PRAGOTI

 In the recent period, alongwith a number of critical discussions on the electoral set-back suffered by the CPI (M) and the Left in last Lok Sabha elections, there have been some questions raised about the practice of democratic centralism as the organizational principle of the Communist Party. Such critiques have come from persons who are intellectuals associated with the Left or the CPI (M). 

Democratic centralism has generally been accepted as the principle for building communist organisations, whereas it was only meant to address the organisational demands of a particular historical context in Tsarist Russia. By institutionalising centralism and leaving democracy undefined, this organisational form has fostered authoritarian tendencies and undermined the growth of new ideas in the working class movement. This is seen in India where the engagement of the communist parties with democracy has remained ad hoc and untheorised.

Prabhat Patnaik, eminent Marxist economist, writes on the legendary leader, Com. Jyoti Basu

By whatever metric adopted - comparison with the previous election results, or with the Lok Sabha results, the verdict from the Bengal civic elections is resoundingly clear. There is a collective fatigue among the people of West Bengal with Left Front rule in the state and even if the total voting population in these set of elections were only about 17% of the overall, the message is all too quite clear.