Page 63 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Comparative Politics and Government

Notes frankly asserted: “No important political or organisational problem is ever decided by our Soviets
and other mass organisations without directives from the Party.” The Communist Party is the
‘vanguard of the working class’ and it is the party that has to see that the gains of the revolution
are firmly consolidated. Hence, after the victory of socialism, there “can be no juxtaposition of
public and private rights and interests in the Soviet society. The interests of the state, society and
personality are synthesised in a new unity. Hence, all branches of law are part and parcel of the
same uniform law — Soviet law.”
As in the former Soviet Union so in the People’s Republic of China, the constitution is a sort of
mainfesto, a confession of faith, a statement of ideals that, as Wheare says, makes ‘excursions into
political theory’. Though a brief document, it lays down in detail the political, economic and social
objectives of the regime. It deals not only with the present ‘that which actually exists’; it also deals
with the future and that which has yet to be achieved’. The constitution clearly states the
determination of the country “to ensure the gradual abolition of systems of exploitation and the
building of a socialist society.” It is, therefore, clear that like the Common Programme, the Mao
Constitution (1954) “is an important political manifesto announcing the basic principles of state
power, military organisation, economic, cultural and educational policy, and foreign policy.”
It may well be discerned as to how different is the concept of constitutionalism when we examine
the case of a communist country. The Marxist writers not only eulogise their concept of
constitutionalism, they also denigrate the western concept as basically misleading. To them
parliamentary democracy is a sham as it is another name for the oppressive and exploitative
model of the bourgeois order. The model of ‘western government’ suits the interests of the class of
the exploiters and the oppressors. As Lenin writes: “At each step in the most democratic bourgeois
state, the oppressed masses encounter a lamentable contradiction between the formal equality
proclaimed by capitalist democracy and the thousands of factual limitations and complications
making hired slaves of the proletarians.” Fundamentally different from this, the Soviets were the
councils of the workers endowed with the aim to draw the whole of the poor into the practical
work of administration. It was a power that was open to all, that did everything in the sight of the
masses, that was accessible to the masses, that sprang directly from the masses. The Marxist
concept of constitutionalism, thus, stood for the system of the Soviets wherein “is realised the
universal participation of the working people, one and all, in the management of the state.”
Concept of Constitutionalism in Developing Countries: It is very difficult to suggest the precise
features of the concept of constitutionalism in poor and backward countries of the Afro-Asian
world that have recently emerged as sovereign nation-states and are struggling hard for achieving
the ideal of a social welfare state. It appears that they are torn between the poles of imitating the
system of some European country under which they remained for a sufficiently long period of
colonial domination on the one hand and going for a better and more workable system having
much of the indigenous elements coupled with something of the ‘socialist’ systems of the world on
the other. It is also found that several developing countries are experimenting with the imported
constitutional arrangements and trying to establish a synthesis between the ideals of the liberal-
democratic constitutional state on the one side and the demands and aspirations of the local
people on the other. It is for this reason that countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh can be seen
involved in alternating from parliamentary to presidential systems and vice versa. It can also be
found that the failure of the constitutional state has led to the collapse of the popular system and
its replacement by a system of military rule that should be regarded as the breakdown of
constitutionalism in most of the countries of the Third World like Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Sudan,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Thailand.
The case of constitutionalism in developing countries may, however, be said to have some broad
features: First, some countries like India and Sri Lanka have been able to incorporate the values of
a western constitutional state, though the ideals like those of liberty, equality and justice have
been suitably tempered with the requirements of a social and economic welfare of the society.
Second, some countries like Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Pakistan, etc. have not yet been able to
choose the correct options and they still feel that the western concept of constitutionalism may not
serve their real purpose, though they have not yet reached the stage of losing their faith altogether

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