen hai zindagi is pal
Zulm ka zahar gholnewale
Kamran ho sakenge aaj na kal
Jalvagahe-visaal ki shamayein
Vo bujha bhi chuke agar to kya
Chand ko gul karen, to hum jane.

Faiz Ahmad Faiz, “Zindan ki Ek Shaam”

Mithilesh Kumar is a PhD Candidate at Western Sydney University, Australia. His interest is in the issues of logistics, migration and labour, political philosophy and theory. He wants to work on the nature, evolution and innovation of the Indian state with respect to social and political movements in India. Email: [email protected]