14

M. N. Roy: Twentieth-Century Renaissance

Dinesh Kumar Singh and A. P. S. Chouhan

Early Radicalism

M. N. Roy symbolised a new ideology of the freedom movement that was neither moderate liberalism nor Gandhism. Before the First World War, he was attracted to the ideology of nationalist terrorism. He was a revolutionary. The partition of Bengal in 1905 gave rise to a national upsurge in India. The Indian political scene witnessed great turbulence. The Bengal revolutionaries’ avowed object was to achieve the emancipation of the country. They realised that the British imperialist power based on force could be overthrown by violent methods alone. The violent anarchical movements in contemporary Europe inspired them. They believed in the language of violence and terror. M. N. Roy joined the influential group of Bengal Revolutionaries operating in Bengal. The Anusilan Samiti was the only revolutionary organization spread throughout Bengal. The Yugantar was its organ. Amongst Indian nationalists, he was an ardent radical as a practitioner and thinker. As he wrote: ‘When, as a school boy of fourteen, I began my political life, which may end in nothing, I wanted to be free, the old fashioned revolutionaries thought in terms of freedom. In those days, we had not read Marx. We did not know about the existence of the proletariat. Still, many spent their lives in jail and went to the gallows. There was no proletariat to propel them. They were not conscious of class struggle. They did not have the dream of communism. But they had a human urge to revolt against the intolerable conditions of life. They did not know exactly how those conditions could be changed. But they tried to change them, any how I began my political life with that spirit, and I still draw my inspiration rather from that spirit than from the three volumes of capital or three hundred volumes by the Marxists’.¹

M. N. Roy was strongly influenced by Vivekanand and Bankim Chandra. He was attracted to the political ideas of Aurobindo Ghose. Bhupendra Nath Datta was his associate. His brief association with the revolutionary group was crucial to his career. ‘It was not an apprenticeship in making a revolution but his terrorist days may have shaped some of his persistent dislikes’.² This revolutionary group did not rely on mass support. There were inherent weaknesses in the techniques and methods of this group. After its failure, M. N. Roy went to Mexico where he was influenced by socialist ideas. He was associated with the formation of the Mexican communist party.

The National and Colonial Question

M. N. Roy had differences of opinion with Lenin at the Second Congress of the Comintern on the strategy and tactics to apply to the national and colonial questions. Roy went to Russia to attend the Second Congress of the Comintern. Both Lenin and Roy had disputes on the issues of bourgeois democratic revolution and socialist revolution. Roy’s debate with Lenin has to be interpreted in context of application of Marxian theory to colonial society. Both Marxist and liberal theoreticians have commented on the debate on the national and colonial question.³ Lenin’s thesis on the ‘National and Colonial Question’ called for the liberation of the peoples subjugated by colonial powers. As a corollary to this policy, Lenin put forward his thesis ‘The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination’. With respect to the selfdetermination of nations, he mentioned three groups of nations. The first group consisted of Western Europe and the United States, the second group of Eastern Europe and the third comprised of semi-colonies and colonies. He called for the immediate and unconditional liberation of the colonies. He recognised a colony’s right to self-determination including national secession. The proletariat’s task in the first and second world, according to Lenin, would be unfinished without championing the right of nations to self-determination. They had to support bourgeois democratic movements for national liberation in colonial countries against the oppressive imperialist powers.⁴ At the Second Congress of the Communist International Lenin propounded his thesis that the bourgeois democratic movements in oppressed countries retained their revolutionary potentialities. He considered these nations as separate entities oppressed by imperialism.⁵

Lenin unmasked the new set of contradictions of capitalism. By analysing the different phases of capitalism he advanced his thesis that imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism. Lenin’s theory of imperialism maintained that colonial expansion strengthened the foundation of capitalist system in Europe. This development of capitalism delayed its inevitable downfall in metropolitan countries according to the prediction of Karl Marx.⁶ Marx, due to historical limitations, did not visualise the different phases of capitalism. He taught that the proletarian revolution would take place in capitalist countries. Lenin further wrote that the finance capitalist phase of the world economic system had linked the metropolitan countries with their colonies. The survival of this system depended on the stability of both the first and third worlds. The revolt in the colonial countries would destabilise the imperialist system. Lenin held that capitalism did not impoverish the proletariat in metropolitan countries. The exploitation of the colonial masses yielded a super profit. The capital was exported to colonial countries where cheap labour was available. In metropolitan countries a part of the profit could be conceded to the proletariat. He traced the development of the privileged aristocracy in the proletariat of the metropolitan countries. He maintained that a successful revolt in the colonial countries was a condition for the overthrow of the capitalist system in Europe. Therefore he emphasised on unity between the bourgeois democratic movements of the colonial countries and the proletarian movements of the metropolitan countries.⁷ M. N. Roy’s debate with Lenin was related to the Comintern’s oriental policy.

On application of Marxian theory to colonial countries, West European socialist thinkers differed from Lenin. The Leninist’s theory of imperialism encouraged the revisionism of Edward Bernstein. Kautsky and Hilferding rejected the idea of dictatorship of proletariat. Rosa Luxemburg, in her book, Accumulation of Capital, maintained that the imperialist capitalist system survived on the external markets of colonial countries. Lenin considered the ‘Ultra Imperialism’ of Kautsky and ‘Capitalist Imperialism’ of Rosa Luxemburg as erroneous. Her work was theoretically reformist. She rejected the idea of dictatorship of proletariat. She criticised the Leninist theory of revolution. Lenin differed from these Marxist theoreticians on the application of Marxism to metropolitan and colonial countries. As one scholar comments:

Marxist theory assumed that decision about what to do in politics depended on what kind of society it was, what its class structure was, and how these classes were likely to behave in political life. But the primary difficulty was, of course, that these societies were structured quite differently from European societies which had either undergone capitalist transformation, or were on the brink of it … Marx had made of nineteenth century European states, but the application of his method to a society that was structured in a very different way. It was not the categories or the formulation that were to be common between the European analysis and the colonial analysis, but the method.⁸

Marx maintained that Britain, the world’s first industrial country, was not susceptible to revolution. In industrialised France, the proletariat lost its revolutionary fervor.⁹ When Germany became fully industrialised, the bourgeoisie there was caught between two historical contradictions. The first contradiction was between the bourgeoisie and feudal landlords. They were constantly checked by the contradiction with the rising proletariat. The bourgeoisie, in these cases, compromised with feudal elements to contain the proletarian’s revolutionary task. Marx advanced his thesis in 1849 in an article on the ‘Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution’.¹⁰ It was called the theory of late capitalism. In communist debate, this theory was advocated by M. N. Roy and Trotsky to apply to colonial countries and the bourgeoisie. The application of this theory was what Trotsky called ‘the law of uneven and combined development’. Trotsky wrote: ‘the further East you go, the more reactionary the bourgeoisie becomes’.¹¹ Lenin differed with this thesis. He maintained that the communists of colonial countries had two avowed tasks. On the one hand, they had to train Marxists organizationally and politically, and rally the proletariat behind them. On the other, the communists had to assist bourgeois democratic liberation movement in colonial countries, to be able to back up all the forces which put forward progressive demands including the national bourgeoisie in so far as it acted from anti-imperialist positions. It had to strive to build up the revolutionary democratic potential of the colonial national movement. The communists had to, in Lenin’s view, raise the role of the proletariat in it. Lenin visualised the national liberation movement led by the bourgeoisie as a sphere of activity for the communists to gain strength that would enable it to eventually claim leadership on a national level. But Lenin warned that support to the national democratic movement implied not only supporting antiimperialism and bourgeois leadership but also consistent criticism of its wavering for compromise. This was, in Lenin’s and the Comintern’s view, the political line to be followed in colonial countries for national and social liberation.¹²

M. N. Roy had differences of opinion with Lenin on the national and colonial question. Roy was invited by Lenin to prepare a draft thesis on the colonial question on the eve of the Second Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in 1920. Roy came forward with his own thesis known as the ‘Supplementary Thesis on the Colonial and National Question’. The Congress faced the problem of what short of revolution could be fostered in the colonial countries, whether it had to be a bourgeois democratic liberation movement or a socialist revolution. By quoting Plekhanov, Roy opposed Lenin’s idea. Roy held that peoples in the colonial countries need not go through the stage of bourgeois democracy. He gave primacy to a socialist revolution. The communists, in Roy’s view, were not to support the bourgeois democratic movement but only the revolutionary elements. The Comintern, according to him, had to contribute towards the development of communist parties alone. The communists had to engage themselves wholly in the struggle for the class interests of the working people. They should lend moral and material support to the revolutionary forces of the colonial countries. He maintained that revolution in the colonies was a pre-condition for revolution in industrialised countries.¹³

In countries like India, bourgeoisie as a class, in Roy’s view, was not different from the feudal elements. The national movement in colonial countries, Roy opined, was ideologically reactionary. ‘Its triumph would not necessarily mean a bourgeois democratic revolution’.¹⁴ He had differences of opinion with Lenin on the role of Gandhi in the national movement. Lenin believed that Gandhi was an inspirer and leader of the mass movement. But Roy held that Gandhi was a cultural and religious revivalist. As he wrote: ‘he was bound to be reactionary socially, however revolutionary he might appear politically’.¹⁵ Roy developed the theory of non-capitalist path of development to support his thesis. Both Lenin and the Comintern recognised his intellectual eminence. Both theses were debated in the Second Congress where Lenin observed:

There was quite a lively debate on this question (non-capitalist path of development) in the commission, not only in connection with the thesis I signed, but still more in connection with comrade Roy’s thesis … The question was put as follows: ‘are we to consider as correct the assertion that the capitalist stage of economic development is inevitable for backward countries now on the road to emancipation and among whom a certain advance towards progress is to be seen since the war ?’ We replied in the negative.¹⁶

M. N. Roy, like Trotsky, applied the Marxian model of late capitalism to the colonial countries. Unlike other colonies, the bourgeoisie in advanced colonial countries like India was highly developed. As Sudipta Kaviraj comments: ‘Roy’s picture of the political economy of colonial India was markedly similar to Marx’s depiction of Germany in the mid-nineteenth century … If understood relatively, this judgement was certainly correct; but Roy crucially misjudged its corollaries’.¹⁷ He overplayed the strength of the working class in colonial countries. He underestimated the influence of the nationalist parties on the proletariat. Roy had not visualised that proletariats and peasants considered bourgeois leaders and organizations as representatives of a nation rather than as spokesmen of the interests of the bourgeoisie.

Indian History

M. N. Roy attempted to analyse the past, investigate the present and visualise the future of Indian society and history from a Marxist standpoint. This analysis of Indian society and history was contained in Roy’s main Marxist work, India in Transition in 1922. This book also contains the fundamental ideas of Roy regarding the character of Indian national movement and production relation and the productive forces involved in it. It points out the social character of the people’s movement indicating the revolutionary trend of the rising mass movement. By using Marxist theory, Roy presented a comprehensive critique of three prevailing theories about the character of the rising Indian nation. The imperialist writers maintained that ‘a new India, a young India is in the process of birth’. They held the opinion that nationalism should not grow too fast against the hegemony of British power. The moderate nationalist, the most conscious vanguard of the rising nation, believed in gradual development along orderly and constitutional channels. The third school, the extreme nationalists, accepted the revivalist ideology. According to them, India was passing through a revivalist period and was not in a state of transition. Roy held the opinion that India was in a state of transition. He maintained that the future of Indian nationalism would be shaped by the inexorable evolution of the progressive forces latent in Indian society.¹⁸ Roy also presented a critique of the two prevailing historiographies which ignored the social and economic history of Indian society. As he wrote:

At best we can have some idea of the glories and grandeur of the Hindu and Muslim Courts. Thanks to the painstaking research of some modern historians, one can learn how many sacks of kishmish the great Aurangzeb consumed in his life, or how the noble Siraj-ud-Daula has been painted in such a black colour by the English Writers.¹⁹

This historiography gave little information about the social and economic conditions of the toiling masses and what little it gave was on blurred and irregular lines. The transition of Indian society, in Roy’s view, was to be judged on the basis of the analysis of the economic development of a section of the population and the corresponding exploitation of the rest. This transition would result in ushering the people of India into a more advanced stage of socio-economic development. Further he wrote:

Therefore her entire stage of popular energy is in a state of revolt against everything which has so far kept her backward and still conspires to do so. This revolt, this great social upheaval, is the essence of the present transition, which marks the disappearance of the old, bankrupt socio-economic structure in order to be replaced by one which will afford the people greater facilities for progress.²⁰

The social struggle, of historic and to a certain extent of unprecedented character, is being waged by the people of India.

In the middle of the 18th century, British imperialist power, according to Roy, undermined the feudal system in India. But feudalism remained in existence in form even after the British occupation of India. Indian society was divided into the following classes: (i) the landed aristocracy, (ii) the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals, (iii) petty peasantry, and (iv) working class including the landless peasants.²¹ The bourgeoisie was now a potent force. The main political tactics of the Indian bourgeoisie was to acquire concession and support from the British Government to further its own interest. It was not in a position to pose a challenge to the rule of British power. It was aware of the fact that British rule could not be challenged without the support of the masses. Therefore the bourgeoisie had opened the doors of the Indian National Congress to the masses to deceive them. The Indian bourgeoisie, being the vanguard of national upheaval, may overthrow foreign rule. But when it became class-conscious it would deceive the masses. This class could not be relied on for the purpose of destroying British rule in India. Indian nationalism would have to rely on lower social classes.²² Roy viewed that capitalism did not alter the existing form of production relations. The international capitalist system controlled the whole Indian economy. The British Imperialist system, in Roy’s view, implanted the capitalist system in India. In fact Roy applied Marx’s analysis of classes in nineteenth century capitalist society in Europe, to Indian society without any adaptations. Marxists regard class analysis as a method to be applied to all societies with modifications. But Roy considered Marxist theory as a set of conclusions which could be transferred to any society.²³ Roy’s class analysis of Indian Society was exactly similar to Marx’s analysis of class in Europe. Sudipta Kaviraj comments: ‘Roy’s analysis of classes in Indian society is in marked contrast to Mao’s famous depiction of the Chinese rural structure. While Mao applies a method, Roy applies a model’.²⁴ As far as Indian nationalism was concerned, Roy analysed it in a narrow perspective. He considered it a mere instrument and strategy of the bourgeoisie.²⁵

Roy gradually changed his Marxist theory to what was later known as the decolonization theory. The term decolonization was firstly used by Bukharin. This theory was propounded by him at the time of the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in 1928. The basic idea, in his decolonization theory, was that the national movement of India was a bourgeois movement. The main objective of the bourgeoisie was the unfettered capitalist development of the country to strengthen its economic position. The bourgeoisie, getting an opportunity, through the concessions given by the imperialist power, of competing with them in the exploitation of the masses, had exhausted its revolutionary potential. It had ceased to be the vanguard of an anti-imperialist force. The decolonization was taking place in the sense that the Indian bourgeoisie had betrayed the national movement.²⁶ Roy, in his book The Future of Indian Politics in 1926, held the opinion that the Indian bourgeoisie had distanced itself from revolutionary forces and formed a united front with the imperialist powers. The book mentioned the attitude of Indian National Congress to the issue that was debated inside the Comintern and Indian communist party. Roy suggested Indian communists to organise the forces of the national movement into a democratic party. The existing nationalist party, according to Roy, could not serve the purpose. ²⁷ Roy differed with Lenin on the question of the national bourgeoisie. This position of Roy remained unchanged. Roy submitted his decolonization thesis to the Comintern after his return from China. The communists associated with the Comintern including Lenin, criticised Roy’s theory of decolonization. He was expelled from the Communist International in September 1929. Overstreet and Windmiller rightly say: ‘The Russians were clearly bent on making decolonization an odious word. … they ascribed to it a meaning which Roy certainly never intended, namely, the voluntary cessation of imperialist exploitation’.²⁸ His theory needs to be analysed. After the collapse of colonialism the imperialists lost their direct political control over the colonies. In the face of the mounting struggle of the colonial people for national liberation, the imperialists realised the impossibility and impracticability of territorial colonization in the sense of direct control. Instead of colonialism the world witnessed the development of a new ramified system of political and economic policy which was defined as neo-colonialism in Marxist theory. Roy’s theory tried to explain this phenomenon. The later development in world politics falsified and refuted his theory. Roy did not differentiate between the different sections of the bourgeoisie. His theory negated Lenin’s Colonial Thesis but the historical experience of the Chinese Revolution also negated Roy’s thesis. In China, the bourgeoisie played a significant role in national and social liberation. Thus we find his theory came closer to A. G. Frank’s formulation of imperialism.

Interpreting Marxism

M. N. Roy returned to India in 1930 and was arrested. He was set free from prison in 1936. From 1930 to 1936 Roy felt the need to rethink the basic assumption and theoretical visions of Marxism and the strategy and tactics of revolution. By the late 1920’s, new trends had emerged in Roy’s view. These new trends manifested themselves in full during this period. Roy still claimed that his basic ideology was Marxism. ‘Socialism, or communism’, in Roy’s view, ‘is not the issue of the day, and socialists and communists should realise that the immediate objective is national independence’.²⁹ He maintained that bourgeois democratic independence should be the aim of Indian revolution. He held that the Indian National Congress was a progressive organization which could liberate Indian nationalism from British Imperialist power. In his letters to August Thalheimer, Dehradun, Roy maintained that ‘Indian workers are too backward politically to play a completely independent role’.³⁰ The Indian worker’s attempt to establish an independent organization would only serve to isolate them from the anti-colonial struggle. During the early 1920’s, M. N. Roy overplayed the maturity of the proletariat to lead the national liberation movement and the socialist revolution. He moved closer to Menshevik ideology. He did not rely on the revolutionary potential of the working class. It showed the nihilistic attitude of Roy. In the early 1920’s Roy advocated that the Comintern’s goal should be a socialist revolution and not a bourgeois democratic revolution. It should strive to establish a socialist society. In the late 1920’s and 30’s, he changed his ideological position. His earlier thesis of a socialist revolution, in Roy’s view, was unrealistic. He diluted the communist vanguard in a larger democratic and petty bourgeois movement.

Roy proposed the idea that communism should be replaced by the Jacobinism. In 1940, Roy held that Indian communists should ‘raise the banner, not of communism, but of Jacobinism’.³¹ He considered the French Jacobins as the Marxists of their time. He suggested that the Indian communists follow Jacobin ideology. He regarded the slogan of national democratic revolution ideologically due to petty bourgeois radicalism with Jacobinism as its political expression.³² M. N. Roy considered the Indian National Congress as an organ of national struggle with the support of the Indian masses. Roy said in 1936: ‘My message to the people is to rally in the millions under the flag of the National Congress and fight for the freedom … we should realise that the National Congress is our common platform’.³³ He considered the Congress as the nation’s democratic force which had to free the revolutionary movement for national independence from the leadership of the bourgeoisie, and from Gandhi.³⁴ He wanted the Congress to get rid of the influence of Gandhism and from that of the bourgeoisie. The Congress, according to him, was a mass nationalist movement. It was not the party of any particular class. In the 1930’s Roy considered the Congress as synonymous to a united national front. He was opposed to all attempts of the left forces to create an organization of working people and revolutionary elements independent of the Congress. It would have weakened the congress and go against the ideology of a united front. Roy opposed the formation of the Congress Socialist Party inside the Congress because it would prevent it from accepting as an alternative to Gandhi’s programme for a national revolution. It would divide the Congress between the proponents and opponents of socialism.³⁵

Radical Humanism

M. N Roy, in the closing years of his life, totally revised his outlook. He advocated a new philosophical idea known as Radical Humanism or New Humanism.³⁶ The principle of Radical Humanism was a total renunciation of Marxism, Roy’s own views of the preceding period and rejection of parliamentary democracy. His ntolerance of religion and nationalism remained unchanged. This new philosophy was seen by political analysts as ‘a resuscitation of the rationalist humanism of the European renaissance and which perhaps explains his fascination for the renaissance motifs’.³⁷

He renounced Marxism. He said that

the popular remedies offered by the leftist parties will not serve the purpose. When a country has still to build industries, their nationalisation is evidently a premature proposition. Socialism was conceived as a way out of the crisis of capitalism in advanced society with a high degree of industrialisation and a mature working class. That is very different matter from building up new industries in backward countries where the workers are still half peasants. Socialism today would mean a more or less equal distribution of poverty. Therefore, the main plank in the economic programme of the leftist parties has very little in common with the scientific socialism evolved by Karl Marx under entirely different circumstances.³⁸

He considered Marxism as a faulty doctrine which retarded the growth of a free man. He further wrote ‘economic interpretation of history is deduced from a wrong interpretation of materialism’.³⁹

Roy enumerated the main inadequacies of parliamentary democracy. It reduced civil liberties to a mere formality. Its doctrine of laissez faire perpetuated the exploitation of man by man. It negated the liberating doctrine of individualism.⁴⁰ Radical Humanism, according to Roy, stood for the ideals of democratic freedom and economic equality. He said, New Humanism advocates a social reconstruction of the world as a commonwealth and fraternity of free men, by the cooperative endeavour of spiritually emancipated moral men. The common wealth and fraternity of free men ‘will not be limited by the boundaries of national state—capitalist, fascist, socialist, communist, or of any other kind which will gradually disappear under the impact of twentieth century Renaissance of Man’.⁴¹

Organised democracy, in Roy’s view, was the alternative to parliamentary democracy. In formal democracy, the individual was reduced to powerless atomised individual citizens. Roy maintained that the pyramidal structure of the state rested on the foundation of organised democracy. The system of recall and referendum ensured that power had to remain vested in the people. The foundation of organised local democracy would enable individuals to exercise direct and effective control of the entire state machinery.⁴² In the new set-up, democracy would be placed above party politics. Roy maintained that politics should be devoid of party politics. It should be scientific, moral and rational. In the new democracy, ‘party loyalty and party patronage will no longer eclipse intellectual independence, normal integrity and detached wisdom’.⁴³ He further said that democracy had to recover the humanist tradition of modern culture. Man should be the measure of things. The conduct of public affairs by spiritually free individuals could guarantee the fundamental democratic principle - the greatest good of the greatest number.⁴⁴