The New Wave is a revolutionary Socialist Organization building a Bolshevik Leninist Party in India and the 4th international. www.newwavemaha.wordpress.com www.litci.org September 2011 (edition no.3)

Perspectives on the Anti-Corruption movement

Contents: -

Editorial…………..………………………………………………………………………………...……………………….………2Our analysis of the Anti-corruption movement…………………………………………………………………………….………3The Politics of the Indian bourgeois – BLPI………….………………………….……...…………………………………...……..5Statement on the Egyptian revolution (International Workers League-Fourth International) …….……………………...………..9Statement in support of the Maruti strike..…...………………………………….…………………………………………...……12Role of the media (Movement towards Socialism – Bengal group) ……………...……………………………………………….14India at 64 – an appraisal ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….16

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Editorial

We present to you the 3rd regular edition of the regular

newsletter of the New Wave group. It is with a good sense

of satisfaction to have been able to maintain the continuity

and improve upon the quality of our publication through the

months and we endeavor to continue to better it. This

edition has two significances, namely it being the first

regular edition being printed after the creation of our party

document the Bolshevik Leninist manifesto for India, as

well as having been written in the background of one of the

most prolific mass mobilizations in recent history in India.

The anti-corruption movement has caught public

imagination in an unprecedented way and equally so, has

shattered the pride and prestige of the ruling class of India,

the Indian bourgeois! Whilst these mobilizations were

taking place in India, more advanced revolutionary

movements had emerged in West Asia and North Africa.

The revolutions in this region have had far reaching effect in

shaping the consciousness of people not just in the west

Asian and North African countries but also elsewhere

around the world and have emerged as an inspiration for

masses all over the world. The tremors of the mass

upheavals were felt as far as Wisconsin state in the USA! In

addition to these democratic movements in the Middle East

and in India, we have also witnessed a re-emergent working

class movement in India with the workers of Gurgaon-

Manesar in the auto industry being the vanguard. Till now

the struggle continues and a fresh round of struggle has

begun against the arbitrarily imposed lock out by the Maruti

management. In our present edition newsletter we are

presenting our analysis of the earlier strike which took place

in July with updated perspectives on how the struggle would

shape up and the dual role of the bureaucracy in relation to

worker’s militancy. These views are in fact a culmination of

our experiences in the last one and a half years of our work

as a group starting from the mobilizations around the

general strike of 2010 and the abortive BSNL strike which

took place in the same year to the initial failures of the

Maruti strike in July. In addition to this we also present two

articles from our comrades of the “Movement towards

Socialism” from West Bengal, with whom we are presently

building an alliance with a perspective towards achieving a

merger in the foreseeable future. We also have a very well

written report on the Egyptian revolution from comrades

from the International Workers League. We are also

reposting an earlier posted article from the BLPI which dealt

with the politics of the Indian bourgeois. We consider this

article to be of great importance even more so in the context

of the ongoing anti-corruption movement in which the

political dynamics of the Indian congress party and its

offshoots and allies have been revealed in full.

Contact : Cell: E-MailAdhiraj Bose 9730109981 Comradebose1989@gmail.comPushkar Ekbote 9422616272 Karl10marx@gmail.com

Mail us at : A-10, Patil Paradise , Dattawadi , Singhad Road , Pune : - 411030.Published by “NEW WAVE-PUNE SECTION”

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Whither the Anti-Corruption movement ?

The anti-corruption movement in India in recent times and the mobilizations which took place around the arrest of Anna Hazare, and subsequently gathered around his fast, have been one of the largest mass mobilizations in recent history in India. Some sources cite numbers going up to hundreds of thousands, whilst the day of Anna’s arrest itself saw nearly 60000 protestors on march in Delhi alone. Never since the end of the emergency have so many people been mobilized in such a manner across the nation to bring about a political change. But the mobilizations which took place on the 16th of August and the 12 days thereafter were in fact a culmination of a struggle in motion since April this year. The leadership of which has fallen by and large to the hands of the ‘India against Corruption’ organization and the team led by Anna Hazare. The core of the demands raised by the leadership was to erect

the office of an ombudsman empowered with various legal powers to investigate, and persecute corrupt officials from the highest to the lowest levels. This is the essence of the Jan Lokpall bill proposed by them, and the main focus of their agitation. Many in the left used the limitations of this approach as well as the apparently ‘middle class’ nature of the initial mobilizations to distance themselves from the mobilizations. This bespoke of their fallacious view of class struggle, and the fallacy of sectarian approaches towards mass mobilizations. They expect a kind of ‘perfectionism’ in class struggle which would take the course according to their own fantasies. The reality of class struggles of course escapes our sectarian muddle heads. Nothing else contradicts the vague assertions of the left intellectuals more concretely than the fact of the composition of the mobilizations themselves.

Nature of the mobilizations:

Whilst the first anti-corruption mobilizations were limited in scale, the second and most recent mobilizations were larger in scale and more diverse in composition. Unlike the first mobilizations in which a limited section of people mostly a section of students , petty bourgeois and NGO activists and their connections, the latest mobilizations drew support from the lower strata’s of society as well as the earlier support base of the so-called ‘consumerist’ middle class. Most significantly, as was witnessed by the mobilizations on the 23 rd august and throughout the agitations, a good measure of working class and leftist presence had already come to the fore. The largest group present in all the mobilizations however, was the students, and petty bourgeois classes in particular the lower and middle petty bourgeoisie. These are classes whose position pits them towards being natural allies of the working class in its struggle against Capitalism.

In the context of India, these classes find themselves more and more pauperized and suppressed by the forces of Capitalism, of which corruption is increasingly revealing itself to be an integral part! This is reflected to the best degree in the massive scams and scandals which have hit the country repeatedly throughout its recent history as well as the massive accumulation of wealth in foreign banks, in tax havens and other depositories of ill-gotten wealth. Swiss banks alone account for over a trillion and a half dollars of Indian wealth stolen from its people by the corrupt degenerate ruling class of India, the Indian bourgeois! This is the accumulated wealth of decades of scams, bribery and looting of public sector companies. Corruption is but one of the means for the bourgeois to both undermine democracy as well as enrich itself, but what sets it apart is the brazen and degenerate nature in which it pauperizes the poor and enriches the rich. The extent and scale of this thievery is understandable from the fact that there are nearly $1.5 trillion worth of Indian money

hidden in Swiss banks alone, and much of this money is illegally accumulated. In the sense that the movement is pitted against corruption, particularly emerging from the highest echelons of power, it is objectively Anti-capitalist. But this reality has completely escaped the sectarian muddle heads of our times. They would rather pour indignation from the comfort of their air conditioned rooms and apartments rather than go to the field of struggle and struggle to give leadership to the masses in action.

Another feature of the mobilizations which were a consequence of its class character, was that it was urban centric. It was the urban petty bourgeois and students based in urban centers, who took the lead in organizing the nationwide agitations. More significantly, it was focused on the major urban centers of India, the metropolitan cities of Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi and Chennai as well as other emerging metro cities like Pune, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. These cities in addition to being key administrative and financial centers are also major industrial centers with a large concentration of an organized working class as well as unorganized working class. Given this disposition, the mobilizations would have the effect of radicalizing the working class of India in its most strategically significant areas, and would bring the petty bourgeois and students into an alliance with the working class. The eagerness of the masses to pose a general strike to break the bourgeois government was ever present. The only factor that did come in-between the further radicalization of the movement was in fact the leadership which it had. Whilst, revealing the massive power of the masses in action, the movement from the beginnings to its consequence also revealed the limitations and weaknesses of petty bourgeois leadership and perspectives, and revealed the weakness of the petty bourgeois class itself.

The movement and its leadership:

The mobilizations of the 16th of August were a culmination of the movement which began as a national movement from

April this year. From the start the leadership of the movement had crystallized around the leadership team of Anna Hazare

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and his colleagues from the IAC organization. The IAC (India Against Corruption) was an NGO set up and headed by Arvind Kejriwal an ex-bureaucrat who had quit his lucrative post to champion the cause of anti-corruption. The other members of the team were all from similar backgrounds, either being ex-bureaucrats or former judges (as is the case with the Bhushan duo and Santosh Hegde). Anna Hazare himself is from a peasant background and is ideologically entrenched in the Gandhian concept of a nation of self sufficient village systems. From a brief perusal of the backgrounds of the leadership team which stood at the core of the movement reveals the most obvious petty bourgeoistic nature and orientation which comes from their position as ex-bureaucrats and specialists. It is no surprise then, that the solution which they posed to the problem of corruption in India would be one which would reflect their petty-bourgeois logic.

The proposal that the team has put forward involves the creation of an office of the ombudsman which would be given extensive powers to tackle corruption, to the extent that it would almost be made supreme over the highest law making authority in the country, the parliament. The selection of the Lokpal itself is not through popular mandate but through a highly filtered and specialized body of which the chairperson would be the Prime Minister himself. Moreover, the bill envisages the existence of a body which is essentially subordinate to the President. Perhaps it did not occur that under their scheme both the highest member of the selection committees as well as the superior authority over the lokpal

were offices now controlled by the ruling party in command! To add to the irony of the whole situation, the government had already accepted their earlier demand of creating the office of the lokpal and had even drafted its own version of the bill to that effect.

The leadership had only this much trouble, that it wasn’t the same version that they had prepared, the main difference being the scope of the lokpal of the government’s bill which was narrower than that presented by Anna and his team and excluded lower bureaucrats as well as the Prime Ministers and Chief justice of the supreme court. In addition to these they also excluded members of parliament from the ambit of the lokpal’s jurisdiction. The mobilizations of the 16th were planned around a fast call by Anna Hazare which was done only after repeated negotiations with the government ended in failure owing to their arrogance stand. Any empirical observer would have us like to believe that it was in fact the bill and the charisma of the leadership by Anna which led to the success of the movement. The reality is, it was the massive outpouring of indignation of the government’s highhanded ways in defending itself against a popular backlash that was the real reason for such a massive and spontaneous mobilization of people. The preventive arrest of Anna Hazare was the real catalyst of the movement which galvanized the anger of the masses of the country against the forces of the bourgeois. In particular, this anger was focused upon the Congress Party and its oligarchs in power.

Where to for the movement?

The sudden and massive spontaneous eruption of public anger against the bourgeois state has had few parallels in recent history of India. The last time such a large scale mobilization took place was in 1977 against the emergency measures imposed by the then Congress government in power. Side by side, it has also revealed several weaknesses of the movement which prevented it from being expanded in its scope and impact. These weaknesses include: a) Weaknesses in leadership, b) Relative absence of working class leadership, c) reformist perspectives taking the fore.

Though the intentions of the leadership of Anna Hazare and his team weren’t wrong, the fact of their being focused on arriving at solutions to problems as rooted in society as Corruption within the parliamentary framework, made the entire struggle limited in scope. Nothing was raised beyond the immediate issues pertaining to the Jan Lokpal bill; neither were more diverse solutions sought which could bring the people directly into the arena of combating corruption. Corruption affects the working class and its impoverished allies in the peasantry and petty bourgeois more than any other class in Indian society, yet they have no say over it. It is only the forces of the working class and other democratic forces in India under class leadership which can tackle the threat of corruption effectively.

Corruption cannot be seen as something that is merely symptomatic and curable with reforms here and there or a quick fix here and there. It is outright wrong to think that one

change to the existing power structure in place would magically as if cure the ailment of corruption which drains the people of India of the wealth that they deserve. The rabid and institutionalized corruption is in fact a result of the peculiar development of capitalism in India which has taken off at a very late period of Capitalism when the bourgeois is bereft of its progressive ability. At the same time, this bourgeois which has emerged from shamelessly hijacking the revolutionary movement for independence, has had to find various means by which to various underhanded ways to enrich itself. One of the ways this was done was through corruption.

This was further strengthened by the prolonged one party rule of the Congress party over India which was the harbinger of corruption. Since then all other political parties be it offshoots of Congress or otherwise have emulated these tactics to make them its own. With statism, the bourgeois was forced to concede welfare to the people, but here again; the structure of the bureaucracy which was inherited from the British, posed a way to undermine this victory. The bureaucracy has now emerged as a major pillar of corruption fulfilling a vicious nexus between corporations, the politicians and the bureaucracy. All the while, this nexus remains buoyant by progressively alienating itself from the people and thwarting any principle of accountability the bourgeois might talk of. This will continue to be so, notwithstanding the plethora of laws and regulations in place, as long as the people themselves aren’t given the first stake in combating corruption.

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But to raise this possibility would be too much to ask from our reformist leaders who are content with the dysfunctional parliamentary democratic system of the bourgeois. Their limited perspectives weren’t restricted to strategy alone but reflected tactically as well. Throughout the strike, the leaders were concerned with the smooth functioning of the day to day work of the capitalist system. It was a strange sight to see that in the midst of huge nationwide protests, businesses and trade running smoothly throughout the country. Eventually, the more militant aspirations of the people were doused by this. The best way to pressurize the bourgeois government into caving into their demands would have been to declare a general strike throughout the country and appeal to workers in every sector and in particular strategic sectors like the railways, to stop work in solidarity with the protests. This would have brought everything to a standstill! Far from such militant tactics, the leadership under ‘team Anna’s’ direction took great care to keep the protests ‘peaceful’ and made sure that not even traffic would be disturbed in cities.

Ultimately, the protests did end with a two way compromise, with the government giving its assurance to discuss the three issues which was pressed. The original demand of the Jan Lokpal bill being passes by the government was turned down in favor of the government’s own version which would “consider some of the issues raised by the Jan Lokpal bill”. On the 29th of August the fast was ended with this compromise being achieved from both sides and was hailed as a “win-win” solution for both sides. The fact is that it was in fact a loss for the people both ways and a pyrrhic victory for the government. Neither did the masses get a bill which would include their democratic participation in tackling corruption nor did they get the more fighting version of the lokpal which was initially promised! One of the factors behind such a compromise being hatched in haste was the failing health of Anna Hazare himself. After 12 days of fasting, he had lost 7.5 kgs of weight and his blood pressure was declining to

alarming levels. He could not fast forever, and neither the government nor the team leadership could let him die. The fast would be broken sooner or later. It was broken and a compromise was reached. These actions reveal the weaknesses of Gandhian tactics which build a mountain and deliver a mouse!

If the anti-corruption movement is to achieve its goal of a society free from corruption, where there can be social justice and where the wealth is not deprived from the people by a clique of the corrupt, then it must advance from the limited frame of a reformist movement to a Socialist struggle with the working class at its core. Corruption will not be ended by one Lokpal nor would it be over with the right of recall alone, but through the overturning of the present wasteful and degenerate Capitalist system by the democratic rule of the working class and its allies under Socialism! The first step towards this transformation is to strive for creating popular committees to fight corruption by the workers at the workplace, by gram Sabhas at the village level and neighborhood committees at each ward in every city!

The protests at India gate saw crowds of several thousands with some figures suggesting over hundred thousand present at the venue.

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The Politics of the Indian Bourgeoisie- Suren Morarji

[This article was published in India by The Bolshevik-Leninist party of India, the Indian Section of the Fourth International as a pamphlet the title of which was Saboteur Strategy of the Constructive Program. It is a very fine analysis of the politics being pursued by Gandhi and the Indian bourgeoisie and completely reveals their role in Indian Nationalist Politics. .]

The programme in a nutshell

The centre of the Constructive Program, says Gandhi, is “always the charkha around which all activities revolve.” Inasmuch as politics is in the final analysis governed by economics, Gandhi is undoubtedly correct. The charkha is the centre of the Constructive Program because the charkha (in conjunction with all other implements in the primitive wooden

family) constitutes, together with the land and the cow, the main means of production in Gandhian society. Charkha economics determines charkha politics. Hence “all other activities revolve around it.” We, however, are reluctant to leave things at that. We perceive certain inconsistencies in the way in which charkha politics has been formulated. We

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suspect that this brand of politics has not been entirely spun on thecharkha, that better spindles and more powerful looms have had something to do with its creation. While, therefore we accept that the charkha forms the basis of the Constructive Program, we must pick out two other features of this program (Communal Goodwill and Social Service) which we regard as only of slightly less importance. These latter help us to decipher the real character of charkha politics. The other items

in the Thirteen Point Program are not of much significance – prohibition, scavenging, kindergarden literacy, chivalry towards women and rashtra bhasha. These are the personal virtues we are adjured to cultivate. We are not much enamoured of them. We think more satisfying canons of conduct are still available for us in the good old homilies of Socrates, the Buddha Socrates and Christ.

Charkha and Gram Udyog

It is not possible to foist a programme on the masses which does not in some way assuage a fundamental mass urge. If, therefore, the peasantry of our country have in the past extended a welcome to the Constructive Program, the explanation of this must found in their conditions of existence.

British Imperialism has not only destroyed the balance of their little village economic structures and subjected them to cruel exploitation through rent-exaction and direct and indirect taxation. It has dragged the peasantry into the coils of the world market and subordinated them to its vicissitudes: Driving his primitive plough on his shrinking strip of land, the Indian peasant comes directly up against, all the mechanized efficiency of the foreign capitalist farm. His prices are governed by world prices. This not only depresses his standard of living but makes it fluctuate as wildly as a seismograph in an earthquake. It is on this medicament of the peasantry that Gandhi has closed in with his charkha and gram udyog programme. He seeks to counterposed once more the self-sufficient productive framework of the ancient village community to the all-pervasiveness of the world economy.He seeks to balance the instability of primitive agricultural production With the wooden prop of the charkha and other village handicraft.Unfortunately, it is not imperialism alone that subordinates peasant production to the needs of the world market. Native machine industry has stepped in to consolidate the process. It is true that the native bourgeoisie aspire to shield themselves behind a high tariff wall. But that is essentially a shield – a device to ward off the unfavourable repercussions of production for the world market. Furthermore, it is not imperialism alone that exploits the peasantry. The native bourgeoisie have long ago matured in that act of ravishment. The internal market (i.e. largely the peasant consumer-population) is great source of hope for the Tatas, Birlas, Kasturbhais and their kin – especially when relieved from the embarrassment of world competition. The charkha and the gram udyogimmediately rush up against the electric power looms of Ahmedabad and the blast-furnaces of Tatanagar. In such an encounter there can be no doubt on whose side the odds lie.

Thus not only is the charkha and the gram udyog program reactionary in its aspiration to resuscitate the primitive village community with its mediaeval standards of life. It is sterile in that it sets out to match primitive handicraft with machine industry in conditions of capitalist competition. It possesses the rare distinction of’ being both reactionary and utopian. The program however has deep-going political implications. In the first place it represents a carefully camouflaged endeavour to

distract the attention of the middle and lower strata of the peasantry from the lands of the zamindar and rich peasant. This is a preliminary indication of its bourgeois counter-revolutionary character. In the epoch of capitalist ascendancy the necessity to unify and expand the internal market, as well as to release the productive forces from the feudal productive relations which fettered them, drove the bourgeoisie to liberate the peasants from the landlords and thus to convert both land and labour into marketable commodities. Today, in the epoch of imperialism, the epoch of capitalist decline, the bourgeoisie can no longer play this liberationist role. Capital and land, capitalist and landlord, are too closely intertwined for either to entertain homicidal intentions in regard to the other. The Indian bourgeoisie will not interfere with property relations on the land. The Indian peasant must not be encouraged to covet his landlord’s land. If he does not have sufficient land to dig even a miserable existence from, he must be taught to look elsewhere for succour. And there, for the bourgeoisie, begins the messianic role of the Mahatma and his charkha. But the charkha and gram udyog programme plays a more positive role in the service of the bourgeoisie. “Khadi” says the Mahatma in his pamphlet on the Constructive Program, “means a wholesale swadeshi mentality, a determination to find all the necessaries of life in India.” The charkha is thus the political emblem of the Indian bourgeoisie in the same sense that the hammer is the emblem of the working class and the sickle that of the peasantry. Small wonder that it is so boldly emblazoned on ehe bourgeois “national” flag! The charkha and gram udyog program is a powerful political weapon in the economic struggle of the Indian bourgeoisie against imperialism. It is a substitute for the dangerous and incalculable method of the mass struggle. It established the native bourgeoisie on its feet especially after the boycott campaign of the early twenties. Can anyone wonder, that despite the yearly turn-out of hundreds of thousands of yards of the finest spun cloth in their own mills, the textile mill-owning millionaires are the most habitual wearers of the coarsest khadi? We will not of course mention that these devotees of the charkha have even taken to the production of “khadi” in their mills!

What Gandhi calls the centre of his Constructive Programme (the little wooden machine that spins his webs for the imperialists, his sophistries for the intelligentsia and his clap-trap for the masses) is none other than the centre of the bourgeois struggle for control over the internal market and the mass movement; a treacherous, reactionary and utopian device to frustrate a fundamental mass urge in the guise of pandering to it. That urge is the urge of the peasantry to overthrow existing property relations on the land as a means of

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emancipating themselves from the choking tyranny of the world market

Communal Goodwill

The masses cannot wait until the Mahatma constructs his pattern of freedom for them on his charkha. Freedom, for them, is neither a mere slogan nor a desirable ideal. Freedom, for them, is an imperative necessity – to do away as speedily as possible with all forms of exaction, exploitation and tyranny. While the charkha spun on, the cauldron of mass revolt was on the boil.

The communal problem is in essence an expression of this phenomenon. Its very virulence is an index to the turbulence of mass discontent. Its distorted appearance does not negate the fact that, at root, it is an expression of the class struggle.

The land-owning upper classes of India and the more subservient section of the native bourgeoisie had no reason to conceal their alarm at the depth and power of the mass movement which the nationalist bourgeoisie attempted to harness to their class needs. The Muslim upper classes in particular (they were more parasitical in proportion as they lacked a big industrial bourgeoisie) feared the accumulating wrath of the Muslim peasantry in the countryside and the vast mass of unemployed and under-employed petty bourgeoisie in the towns. The powers and privileges they derived from their alliance with British Imperialism were, moreover, endangered by the political aspirations of the nationalist bourgeoisie. It was necessary to attack the mass movement – for an attack on the mass movement would not only disorient the masses but would equally weaken the only sanction of the bourgeoisie against imperialism. That attack took the form of Muslim communalism, drugged with separatist demands, and delivered through the intellectual medium of the job-hunting Muslim intelligentsia.

Muslim communalism was in fact the solution of the Muslim upper classes to the sharpening class-antagonisms of Indian society. In form it was a piercing flank attack on the anti-imperialist mass movement. Every betrayal of the mass struggle by its leaders was a signal for a communal counter-offensive, leading to further disorientation and prostration of the masses. Communalism thus became a powerful weapon in the hands of the, imperialists. Every defeat, every betrayal, every postponement of the anti-imperialist struggle widened the communal rift strengthened the communalists. But inasmuch as the crisis of imperialist society in India cannot be solved under its aegis and every defeat of the masses is an education for the future, the gathering proportions of mass revolt had reduced the communalists to greater and more complete dependence on the

imperialists. So complete is this dependence that the liquidation of the communal problem can only ensue on the prior liquidation of imperialism India. Muslim communalism also derived an initial impulse and sustained impetus from the reactionary politics of bourgeois nationalism. Rationalism was the philosophy of the bourgeoisie needing to liberate the peasantry from the control of a feudal church in the period of capitalism’s rise. In the epoch of the decline of capitalism the bourgeoisie need not to liberate but to harness the peasantry to their yoke. Hindu revivalism is the philosophy of one such bourgeoisie, for Hinduism has had no peer in its ability to inhibit the most fundamental urges of the masses. Hence, under Lokmanya Tilak, the real ancestor of hysterical Hindu communalism, bourgeois nationalism took on a decidedly Hindu coloration. In the hands of Gandhi the process was further extended and deepened. It was a simple sadhu that bourgeois nationalism dangled before the masses of the peasantry, who flocked in their hundreds and thousands to receive his dharshan. It mattered little to the illiterate, Muslim masses that the sadhu was able to recite the Koran or quote from the Bible. That sort of dope they could get in higher quality and greater quantity within their own mosques.

Himself responsible to a certain extent for the strengthening Muslim communalism, the Mahatma aspires to solve by religious methods what is in essence an expression of the class struggle and in form a political counter-attack. His method is that of “unbreakable heart unity.” The communal problem to him is not a strategically problem in the setting of the anti-imperialist campaign. It is not an imperialist counter-attack on the mass movement. It is a personal problem. The hearts of both Hindus and Muslims are somehow not in the right place. They have first to set their hearts right so that there may no more be “Hindu water or Muslim tea.”

As always, the religious formulation conceals a political maneuver. The Endeavour is to find an agreed formula between the landlords and princes of the Muslim League and the industrial bourgeoisie of the Congress – a formula which will divide the spoils of office under imperialist patronage and thus present a united front of the exploiters, in control of the armed resources of the State, against the accumulating forces of mass revolt below. One failure or two to win the Qaid-e-Azam does not discourage the Mahatma. While the masses keep straining to get their hearts into piece he is at least certain that real unity will be prevented – unity of the masses against their exploiters along the lines of the class struggle

Social Service

Neither the charkha manoeuvre of Gandhi nor the communal manoeuvre of imperialism can halt for one single moment the process of the class struggle. And though the Mahatma may refuse to recognise the class struggle, the class struggle never fails to recognise the Mahatma. Kind and sensitive man that he

is, he cannot ignore that recognition. He winks back at it, in the form of social service. Social service is Gandhi’s answer to the class struggle. He continually warns against “violent and bloody revolution.” He preaches (to the poor masses to be sure!) “voluntary abdication of riches and the power that riches

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give.” Meantime he advises the masses to live at peace with their masters, i.e., to collaborate with their exploiters. To help the masses to accept his advice he has his program of social service.

We are not here concerned with the motivation of humanitarian social service. The Mahatma’s heart may be as bottomless as the caverns of hell in its sympathy for the poor. We are here concerned to demonstrate the reactionary social orientation of humanitarianism itself. Inasmuch as the class struggle is fundamental to class-society and ineradicable within it, the

attempt to moderate its harshness on the exploited classes, and by these means to distract their attention from it, is not only futile but is to enter into the service of the exploiters themselves. If Gandhist society is the same thing as the egalitarian society, the social objective must be not to subject the masses to less exploitation, but to free them from exploitation altogether. The latter is certainly not the object of the Mahatma. He thereby demonstrates how completely he is in the service of the bourgeoisie. Sweet faces and angel graces are not beyond “riches and the power that riches give.”

Role of Non-Violence

One feature in common all three principles of the Constructive Program contain: in the guise of serving a fundamental urge of the masses, each of them seeks to frustrate it. The charkha pretends to serve the desire of the peasantry to emancipate themselves from the world market but fastens over them the stranglehold of the native bourgeoisie and ultimately, of the very world market they were seeking to avoid. Communal heart unity pretends to lay down the basis for a united offensive of the masses against British imperialism, whereas in reality it deflects the masses away from the anti-imperialist struggle and fastens the death-grip of imperialism over them. Social service, aspires to elevate the economic and cultural level of the masses but, in reality, perpetuates the system of semi-feudist exploitation that holds them down. The common feature is not directly attributable to deliberate deceit on the part of the Mahatma. We do not know, nor do we care, whether even indirectly it is so. What is pertinent is that the manifest contradiction between object and result springs from the single unifying factor in the whole distraught philosophy of Gandhism – non-violence. For, says the oracle himself “the constructive program they otherwise and more fittingly be called constructon of Purne Swaraj or Complete Independence by truthful and non-violent means.” The Constructive Program is the non-violent road to swaraj. The basic unifying force of the whole Constructive Program as of the whole theory and practice of Gandhism, is non violence.

Force or violence is the final sanction of law. The imperialist state is organised violence. To overthrow this imperialist state is to counterpose to its own violence a superior violence. This superior violence can only come from the intervention of a foreign state or by the intervention of the masses on the political arena. Revolution is the method of the defeat of the violence of the state by the superior violence of the masses. Truly does the Mahatma characterise revolution as “violent and

bloody.” Non-violence is defined by the Mahatma as “a process of conversion.” In other words, non-violence is concerned with the individuals, not with the system.

To the violence of the imperialist state (the Mahatama once called it “leonine”) non-violence replies with moral pressure on the state official. It tries to “change the heart” of the state official, i.e. to move him to pity, and thence to understanding, by self-suffering. Thus, non-violence does not challenge the authority of the imperialist state, but seeks to change its manifestations. By denying the right of the masses to counterpose their own violence to the violence of the state (the final sanction of all laws), non-violence subordinates the masses to the authority (i.e. violence) of the imperialist state. The method of non-violence apart from its political content) is at best reformist, not revolutionary. That is to say it operates entirely within the imperialist system. Whatever the phraseology of its advocates, non- violence cannot seek to overthrow the imperialist system.

The strategy of reformism is a pressure strategy. Violence, or overthrow strategy, is the strategy of revolution. Whether for pressure or for overthrow mass struggle is necessary. But should the mass struggle develop along violent lines (i.e., should it direct itself towards the overthrow of the state), the collapse of the imperialist state will be accompanied by the collapse of the property forms it maintained – the native bourgeoisie being too weak to maintain their property either against imperialism or against the masses. The message must, therefore, be forced into the straightjacket of non-violence, so that bourgeois property is maintained. Herein lies the basic contradiction, the double faced character of non-violence. It is clothed with revolutionary phraseology and purports to save the masses from imperialism. But it actually serves counter-revolutionary purposes, for it dams and deflects the mass struggle, and saves imperialism from the masses.

Saboteur Strategy

The mass struggle that began in August ’42, despite nearly a quarter of a century of preaching on the part of the Mahatma, was openly and quite unashamedly a violent struggle. The masses, at the very outset of the struggle, sloughed off the

straight-jacket of non-violence in which the bourgeoisie had sought to imprison them. They thereby demonstrated to the world the scant esteem in which non-violence was held by them. That was their way of asserting that their road to the

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overthrow of the imperialist state was the road of violence, of class struggle, of revolution.

Who need wonder at the panic of the native bourgeoisie who quite early deserted the struggle and attempted to stop it, and of the Mahatma who today denounces it and disclaims all responsibility for it? Never again will they attempt to use the mass struggle to browbeat imperialism – not if they can help it. The Mahatma, therefore, puts forward his Constructive

Program not as a preparation for civil disobedience, but “as an alternative road to Swaraj.” So important is this “alternative road”, that he threatened to fast if his disciples did not accept it. So important is it, that behind its immense fire-power has been also brought up the heavy artillery of the Rs 1½ crores Kasturbe Fund (more social service!). To sabotage the revolutionary mass movement fromwithout by forcing on it once again the straightjacket of non-violence which it had decisively rejected – that is the strategy of the Constructive program

Conclusion

But the straightjacket will stay on only so long as the masses do not enter the arena of direct struggle. Hence the Constructive Program seeks also to sabotage the mass struggle from within, to destroy the existing class organisations of the masses. The Constructive Program has, therefore, recently been extended. Separate programs have been prescribed for workers, for kisans and for students, so that each of them may contribute to the “construction ofswaraj.” It is not necessary here to deal with these in detail. Suffice it to say that “construction of swaraj means today, in 1945, for Mahatma:

1)the destruction of the class independence of the trade unions, through the “construction” of rival company unions (as at Ahmedabad) and the enticement of functioning union away from the Trade Union Congress into the openly class-collaborationist Hindustan Mazdoor Sevak Sangh.

2)the smashing of the class independence of the kisan sabhas through the “construction” of a Kisan Congress, dominated and controlled by the National Congress, i.e., under the kindly patronage of the upper classes, both bourgeois and landlord.

3)an ideological offensive against Marxism under cover of a drive against Stalinism, and the reduction of student organisations to ideological servility to the bourgeoisie through the “construction” of a Students’ Congress which will “keep all politics out” – except Gandhian superstition and utopian revivalism.

More immediately, the Constructive Program is designed to prepare the ground for the coming surrender-settlement with British Imperialism. It is not the first occasion on which the Mahatma fled precipitate before a mass offensive on the imperialist state, to bury himself ostensibly in the social uplift, and religious regeneration. At least one previous public

performance has history been afforded of this identical stage-trick. Especially after the calling off of the struggle of the earlier thirties did the Mahatma appear to vanish from the political scene, under the pretext of devoting himself entirely to the cause of the Harijans. What he actually achieved every Indian in his ‘teens already knows: the thwarting of the mass-struggle and the preparation, step by step, of the Congress for eventual collie-service on behalf of British Imperialism. The objective is no different on this occasion. While the Tatas, Birlas and Kasturbhais employ the aid of imperialist capital and technique in the more intensive exploitation of the masses, while the Munshis and the Rajagopalachariars employ the imperialist police to shoot down striking workers and bludgeon rebellious peasants, and throw militant fighters against imperialism into imperialist jails with the help of the imperialist penal code, the Mahatma will be pacifying the masses and shepherding them along the “constructive” road to swaraj – building “swaraj” within the imperialist system! The vision is almost idyllic. The reality reeks of rank insidious treachery. The Constructive Program aims to sabotage the anti-imperialist mass struggle now and for good.

Gandhi addressing a crowd of followers during the Non-Cooperation movement.

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Egypt: A revolution underway - ( Report from the International workers league ) Between the 3rd and the 6th June, a representation of Brazilians took part in the Conference of Solidarity with the Arab Revolution in Egypt. Dirceu Travesso, representing CSP Conlutas, Clara Saraiva for ANEL (Students’ National Association – Free) and Gloria Ferreira of the PSTU. What follows is the text of a report on situation in Egypt, written by comrades Gloria and Clara.

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Winds of Revolution still blow in El Cairo

Conversations with workers and activists revealed that winds of revolution are still blowing in Egypt. The process initiated on January 25th goes on posing the alternative: revolution – counterrevolution.

The city breathes revolution. El Cairo has 7.9 million inhabitants, 2 out of which wee on the Tahir Square during the denouement of the great events in February. Seeing the numbers it becomes easy to understand: the revolutionary awareness was built up by the millions out in the streets stands for the absolute majority. The taxi-driver, the caretaker, the worker, the student, the young unemployed woman… they have all been on the square, they saw the power of the moving masses, and they know that after 25th January the country is no longer the same. Inquired as to what has changed after the fall of Mubarak, Ahmedm a young taxi-driver answered categorically, “Everything.”

Youth and vanguard

The first anniversary of the day when Khaled Said, a middleclass youth was arrested, tortured and murdered by the police of the Mubarak dictatorship. The entire population was shocked by this terrible injustice, thinking that this could have happened to any of them or to any of their children. This turned into a great symbol of struggle and, in 2010, thousands walked out into the streets carrying his photographs and saying “We are all Khaled Said”.

We talked to many young people during this trip, to the protagonists of this revolution. Practically all of them has been jailed or had a story of repression during the Mubarak days to tell. Many even have a fiend who has been killed. When we reached the El Cairo University, we saw the exhibition of the photographs of the students killed during the Revolution.

We managed to have a meeting with representatives of the 6th April who, even though they do not have a socialist programme or a clear strategy of power, their activity was central to the Revolution. They are young people who, in 2006, built an organisation stemming out of a workers’ strike in Mahallah, in the north of Egypt, when workers occupied factories. These youngsters, many of them students, felt identified with the struggle of the workers and they realised how important that was to challenge the dictatorship. They began to have a larger scope of action in 2007 due to an audience conquered through the Internet.

The Revolution

They gave us the best report on the Revolution: “After the ascent in Tunisia, when Ben Alli was toppled, combined with the enormous repudiation (real hatred) of the population against the Mubarak, the 25th January dawned. As an outcome of these two conditions, the Engineers’ Trade Union summoned for a rally for January 25th, traditionally an institutional commemoration of Egyptian police. When we issued this summons we never knew how this date would remain marked in history.”

“The demonstration was a great success and, in several points of the city, many thousands of workers and young people started gathering little by little. During the march, they chanted, “come, come, bring your families and join us.” Meanwhile the police brutality accrued against the demonstrators. But the effect was contrary to what it was meant to be: more and more people walked out into the streets.” News started coming from other cities in Egypt: they were also occupying squares and streets and spawned more confidence in resistance.

“So we thought, ‘oh OK. So now we have a revolution. So what are we supposed to do now?’ Half a million people were already occupying the Square and the number kept on increasing as a part of the same national movement increasingly confident that they would only stop when Mubarak fell.”. There was no other conclusion to be drawn: we were face to face with a revolution. Repression became more savage. Thousands of demonstrators were arrested and some were killed. The deep meaning of what was going on spawned more self-sacrifice and greater predisposition to fight to the absolute end. Simultaneously what grew was also the felling of equality among those present. Men and women, Moslem and Christians, young and old, all together were equal and revolutionary.

Massive self-organisation began. Commissions to guarantee security, food and cleanliness were formed. There were millions living in an inexplicable harmony in quest of building for future of their country. “The Square was the most perfect place in the world at that moment,” one of the leaders tells us.

Mubarak tried to demoralise them saying that they were an isolated movement on the Tahrir and they not more than youngsters. He threatened them dreadfully, cancelled the internet in the whole country to avoid communication through social networks. They told us that at that moment they discussed the need to extend the revolution to workers. And this was the turning point. Mubarak’s attempts at isolating the Revolution at Tahrir Square proved to be a failure: workers at factories went on strike, something that was evidenced during the three days when the Suez Channel, economically very important for imperialism, was paralysed. The Revolution became stronger until, on 11 February 2011, Mubarak fell.

New tasks

A young activist asks us about Brazilian experience. He poses the problem: “We are all under 30: we have not done any militant activity before the Mubarak dictatorship. We do not know how to do overt military activity.” There is an ample process of political and trade union reorganisation underway. Strikes have extended all over the country; at the universities there is a broad process of mobilisation against local leaderships and administrations; activists discuss building of trade unions, independent students’ associations and political parties. And yet, even from the democratic point of view there are still many tasks to be completed. They army is the boss of the country, even the same police are still patrolling the streets, the officials of the old regime have not yet been published and there are new rules demanding that $160 000 are to be raised before a party can be mounted, etc.

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Unemployment and poverty are still rampant

When we asked a taxi-driver about the living conditions, he answered, “Ah! This is still just the same”. The structural conditions that had led to the revolution are still there: economic crisis, inflation where food is concerned, unemployment and poverty.

An activist expressed the indignation of the people clearly, Can you understand this? A kilo of meat here costs about 15 dollars. Thousands of Egyptians do not know the taste of meat.”

Change in the living conditions and even the furthering of the democratic achievements depend on the split with imperialism and clash against the limits of capitalism in the region. Showing off their total subordination to imperialism, the military administration have just signed an agreement with the IMF including a 3000 million dollars, allegedly “aid” to “warrant the transition to democracy and freedom”. Actually it is conditioned to keep the new government under neo-liberal regulations and in agreement with the IMF prescriptions and includes such measures as privatisations, opening to foreign investment and free transit of capitals.

Youth is still fighting against the authoritarianism of the government

As from 25th of January, Fridays became protest days, larger or smaller rallies; the square has never been empty. There went young workers, unemployed, many of them newly graduated from universities, with no prospects for future. The military junta has been tying hard to control and – if necessary – to repress this movement. But they are up against an entire generation educated in this revolution. The government repressed a march in support of the Palestinians heading for the frontier with Gaza on the Nakba anniversary.

The army, the strongest institution of the new regime, continues committing all kinds of maltreatment and has recently been involved in a scandal. An office stated that they had been practising a “test of virginity” on women activists arrested during protests at the Tahrir Square to make sue that later on they could not be accused of rape. This real aggression against women spawned commotion among the population.

Young people made headway in their organisation, even in the neighbourhoods and together with workers. For the first time in the history of Egypt, they are holding free elections to students’ centres and trade unions for teachers and employees. We can perceive their great mistrust in the current regime governed by the militaries.

A few days ago, a newspaper issued an article suggesting the possibility of freeing Mubarak without a trial. An outraged population reacted to that so the government issued a statement saying that it was all the periodical’s fault and that as from now every article will have to be authorised by them. They still feat the power of the masses and – especially so – the selflessness of the Egyptian youth.

The contradiction: the masses still trust the junta administration

The great contradiction is that the masses have great expectations in the current administration. The High Council of the Armed Forces (HCAF) claim to be part of the 25 th

January revolution when actually they are part of the counterrevolution for they upheld the old regime until the very last and only yielded when the adamant stance of the masses made the change unavoidable if social order was to be maintained. But not everybody is aware of that: armed forces enjoy high prestige in the country. In spite of their own crisis in the face of the revolution, they went through the process without a split because – even if they were obliging and allowed the police to repress, it was not their troops who repressed the protest overtly. It was the police who shot at the demonstrators. That is why it is the police that wound up so burnt-out, that is why they had to abandon the Square and, after the fall of Mubarak, were dissolved – even if the cadres were stationed elsewhere and are still part of the repressive schema.

This is why the situation of the country is so complex: there is terrific confusion in the awareness of the workers as to the current government headed by the armed forces and a great doubt as to what the future of the country is supposed to be. But, according to the young people we have been talking to, people can see very clearly that it was the workers who made the revolution and the people and not the militaries, even if they do expect the army to carry out the transition towards democracy and a change in the country.

The recent government-proposed Referendum held on the reforms to the Constitution was a way of channelling the revolution towards small constitutional changes meant to create the mirage of a real change in their lives. The 6th April Movement stood for the NAY vote. They told us that most of the young people voted NAY, especially in El Cairo. The inland regions, less affected by the revolution and receiving more army-made ideological propaganda pushed the final result to 77% for AYE.

“Revolution in Egypt: AYE or NAY?

Among the youth who participated in the mobilizations experience is further ahead. For example: we met a young man wrote on the walls, “Revolution in Egypt: AYE or NAY?”

When we asked him what this meant he spoke of the ire against the social pest of the country and the military government. What he was trying to express was that Revolution in Egypt had not reached its end, that we could not be celebrating so much, that the banners raised on the Tahrir Square had not yet been achieved. He criticized the current government bitterly and said that the living conditions of the population had not changed. He regretted that the demonstrations did not keep on with the same strength, but at the same time he expressed hope that economic and social demands should go on being raised alongside with the democratic ones. He was an unemployed newly graduated architect. He was the face of the revolution. Criticism posed to the government was a recurrent issue in conversations with young people. We might say that youth regards the Superior Council of the Armed Forces.

The young vanguard of the revolution does not feel represented by the figures that lead the country. On Friday 27 th

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May, several youth organizations, headed by the 6th April Movement, summoned for a day of demonstration. About 500 000 people got mobilized; it was the biggest event since the Revolution. The main demand was trial for Mubarak and immediate establishment of a civilian government.

It was a great demonstration in spite of the boycott of the Moslem Brotherhood who, consistently with their role of the principal political mainstay of the government and the Council of the Armed Forces, took a stance against the protests.

The rally expressed that the revolutionary process goes on and that, in spite of their traditional leaders. Workers are seeking ways and building their own. The government and the armed forces are trying to find a way of aborting this while Egyptian workers and youth are gaining awareness of the deep change they have spawned: Mubarak fell. The toiling masses entered the stage with an impressive force. When workers and youth get together with the purpose of changing their lifestyles, there is no stopping them.

A picture of the “march of the millions” in which 1.5 million people gathered on the streets of Alexandria to demand an ouster of the president Hosni Mubarak.

Report on the Maruti Suzuki strike and analysis:

On the 4th of June, the workers at Maruti Suzuki India Limited plant at Manesar went on an indefinite strike. They demanded the recognition of the Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU) and the reinstatement of the 11 sacked workers who led this new union who had been dismissed two days before. By the 8th day the strike had gained enough momentum to make it through to prime time on several national news channels. It was a struggle of immense strategic significance which could fundamentally alter industrial relations on a national scale. Maruti Suzuki is the largest automaker in India, and autoworkers have been playing a pivotal role in the reemergence of workers struggle. Once the strike began it received tremendous support from all the workers of theregion. All 65 unions functioning in the industrial belt extended their support to the striking workers at Maruti Suzuki. A two-hour tool down strike was announced first on the 15th then deferred to the 20th, by which time the strike was over. The strike was called off in its 13th day in a deal brokered by the Haryana Government, run by the Congress party with the AITUC. The agreement was non-committal towards the recognition of the MSEU and included a problematic clause for making the workers compensate for the man-hours lost

during the strike by deducting wages for 26 days for 13 day strike. Workers returned to work on the 18th of June. The silver lining to this however, was the fact that 11 of the sacked workers were re-instated in the plant, which is a landmark achievement in the history of worker’s struggles at Gurgaon. Nevertheless the management strengthened by the end of the strike sacked the 11 MSEU leaders once again in July 29th, together with the suspension of 38 other workers. The workers could not accept the bosses’ backlash and production was halted since then. In September 1st, five thousand workers gathered in the entrance of the plant. This included workers from many factories in the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera-Bawal industrial belt in Haryana, including workers from Maruti Suzuki Gurgaon plant, Suzuki Powertrain Manesar, HMSI, Hero Honda, FCC Rico, Rico Auto Dharuhera, Rico Auto Manesar, Omax, Lumex, Sona Steering and others. Various Unions from the independent factory-based ones to central trade unions AITUC, HMS, CITU, INTUC, NTUI, AICCTU have expressed solidarity with the strikers. People from surrounding villages, students from colleges in Haryana and Delhi and many intellectuals also participated in the meeting. The strength of the strike and the solidarity it generated is indicative of the potential of the movement. What emerged from Manesar may develop into a strike of national

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proportions striking at the very highest echelons of power of the bourgeoisie. Longtime Privileged Corporation in the Heart of Auto Industry Maruti-Suzuki which is owned 54% by Suzuki Motor Corporation of Japan is the largest producer of passenger cars in India and has had a shady history of linkages with the top leadership of the Congress party. It is no secret that the company, which was nothing more than a small scale manufacturer before 1985, owes its present existence primarily to the nepotism of the Indian bourgeois state and the Congress Party. It was after all Sanjay Gandhi who was the brainchild behind the Maruti 800 car which was the de facto ‘people’s car’ of India. It was this car that propelled the Indian automobile industry from its nascent stages. The plant at Manesar sits at the heart of Maruti Suzuki India Limited. The workers movement in Manesar is nascent but incredibly powerful and is one of the products of the proletarianization of the peasantry last 10 years in India. The focal point of these struggles has been in the automotive industry. The industry constitutes 6.5% of the Indian GDP and has a heavy presence of foreign manufacturers and together with strong domestic manufacturers like Tata, Mahindra and Bajaj. Workers Strikes on the Agenda The strike at Manesar revealed some of the most critical dynamics of the Indian labor movement and established some of the main hurdles in the road of the furthering the revolutionary struggle of the masses. In the recent past major struggles developed in the national level: BSNL in December 2010, the dock workers in February and Air India pilots both in 2011. Locally major struggles unfolded across the country. In Madras the workers of the Taiwanese FoxConn went on strike for the right of organization and agitation as well as against state repression. In Maharashtra the sugar industry workers strike was infact one of the largest uprisings of workers in the recent past in Maharashtra involving 200,000 workers across the industry. They won a massive concession from the government in lieu of payment of wage arrears. They succeeded primarily due to the massive pressure exerted by the sheer scale of the struggle as well as its occurrence in a politically strategic sector of the Maharashtrian economy which relates directly to the top echelons of the ruling political clique of the Congress Party and its offshoot the NCP. In the auto industry, there were strikes in Honda, Rico and Maruti-Suzuki in the Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt. In all cases they reached magnanimous proportions with the Rico workers strike having an international impact. In Haldia dockworkers went on strike against the dismissal of contract workers which were reversed.

The most active sectors were the workers hired by public companies followed by foreign private corporations. In the public sector the opposition to privatization is at the center. Among foreign owned companies, wages and the right to unionize are the main issues. The air India strike in particular turned out a significant victory which achieved the recognition of the Air India Pilots union as well as the reinstatement of fired employees. They are now at a position to start for a new struggle against the mismanagement of the public carrier. The same cannot be said neither for the dockworkers nor the BSNL struggles. The latter has particularly created an air of frustration as it was called off by union leaders with no positive results despite its strength. The dockworker’s strike has been pacified till now by deferring the struggle almost endlessly till the point of dragging the workers into negotiations with the government and the port management. This is done in stark contrast to the victories the dock workers had achieved in 2007. Wherever necessary state repression was employed to benefit corporations like in FoxConn, Honda and now, Maruti-Suzuki.

What was common in the victories of these struggles was the consistent and uninterrupted struggle waged by the workers against the forces of the bourgeoisie and kept on a consistent pressure upon the bureaucratic leadership to perform in their interests. Whilst in Air India, we are only dealing with a nascent trade union where the degenerating tendencies of a union bureaucracy have yet to emerge. This has allowed a greater scope for militancy amongst the employees of Air India. The struggles of recent times have revealed the dialectical relationship existing between trade union bureaucracy and worker’s militancy where they naturally tend to go against each other. The bureaucrat usually seeks more power and perks whilst the workers seek better living conditions and working conditions. The victories of the class in recent struggles affirm this interrelationship in the positive whilst the defeats affirm this in the negative. However, the defeats notwithstanding their immediate consequence which is negative are not permanent/historical defeats but only temporary in nature. More than the negative aspects of eventual immediate defeats, these struggles nonetheless showed the strength of the working class and the potential for their further development in working class militancy. In some cases, the class militancyand strength is strong enough to go against the most bureaucratized of leaderships they receive, and secure concessions despite their constrictions. The Necessity of a New Militant Unionism The strike at Manesar hit at the heart of the automobile industry and a critical branch of political-industrial matrix that is a defining feature of Indian Capitalism. Its fate will have a lasting influence in the coming struggles.

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The first strike last June showed a negative role played by AITUC. The strike was powerful but the AITUC played down local and national solidarity that could force the bosses to recognize the union and to reinstate its leaders, with no compensation for the non worked days. The potential for solidarity was evident in the course of the struggle from the willingness of the workers in the region to go for a tool-down strike. This, however, was deliberately stalled by the leadership of the AITUC.

The failure of the solidarity action paved the way for the isolation of the struggle and gave the management and the government an upper hand to deal with the workers and their representatives. Now, however the situation has changed. Having learnt their lesson from the defeat of the last strike, a better effort has been undertaken to generate solidarity among the workers at other plants which has added strength to their present struggle which started from 29th of August. The focal point of the last strike was the non-recognition of the worker’s union the MSEU. The management’s alternative is the company’s own yellow union. The bourgeois in times of crisis has a preferred alternative to directly crushing theworkers. This alternative involves pacifying, and deceiving the working class into submission. Who better to do it than the bourgeoisie’s own pet bureaucrats of the yellow unions? The bureaucrats of the company’s yellow union perform preciselythis function namely, that of pacifying the workers and disorienting them from struggle and militancy into

contemptible submission. The main demand of the workers has remained unchanged in the present struggle as the last strike had failed to resolve this issue. The trade union albeit rudimentary is still an organization of the working class, and an organization of the class is useful only when it’s a fighting organization. All forces of revolution must be steadfast in resolutely fighting against any tendency that deprives a union its fighting teeth and turns them into passive organizations or worse, into direct stooges of the bourgeoisie. With the existing bureaucratized union at Maruti, this has been the case. The success of the present struggle at Maruti will become an inspiration to the working class all across the nation and pave the way for liberating the working class from the stranglehold of compromising pet unions of the bourgeoisie. It is thus, necessary for all counter revolutionary forces to join hands in dousing the militancy of the striking workers. The struggle is not over and the fight must continue till the preferred union of the workers is recognized by the management and the government. The workers need to develop an alternative militant body to take the lead, to build solidarity locally and nationally in order to develop an uncompromising struggle till victory which will have a tremendous impact in the national political arena.

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The role of the media in the 21st century:

(-MTS Bengal)

Bourgeois Democracy is defined to be the system which is run, by the people, for the people and of the people. Commonly understood, the system has three ‘pillars’ namely the legislature, executive and judiciary. These three work in tandem to preserve in one way or another, the class structure of Capitalism within a bourgeois democracy. But in addition to this, a fourth pillar has emerged on its own right to supposedly safeguard the sanctity of democracy; this fourth pillar is the pillar of the bourgeois media! With vast assets, networks and coverage under its control, the bourgeois media serves to manufacture consent in the minds of the people, through a clever ploy of deception and subtle propaganda.

Dual role:

Coming to the Indian context, the media scenario has changed considerably over the last 2 decades with the liberalization in print and television media. Earlier it was the state owned Door Darshan which had dominated the airwaves unquestionably for several decades since India’s independence in 1947. Today there are nearly 600 television channels and dozens of news channels both in Hindi and English. The blandness of Door Darshan has given way to crisp and ‘entertaining’ news from

private channels that have a penchant for exaggeration and dramatization. Both these features were seen in the manner in which the news channels reported the anti-corruption movement in recent times. Similar is the case with the print media with India having nearly 60000 newspapers registered with the registrar of newspapers of India. To an extent the media even today despite its commercialized distortions, can play a positive role, in exposing corruption scandals ( as it has done with scams like the CWG scam, and the 2G spectrum scam) as well as highlight certain issues from time to time. But this trait is limited by the fact that the media would never put to question the very system on which it rests and from where all the ills of our present society emanate, that is the system of Capitalism! Herein lies the essence of the duality of the bourgeois media. This character trait is shared with practically every other organ of the bourgeois system. It will necessarily side with the bourgeois where it feels threatened, all the while cleverly pretending to be with the people. Outright lies are thus replaced by clever distortions and manipulation of facts and in most case outright omission of information. The commercialization of news has now added to its political and social roles, a commercial role where the profit motive reigns supreme. News is therefore, not just for

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the enlightenment and awareness of the people, but also for their ‘consumption’. News has become a commodity and news media would thus be no different than corporate factories churning out cheap edible ‘entertainment’. The following characteristics are not unique to India but are in fact a global trend which has been best represented in its most negative avatar by the reach and influence of the Rupert Murdoch news empire.

1) Concentration of power:

Capitalism ultimately works towards the concentration of power in the hands of a few who become the ruling elite. The state and its machinery work to entrench this power and defend it. The media in its role as an organ for the bourgeois in power serves the same end. One example is that of the Murdoch media empire running all the way from America to Australia and present in one form or another in virtually every country. The channel network he controls, Fox network, has been notorious in manipulating and shifting public opinion in favor of politicians and parties who favor Murdoch’s agenda. Fox news was at the forefront of manufacturing consent in favor of US led invasion of Iraq. In this way the news media has worked and is working towards “manufacturing by consensus” an opinion which favors its own agenda.

2) Decline in ethics:

Corporatization naturally creates its own set of ethics, namely the ethics of greed and accumulation. In case of news media this means a decline in ethical standards of journalism and its replacement with a new set of degraded ethics. The only Irony here is that (as is of course typical of the bourgeois) the media still claims aloud the halo of sanctity around it. It invokes it time and again whenever they feel threatened by censorship and any other kind of attack from the state forces. TRPs and profits rule the roost when it comes to reporting. So news

which is not ‘entertaining’ or does not ‘please the public’ would have to be shelved. Never mind that it was about a pertinent issue or that it would affect the daily lives of the people. Everything must be adjusted to ‘profits’, even news!

3) Corporatization of the media:

With an increasing presence of corporates and bigwigs joining the business of media and communication ( each with his own political support and ideational motivations ) , it has almost become a routine affair for news media to parrot the agenda of the corporate bosses. During the 2G scam, the credibility of various news reporters and journalists had taken a hit after linkages with the corrupt ministers and companies were revealed. Liberalization, corporatization and globalization are the by-words for the bourgeois in India, and it is the media’s job to create consensus for its exploitative policies through its networks and channels and constant battery of propaganda.

The Indian situation:

Globalization in the Indian context has opened up the news and media sector to foreign capital. This has meant the entry of foreign news multi nationals like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network. The network controls the Hong Kong based Star TV network which has the lion’s share of entertainment shows in India today as well as a section of the news media. Gaining inspiration from their foreign peers, Indian news channels too have ventured into the arena of commercialized news and entertainment with the three ‘Cs’ dominating the airwaves. “Cricket, Cinema, and Crime” . This accounts for the bulk of news available nowadays. In other very innovative concept of commercialization and corporatization of news has been through the exchange of ‘private treaties’ pioneered by Bennet Coleman & company *(Owners of the times news network.) where news space has been exchanged for equity shares.

Fox News Channel is the news channel owned by Rupert Murdoch. The channel is notorious for its penchant for political manipulation and favoring governments which are supportive of its own viewpoints.

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INDIA AT 64 – AN APPRAISAL- ( From MTS – Bengal )

On the midnight of 15th August 1947 a nation was born. This new nation was greeted with this famous line by Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru, “On the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India awakes to light and freedom!” Around 64 years since then, the present day prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh greeted it with a message of ‘growth’, ‘development’ and

‘power’. But the irony of history is that just as the first prime minister of India presided over a partition, the present prime minister also presides over a partition. The first partition was the partition of the “Empire of India” into India, and Pakistan. The ongoing partition is between India, that is the land of Billionaires, and Bharat that is the land of impoverishment.

Contradictions of Wealth :

On the one hand India boasts of harboring the 4th largest concentration of billionaires in the world, whilst on the other hand, ‘Bharat’ possesses 836 million people living on less than Rs.20 a day. With such mass of poor people, India achieved the great distinction of being ranked 126 in international human development index. What this means is, that the poor are more fortunate to be born in countries like Bolivia, Guatamela and Gabon than in India. And as the poor continue to get poorer, the rich riding on the most brutal exploitation of the poor in the history of the sub-continent scale such enormous heights of wealth and power that they are today richer than the billionaires

of Germany and Russia on net asset worth basis. There are today 100000 dollar millionaires in India of whom 25000 reside in the cesspool megalopolis of Mumbai. A city where over 60% of its inhabitants are slum dwellers having to live on around a quarter of the city’s total area! The remaining 75% of the city of course is very well open to the rich and their children to live and thrive in. Never mind the fact that there is so little for the poor than 2.5 million of their children die every year out of the most avoidable reasons. What makes this state of affairs worse is the fact that over the last 15 years, the decline of infant mortality has actually slowed!

Increasing inequality:

The misery of the poor can be seen further by the miserable expenditure patterns where they end up spending more than half of their income on essentials, like food and clothing and healthcare and little on education. The privatization of healthcare and education has added towards making these services out of reach for the vast majority of the country’s citizens. India today in fact has the 6th most privatized healthcare in the world. The data from the MPCE shows that out of Rs 503 as monthly expenditure, Rs.34 goes on healthcare and Rs17 on education. With these standards the quality of education they receive itself amounts to being sub-standard, to mention nothing of the quality of public healthcare. This is the average spending of an Indian farm household. The bourgeois ideologues who dominate the media in India today, of course, shamefully boast of the achievements of Indian capitalism in supposedly raising the standards of the poor. Among other things they cite the enormous rise in labor productivity over the last 2 decades which has gone up by 84%! Of course what this statistic very cleverly hides is that the bulk of labor in India is employed in pathetically low productivity industries in the informal sector. A small minority that is employed in the organized sector has for the most part been under attack during the periods of reform with privatizations, wage cuts, ‘rationalization’, and contractualization of workforce. In the same period salaries of corporates skyrocketed to astronomical heights, making the rich of India not just richer, but amongst the richest in the world! Whilst, the condition of the urban workforce is degrading, that of the rural workforce or peasants and landless agricultural workers, is degrading to genocidal proportions. The pauperization of the peasantry and its present

round of destruction, outdoes anything that the British with their colonial economy were capable of. The Indian bourgeois may take pride in the fact that it has achieved a task greater than their former colonial masters. This century is witnessing a genocidal drive for proletarianization which seeks to eliminate the entire class of rural peasants and poor driving them in the millions in desperate migrations into urban megalopolises. India has added more hungry people in the last 2 decades than the whole of the world put together! Rural food consumption has dropped to a level 100kg less than what it was 10 years ago. What this reveals, is that poverty in rural India has increased whilst wealth concentrated in the pockets of the urban bourgeois and their nepotistic allies in large landed classes of rural India have increased! As if it wasn’t enough to pauperize the peasantry of India, the Indian bourgeois has now undertaken a massive expansion of agricultural businesses in East Africa which is amounting to exporting the poverty of India to the shores of Africa. Yesteryears colonized have become today’s colonizers. The Class of “Dark skinned Englishmen” as Bhagat Singh would have had us call them, has now taken over the assets of the old Empire and are carving their own empire of misery and nepotism. The parliament has been reduced to a pig sty of criminals with 183 of them being hardened criminals and almost 300 of them being multi-millionaires! But never mind that, they are still entitled to gaudy (and useless) parliamentary privileges, including food at wonderfully subsidized rates as low as 8 rupees for a full plat of Biryani! It would seem that the rates of the parliamentary canteen have stagnated just like the mindset of the Indian bourgeois, stuck with an imperial hangover from the colonial era

Price Rs. 15/-

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