The Communist Party works to end the rule of a minority exploiting class, the bourgeoisie, and bring the working class to power, in alliance with all the toiling and oppressed people, so as to end exploitation and create a classless society. It seeks to replace bourgeois democracy with a superior system of proletarian democracy. It adopts such tactics and forms of struggle that would serve this strategic aim.

The reality in our country is that there is growing anger and discontent among the masses of people. Disillusionment with the politicians and the governments is widespread among workers, peasants and broad sections of the middle strata.

Across the country, various initiatives by the discontented people are coming to light, seeking to challenge the party dominance of the political process. People in many areas have begun to demand the right to have a say in policy decisions, in candidate selection and the right to recall the representative they elect. They have come together to field candidates selected from among their midst to challenge the monopoly of the parties of the status quo. What attitude should communists take to such initiatives?

Communists should not only support but provide leadership to the people’s initiatives to challenge the existing party dominated political process. The Communist Party should be broad-minded and help forge unity between different initiatives that are taking place. This is a necessary part of preparing the working class and people to build that broad popular political front that can take power in its hands and put an end to the rule of the bourgeoisie once and for all.

In adopting this course of action, the Communist Party is guided by the principle that it does not seek to come to power itself, but to bring the working class and people to power. The communist party must ensure that, as the crisis of the bourgeois order deepens, the working class and working people in their crores are politically and organisationally prepared to seize the initiative and become the masters of their own destiny.

Party dominance serves bourgeois rule

The ruling bourgeois class does not rely only on the brute force of its armed state machinery to preserve the exploitative system and block the path to progress. It relies also on the instruments of bourgeois democracy –council of ministers, parliament and assemblies, the electoral process, judiciary, the media and so on. It spreads illusions in the minds of the oppressed people that these institutions can be used to serve them. However, the institutions and political process of bourgeois democracy are designed to ensure that the people have no power to challenge or change the status quo.

The electoral process as it exists is dominated by self-serving parties of sectional interests of the bourgeoisie. Ending this party dominance is an immediate problem that presents itself to those who are resisting their exploitation and exclusion from political power.

Party dominance serves to maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie, headed by the big monopoly houses. It ensures that no matter what the mood of the people is at any time, the rule of the bourgeoisie remains in place. The management team can be changed, but the agenda of the big capitalists is always carried out. The capacity of the people to organise and act upon their own demands is at all times frustrated.

While people are called upon to cast their votes for this or that candidate in elections, these candidates are not accountable to them. They are accountable to the parties who nominate them. The political process of representative democracy ensures that the real business of governing is firmly in the hands of a select club of parliamentary party leaders and career bureaucrats who have a vested interest in the continuance of bourgeois rule. .

When the people become angry and dissatisfied with the working of one government, they are encouraged to ‘punish’ that government and party by voting for the rival party or coalition in the next election. While much is made of the people's ‘will’ finding expression through the elections, all that happens is that the rival party waiting in the wings gets its chance to fill the positions in the government and implement the agenda of the ruling class.

Whether it is the seesaw contest between the Congress and the BJP, or the DMK and the AIADMK, or the Congress and the “Left Front”, or a three-way contest in some states, the people remain where they were. The political energies of the people are channeled into the dead-end alley of voting for this or that bourgeois party and government, or not voting at all. In the end, they have no say in deciding who will rule and whose interest will be served.

‘Left’ opposition to people’s initiatives

There are parties within the communist movement as well some non-party organisations that extol the existing system as an advanced democracy. They lend it credibility and thereby do a great disservice to the people. Such conciliators with bourgeois democracy have come out in opposition to the people’s initiatives against party dominance.

The parliamentary communists, led by the CPI(M), are making alliances with various other discredited forces for some kind of "third front" in the states and corporations going to the polls. They want to ride on the dissatisfaction of people with the ruling Congress to gain a few seats and later strike a deal with the Congress if possible. They refuse to support any initiative which questions parliamentary democracy or the system of party rule..They and their fellow travellers charge these initiatives as being “middle class” or “elite” initiatives.

The fact is that when broad masses of people, in bastis, residential colonies and in villages, begin to assert their right to elect and be elected, including the right to select and to recall, they actually begin to pose a threat to the existing order. Those who ridicule them and criticize them are serving the cause of preserving the status quo, no matter if they call themselves leftists or communists.

To break the vicious cycle of one party of bourgeois rule replacing another is a crucial task facing the communist movement in India. How to break this sandhi and release the mass political energies and initiative of the people? It cannot be achieved if the Communist Party merges with the existing political process of bourgeois democracy, and looks at intervening in parliamentary process solely with the narrow aim of advancing its own position within the bourgeois state.. Nor can it be achieved by the Communist Party boycotting the electoral arena on a strategic basis. These two trends in the communust movement are united in being fearful of working people striving to create a new political process that will end the domination of capitalist parties over the political process and open the path to workers and peasants rule.

Build people's committees as the base of a popular political front

The growing mass anger must not get periodically dissipated through the electoral process in a way that is safe for bourgeois rule. Communists must use this anger to build the people's own platform. We must actively help build people's committees – at local, national and all-India levels. We must build them on an ongoing basis, not only before elections but actively at all times. We must build them as organs of struggle, building blocks of the popular front against bourgeois rule, and as the future organs of political power. Those elected to such organs must not be accountable to any party, but to the people who elected them.

The Communist Party is not an electoral machine; nor is it a military machine. It is a political party in the true sense – an instrument for empowering the working class and all the oppressed. Its aim is to see that sovereignty, the supreme decision making power, is transferred from the hands of a minority exploiting class into the hands of the toiling and oppressed majority, with the working class at the head. With political power in their hands, those who wish to end exploitation will actually do so – and create a society where prosperity and protection are guaranteed for all.