History asserts that ‘the left activism’ emerged due to an assemblage of various rebellious thoughts which were all independently projected as probable solutions to all problems that arose due to the Capitalist influence upon the socio-economic sphere. Communism is contemplated to be the substratum of left activism. However, it gained massive attention and momentum only when Karl Marx started propagating it. Marx is considered as the father of the Left revolution and is also constantly celebrated by the left tribe across the globe. A life analysis of Marx discloses about his three-part intellectual trajectory, he started out as a German philosopher; became a French-style political analyst and ended up trying to become a British style economic historian.
He presented his virgin rebellious thought in ‘The Communist Manifesto’ and attempted to counter the then ongoing oppression against the proletariat-labour through his Economic theory ‘Das Kapital’, ever since, the aforesaid literatures have stood as the pamphlets for the left activists. Multiple countries have so far been ruled under the Dogmas of Communism, the whole of 20th century after the World War I could be considered as the peak-time of communist dominance while the communist rulers ‘dictated’ to nearly half of the mankind.
The effects of the World War I had left the USSR, which was then under the control of the Tsar Empire, severely wounded, due to which the political field was ripe for a revolutionary ideology to be ploughed and Vladimir Lenin completely took over the situation and succeeded in infiltrating under the brand name of Communism. Lenin promised ‘Peace, Land and Bread’ to the Russian revolution before bulldozing the tsarist regime. His ideas were more driven by the thoughts of political revolution unlike Marx’s economic revolution.
The pursuit of Lenin’s model of communism or ‘Leninism’ went on to emerge not as an updated version of Marxism but as its proxy model, Marxism always expected that Capitalism would vanish on its own upon effective implementation of communist principles, but Leninism had contrary views. Marx argued that a proletariat revolution was inevitable, and he envisaged that his theory would come into practice in more developed & advanced capitalist states because that was where the revolution he talked of could take place.
However, USSR wasn’t an industrialized or an advanced state, but Lenin subsequently changed the basic Marxist structure to fit into his country and run his political show. Lenin argued that capitalist states would have enough power to suppress any revolutionary feeling in the working class. Leninism says that the capitalist states will give just enough money and benefits to the working class so that they will not have revolutionary feelings, this proves that “Marx’ was only used as a flyer-face while the principles adhered were custom built to suit the political climate.
Marxism was further conveniently manipulated when Joseph Stalin, propagated his own thoughts for his existence as a ruler, under the mask of Marxism. Stalin’s policies included rapid industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, powerful bureaucracy and too much centralization of power consequently making USSR an authoritarian state. Stalin’s policies even met with opposition from within the communist party who claimed that Stalinism contradicted with the communist dictum.
Finally, after seven decades of dictatorship under the masquerade of Communism, the Leninist-Stalinist regime was overthrown, and USSR was fragmented into fifteen countries. In ‘the Communist manifesto’, Marx wrote ‘A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exercise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies’. However by 1992, the main power of Europe – the common public, including the proletariat realized the fallacy of the thought, they entered into an undisclosed alliance and rejected the idea of Communism.
The Soviet collapse also marked an end of multiple communist regimes including East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary. Republic of China’s massive misgovernance and the impact of the World War II paved way for a massive Civil war within the country while Communists were the primary revolting force. In 1949, they succeeded in toppling the government and replaced it by People’s Republic of China and subsequently Communist leader Mao Zedong became its Head of State. Immediately after taking power, Mao declared that collectivization in China would take time; it would depend on industrialization and mechanization of agriculture.
The wholesale execution of enemies inspired Mao’s brutal dictatorship and under the theory of “continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat’ he launched of the Cultural Revolution where he maneuvered against his rivals within the leadership by launching millions of youth into futile and destructive marches and demonstrations. Maoism under Deng Xiaoping was completely transformed into a capitalist model, he had famously answered his critics by quoting ‘It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white– so long as it catches mice (China is communist or capitalist – so long as it can become a great nation again)’, Throughout its history up until today, Maoism and its succeeding versions, has continued to maneuver and make deals within the world capitalist system, It is being functioning adhering to China-Convenient communist doctrine with a capitalist attire under the posture of Marxism.
In the Communist-free ultra-capitalist United States, a new model of left activism, ‘Cultural Marxism’ began to emerge parallelly in the mid of 20th Century, again under the mask of Marxism. After the end of first world war, few Marxist theorists were at a restless state of mind about the current affairs, two most peculiar out of them were Antonio Gramsci and George Lukacs. They both had arrived at a conclusion that the working class of Europe had been blinded by the success of democracy & capitalism, and reasoned that until both get destroyed, a communist revolution was not possible.
Lukacs strongly believed that if the family unit and sexual morals were eroded, society could be broken down. In 1923, Lukacs met a young, wealthy Marxist named Felix Weil, he was extremely enthused by Lukacs’ cultural angle on Marxism. Weil’s interest led him to fund a new Marxist think tank—the Institute for Social Research, which eventually came to be known as The Frankfurt School. In 1930, the school changed course under new director Max Horkheimer and focused its concentration on cultural distortion.
The team began mixing neo-ideas with those of Marx, and cultural Marxism was born. By then in 1933, as Adolf Hitler had taken over Germany, the Frankfort school was forced to move to New York City, the bastion of Western culture at the time. The school was reborn at Columbia University and it went on to publish a lot of instigating literature and the first of these was ‘The Critical Theory’, which criticized every pillar of the existing Social culture—family, democracy, common law, freedom of speech, and others. The hope was that these pillars would crumble under the pressure.
Herbert Marcuse, another key member of the school has very openly rejected the theory of class struggle and the Marxist concern with labour. He believed and went onto propagate that it would be a victim coalition of minorities, blacks, women, and homosexuals, who would replace the working class as the new vanguards of the Marxist revolution. This very deceiving thought inspired many social movements in the 1960s— black power, feminism, gay rights, abortion rights, drug policy reforms, sexual liberation in the United States and gave Marcuse a unique platform to spew cultural-Marxist venom into the mainstream.
This entire concept of the Neo-left is being built on three negative aspects, To Reject, To Resist and To Rebel. They Rejected the tradition, Loyalty, Patriotism, Nationalism, Sexual Restraint, Ethnocentrism, Convention and Conservatism; They Resisted the Language, Culture, Religion, Belief, Faith, Family, Patriarchy, Hierarchy, Morality and Ethics; They rebelled against the State-System, Democracy, Social-Structure, Constitution, Law and Majority. Critical theorists have always believed that traditional systems have to be completely replaced by a “new thinking” that would become as much a part of primary consciousness as the old one.
Immediately after Modi’s power assumption, the aforesaid narrative was borrowed by the Break-India forces and as a result, Contemporary India is witnessing a series of Anti-National sloganeering and Hate shows. It all started at an event organised at JNU to glorify a terrorist named Afzal Guru, where a cry for India’s disintegration was clear and loud. To dent the global perception of a progressive India, this very intolerant brigade launched an award wapsi campaign so as to paint India intolerant. Southern Actors like Kamal Hassan and Prakash Raj, who have recently bandwagoned with the neo-left have appealed to secede by calling for a separate Dravida Nadu and have challenged the Constitution by threatening to protest against the people’s popular mandate. Rapes and atrocities against women no more attract the attention of feminist and women activists until and unless the victims name is of a non-Hindu. The present intention of the neo-left is to divide the society and create multiple ‘minority’ sections on the basis of Gender, Language, region, Origin, faith, Social & Economic Status, nature of Employment, etc. and make them all feel that they are oppressed and instigate them to resist, reject and rebel against the Indian democracy and Constitution, ultimately to form a coalition with a dirty political motive. Congress – The main opposition party of India was until now considered as not an ardent supporter of the Extreme-left ideologies, however its not the same anymore, the declining image of Rahul Gandhi has forced them to start a fresh Bromance with the neo-left.
As determined from the global paleo-left regimes and neo-left movements, the nature of leftism is to always rebel against the establishment, a democracy or an empirical regime, an anarchy or a theocracy, irrespective of its governing methodology; and disrupt it by constructing a counter narrative. Dictatorship or Authoritarianism has always been its driving force while fragmentation has always been the residual product. Like any other biological species, Bacteria’s do not require a synthesis to extend its existence, their nature is to divide themselves through a process called binary fission. The Left DNA is very much similar to it, they rebel against anything and everything without a sane reason, they are never satisfied, they can never be at peace, they are never tolerant, they are always divisive and inimical.