#The communist movement in India is turning 100 years old in October this year, and here’s a publication from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on this occasion. The India office of the institute has taken the lead in producing this, with plenty of help from our colleagues at the other offices.
Many of those who know a fair deal about the communist movement in India would find that several important struggles, events, aspects and even organisations are missing in this story. But we had to keep it somewhat short, keeping in mind the usual size of our dossiers, even though the topic is vast. Nevertheless we hope this will be a useful overview. Even those who know about the movement very well might find it interesting to look at and to circulate among their friends, family and acquaintances.
Right now the dossier is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. More translations are on the way, including in some Indian languages. Please do read and share.
The dossier has some nice, historic photographs as well. You’ll find a beautifully designed pdf copy available for free download if you scroll down to the end of the page. ????
## FMS: to rule with a General-Colonel Red Army. For most “Marxists” Marx is foreign.
Expansion of factory production engendered a social strata that self-characterised itself as “intellectuals”. With owner-based factories displacement by joint stock companies came managements. Dominant part of “the intellectuals” constitute managements in companies. A part of “the intellectuals” , revolutionary intellectuals constitute “Marxists”.
Karl Kautsky, a leading theoretician, formulated the framework of revolutionary intellectuals :
“1. Communist consciousness comes from the studies of philosophy, history, economics etc.
2. Wage-workers on their own can at most achieve trade union consciousness.
3. Communist consciousness needs to be injected in wage-workers from outside. Revolutionary intellectuals have to play this historical role.”
Lenin in his 1903 book, “What is to be done?” puts forward a popular version of Karl Kautsky’s theory. October 1917 catapulted Lenin on the global stage.
With the incomparable leap in productive forces premised on electronic machines, in the 1970s began the rapid transformation of universities into knowledge production factories. The irrelevance of “intellectuals” social strata in general and “revolutionary intellectuals” in particular is in front of us. This is nothing to lament about. Rather, these are vibrant-lively times to contribute to global radical transformations taking place all over the world.