- My good friend Life’s Elsewhere (Anindya) is understandably disturbed by the questions raised in my last 2 posts. Because he is a honest fighter on the side of the poor.
- Professor Kunal Chattopadhya’s reaction to my last 2 posts is, however, typical – a Brahminical attempt to claim immunity from questioning without trying to address the questions raised. He wants me to join him in cheating the working classes by participating in what he calls this process of cheating and fooling the poor as “working class struggles” and also to further acquire learning in the same bunkum that he and his ilk have used hitherto to fool and cheat the poor and working class in order to be qualified enough to criticize this cheating and fooling – what a dream!
- What a dream that I join their cheating and become a cheat myself so that I stop calling them cheats. Pray, why should I do that?
- And don’t throw your learning at me – I have read all the stuff you are mentioning and the questions I am raising are after reading all that bunkum that you claim will educate me. It is possible that I did not understand all that “stuff” that I need to read to educate myself. In that case, answer my questions and show that the answers are already there in all that “stuff” you claim will educate me. Show me why my questions should be brushed under the carpet and why, instead, I should offer only the puerile “intelligible” arguments that you care to debate upon. Why cannot we question what you call “intelligible” and claim that instead of being “intelligible” arguments they are nothing but intelligent attempts at fooling the working class?
- Here is his reaction followed by my reply to this reaction:
- Kunal said…
- Arjun’s antics would have been funny, if he had not been making snide remarks on a serious issue. Illiteracy is hardly the ground for applause. Arjun needs to study, before making claims such as Trotskyists have no proposal about working class emancipation, collective production, and so on. He can reject our views. But we have no reason to enter into debates with every loudmouth. I suggest two things.
1. He can provide some evidence about his actual involvement in working class struggles for emancipation. We do not bleed for the poor, cry for the poor, or whatever. We fight as part of the working class struggles. Does he? When, where?
2. he can read stuff, such as Trotsky’s Towards Capitalism or Socialism?, Trotsky’s The Soviet economy in Danger, Mandel’s defense of democratic yet central planning, and of course, the resolution of the Fourth international on Socialist Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
After reading these, if he has specific, intelligible arguments, I will be willing to engage in a debate. Otherwise, his rantings about why we should surrender to him leave me cold. I do not see why Anindya is getting bothered.
First, let me clarify the issue of “snide” remarks. Any debate necessarily involves criticism, war of words and ideas and will have “snide” remarks. But they are not intended to denigrate you as a person or individual. Their sole purpose was to highlight issues and and defend and propagate new views for whatever they are worth.
Just as I am not interested in criticizing you as a person or individual but instead only your views and the political position that you defend and propagate, I expect you to criticize me not personally, not as an individual but instead the issues I am raising and the political views that I am defending or trying to propagate. Stick to issues not the individual who is raising them.
It is unfortunate that you have resorted to a typical Brahminical approach to defending yourself. Instead of debating the specific issues I have raised you are trying to question whether I am Brahmin enough to question other political Brahmins such as you.
I accept I am a political untouchable not having the “caste” (not class because you may participate in working class struggles but the issue I have raised is not whether you participate in working class struggles or not but whether your so-called struggles are really nothing but struggles to fool the working class; and that makes a big difference) to question political Brahmins such as you nor do I have the “learning” that you political Brahmins have, but again the issue I have raised is whether you are using all this learning in the service of the poor or whether you are using that learning to fool them. The issue is whether more Brahminical learning that you suggest that I should undergo will change the character of the way you are using any learning – good or bad. The issue is not of “learning” per se but what use is being made of that learning.
I will be only too willing to join working class struggles led by the Trotskyites and will also be willing to get over my “illiteracy” provided you can give me reasonable answers to the following specific questions:
(a) why do you believe the capture of political power, i.e. political superstructural change, can precede economic structural change when this has never ever happened in history and when it directly contradicts the basic tenets of Historical Materialism?
(b) why do you think the poor or the working classes should help you to come to political power when you seem to have no idea as to what communist relations of production are since the only structural change that you have been able to think up is some form of state ownership without any solution of the problems associated with state ownership such as how to do away with prices and wages, money and production of exchange values, market mechanism and the problem of distribution, etc , i.e. all the other economic issues I have raised?
(c) what is your conception of structural change in human society – how do you think structural change has taken place in the past and how do you think it will take place now during the transition from capitalism to communism? Capture of political power is political and, therefore, superstructural change, so how do you think economic and structural change will take place?
(d) What is your conception of relations of production? What is your conception of communist relations of production?
(e) What is your conception of socialism, democratic socialism or whatever else you may care to call your conception of the post capitalist world that you are trying to build and how is it structurally different from capitalism – its class-rivenness and its exploitation of human labor power?
If you can answer these questions satisfactorily, I will be only too willing to accept the leadership of the Trotskyites or anyone else who claims to have any answers to these questions.
I have tried to answer these questions in my own humble way as I have found that none of you great political Brahmins and leaders of “working class struggles” have any answers to these questions and what is worse is you try to fool the working class to follow you by brushing these questions under the carpet by claiming that you know better and these questions need not be asked at all.
I may be wrong but before I accept I am wrong you have to show me why I am wrong and you are correct.
Which means you have to address the questions I have raised rather than trying to hide behind your Brahminical claims of being someone above questioning. No one, how much learned he or she may be, is above questioning. Answer my questions and prove your learning instead of merely claiming to be learned just on the basis of some bourgeoisie yardsticks.
All your academic and other achievements are nothing but bourgeoisie recognition of your so-called “learning” because such learning serves the interests of the bourgeoisie and helps to fool the poor and the working class.
Mere participation in working class struggles gives you no immunity from the charge that such participation is nothing but attempts to fool the working class and serve the interests of status quo – of no change from capitalism – while pretending to be great fighters on the side of the poor.
As for my participation in working class struggles – first, I do not have to wear such participation on my sleeves if for no other reason than the simple fact that I participate in such class struggle with my life and my existence as I belong to the army of unemployeds and if I am misled or confused or short of “literacy” it is because of you, the leaders of the working class – show us how you are not fooling us by providing answers to the questions I have raised. If you have answers there is no reason why you should run away on one pretext or another – answer them and tackle the issues raised instead of trying to denigrate me as an individual. You can’t because the poor cannot be further denigrated than what you, the so-called leaders of the working class in alliance with the bourgeoisie have already conspired to do so.
Second, it is my participation in class struggles that has helped me to know the total political and economic bankruptcy that all you leaders of the working class are suffering from and how you only pretend to be working for the working class when in reality you do nothing but fool the working class into continuing with the status quo of no structural change.
All your struggles are nothing but struggles to fool the working class into selling them the dream that your political struggles will somehow give them economic emancipation.
So pray, why should anyone need your sanction of “participation in working class struggles” to criticize you and point out that these so-called struggles are nothing but struggles to fool the working class.
Why should anybody participate in the process of fooling the working class to acquire the qualification to call that very same process a process of fooling the working class?
Why do I have to join the cheats in order to acquire the qualification of being a cheat myself only to criticize the cheats? What kind of logic is that?
Rantings Of A Gagged Journalist 