Comrade Moni Guha
29th September 1914 – 7th April 2009
Comrade Moni Guha breathed his last on the morning of 7th April 2009 in the city of Kolkata. He was 95. Born on 29th September 1914, comrade Guha was veteran of the Indian communist movement who devoted almost eighty years of his life upholding the banner of Marxism Leninism. Though never a successful mass leader of any political party comrade Guha always strove for organizing group of comrades who really understood the basic tenets of Marxism Leninism and who would be ‘class-for-itself’ and not just ‘class-in-itself’. It is a remarkable testimony to his personal and political qualities that he was held in high esteem even by his critics.
A man with an encyclopeadic knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, his identity as a scholar in Marxism and specially as Stalinist scholar is acknowledged even by his most vocal critic, comrade Guha came in contact and crossed swords with many of the titans of the communist movement such as M.N. Roy, B.T. Ranadive and Charu Majumdar. It goes to comrade Moni Guha’s analytical prowess that he was among the first few who understood the revisionist strands in the 20th Congress of the CPSU within weeks of the event, when other communist intellectuals and parties were still trying to interpret the emerging phenomenon.
His small booklet ‘Revisionism against Revisionism’ is a brilliant piece of Marxist analysis where comrade Guha,, meticulously exposed the deviations almost amounting to revisionism in Mao’s and CPC’s struggle with CPSU, that he termed as a struggle between two revisionists. His other works like Moscow Trial, 20th Congress and Stalin, Yugoslav question and the Role of CPC and CPSU, , Mao supplements Krushchev , Trotsky in the eyes of Lenin, Mao-tse-tung, are works par excellence in the great tradition of Marxism Leninism, aimed understanding the root cause of revisionism that has come to plague the international communist Movement. Though on the character of Indian revolution Com. Guha held that India has become a capitalist country and the stage of revolution has thus become socialist, this view we think is erroneous given the objective and subjective condition prevailing in India today. the data and the stage of industrialisation, state of agricultural sector all, according to us points that India is still a middle level capitalist country, a junior member of the imperialist club hence the stage of revolution has to be democratic rather than Socialistic!
Some of comrade Moni Guha’s articles can be found on the website of his Journal Proletariat Path at http://www23.brinkster.com/proletarianpath/
Comrade Guha’s View on the Stage and characteristic of Indian Revolution titled “Marxist Methodology and the Current Stage of the Indian Revolution” athttp://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv3n2/stage.htm
Lal Salaam comrade Moni Guha
Other Aspect 