(c) Lok Awaz Publishers 1996. No Part of this Publication may be reproduced without prior written permission of the publisher.
CGPI has come to the conclusion that the stage of revolution in India cannot be determined only by studying the conditions internally. It has to be established mainly on the basis of studying the internal situation within the context of the international situation.
Capitalist forces are put into action everywhere by the world bourgeoisie and reaction in order to block the door to progress of all countries. The world bourgeoisie and reaction are demanding "shock therapy", a euphemism for outright robbery and devastation, as the means to entangle the entire world in their web. Any resistance to the international financial oligarchy is immediately threatened with the use of world bodies like the UN Security Council, military alliances such as NATO, and aggression and intervention in a thousand and one ways. There is a demand that no country must escape capitalism under the guise of demanding a "free market economy", "the multiparty system", "ideological and political pluralism" and what they call "respect" for human rights.
While the world bourgeoisie and reaction are demanding that everyone must submit to world capitalism, the international situation at this time is characterised by the deepening and broadening of the all-sided crisis of capitalism and the only marginal growth of the world economy. The jobless "recovery" is becoming a universal feature of this capitalism, as is so evident in the US, Germany, France, etc. The globalisation of capital and production is the response of the financial oligarchy to the deepening of the all-sided crisis of capitalism. It is the form through which financial oligarchies are fighting out the battles between themselves for the domination of the entire world.
The destruction of the bipolar division of the world has also aggravated the capitalist crisis. The collapse of the Eastern bloc has contributed immensely to the deepening and broadening of this crisis of world capitalism, as masses of the people in these countries are raising their voices against the catastrophic situation created by the collapse of pseudo-socialism and the rise of classical capitalism in their countries. As capitalism opens new space for itself across the world, new tragedies befall the people. It spreads with a tremendous sweep and takes over whole continents and regions in one swoop. It is like a cloud of locusts descending on lush meadows. Everything is turned to dust in its wake, with millions of people thrown into the abyss. While, in its beginning, capitalism spurred the development of the productive forces, at its final stage, it is a moloch sucking the blood of the people. It is this kind of capitalism that exists in India and is the source of all the problems the people face.
The attempt by U.S. imperialism to establish the "new world order", the unipolar world under its command, has emboldened it to crush any resistance to this spread of capitalism and imperialist plunder. U.S. imperialism is still confident that all the doors have been flung open to it, either through violence, as in the assassination of Nikolai Ceaucescu, or through internal subversion, as accomplished by Mikhail Gorbachev. But in its megalomania it does not wish to concede that the revolt of the productive forces against the capitalist onslaught has yet to express its full fury, but like a thunderclap will soon hearken the coming revolutionary storms. While the victory of the "open door policy" as enunciated by the US looks so irreversible, nonetheless, it is being thwarted by the sharpening of the inter-imperialist contradictions, by the resistance of countries like Iran, Iraq and others which are standing up to the foreign subversion and the dictate of U.S. imperialism and are refusing to accept its "unipolar world". Countries like Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam are bravely sticking to their own kind of system, safeguarding their independence and warding off any threats to them. The Islamic movement is also standing in the way of this "open door policy", against the dictate of U.S. imperialism for a "unipolar world".
Under these circumstances, while imperialism, the bourgeoisie and world reaction pretend that the danger of socialism and communism is finished, in fact, the all-sided crisis in these countries reveals an economic base in utter chaos, and is awakening the working class afresh to the dangers the capitalist system poses for them. The contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie, and socialism and capitalism is becoming fierce. It is expressing itself in the struggle between the exploited and the exploiters, and between the forces which are for democratic renewable and those which are opposed to it. In essence, the content of this struggle is to open the door for the progress of society. The time has come for Indian communists to arouse the working class, all toilers and patriotic forces to raise their cudgels, to direct their volcanic power against this onslaught of the most brutal form of capitalism which the bourgeoisie and reaction are deploying against the people in India.
It is the contention of CGPI that the most important contradiction, the one that has become the most crucial, is between socialism and capitalisms. To resolve the contradiction between socialism and capitalism is to resolve everything else. In political terms, it is a contradiction that appears in a particular form at this time; it appears in the form of the contradiction between those who are for profound transformations, for the renovation and modernisations that society requires in order to progress, and those who create illusions about the existing system and the worn-out notions that there is another stage of capitalism, a reformed, social-democratic stage. The contradiction between socialism and capitalism can be seen in the acute struggle in the sphere of theory, in the sphere of the ideological and polemical struggle, in the drive of the bourgeoisie to lower the level of everything in society, especially politics. It means that the cutting edge of this struggle is to oppose those who are creating illusions about capitalism and "socialism", that is, about privatisation and liberalisation and about social-democrcy.
Within this sharpening of the struggle between social socialism and capitalism, all the other contradictions can be seen. It is significant that U.S., imperialism insists on maintaining its blockade of Cuba, not because Cuba poses any kind of threat to the U.S., but because the Cuban system is a repudiation of the notion that there is only one democracy and one system in the unipolar world as defined by U.S., imperialism. This contradiction between socialism and capitalism can also be seen in the striving of capitalism to completely subjugate countries and the forces fighting against it. A large number of countries have been reduced to total dependence on international finance capital, in which the struggle against their economic and financial enslavement is inevitable.
Within the framework of this contradiction, the stage of revolution in India is the elimination of capitalism, all remnants of feudalism, colonialism and imperialism. Capitalism is developing extremely rapidly in India and is sharpening all the contradictions, especially between the exploited and the exploiters. It is this contradiction that has been used by the bourgeoisie itself when it pretends that it is dismantling socialism as a prelude to the economic progress of the country.
There are a large number of tasks of a democratic and anti-imperialist character that also have to be carried out at this stage of revolution. However, the working class and the toiling masses of the country will not understand them if the issue of the destruction of capitalism is not put to them as the first priority. This is the most crucial question which must be discussed and settled at this time around which the strategic political unity of the working class and the broad masses of the people must be established. This, however, is not the end of the discussion on the determination of the stage of revolution. It is only the beginning.
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