Fifth Arvind Memorial Seminar on “Problems of Socialist Transition” begins in Allahabad
Allahabad, 10 March. Five-day fifth Arvind Memorial seminar on “Problems of Socialist Transition” began today at Vigyan Parishad, Maharshi Dayanand Marg. Apart from intellectuals and social activists from different parts of country , there will also be participation from the abroad.
Comrade Meenakshy making a formal announcement of the beginning of the seminar
While making a formal announcement of the beginning of the seminar, Meenakshy, managing trustee of Arvind Memorial Trust said in her welcome statement that the real tribute to a brilliant talented and spirited revolutionary like com. Arvind will be to continue the process of theoretical-practical experiments related to the goal of emancipation of the proletariat and Indian revolution to which he was committed till this his last breath. Arvind Memorial Trust is committed to this very goal.
Famous poetess and social activist Katyayani who is associated with Arvind Memorial Trust, said while introducing the topic that even though the cacophony of capitalist triumphalism, “End of History”, “the coffin of Marxism being finally laid to rest” being played by the hirelings of bourgeoisie after the collapse of Soviet Union. Numerous deviation of “freethinking”, spontaneity, non-party revolutionism and anarcho-syndicalism are surfacing from within the communist movement itself.
Famous poetess and social activist Katyayani introducing the topic
In such a situation it has become extremely important to enter into debate concerning all questions related to the myriad problems of socialist transition viz. the inter-relationship between proletarian class, its vanguard party and proletarian state, the contradiction between production relations and the forces of production in the socialist society, the form of class struggle and the gradual transition toward the advance stages of the transition in the light of the past experiences.
The first paper of the seminar was presented by Abhinav Sinha, editor of students-youth magazine ‘Ahwan’. The topic of the paper was “Soviet Socialist experiment and Problems of Socialist Transition: Problems of history and theory”. A critical appraisal of the socialist experiments in the period between 1917 and the decade of 1930s was presented in the paper. As per the paper the socialist revolution took place in the Soviet Union in exceptionally complicated conditions and the Bolshevik Party took upon itself the task of establishing a
Abhinav Sinha presenting his paper
proletarian state in extremely adverse situation. For the first time in the world history, the challenge of fulfilling the historical task of socialist construction came to the fore after the consolidation of the proletarian state. A stage-wise description of the Soviet socialist experiments was presented in the paper and the external and internal problems before the Bolshevik party was critically analysed. Besides the ideological mistakes of the Bolshevik Party were also analysed. At the same time it was clarified that the points on which the soviet socialist experiments are generally criticized are in fact the points on which the Bolshevik Party must be praised. While presenting a critique of the prevailing interpretations and critique of the socialist experiments, it was shown that there was no novelty in them as most of the arguments were responded in the era of Lenin and Stalin only.
After presenting the paper, the process of debate on the paper was commenced in which Mithilesh Kumar, student from Sidney University, Shirish Medhi of Vishapan Virodhi Andolan Thane, Deepti Gopinath of Indian Airport Employees Association Mumbai, Kashmir Singh from Sirsa, P K Shakun from Jaipur, D K Rathod from Ahmedabad intervened with their comments.
In the next two days of the Seminar, papers will be presented on the other aspects of socialist transition. These papers include On “Chinese socialism and Cultural Revolution” by Sukhwinder, Editor Punjabi journal Pratibadh, On Stalin and Soviet Socialism by Dr. Amritpal from Ludhiana, On communisms of post-Marxists by Shivani and Baby Kumari of Delhi University, On socialism in Cuba, Venezuela etc. by Sunny Singh and Arvind Rathee of DU and On Maoism and Mao Tse-tung Thought by Harsh Thakor, Mumbai. Mithilesh Kumar of Western Sidney University, Australia will present a paper on Crisis of the European Left and a team of political activists from Nepal will present their paper on socialist transition and the question of Nepalese revolution. Anand Singh from Noida will also present a paper on the critical assessment of Nepalese revolution. The fourth and fifth day of the seminar has been reserved for detailed debate on and discussion on all the papers presented during the seminar.
Today’s session was presided over by senior poet and General secretary of Nepal Progressive Writers Association Mitralal Pangyani, Dr. Sukhdev from Sirsa and Meenakshy, managing trustee of Arvind Memorial Trust. Satyam Varma moderated today’s session.