PEOPLE'S
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PEOPLE'S
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Edition: May 1-15, 2004 Published by the Communist Ghadar Party of India |
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TABLE OF CONTENTS |
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May
Day 2004: Comrade workers! May Day this year comes at a time when workers belonging to various sectors of the economy have united, cutting across party barriers, against the privatisation program and anti-worker labour law reforms. It is the fighting unity of workers that has managed to temporarily block the plans of the Ministry of Disinvestment. May Day this year comes in the midst of the 14th Lok Sabha elections. Whether the BJP and its allies or the Congress Party and its allies win the majority of seats in the Lok Sabha, the program for the future has already been set by the big bourgeoisie. The working class is confronted with the danger of escalation of their exploitation and further attacks on their rights, soon after the elections are over. What the big bourgeoisie has in store for the workers and peasants after the elections is a fresh round of privatisation affecting a wide range of sectors, including water and electric power, banking and insurance, education and health care. Amending labour laws to fulfill the demands of big capitalists ranks high on the agenda. Measures to further liberalise internal and external trade are on the anvil, further subjecting the peasantry and other small producers to the domination of the trading monopolies and multinationals. The big bourgeoisie has plans to develop India as an imperialist power, in collaboration and contention with the United States and other imperialist powers. Warmongering and profiteering from the arms race, military intervention in Nepal and other countries, are part of this plan. So are measures to further fascise the state apparatus and further communalise and criminalise the polity. Posters announcing May Day rallies all over the country have placed on the agenda the task of defeating the anti-people offensive of the big bourgeoisie. What kind of fighting front is required in order to defeat the bourgeois offensive? This is one of the most crucial questions facing the working class. What the workers need is to consolidate their unity on the basis of their own class platform. What they need at this time is a worker-peasant front, a broad alliance of all the oppressed around the working class. What is needed is a united front without the bourgeois and against the bourgeoisie. Such a united front is needed in order to wage tit for tat struggle against every attack of the bourgeoisie on any section of the masses. Such a front is needed in order to pro-actively advance the alternative program to bring the workers and peasants to power and reorient the economy in their interest. The 14th Lok Sabha elections provided an opportunity for the communist parties and workers’ organisations to push forward and popularize the platform of the working class. They could have done so at least in the urban centres, where large unions and associations exist and the capacity of the organised working class is the maximum. However, if we look at the candidates who are in the fray in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, we find that there are no working class candidates in these big cities of our country. What is the reason for this? The reason for this state of affairs is that some of the biggest parties in the communist movement, with considerable influence among workers, have deviated from the aims and agenda of the working class. Instead of organising to field working class candidates, they have decided to campaign for one of the bourgeois candidates in the name of defeating the BJP at any cost. This has spread conflicting messages among the workers, preventing the possibility of the working class effectively campaigning on its own platform in these elections. Will the replacement of one bourgeois coalition by another bourgeois coalition in power help to defeat the bourgeois offensive? If we go by our past experience, it is clear that it will not help one bit if the Congress Party replaces the BJP. In its current election campaign, the Congress Party is repeatedly reminding the people that it was the architect of the liberalisation and privatisation program, which the BJP has only developed further. Why then should workers accept the aim of replacing the BJP by the Congress Party? The strategic aim of the working class is to replace the rule of the bourgeoisie by the rule of the workers and peasants, as the necessary condition for carrying out the revolutionary transformation from capitalism to socialism and communism. The immediate aim of the working class is to defeat the fascist offensive and imperialist drive of the bourgeoisie. To replace the BJP coalition by another bourgeois coalition cannot be the immediate or strategic aim of the working class. It is in fact the immediate aim of one section of the bourgeoisie, which is backing the Congress Party. It is the strategic aim of the bourgeois class as a whole that the workers and peasants should remain enslaved to this notion that there is no alternative except to replace one party of the bourgeoisie by another. Those within the working class movement who are advocating that the BJP must be defeated at any cost are subordinating the movement of the workers to the aims of the bourgeoisie. Can the working class defeat the bourgeois offensive? Yes, it can because the working class constitutes about half of the entire population of India, including manual and mental workers in industry, agriculture and services. It is the most organised class among all the oppressed. If the working class unites with the peasantry, who are also discontented and protesting against the globalisation and liberalisation program, then such an alliance will be an invincible force, representing over 90% of the population, which can indeed defeat the plans of the bourgeoisie and change the course of India. In order to defeat the bourgeois offensive, it is essential to overcome the divisions within the working class movement. In order to overcome these divisions, it is essential to wage a relentless struggle against all those who are conciliating with social-democracy, and refusing to develop the fighting program of the working class. Such conciliators are calling on workers to become the tail of the bourgeois opposition, rather than become the head of all the oppressed. On this May Day 2004, let us pledge to work untiringly over the coming 12 months to establish and develop the program of the working class, on the basis of which all communists and working class organisations can wage one unified struggle. Let us prepare to greet the new Government with renewed and stepped up struggle in defence of our rights and against the privatisation and liberalisation program. Let us strengthen the workers’ unions and associations as organs of class struggle, in opposition to those who want to convert them into channels for delivering vote banks to this or that party. Let us prepare the conditions for a politically united working class, at the head of a worker-peasant front, to emerge as an invincible force on the Indian political scene by the 1st of May, 2005. Long Live May Day! |
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Open
Letter to All Communists 24th April, 2004 Dear Comrade, The elections to the 14th Lok Sabha have begun, alongside assembly elections in several states. Reports of the election campaigning and initial polling are an indication of the popular mood. The bourgeois media looks at all phenomena from the narrow perspective of whether it helps the BJP or the Congress Party to form the government in New Delhi. We communists must study the phenomena in order to assess the class struggle and adopt appropriate forms to provide it with effective leadership. The bourgeois news media is reporting many events that show the rising level of consciousness among the voters. In some places, voters have decided and implemented a total boycott, delivering a zero voter turnout. In other places, various popular fronts and mass organisations have organised mass meetings at which the citizens have played an active role, placing demands on candidates rather than listening quietly to their speeches. It is reported that women who used to follow their husband’s or father’s directive in the past have now begun to make up their own minds, and vote according to their own conscience. The demand for the right of the electorate to recall their elected representative at any time has been raised in various circles. The advancing of the date of the 14th Lok Sabha elections is, in itself, a sign of weakness of the ruling bourgeoisie and the unpopularity of its program, which both the Congress Party and the BJP have championed, at the centre and in various states. There is growing unity in action among the workers and peasants against this anti-people program. The big bourgeoisie is hoping to use these elections to regain lost ground, and launch a fresh assault on the livelihood and rights of the masses after the elections. The mood of the people shows that the situation is not only fraught with grave dangers, but that it is also pregnant with revolutionary potential. In order to turn this potential into a real force, we communists need to act in unison. The broad masses of workers are demanding unified leadership from the communists. There is certainly more discussion now than before among communists, cutting across party barriers. However, we have still not arrived at the stage when we can say that the communist movement in India is politically united around one uniform set of tactics – around one immediate program. Such a fighting program is already beginning to emerge out of the mass struggles; it is necessary for all communists to recognise this and further develop this alternative program to defeat the bourgeois offensive. While various parties in the communist movement are backing communist candidates and working class candidates as part of their attempt to popularize and develop the alternative to the bourgeois program, there are others in the movement who are pursuing a conflicting agenda. Those who have entered into an electoral understanding with some bourgeois party are backing that party’s candidate instead. There are even some constituencies where one communist candidate is contesting against another communist candidate. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, restoration of unity of Indian communists is an urgent necessity as well as a possibility. It is urgently needed in order to effectively combat the drive towards fascism and war. It is possible provided a critical mass of communists join hands, cutting across party barriers, for the sake of strengthening the unity of thought and action among the working class and communist movement as a whole. One of the most important lessons from the 20th century is that the essential condition for victory over fascism is united and consistent action by the working class. Such a united front was built by the communists of all countries, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party with Comrade Stalin at the head. Comrade Dimitrov, a leading figure in the Communist International at that time, repeatedly emphasized in all his writings that without political unity of the working class, it is not possible to build a real fighting front that can defeat fascism. In the opinion of our party, it is a grave mistake for any communist to come to the rescue of the bourgeoisie in its moment of crisis. Today, the ruling bourgeois class in our country faces a serious crisis of credibility. More and more people do not trust either the BJP or the Congress Party. They do not find acceptable this electoral process that is designed to deliver the reigns of power into the hands of such parties that the people cannot trust. The times are calling on the communists to come forward as champions of an independent political front, without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. Only the working class can save India from the dark and dangerous future that the bourgeoisie has in store. The working class can do so if and only if it acts as one political force, with one unified vanguard Communist Party at its head. It can lead India out of the crisis provided it is united around one immediate program. While the proletarian revolution entered a period of retreat with the fall of the Soviet Union, retreat does not mean the end of revolution. It only means that communists have to work out afresh the tactics that are appropriate for this period. There is an urgent need to further develop the mechanisms and forums for communists belonging to various parties to engage in discussing the program of the working class at the present time, around which all the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist forces can be united. Political unity around one program is an immediate necessity. It is the stepping stone to the restoration of unity of all revolutionary communists in one party. The Kanpur Communist Conference held on December 25, 2000 resolved to work towards actualizing the slogan: One working class, One program, One communist party! Since then, various attempts have been made by various parties and groups towards this end. The conference on the Indian State and Revolution, organised by our party in November 2002, attracted communists belonging to many different parties, who participated actively in the discussion. Our party has decided to organise another communist conference this year, in August 2004, to discuss the immediate program for the movement. We will soon be issuing invitations to all the communist parties and groups. I look forward to your presence and participation at this important conference. With revolutionary greetings, |
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Sir, The elections to the 14th Lok Sabha have begun with the first phase of polling concluded in several contituencies in Karnataka. There are simultaneous elections also to the Legislative Assembly. There is considerable suspense in the air about what the outcome is likely to be. It is widely expected that Karnataka will elect a large number of MPs from the Bharatiya Janata Party, while it seems likely that the incumbent Chief Minister Mr. S. M. Krishna will come back to power. To the largest fraction of the population, of course, there will be little difference from the outcome. At the level of the Lok Sabha the alienation of the electorate from the elected has never been greater. While the stories of the common man center around matters of livelihood, drinking water, a roof over one’s head, enough food on the plate and safe transportation, to name a few issues, the members of the Lok Sabha are not likely to bring any of these to the common man. The main aim of the elected will be to find ministerial berths in the new Government since it it has been projected that the BJP is likely to be the single largest party and is expected to cobble together a ‘stable’ coalition Government that will see a full term. At the level of the Assembly there is significantly more anxiety, since a large number of vested interests would like to see a continuation of the policies adopted by the Krishna Government and have invested a lot in currying favour in the corridors of power. It is instructive to spend a few moments thinking about the candidates that are running from Bangalore South constituency: Mr. Ananth Kumar of the BJP who is one of the important leaders of the party in Karnataka, who was just seen campaining with none other than the notorious Mr. Narendra Modi, and Mr. ‘Layout’ Krishnappa of the Congress, who had earned the nickname from his vast realestate empire and construction business in the many residential layouts scattered across Bangalore. This state of affairs then begs the question as to what the future is really likely to be. On the one hand, the main stream media has been projecting the notion that India is somehow shining, while sections of the media debate whether it is the policies of the BJP or in reality it is the ‘vision’ of former Congress Governments that should claim the ‘credit’ for this shine. This shine, unfortunately, last lustre for the largest fraction of the population of the country. One of the important tasks that faces progressive forces is the need to completely expose these two most important of the parties of the bourgeoisie. They must be shown to represent none but the interests of the rich and the propertied, and that they compete with each other to please the bourgeoisie, at times in consonance with the tunes of international financial institutions, and transnational companies, and at times not. They must be shown as those that dupe the people in the name of patriotism, national security, national pride and a host of other bogus slogans, while in fact they represent the most notorious and base elements of the Indian political spectrum. Another important task is to expose thoroughly the phony and bogus debates centred around the alleged ‘secularism’ of the Congress and its logical counterpart, viz., ‘communalism’ of the BJP. These debates are precisely those that are engineered by the bourgeoisie to somehow say that the problem with the Indian polity is with parties, rather than with the British state that has been inherited with the rulers. Thus, challenging times lie ahead for the progressive forces in the country. A. Narayan, |
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