BOOK REVIEWS 71 of consumer durables which, though incapable of stimulating the whole economy, influences the distribution of private investment and public priorities. Harris's political analysis, however, is not likely to win any such general agreement. He would probably say that the likely disagreement "will only substantiate his criticism that the Indian Left is confused between the alternatives of sterile parliamentarism and mindless terrorism. Many of his essays directly or indirectly tackle the questions of the class basis and strategy of the Indian revolution. But both in the diagnosis and in the remedy prescribed, the author is wide of the mark* For instance, Harris postulates that the legacy of what he calls 'Stalinism' is the root cause of the crisis of the Indian Left. He argues that this inheritance has plunged the Indian Left into a crisis which has no solution other than •either "parlour speculation of mere theorists" or the "mindless militancv of simple activists/5 It is not difficult to see that Harris's Trotskyist obsession with ''Stalinism^ inhibits his understanding of the complex of historical factors leading to the present fragmentation of the Indian Left. Harris blames Stalin for every defeat of the international communist movement. He says: "The terrible defeat inflicted on the Chinese Communist Party in 1927, the ever more shattering defeat of the German Communist Party in Hitler's rise to power,, the destruction of the Spanish revolution, the failure to prevent the Second World War, and, when declared, the failure to transform it into the European socialist revolution, these were the triumphs of the Stalinist Gomintern and its satraps. The whole line of development of modern history was reshaped by the degeneration of the Russian revolution".5 When he talks of the 'reshaping' of modern history he has in mind already a fixed shape of history which would have come about had Trotsky defeated Stalin in the contest for policy and power. This is an obvious instance of what one may call 'personality cult in reverse' which has nothing to do with Marxism. Socialism through Coalition Ministries? It is unfair on the part of Harris to suggest that when the Indian leftist activists talk about the proletariat "the word is largely detached from any real workers or real peasants".0 Though he swears by the working class, the trade union movement in the country does not inspire in him confidence about the revolutionary potentiality of the Indian proletariat. Typical of the Trotskiyists is the sectarian underestimation of the cole of peasants and middle classes in the revolution. In fact, he traces all the ills of the Indian Left, including its 'theoretical poverty', to the middle class social basis of the revolutionaries. Harris has only contempt for the strategy of the united front of classes partly because he does not have enough patience to differentiate between stages in the revolution and to «cek class combinations and alignments appropriate to each stage. To sec the Indian revolution in terms of battle lines neatly drawn between the