Beyond the 16th Lok Sabha elections:

Prepare to fight the capitalist offensive!

By the time this issue of Mazdoor Ekta Lehar reaches our readers, the elections to the 16th Lok Sabha would have been completed and the results declared.

Prepare to fight the capitalist offensive!

By the time this issue of Mazdoor Ekta Lehar reaches our readers, the elections to the 16th Lok Sabha would have been completed and the results declared.

Throughout the past few months, day after day we have been bombarded with the propaganda of BJP and Congress Party. Incitement of communal and inter-caste hatred, unleashing of sectarian violence and all kinds of diabolical methods have been used in their cut-throat rivalry for votes.

It is claimed that periodic elections and multi-party contests are indicators of a democratic political system where the will of the majority prevails. However, it is a wealthy minority headed by the biggest monopoly capitalists who actually set the agenda, using their ownership and control of the media and the enormous financial resources at their disposal. This is the case not only in India but also in Britain and the United States of America.

Ten years ago, the big bourgeoisie promoted Congress Party as the alternative to the BJP, with the propaganda that it would implement capitalist reforms with a “human face”. This time around, it is the BJP that has been promoted as the alternative to the “non-performing” Congress Party.

Hundreds of crores of rupees have been spent to promote Narendra Modi as a “strong leader” and a “man of action”, hiding the fact that his leadership and his actions serve the capitalist class and not the workers and peasants. The so-called good performance that is expected from the BJP is nothing but more rapid globalisation and escalated exploitation and plunder of the land and labour of our country.

The Tatas, Ambanis, Birlas and other Indian capitalist houses are hell-bent on pursuing the program of globalisation, through liberalisation and privatisation. They want to continue taking out enormous amounts of the wealth produced by Indian labour and investing it abroad to exploit the labour of others, so as to enhance their global status. Driven by unlimited greed and imperialist aims, the big bourgeoisie is keen to open up all sectors of the economy to foreign capital, to step up the joint plunder of our land and labour.

In the conditions of continuing crisis of the global economy, the capitalists of other countries are keen to penetrate the Indian economy even further to reap maximum profits. They are eyeing the youthful Indian work force that can be super-exploited. They are eyeing the enormous savings of our people, which are currently in the hands of state-owned banks and insurance companies. They are also eyeing the massive potential profits from retail trade, a sector which is largely in the hands of small and medium-scale operators at this time.

It is crystal clear that there are only two possible programs today. One is the program for the defence of the capitalist system and the status quo, the defence of the interests of the exploiting minority in power. The other program is for undermining the capitalist system, upsetting the status quo, and bringing the toiling majority to power. It is the latter program – the anti-capitalist and human-centric program for the Navnirman of India – that Communist Ghadar Party popularized widely during this election campaign.

Workers, peasants and the toiling majority of people in our country stand to gain from uniting and fighting for the program to undermine the capitalist system and bring themselves to power. However, the political unity of the working class and people requires unified leadership on the part of the communists. It requires a clean break with the diversionary line of supporting Congress Party or seeking to form a Third Front”.

There are some within the communist movement who are talking about repeating the experience of 1996, when a coalition of regional and left parties formed the government with outside support from Congress Party and CPI(M). What really is the lesson from that experience?

The experience of 1996-98 showed that a coalition of regional bourgeois parties cannot and will not deviate from the program of globalisation through privatisation and liberalisation. Life experience of the people since that time has confirmed that regional bourgeois parties such as AIADMK, DMK, Akali Dal, Shiv Sena, Janata Dal (United), Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Trinamul Congress and Biju Janata Dal are all committed to implement the capital-centered program of liberalisation and privatisation in their respective states.

One argument that is given for communists to support a Congress Party led government, or to join a Third Front, is that BJP represents the main danger and “bigger evil” because of its communal ideology of Hindutva. However, those who are genuinely interested in eliminating the danger of communalism and communal violence need to recognize that it is not enough to keep the BJP out of power.

Thirty years ago, it was the Congress Party that initiated the policy of state terrorism in Punjab, portraying people of the Sikh religion as being terrorists and the Central Government as the defender of secularism. Since then, communal violence has been unleashed again and again, both by parties that preach Hindutva as well as by parties that preach secularism.

Communalism is an inseparable adjunct to the rule of the bourgeoisie. Division of the working people on the basis of religious beliefs serves the capitalist class to preserve the status quo. It is extremely harmful to separate the struggle against communalism and communal violence from the struggle against capitalism and the globalisation program.

The Constitution of India, while claiming to be secular, does not prohibit the State from interfering with the citizens’ right to conscience.

No bourgeois party or coalition can protect our people from the danger of communal violence, or from the capital-centered economic orientation and the threat of escalated imperialist plunder. Only the working class can do so, in alliance with the peasants and all the oppressed. The times are calling on the communists and all progressive forces to build such a revolutionary alliance of the workers, peasants and all the oppressed.

If we communists do not rise to the occasion, the worker-peasant front cannot be built as a powerful political force. The agenda of the big bourgeoisie will advance, wreaking havoc on the toiling masses and on the self-reliance and sovereignty of India.

Let us not get diverted by calls to build a Third Front or support some “lesser evil”!

Let us focus our attention and energies on building the united worker-peasant opposition to the capitalist offensive!

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