Myth about Communism

In this post I have tried give an analogy about the thought porcess of present day "Commies".

Once there was a well dressed person going around the streets of the Moscow. He was wearing a suit, tie and as any westerner wore a hat too. When he was wandering around the street he came across workers who were repairing the roads, the well dressed person found that the working condition were pathetic, there were no proper tools nor any protection for the workers and the workers were in a very bad shape. He came near to the workers and introduced himself, " I am Karl Marx, I see that your working condition is pathetic, why not ask your head for proper tools and proper protection equipments"

For which the worker replied:" Yes we constantly make requests to our head but he hardly cares about it. By the way you said, you are Karl Marx? I cant believe you are Karl Marx and you can never be, as he will be dressed like one of us and you look healthy which means that you cant be Karl Marx"

For which Karl Marx replied:"Yes, I am Karl Marx, I am the one who propelled the cause for the proletariat. I am trying hard, to uplift all of you to my status and not the other way round".

I guess this is exactly what many "commies" should try to understand. The communist party should uplift the social status of the working class and thereby attaining equality rather bringing the upper class people to the working class level.

I would like to thank Dara bayat, my colleague during my masters who gave this interesting analogy while we were discussing Communism:Past, present and Future.

Pillars of Indian constitution

A small digression from the earlier post on the different ideologies. Lately I have being doing a lot reading on the various fundamental aspects of Indian constitution, this is mainly inspired by my quest to understand the very stratum of the Indian constitution.

As many might know I pursue a doctorate degree and one should not misunderstand that doctorate degree is a kind of advanced research on a particular topic rather it is during this time the doctorate student revisits the fundamental question which many of us take for granted. In the due course of this enlightenment it might so happen there might be a new path in solving a problem and with this people earn there degree (hopefully).

I made this anecdote to justify my quest to understand the fundamental pillars of the Indian society. It is based on this learning ; I write my below observations.

Many of us would have underwent a not so rigorous course on civics in the early part of their school days. In this many would have learnt that Indian government is based on three pillars namely the executive, legislature and the Judiciary. I learnt this in my class too but never thought about its respective functions for I wasn't aware of its importance. But once after the time I was interested in pursuing my carrier in civil services I pondered over these topics and asked the question which seemed very fundamental to me, like what are functions of a MLA, an IAS officer, a local councillor and ofcourse the MP. (Though I didn't walk in the direction of the civil service which is a totally different topic :D )

Legislature: One who enacts the law.

Executive: One who implements the law.

Judiciary: One who upholds the law.

Now, for example an IAS officer comes under the executive thus his functions are to implement the law enacted in the assembly, like say, our MLA (a legislator) says Jodha Akbar should not be screened, then the IAS with his coterie maintains it. If in case the theatre owner doesn't follow the rules one can get an order from the court (namely the Judiciary) and the law takes its due course.

The beauty of this model is no one is the boss, ideally they have their own boundaries and each is not allowed to encroach upon one another. These three equally powerful pillars is the most fundamental aspect of the Indian constitution. It is because of these three powerful structure(rather division of powers) India is still a democratic country unlike other countries in the Indian sub-continent which are either anarchic or oligarchic. So in summary, we are greatly indebted to the intellectuals who wrote the Constitution.

Political philosophies continued....

This is in continuation to my earlier post on political philosophies and my color to it.

Now let us see the other ideology namely Communism.

Communism: Nobody needs an introduction to what communism stands for as some point of time everybody in this world would have personally encountered it. Communism is supposedly a brain child of Karl Marx. The main purpose of the communism is to create a class less society where everybody is treated alike. In this ideology, the whole set of people are divided into two class namely Bourgeoisie and proletarian. This division is equivalent to the ruling and working class. A sect of people who believe in developing a classless society are called comrades and the proletarian group with the intellectual help from these comrades make a revolution against the bourgeoisie.

But there are several self-contradictions in my opinion on this theory, the foremost is, assuming that a revolution against the bourgeoisie has happened and the proletarian has won. Now to maintain law and order these comrades start to take responsibility and it leads an evolution of these comrades equivalent to an imperialistic rulers. Thus now these comrades who wanted to create a classless society have themselves created a new class namely the political class. Thus the theory itself has some self-contradicting property. This was practically seen after 1919 Russian revolution where Stalin took over the reign of Russia and many presently see the undemocratic movement in China.

And being an Indian I need to point out some examples in India, many would have read the take over of nandigram in November by the comrades where it has becomes the comrades vs non-comrades. And recently in kerala where the state CPI unit was in a killing spree in Kannur against section of another political ideology.

Now after giving the fundamental pillar on which communism was build, it is good to give an introduction to the different kinds of communism. Basically this division is based on the fact that, to achieve the universal classless society there are numerous ways and some are listed as follows:

• Leninism
• Marxism
• Maoism
• Stalinism

Out the above the Maoism is what is seen in Nepal and different parts of India in the form of Naxalism. The main belief of Maoism is the classless society can be achieved only by armed struggle. The founder of such a way is Mao Zedong from China and hence the name Maoism. The people who follow are called as Maoist.

But nevertheless personally I need to appreciate the communism ideology(though not practically viable) it takes into account the human sympathy.

People who follow communism are exotic individuals who are mostly intellectuals which in other words means they are good in writing blogs/columns/comments but never would have worked in the field. This is my opinion.

Let us see the other two ideology namely Socialism and Imperialism in forthcoming posts.

Political philosophies....

Once again, I should repent for not continuing my writings on politics, though much has happened since I wrote last August. The nuclear deal which everyone were pushing hard went to hibernation. This is not different from many other Indian policies which have a good start and soon gets pushed to the cellar either due to bureaucracy or conscious political intervention.

This political intervention is driven by some ideologies which each party is affiliated to, though strictly speaking recently the Indian parties grow like weeds without even having any ideology. But mostly parties which play in the national role have some ideology driving it (at least now). This topic is to discuss such ideologies and give a my color to each..

First, we need to understand that political ideology main purpose is to govern the people and make this world a better place to live. To reach this point there are(should be) numerous ways, it is just similar to Adi Sankaracharya teaching whose main theme is "there is no single way to salvation" (and his way is Advaitam). Thus accepting there is no single way to govern the people we will move further.

In today's world for some odd reasons making the world a better place to live is closely associated with having a decent bank account. Thus bringing the link between political ideology and economics. In the present world political ideology and economic policy for a country have intermixed, thus the division in ideologies is broadly based on economic policies.

Let us discuss four political ideologies in detail, namely capitalism, socialism, imperialism and communism.

Capitalism: As everyone knows capitalism is the main ideology of US. I recently came to know that capitalism was originally a brain child of Adam smith. In his famous book "The wealth of nations" he has described more in detail. His main punch line is "self-interest alone helps to achieve socially beneficial results". I guess this says all about capitalism. People to earn more should have some capital either in the form of knowledge or money and using this they grow. The government just stays as a silent spectator creating the environment for such people. Now the advantage is if you are talented only sky is the limit. Now the drawback, just imagine you want to leave a peaceful life just making sufficient earning to survive, but just because everyone surrounding you don't have the same mentality and start(want) to earn more they push the prices of the commodities causing inflation. Thus you will be indirectly be pushed to earn more. Therefore the conclusion is if you are not a materialistic person a capitalistic country will be difficult to adjust.

I guess this is already a long post will write later on other ideologies.