Indian Debates on the International Left: Selected Writings of Lajpat Rai

This book traces the Indian Left’s engagement with the international communist debates of the 1960s and 1970s, shedding new light on the fault lines within the Left as well as on its international solidarities. Lajpat Rai argued for rethinking established leftist positions, seeking inspiration in experiment and developing creative approaches for the sustainability of socialist ideas and ideals. The contemporary relevance of these debates is significant as the Left remains without a sharp response to the rise of neoliberalism and right-wing populism in India, and a failure of the Left to recognize the challenges emanating from a strongly integrated and organized finance capital on the one hand and the increasingly self-aware identity politics on the other. Democratic opposition rather than a bureaucratic thinking needs to be the backbone of any meaningful Left struggle. Lajpat Rai’s passionate writing gives expression to the spirit and intensity of political debates at the time and the role of the Left intelligentsia in comprehending, from a committed socialist angle, the shifting paradigms of an unstable world to help bring about progressive change. Cover Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: Dilemmas and Challenges for the Left Intellectual CHAPTER 1: The Left Intellectual CHAPTER 2: Making Best of Both Worlds CHAPTER 3: Responsibility of the Intellectual Part II: Debates amongthe International Left Parties:The Challenge to Conformity CHAPTER 4: Traditional Communist Parties CHAPTER 5: From Polycentrism to Disarray? CHAPTER 6: Proletarian Internationalism and the Socialist Camp Part III: Latin American Movements: The Rise and Fall of the Left CHAPTER 7: Cuba’s Way CHAPTER 8: Castro Unmasks Peking CHAPTER 9: Cuba CHAPTER 10: Peaceful Transitionto Socialism CHAPTER 11: Responses to Chilean Coup CHAPTER 12: Uruguay Part IV: Indochina and the USA: Solidarities and Betrayal CHAPTER 13: Vietnam and the Socialist World CHAPTER 14: Vietnam and the ‘Third Communist Front’ CHAPTER 15: Vietnam: Whither the Paris Peace Accords! CHAPTER 16: Nixon’s Tactics in Indochina About the Author and Editors Index