Kerala comrades realise an Engels dream

Party is withering away its goals, accountability, and its very ability to comprehend anything definitive

K Raveendran

Pinarayi Vijayan and his fellow comrades have achieved a lofty Marxist ideal: the withering away of the state, which Engels had envisaged as the ultimate success of socialism, but could not live to see happen.

In the glorious land of Kerala, where the red flag flutters proudly and coconuts fall with rhythmic certainty, we stand on the cusp of a historic achievement – the state withering away so spectacularly, it might as well be taking a vacation to Singapore!

The comrades have even found a shortcut to do this: make the distinction between state and the party disappear and make the party wither away.

Under Vijayan’s untainted leadership, what remains of the withered party has taken a flight to the neighbouring Tamil Nadu and adopted the identify of a Tamil party, or Dravidian if you will. The CPI-M has two MPs hailing from Tamil Nadu, double the number that the withering party has managed to send to Delhi from Kerala.

Now, some cynics (those capitalist roaches!) might point out that the Kerala government still seems rather robust. Files requesting permits gather dust in bureaucratic purgatory for years, the roads resemble a lunar landscape after a particularly enthusiastic meteor shower, and the promised high-speed internet remains as elusive as an independent-minded police.

But fret not, comrades! This is precisely how the withering works. The party is withering away its goals, accountability, and its very ability to comprehend anything definitive. It’s a withering of a different kind, a withering born of glorious revolutionary… paperwork!

Think of it this way: the less the party does, the less there is for it to do, and hence, the closer it inches towards that sweet oblivion of non-existence. It leaves party workers free to do what they like and even skip ‘steady’ classes, the vital line of communication between the leadership and the cadre. Like that prizewinning pumpkin at the Onam harvest festival, the party is slowly but surely rotting from the inside out, a testament to the impermanence of all things, even governmental ones.

Of course, there are whispers of corruption, whispers that certain revolutionary comrades and their children may have… enriched themselves a tad during this withering process. But surely, these are just capitalist lies! In a state and party that are withering away, who needs petty things like transparency or pesky checks and balances?

So, let us celebrate this glorious paradox! Let the state and the party wither away, at their own leisurely pace, taking all their glorious inefficiencies with them. For in the end, won’t we, the glorious people, be left to govern ourselves?

We have seen that in operation during the Nava Kerala mission with its famous ‘rescue acts’. In perfect harmony, of course, occasionally punctuated by the joyful sounds of a hartal or two. After all, what’s a revolution without a little disruption?