Editorial: Metamorphosis of Marxists in Kerala

As Kerala, the only State where the Communists are in power, is going to polls next year, the CPI(M) is undergoing a churning marked by a dilemma over whether it should embrace pragmatism or stick to its core ideology

Winds of change are sweeping the Marxist party which finds itself at an ideological crossroads with sharp internal divisions over electoral tactics. As Kerala, the only State where the Communists are in power, is going to polls next year, the CPI(M) is undergoing a churning process marked by a dilemma over whether the party should embrace pragmatism in tune with the changing times or stick to its core ideology. The harsh reality is that the Left parties have been witnessing a steady erosion of their support base across the country and losing power in their traditional bastions. The CPI(M), the big brother leading the Left coalition in the southern State, faces an unenviable task of re-inventing itself to stay relevant and draw up a workable strategy to retain power in the 2026 elections. Towards this end, the party has made some stunning U-turns in terms of its ideological positions, the kind of changes that were unthinkable in the orthodox apparatchik a couple of years ago. The Kerala CPI(M)’s vision document ‘New Pathways for New Kerala’, released recently, includes several ideas that were considered anathema to the party’s core principles till recently. They include neoliberal capitalist prescriptions such as providing a bigger role for private capital, a PPP (public-private partnership) model for loss-making public sector undertakings (PSUs) and allowing the establishment of private universities. After vehemently opposing liberalisation and privatisation for decades, the Marxist party has now signalled a paradigm shift in its approach towards capital and investment.

From promoting a resource mobilisation drive and allowing private participation in the public sector to increasing fees and surcharges based on income, the vision document, released by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, proposes a slew of measures to attract investments. The vision document calls for significant private investments to tackle the State’s financial challenges head-on. It unequivocally advocates for private sector participation in sectors such as higher education, industry and tourism to boost the economy. Surprisingly, this radical shift from the CPI(M) has not gone down well with its co-traveller CPI which opposed the proposal to run PSUs in PPPs as a ‘dangerous trend’ and a ‘problematic approach’. Though the Marxist party has been having an internal debate, for quite some time, over ideological issues, it is probably for the first time that it has put it in the public domain. The party appears to have learnt lessons from its decimation in West Bengal and Tripura and realised the need for effecting major changes in its policies to overcome the existential crisis. There is an urgent need to establish an enduring connect with the aspirational middle class, a section perceived to be out of the ambit of the Left influence so far. It is a major challenge to attract the post-liberalisation generation into a party whose main agenda has been to fight neoliberal economic policies.

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