...if all political formations follow the same set of policies, then it means that politics reaches a “closure”. The electoral choice that people exercise makes no difference to the set of policies that are implemented, having an impact on their material lives. Their choice, in short, not only makes no difference to their material lives, but does not even promise that it would. Their choice cannot even be presumed to bring in an alternative agenda promising to make a difference to their lives ...The carrying forward of the emancipatory project in today’s context must mean breaking out of this “closure of politics”, a liberation of politics from this “closure”. And this must mean not a catering to the consciousness of the people as they are, which in Lenin and Luxemburg’s time would have meant falling in line with national chauvinism, but placing before them an alternative that can change their consciousness. This requires not a preoccupation with immediate electoral prospects but going beyond electoral calculations. There is no mystery about the constituents of such an alternative agenda. I have written earlier about the economic elements of such an agenda, involving for instance the institutionalization of a set of universal and justiciable rights, such as the right to food, to free healthcare, to employment, to free education and to adequate old-age pension and disability assistance. But quite apart from the economic component, it must project the elimination of the caste system and of patriarchy as concrete objectives. It must unite different streams of “identity resistance politics” of the marginalized. Class politics consists not in shunning “identity resistance politics”, but in uniting its streams into a larger project of social transformation. telegraphindia/1140311/jsp/opinion/story_18059123.jsp?fb_action_ids=727237430644544&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 05:38:17 +0000