Should Communist parties in India be banned

The killings at Nandigram and the reaction or non –reaction of the W. Bengal government throws light on the fundamental problem of having a communist state government in a Democratic country.

While most people do hold the correct view that communism’s organizing principles of collective ownership of property is the opposite of capitalism which favours individual ownership of property, communism is also opposed to democracy. Democracy is rule by the people. It is a form of representative government, where the individuals not only elect the leaders, but also have ownership of private property, and can decide to sell or not sell their property. The vanguards of democracy are both the freely elected government and a free press which keeps watch to make sure the public is informed of all those facts that affect it.

Here is where, the communist government of W. Bengal’s attempt to take away property forcibly for the “greater good” of industry runs into problem. The question is “can a communist state government’s policies usurp my rights as a free citizen in a democratic country.”

While democratic nations such as the U.S. do have the concept of eminent domain, whereby the state can demand your property for development purposes, this just becomes a legal battle, one fought in a court of law , not on the streets with gun battle.

The problem with communism is more fundamental than just another occasional episode of violence.The very basis of communist governments is based not only in collective ownership of property, but in a totalitarian control of all economic and political activity. So that, the citizens do not decide what is good for them, since there is no representative government, but rather a group people who come into power by whatever means decide the greater good. If the people then decide they want to get out of the totalitarian system, they find that they can’t opt out . A case in point would be the Tiananmen square fiasco, where the government which is supposed to protect the people ends up killing them. And this makes perfect sense in communism because the government is really is not of the people or even, for the people. Totalitarian regimes exist solely to self-perpetuate.

How does this translate to our own home-grown communist parties? Pretty much the same. They unfortunately react to protest in the same way that their counterparts in China do. Suddenly we find the party which was supposed to represent labor and the lower classes, wants to grab the land and give it to the bourgeois (or MNC s as maybe the case).

The problem of public ownership of all property is another contentious issue. Does this only relate to land, as in the land owned by farmers , or does it include all property. Thus, can the government just take away my home if they wish? How about my car? Where is the line between what is mine and what is everyones defined.

So, should a democratic nation have communist parties at state or local levels of government or should it ban such parties from existing. Now here is where I think most people would say that no, a democratic nation is one that allows freedom of political thought. This is problematic for two reasons. One is that it assumes a certain moral equivalence between rule of the people and rule by elite totalitarian parties. But there is no moral equivalence. A government representative of the people is one that is sensitive to the needs of the people and understands that its primary duty is to its citizens and not just its party. It is also one that owes its positions of power to the people and is truly a servant of the people. A totalitarian regime on the other hand has only a duty to its other party members and not to the ruled public.

The second problem is with the definition of democracy and freedom… What does it mean to be free? If I am free, does that mean I can choose to be a slave? For most of us, the answer would probably be yes, that makes sense. Freedom of choice means freedom to be a slave. But here’s the problem, once you enter slave hood, you end up renouncing your freedoms and therefore, once you become a slave, by definition, you have no free choice, so you can’t get out of that state. And this is the problem with communism. By definition, even when we elect it, it no longer becomes a representative government. It automatically becomes a government for its own self-perpetuating ideologies. Then, it becomes difficult to remove it from power. As is the case of China ( and perhaps Bengal yet again. )

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