Georg
Lukacs, the renowned Marxist philosopher, had remarked
that in terms of attitude to life, Lenin's position
had represented a basic shift from that of earlier
revolutionaries. Eugen Levine, the leader of the short-lived
Bavarian Soviet, who, despite being thirteen years
younger than Lenin, had typified the earlier attitude,
had once famously declared: ''We Communists are dead
men on leave!'' A Communist's life, according to this
perception, was always lived under the shadow of imminent
death. This did not mean espousing asceticism; and
Levine who was executed when he was just thirty-six
years of age had been no ascetic; but it did mean
the espousal of a personal philosophy where the extinction
of life in the revolutionary cause constituted its
supreme realization.
Lenin too had been no ascetic. He loved Beethoven,
played chess, took long walks in the hills, and liked
reading not only the Russian classics but others too,
including Jack London. But to him the meaning of life
lay in life itself, provided it was devoted to the
revolutionary cause. Death was not the supreme sacrifice
one welcomed but an end which had to be put off as
long as possible, precisely in order to prolong one's
service to the revolutionary cause. So, he relished
the exuberance of the myriad details of life, from
playing with the Zinoviev children in their adjoining
Kremlin quarters, to being acutely concerned whether
Comrade Inessa Armand dressed sufficiently warmly
in the Moscow winter.
But no matter how different Lenin's attitude to life
might have been from Levine's, the actual tenor of
their lives could scarcely have been very different:
being shadowed by secret police, long years of exile
in Siberia (Levine too, born to Jewish parents in
St.Petersburg, had his baptism in the Russian revolutionary
movement), bitter and exhausting arguments with comrades,
and encountering the horrific violence of civil war.
The context today is so different that even a Communist
who shares Lenin's attitude to life, will nonetheless
have to live a life that is vastly different from
Lenin's. What will such a life be? I am not concerned
here with the empirical question of how Communists
actually live under capitalism, but with the theoretical
demands that such a life must make upon them. The
political praxis of a Communist Party having to work
within a capitalist society where there are no imminent
prospects of a revolutionary transcendence of the
system has been a matter of much discussion. By contrast,
the contradictions confronting the personal life of
a Communist activist in such a context have been scarcely
discussed.
Dedication to the revolutionary cause cannot of course
be a ''nine-to-five'' job like office work. A communist
activist cannot simply switch off during certain hours
and immerse himself in a world of vegetable shopping,
TV serials and local addas. Being engaged in an effort
to transcend the system requires no doubt a host of
fairly routine tasks no different from what an average
office-worker engages in. But it requires both the
performance of these tasks and what one does during
one's ''off-task'' hours to be informed by a passion
for the transcendence of the system which invests
even the mundane with a deeper meaning. And such passion
must preclude the ''nine-to-five'' attitude which is
symptomatic of an alienated life.
But if this passion, which must distinguish a Communists'
life and which underlies the attitudes of both Lenin
and Levine (though each gave a different meaning to
it), causes a seclusion of the Communist activist
from the ordinary quotidian life of the people, then
he runs the risk of being out of touch with them and
hence irrelevant. What the people think, how they
perceive their situation is an important input into
Communist theory, and hence the formulation of Communist
praxis. Becoming aware of people's daily concerns
is thus essential; and for this there is no alternative
to one's own participation in quotidian life. Party
meetings into which the light of quotidian life of
the people does not directly enter, and where only
a bunch of committed ''theorists'' speak to one another
are no substitute for it; nor is information acquired
through Party sources alone, since there is an inescapable
tendency for lower cadre to tell their leaders what
they think the latter wish to hear. And reliance on
the ''public media'', which are largely controlled by
corporate interests, for assessing the public mood,
has consequences for the movement which are obviously
adverse.
Even the opinions of sympathetic elements among the
elite constitute a shaky foundation for the formulation
of appropriate Communist praxis. There is an interesting
story of a group of Indian revolutionaries, belonging
to aristocratic and affluent backgrounds, meeting
Lenin to request Soviet help for India's freedom struggle.
Having listened to their views for some time, Lenin
asked if there was any person of proletarian background
among them. The visitors scratched their heads, got
into a huddle and finally decided that the person
who came closest to Lenin's requirement was the Indian
driver of the vehicle that had brought them to Lenin's
office. They informed him accordingly and Lenin asked
for the driver to be brought in to the meeting; and,
when he entered the room, Lenin turned his back on
the rest of the delegation to have a long chat with
the driver on the Indian political situation! Appropriate
communist practice requires not just occasional chats
of this sort but a continuous interaction with ordinary
people. This can come only from participation by Communist
activists in a quotidian life that brings them into
contact with people.
There is therefore a peculiar contradiction that surrounds
the life of a communist under capitalism. Being immersed
in quotidian life sans revolutionary passion, with
revolutionary activities treated as a mere ''nine-to-five''
job, is inimical to correct praxis. Likewise, being
confined merely to a charmed circle of fellow-revolutionaries
with little contact with ordinary people in their
daily lives, is equally damaging for revolutionary
praxis, for it leads either to a substitution of one's
own, and one's comrades', wishful thoughts about the
people's mood for the actual mood itself, or ends
up taking the word of the corporate media for assessing
the people's mood. A Communist needs therefore both
to participate in quotidian life, and yet to retain
an ''outsider's'' perspective upon it. This condition
is not satisfied by dichotomous conduct, such as the
Communist activist's engaging intensely with comrades
during certain hours of the day, and then withdrawing
into a private world to recoup himself; on the contrary,
such dichotomous conduct entails a detachment from
quotidian life during both periods.
It may be thought that the issue being talked about
here is somewhat esoteric, that the problems facing
the communist movement in India today are altogether
different from those arising from a communist's engagement,
or lack of it, with quotidian life in a capitalist
society. There can hardly be two opinions on this:
the communist movement in India today has to engage
with the question of caste and other identities; it
has to fashion its political praxis to form a united
front among extraordinarily disparate social groups;
it has to defend, not just in a contingent fashion,
but as an essential link to its vision of socialism,
the democratic rights of the people; it has to strive
to unleash the creativity of the people, including
of its own cadre; and it has to carry out ''rectification''
among its cadres which is far more elemental than
what we have been talking about, where ''vices'' like
corruption, local ''satrapism'' and careerism need priority
of attention.
Nonetheless, while all this is true, the question
of a communist's life under capitalism, remains a
relevant one, which cannot simply be wished away.
What is more, it is not an issue which has attracted
much classical Marxist theorizing. Both Marx and Lenin
lived the bulk of their lives under the impression
that a European revolution was imminent. Both, as
they got disillusioned about the prospects of a European
revolution, turned their attention eastwards, but
did not abandon the perception of capitalism's days
being numbered. This has also been the general perception
of the communist movement. This perception may well
be more valid today than it has been for quite some
time in the recent past; nonetheless the durability
of capitalism must not be underestimated, in which
case the question of how a communist living under
capitalism must both engage in quotidian life and
yet be outside of it needs to be addressed.
* This
article was originally published in the Telegraph,
8 May 2012, and is available at
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120508/jsp/opini
on/story_15461475.jsp#.T6pCsOj-dw4
