Statement of Communist Ghadar Party of India to the anti-imperialist forces converging in Mumbai.
January 10, 2004
Tens of thousands of people from all over India and from all continents of the world are assembling in Mumbai at the World Social Forum as well as other forums in January 2004. This is a reflection of the fact that the peoples of the world are refusing to accept the course being set for humanity by the likes of George Bush and Tony Blair. Peoples of all countries have expressed their unequivocal opposition to the naked aggression, military occupation and brutal violation of national sovereignty being perpetrated by the Anglo-American imperialists in Iraq, in the name of fighting terrorism.
From Seattle to London and spreading to all corners of the world, the mass movement against the imperialist offensive has grown in strength and significance. People are coming together in massive numbers to contest the assertion that there is no alternative to globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. Declaring that there is an alternative, people are converging to discuss ways to demolish this old man-eating system of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. All of this shows that the anti-imperialist movement is gaining momentum in both breadth and depth.
“War against terrorism and fundamentalism” is the bogey that is being used by the US and its allies to smash the growing movement against imperialism. They brand all their opponents as terrorists and fundamentalists. Armed with the most deadly weapons of mass destruction, it is US imperialism and its allies who are the greatest source of terror. They constitute the main danger to peace and security of the peoples of the world.
The aim and motive of the “war against terrorism” is world domination, through monopoly control over markets, zones for the export of capital, sources of cheap labour, raw materials and energy supply chains. US imperialism is eager at this time to establish its domination over most of Asia and use it as the springboard to dominate the entire world. Other imperialist powers are colluding and contending with the US to advance their own imperialist ambitions.
Capitalism is a system where social production is oriented towards securing the maximum rate of private profit by a wealthy minority that owns the means of production. Capitalism reached the stage of monopoly capitalism, or imperialism, at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, the degree of monopoly and concentration of wealth and power has only grown higher.
Globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation constitute the aggressive program of imperialism and the reactionary bourgeoisie on the world scale today. It represents the further continuation and accentuation of the drive of monopoly capital to reap the maximum rate of profit, through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of peoples of all the countries of the world, as well as through wars and militarization. The parliamentary road, state terrorism and individual acts of terrorism, gangsterism and criminalisation of politics -- are the preferred weapons of imperialism to advance its agenda today.
Imperialism is the source of fascism and the restriction of democratic rights. It allies and props up the most backward social forces in all countries, spreads racism, communalism and obscurantism, to facilitate its domination and plunder. Today it is targeting people of the Islamic faith as part of its offensive against the anti-imperialist movement.
Imperialism means acute poverty at one pole, with unimaginable riches in very few hands at the other pole. It means the division of the world into a handful of subjugating and colonising powers, on the one hand, and the majority of dependent and subjugated nations and countries, on the other hand.
Imperialism means the inevitability of wars between competing capitalist states over markets and territories, wherein the working people are ordered to kill each other for the sake of the empire building aims of their ‘own’ bourgeoisie. The so-called nation building exercises in Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing but empire building missions, motivated by the hegemonic aims of the biggest imperialist power.
The anger of the broad masses of peoples is rising against the war crimes of imperialism and against the highway robbery that is going on in the name of economic ‘reforms’. It is rising against the concentration of political power in the hands of unpopular governments that claim to have the ‘mandate’ of the people to act against their interests. The deepening conflict between the exploiters and the exploited is also leading to the intensification of contradictions within the bourgeois imperialist camp.
These developments confirm that imperialism is the last stage of capitalism, wherein all the contradictions of the capitalist system—the contradiction between labour and capital, between a handful of imperialist states and the vast majority of the peoples, and the contradictions amongst the different imperialist powers—are raised to the highest level. Imperialism is the eve of the proletarian revolution, the eve of the destruction of capitalism and its replacement with socialism.
The alternative to imperialism is scientific socialism, the first stage of communism. Socialism is a system based on social ownership of the means of social production. In a socialist society, production is oriented not to maximise private profit, but towards the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society.
There is no doubt that the world is witnessing the gathering of revolutionary storms on the horizon. This is an indication that the time is ripe for action aimed at eliminating imperialism from the face of the earth, so as to secure lasting peace and guaranteed prosperity for all the nations and peoples of the world. However, for the brewing revolutionary storm to develop and successfully sweep away the moribund system of imperialism, the movement needs to consolidate its political unity.
In order to defeat imperialism, it is essential for the people of each country to organise against capitalism in their own country, which is the base for the imperialist domination and plunder. There is need to link the struggles against capital in individual countries with the international struggle against the imperialist offensive.
History shows that when the Russian working class and people, led by the Bolshevik party, waged uncompromising struggle against imperialism, they won important victories. The Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917 successfully broke the chain of imperialism and one sixth of the globe was liberated from imperialist enslavement. This dealt a mighty blow to the global imperialist system, and accelerated the anti-imperialist struggles in all countries around the world. The chain of imperialism was once again broken when the forces of the anti-colonial and anti-fascist struggles swept through Europe and Asia at the conclusion of the Second World War.
The imperialist chain is bound to break again in the 21st century, in one or more countries. How soon this will happen depends on whether the anti-imperialist forces organise to strengthen their unity in action and strengthen political unity around their common aim of defeating the imperialist offensive. It will depend on whether the communists in every country rally around one Party and one program of revolution and socialism.
Anglo-American troops, out of Iraq!
No to the violation of national sovereignty under any pretext!
Oppose all imperialist warmongering and interference in South Asia!
No to the negation of individual and collective rights in the name of fighting terrorism!
Defend the right of every state to set its own policy free from external dictate!
Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite!
* * *
India is being talked about in the imperialist media as an ‘emerging’ market and as potentially one of the big powers of the 21st century. The Indian bourgeoisie, which for many decades after independence pretended to be part of the anti-imperialist camp and assumed leadership of the ‘non-aligned’ movement, has now revealed its real imperialist ambitions and aims. Armed with nuclear power, it is headed on a dangerous and adventurous course, at the expense and in utter disregard of the security of livelihood and rights of the Indian people.
The Indian bourgeoisie is emerging as one of the most pro-active forces behind the anti-social offensive in the name of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. Sections of the ruling circles are eager that India should become one of the closest allies of US imperialism and a pro-active player in the “coalition against terror” headed by the US. It is only the strength of the mass opposition in the country that prevented the Government of India from agreeing to send Indian troops to Iraq at the request of President Bush.
The monopoly business houses of India, headed by the Tatas, Birlas and Ambanis, benefit from the imperialist loot and plunder of India. They seek collaboration with foreign capitalist monopolies, while pursuing their own imperialist ambitions of empire building, expansion of foreign markets and the Indian sphere of influence. They are part of the imperialist camp, colluding and contending with other imperialist powers.
The Indian bourgeoisie has preserved the political institutions left behind by the British colonialists, and further perfected these institutions to intensify the plunder of the land and labour of India. The Indian State is an instrument for defending and developing capitalism alongside the remnants of feudalism, as the base for imperialist plunder and colonial empire building. It is an arrangement for concentrating political power in the hands of the propertied classes, headed by the monopoly capitalists, to the complete exclusion of the workers and peasants, who constitute over 90 percent of the Indian population. It is a political power of the bourgeois class, with the big monopolies in control of the Union and sharing power with its allies in different regions. The Indian Union is an instrument for continuing the enslavement and suppression of the nations, nationalities and tribal peoples who constitute India, denying them their right to sovereignty.
The struggle of the workers, peasants, women and youth of India against the privatisation and liberalisation program of the bourgeoisie has scored important tactical victories in recent times. By questioning the legitimacy of the right of the party in power to sell public assets to private bidders, without any legal framework approved by Parliament, the working class movement in India has managed to create legal hurdles and constitutional problems in the path of the privatisation plans of the Ministry of Disinvestment. The Supreme Court verdict staying the privatisation of the petroleum companies HPCL and BPCL is a clear example.
The movement against the privatisation and liberalisation program has managed to push the bourgeoisie on the defensive, at least for the time being. This shows that it is possible to halt this juggernaut of market oriented reforms, provided the workers and peasants wage an organised and united struggle, without compromise or conciliation of any kind with capitalism and the bourgeoisie.
There is rising and widespread anger among the majority Indian people against the exercise of political power by criminal self-serving parties of the bourgeoisie. The Indian State claims to be a ‘secular’ Republic. But facts have shown that it is a weapon for the competing parties of the bourgeoisie to accentuate communal divisions and organise communal violence, so as to keep the people at each other’s throats and use them as vote banks.
The recent elections in four states on 1st December showed the growing disgust of the electorate with their elected representatives. It also revealed the fundamental flaw in the political process of Indian democracy – namely, that while people cast their votes, they have no say in the course of society. The power to set the course for India remains exclusively in the hands of the same old corrupt and criminal self-serving parties.
What is required, on an immediate basis, is the building and strengthening of the worker-peasant alliance, as the backbone of a popular front against the bourgeoisie. Such a popular front is a network of politically united organs of struggle of the workers, peasants, women and youth. It will have at its foundation samitis in the factories, mohallas and villages. Such a popular revolutionary front can and must be built in the course of the struggle to halt the program of privatisation and liberalisation. It can and must be built in the course of the struggle against state terrorism, communal violence and all forms of fascist attacks against the fundamental rights of the people. The popular revolutionary front will replace the existing system of party dictatorship with the dictatorship of workers and peasants. They will replace the existing Indian Union with a voluntary union of consenting peoples who wish to live together for mutual benefit.
With political power in their hands, the workers and peasants will affirm their rights and reorient the economy to fulfill their needs. They will end the imperialist domination and plunder, and sweep away all remnants of feudalism. They will eliminate, step by step, the economic basis of capitalism and build socialism. They will defend the right of each constituent of the Union to self-determination and progress. The worker-peasant rule will be a force to advance the anti-imperialist movement on the world scale.
Nayi sadi ki hai yeh maang, Hindostan ka Navnirman!
Lal Kile pe lal nishan mang raha hai Hindostan
Hum hain iske malik! Hum hain Hindostan!
Mazdoor, Kisan, Aurat aur Jawan!
History shows that compromise and conciliation with imperialism leads to disaster for the peoples of the world. It is precisely when the Communist Party of Soviet Union compromised with US imperialism in its 20th Congress that socialism began to decay within the Soviet Union. The anti-imperialist movement was split and weakened.
The leadership of the CPSU began to create illusions about peaceful coexistence with imperialism, to cover up their own conciliation. They spread illusions that newly independent countries such as India could have a peaceful transition to socialism, through a so-called ‘non-capitalist path’ or middle road, thereby denying the need for revolution. They spread the notion of ‘limited sovereignty’ to justify converting the people’s democracies in Eastern Europe into appendages of the Soviet empire. They began to justify imperialist aggression and the violation of national sovereignty, including their aggression on Czechoslovakia in 1968 and on Afghanistan in 1979.
The root cause of the degeneration and decline of socialism in the Soviet Union, and its conversion into a social-imperialist power, was the conciliation on the part of the Soviet Communist Party with social-democracy.
Social-democracy is a form of bourgeois rule and ideology. It seeks to reconcile the class contradictions, both within the ranks of the exploiters and between the exploiters and the exploited. It seeks to achieve class peace at the expense of the exploited masses. The social welfare states of Europe and the Nehruvian regime in India based on the ‘socialistic pattern of society’, were examples of social-democracy in power. When out of power, social-democratic parties play the role of diverting the progressive forces from the path of revolution, by creating the illusion of a reformed capitalism and of a peaceful capitalist world without wars.
Conciliation of the Soviet leadership with social-democracy led to the deterioration of socialism into a hybrid society, with capitalism flourishing at the base within the shell of socialism. As the discontent of the masses grew with this hybrid system, the champions of the capitalist system used this discontent to pave the way for the destruction of even the shell of socialism. Starting with glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s, the ‘neo-liberal’ offensive backed by world imperialism led to the complete disintegration of the Soviet Union and its replacement by a classical capitalist state in Russia in 1991, with supreme power concentrated in the hands of the President.
Declaring that red is dead and that there is no alternative to capitalist reforms, imperialism and the bourgeoisie escalated their anti-communist and anti-social offensive in the 1990s, with the call for globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation as the prescription for all countries. While they claim to be liberalizing society, what they are out to build is fascism – that is, the brutal dictatorship of the most reactionary, rapacious and bellicose sections of finance capital. They are striving to build fascism while maintaining the process of “free and fair elections”, which provide the parties of big capital with legitimacy and a ‘mandate’ to continue attacking the livelihood and rights of the people.
Liberalisation under the present conditions is nothing but a euphemism for unbridled robbery and domination by the monopoly bourgeoisie. Liberalism as an ideology was consistent with the early stage of capitalism. Ever since capitalism developed into monopoly capitalism, to the stage of imperialism, the economic power of the monopolies gets combined with the political power of the state. All traces of liberalism between one section of the bourgeoisie and another gave way to cut throat monopolistic competition.
There is no possibility that imperialism will lead to free competition. The ‘free market economy’ of today has nothing to do with freedom. It is a euphemism for the monopolists to hold the entire society to ransom, claiming that the state has no obligation to anyone excepting the big business interests.
While pursuing their fascistic ‘neo-liberal’ offensive, imperialism and the bourgeoisie are deploying social-democracy to disorient and disrupt the growing resistance to this course. Social-democracy is presenting itself as the moderate alternative to all extremes, spreading illusions about the “free and fair elections” and about a ‘middle’ road once again, through the building of all kinds of parliamentary coalitions.
Life experience of the Indian people with the various coalitions and social-democratic ‘alternatives’ have shown that they only serve to reconcile the toiling masses to the status quo, as they do not upset the capitalist orientation of the economy. The Left-Front Government in West Bengal, for instance, preserves the system of capitalism and implements capitalist reforms, while justifying itself to the workers and peasants as the “best that is possible within the given circumstances”.
A middle road is objectively not possible, as it is not possible to fulfill the greed of monopoly capital and also fulfill the needs of the workers and peasants. In spite of the negative experience of the past with the ‘middle’ road, the conciliators with social-democracy are persisting on this path. Today they are calling for a ‘secular front’ as the alternative to the ‘communal-fascist’ front led by the BJP. They are diverting the progressive forces from the task of building the worker-peasant alliance, as the backbone of an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolutionary front.
Social-democracy and those who conciliate with it seek to compromise the movement against imperialism on all vital questions of principle – be it the national question or of democracy, or the struggle against communal violence, or against fascism and war.
On the question of the nation, social-democracy promotes the Eurocentric notion that there is no alternative to the European bourgeois model of the nation state. It prevents the working people of India and of each country to build on their own philosophies, economic and political theories. It prevents them from developing their own state structure and set the direction of their economy and culture in their service.
While pretending to oppose the Anglo-American aggression on Iraq, the social-democrats and their conciliators justify the suppression of national rights within India, such as of the Kashmiris, Nagas and Manipuris, in the name of defending “national unity and territorial integrity”.
Those within the communist movement who conciliated with social-democracy have ended up supporting the Soviet aggression on Czechoslovakia in 1968 and on Afghanistan in 1979. They argued that it was just for a socialist government to send its troops into another country, for the purpose of a ‘progressive’ regime change. However, if regime change by an external force is justified in one context, it becomes justifiable in every context. In effect, the conciliators with social-democracy became apologists for imperialist aggression and violation of national sovereignty.
Social-democracy compromises the struggle against fascism and communal violence by towing the imperialist line that ‘fundamentalism’ is the main source of danger. In India, social-democracy spreads the harmful illusion that the Indian State has secular foundations and is to be viewed as a weapon in the struggle against communalism and ‘fundamentalism’.
While promoting the parliamentary struggle as the main or only form of struggle, social-democracy and its conciliators seek to divide the ranks of the progressive forces on the basis of making the method of struggle the main issue. By demanding that all political forces must submit to parliamentary democracy or be branded as terrorists, social-democracy fosters splits and divisions among the fighting ranks.
Imperialism and the forces of reaction wish that we, the anti-imperialist forces, remain an unorganised mass of disparate groups, without a common vision and an independent program of action. They wish that the forces of resistance remain divided, with some under the wing of social-democracy and others marginalized and branded as terrorists. They wish that the working class movement remains divided, with various factions competing for space within the bourgeois coalitions and parliamentary fronts. This wish of imperialism and the bourgeoisie can and must be smashed.
The fighting forces need to get together, not only to exchange ideas and air their views, but also to take collective decisions and fight for their implementation. We must decide on measures to strengthen our unity in action against the fascist and military offensive of imperialism, and against globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. We must develop mechanisms to strengthen unity around our common political aim and around one program to achieve that aim.
Reject social-democracy and the ‘middle’ path!
Unite in Action against the imperialist offensive!
Build the anti-capitalist front in each country as part of the global anti-imperialist front!
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