untouchable EARTH

Kamikaze Marxists

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 05:41:00 +0000

Shocked and surprised by full blown chauvinistic appeal by Dr Hiren Gohain on his speech at mass meeting of KMSS. He is probably "Last of the Mohikans" of Marxist metamorphosis to nationalist, of course a dearly chauvinist as already "Bagha Bagha" Communist are metamorphosed themselves fully into "progressive nationalist" in Assam. It is concern moment for working class struggles in Assam. Although some of his recent articles and engagement with nationalist progressive bourgeoisie of Assam, denial to self-determination of some ethnic communities such as Karbi, Bodo etc, we assumed that Dr Gohain Sir still believe in pan Assamese nationalism. Reasoning a demand of ULFA he is trying to proclaim "yes, why with India?" and let loose all the cannon. There are many also, who are in favor of a sovereign Assam. It is understandably taken as many love this land affectionately. Pain of this land is felt by them with pure passion and conviction. But nationalist appeal by DR Hiren Gohain SIR at mass meeting is evoked some questions.

"The more strongly the working-class movement develops the more frantic are the attempts by the bourgeoisie and the feudalists to suppress it or break it up. Both these methods—suppression by force and disintegration by bourgeois influence—are constantly employed all over the world, in all countries, and one or another of these methods is adopted alternately by the different parties of the ruling classes. In Russia, particularly after 1905, when the more intelligent members of the bourgeoisie realised that brute force alone was ineffective, all sorts of “progressive” bourgeois parties and groups have been more and more often resorting to the method of dividing the workers by advocating different bourgeois ideas and doctrines designed to weaken the struggle of the working class. One such idea is refined nationalism, which advocates the division and splitting up of the proletariat on the most plausible and specious pretexts, as for example, that of protecting the interests of “national culture”, “national autonomy, or independence”, and so on, and so forth. The class-conscious workers fight hard against every kind of nationalism, both the crude, violent, Black-Hundred nationalism, and that most refined nationalism which preaches the equality of nations together with ... the splitting up of the workers’ cause, the workers’ organisations and the working-class movement according to nationality. Unlike all the varieties of the nationalist bourgeoisie, the class conscious workers, carrying out the decisions of the recent (summer 1913) conference of the Marxists, stand, not only for the most complete, consistent and fully applied equality of nations and languages, but also for the amalgamation of the workers of the different nationalities in united proletarian organisations of every kind. Herein lies the fundamental distinction between the national programme of Marxism and that of any bourgeoisie, be it the most “advanced”. Recognition of the equality of nations and languages is important to Marxists, not only because they are the most consistent democrats. The interests of proletarian solidarity and comradely unity in the workers’ class struggle call for the fullest equality of nations with a view to removing every trace of national distrust, estrangement, suspicion and enmity. And full equality implies the repudiation of all privileges for any one language and the recognition of the right of self-determination for all nations.

To the bourgeoisie, however, the demand for national equality very often amounts in practice to advocating national exclusiveness and chauvinism; they very often couple it with advocacy of the division and estrangement of nations. This is absolutely incompatible with proletarian internationalism, which advocates, not only closer relations between nations, but the amalgamation of the workers of all nationalities in a given state in united proletarian organisations." -Lenin on "redefined nationalism"

But if we go back some years in history of political activities of Assam, those days of "Kalakhar"edited by Dr Hiren Gohain, we have seen a Marxist with commitment to working class and peasant movement, who was beaten at street by ultra nationalist thugs. Its ironical as Assamese nationalism also non other then other Bihari, Tamil, Gujrati, etc nationalism of modern India. Regional nationalism which are mostly based on "language" are on the verge of self destructive, self exposure to its own contradictions and conflicts. Mostly brahmonical in structure, most of all regional nationalism are deposed, degenerated in own conflicts of self induced historical division of labor or caste and class. Regional nationalism are composed itself to full grown oppressive national bourgeoisie now that what LENIN warned about.

"The difference between Lenin and Luxemburg on the national question may be summarised as follows: while Rosa Luxemburg, proceeding from the struggle against Polish nationalism, inclined to a nihilistic attitude to the national question, Lenin saw realistically that, the positions of oppressed and oppressor nations being different, their attitude to the same question must be different. Thus, starting from different and opposing situations, they proceed in opposite directions to reach the same point of international workers’ unity. Secondly, while Rosa Luxemburg disposed of the question of national self-determination as incompatible with the class struggle, Lenin subordinated it to the class struggle (in the same way as he took advantage of all other democratic strivings as weapons in the general revolutionary struggle). The fount of Lenin’s approach to the national question, missing in Rosa Luxemburg, is the dialectic: he saw the unity of opposites in national oppression, and the subordination of the part – the struggle for national independence – to the whole – the international struggle for socialism. Rosa Luxemburg’s strength regarding the national question lies, as elsewhere, in her complete devotion to internationalism and her independence of thought. This led her, via Marx’s method, to see how the position of Poland had changed vis-à-vis Russia between Marx’s time and her own. It caused her, contrary to Marx, to oppose the national struggle of Poland, but at the same time, and again contrary to Marx and Engels, led her to support the national movement of the South Slavs against Turkey. Marx and Engels had argued that to halt the advance of Tsarism the unity of the Turkish Empire had to be defended; and the national movements of the South Slavs, which were engulfed in Pan-Slavic ideas, and were blind weapons in the hands of Tsarism, had to be opposed. Rosa Luxemburg made an excellent analysis of the new conditions in the Balkans since the time of Marx. She concluded first that the liberation of the Balkan nations suppressed by the Turks would rouse the nations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The end of the Turkish Empire in Europe would also mean the end of the Hapsburg Empire. Secondly, she argued that since Marx’s time the national movement of the Balkans had come under the dominion of the bourgeoisie, and hence any continuation of Russian influence was due only to suppression by Turkey. The liberation of the Balkan peoples from the Turkish yoke would not enhance the influence of Tsarism, but would weaken it, as these peoples would be under the leadership of a young and progressive bourgeoisie which would clash more and more with reactionary Tsarism. Thus, in the case of the Balkan nations, Rosa Luxemburg’s attitude to their national strivings differed greatly from her attitude to Poland." - Tony Cliff

If we monitor above scenario we can a get similar picture of India. Yes even more complex one - multi linear Nationalism, layered social structures in south Asian diaspora. Possible clashes in Kashmir and many places and ethnic questions, infiltration in Northeaset India, so its viable that "progressive national bourgeoisie" is looking for a solution, even in frustrated situation its thrives on "chauvinistic" nationalism. But its very important to know is it only crisis of "Oxomiya" in Assam? Probably not, its a crisis of all regional national bourgeoisie of India under aggressive "globalization" and capitalist agenda. If it is noted as written by Dr Hiren Gohain, to appeal against ruling state on behalf of Assamese nationalism, such kind of appeal from all corner of India will weaken the proletariat struggles in India. Further more its a trap to lure regional nationalism to to divide working class in many dimensions.

Face-off:

Imperialism is the stage of capitalism in which a few economically advanced states dominate the rest of the world. Imperialism reveal itself as a system during the last years of the nineteenth century, but its cruel dynamic also drives the process known as "globalization" today. Humankind continue to live in a world in which a handful of strong nation with imperialist order use their economic and military power to subjugate and exploit weaker nations. Our world is still one in which the strong nations regularly face off against each other--threatening, preparing, or unleashing wars whose basic aim is to secure a competitive advantage for one nation over its rivals in imperialist plunder. One of the consequences of imperialism is nationalism and ultra nationalism to fascism.

But as capitalism spreads around the globe, it also gives rise to powerful movements of resistance and it will grows proportionately . Initially, the revolt of workers and peasants in countries oppressed by imperialism almost invariably takes the form of nationalism. That is why it is crucial for socialists to understand how to approach nationalism and how to assess the various struggles for national liberation today. Its duty of socialist to understand why it is time for not to play in dirt, not to carried away in emotional waves and downplay working class movement of poor people for all kind of economic demands.

The historically progressive nature of capitalism in relation to feudalism, however, did not mean that Marx and Engels automatically supported every national movement. Marx and Engels welcomed the 1857 Indian uprising as a "national revolt,". But Marx and Engels did not allow economic criteria to dictate whether they would lend support to specific national movements. Rather, they gave or withheld support on the basis of a political assessment of each movement in the international context.

A clear distinction must be drawn between two periods of capitalism with respect to the national question. The formation of bourgeois-democratic society and its state characterizes a first period of waning feudalism and absolutism. Indian National movement during this period are mass movements that draw all classes of the population into politics. In contrast, after 1947 a second period of fully formed capitalist states is characterized by long-established constitutional regimes and a highly developed antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. When the right of nations to self-determination shifts from the political realm to the cultural realm, it proceed towards Lenin declared as - "aggressive bourgeois nationalism, which drugs the minds of workers, stultifies and disunites them in order that the bourgeoisie may lead them around by the halter." That is why Lenin stated repeatedly that socialists "take from each national culture only its democratic and socialist elements; we take them only and absolutely in opposition to the bourgeois culture and the bourgeois nationalism of each nation."

Lenin proclaimed - "our banner does not carry the slogan 'national culture' but international culture, which unites all the nations in a higher, socialist unity, and the way to which is being paved by the international amalgamation of capital."

"I am not sure to the extent to which Marx saw the Asiatic mode of production as a core concept grounding his discussions of India, China, etc. I have not really thought that through, but certainly the Asiatic mode of production is not something on which he expended a lot of intellectual effort. There is the long section in the Grundrisse on pre-capitalist modes of production that talks about the Greco-Roman mode of production and the ancient Asiatic mode of production. There he is really talking about India, as far as I can tell. But beyond that, Marx wrote a lot journalistically about India, and the phrase “Asiatic mode of production” does not, to my knowledge, occur in those writings. I also used to think that there must have been a long essay somewhere by Marx describing the feudal mode of production. But there isn’t. It’s just a few scattered comments here and there, as far as I can tell. Marx is not Max Weber. Weber was a scholar who spent perhaps most of his intellectual effort on trying to figure out the uniqueness of modern Western capitalism vis-à-vis earlier social forms. He wrote voluminously on China, India, ancient Judaism, ancient Greece and Rome, and the European Middle Ages. With Marx, the concerns are very different. He does look at these kinds of issues sometimes, but he always does so with contemporary concerns in mind, not only about the structure of capitalism, but also to figure out the problems of resistance to and revolution against capital. Thus, Marx’s interest at the end of his life in the Russian and Indian villages develops because he thinks that these were possible sites of resistance to capital that could become allies of the Western proletariat. To the extent that he is concerned with the non-West or the non-core capitalist countries like Ireland in his own time, it is because of their relationship to the problematic of capital and labor inside the core countries. Sometimes he thinks these relationships can reverse themselves. Accordingly, in the late 1860s, Marx feels that an Irish revolution could become the lever that might spark proletarian uprising inside Britain. Similarly, he argues that the Russian communal village could be the starting point for a global communist development if it could link up with the proletariat in the West. These are not isolated questions for Marx. Certainly he never addresses Ireland, India, Russia or anyplace else for the sake of elaborating a philosophy of history. There may be a very interesting philosophy of history there, but that would have to be teased out." - Kevin Anderson, Marx at the margins

On ethnological notes of Marx:

[In a multitude of variants, the same basic conditions prevailed in Asia, Africa, parts of Eastern Europe, Russia, Canada, Australia, South America, the West Indies, Polynesia-wherever indigenous peoples had not wholly succumbed to the tyranny of capitalist development. After reading Morgan's portrayal of "primitive communism" at the height of its glory, Marx saw all this in a new light. In the last couple of years of his life, to a far greater degree than ever before, he focused his attention on people of color; the colonialized, peasants and "primitives?"

That he was not reading Morgan exclusively or even primarily for historical purposes, but rather as part of his ongoing exploration of the processes of revolutionary social change, is suggested by numerous allusions in the Notebooks to contemporary social/political affairs. In the Notebooks, as Raya Dunayevskaya has argued, "Marx's hostility to capitalism's colonialism was intensifying...[He] returns to probe the origin of humanity, not for purposes of discovering new origins, but for perceiving new revolutionary forces, their reason, or as Marx called it, in emphasizing a sentence of Morgan, "powers of the mind?"

It was only after reading Morgan that anthropology, previously peripheral to Marx's thought, became its vital center. His entire conception of historical development, and particularly of pre-capitalist societies, now gained immeasurably in depth and precision. Above all, his introduction to the Iroquois and other tribal societies sharpened his sense of the living presence of indigenous peoples in the world, and of their possible role in future revolutions.Reading Morgan, therefore, added far mote than a few stray bits and pieces to Marx's thought-it added a whole new dimension, one that has been suppressed for more than a century and is only beginning to be developed today.

Pivotal to all the excitement, playfulness, humor, discovery and diversity of Late Marx-so reminiscent of the mood of the 1844 texts-his anthropological investigations have a special relevance for today. If a century later, Marx's "return to the projects of his Paris youth" still glows brightly with the colors of the future, it is because the possibilities of the revolutionary strategy suggested in these notebooks and related writings are far from being exhausted.

Fragmentary though they are, the Notebooks, together with the drafts Of the letter to Vera Zasulich and a few other texts, reveal that Marx's culminating revolutionary vision is not only coherent and unified, but a ringing challenge to all the manifold Marxism's that still try to dominate the discussion"" of social change today, and to all truly revolutionary thought, all thought focused on the reconciliation of humankind and the planet 'we live on. In this challenge lies the greatest importance of these texts' A close, critical look back to the rise and fall of ancient pre-capitalist communities, Marx's Ethnological Notebooks and his other last writings also look ahead to today's most promising revolutionary movements in the Third World, and the Fourth, and our own.

Raya Dunayevskaya, to whom 'we owe the best that has been written on the Notebooks, rightly pointed out that "there is no way for us to know what Marx intended to do with this intensive study?" One need not be a card-carrying prophet to know in advance that this undeveloped work on underdeveloped societies will be developed in many different ways in the coming years.

But here is something to think about, tonight and tomorrow: With his radical new focus on the primal peoples of the world; his heightened critique of civilization and its values and institutions; his new emphasis it on the subjective factor in revolution; his ever-deeper hostility to religion and State; his unequivocal affirmation of revolutionary pluralism; his growing sense of the unprecedented depth and scope of the communist revolution as a total revolution, vastly exceeding the categories of economics and politics; his bold new posing of such fundamental questions as the relation of Man and woman, humankind and nature, imagination and culture, myth and ritual and all the "passions and Powers of the mind." Late Marx is sharply opposed to, and incomparably more radical than, almost all that we know today as Marxism. At the same time, and everyone who understands Blake and Lautreamont and Thelonious Monk will know that this is no mere coincidence, Marx's culminating synthesis is very close to the point of departure of surrealism, the "communism of genius."] by - Franklin ROSEMONT

Marx's ethnological notebook raises hope in serious degree for a place like Northeast, mostly dominated by ethnic communities, diverse in language, culture etc. May be I have to back off here due to my disadvantage in academic methodological study and research for this land and possibility , potential in can bring to revolutionary thought and practice. But need to be warned that this exploration in the light of ethnological note cant be a mere phd thesis, it should be marked with or a deep understanding of how to integrate northeast India in to working movement of world.

Recent general strike in India:

"Between 1991 and 2015 there is a vast gap. The mainstream left parties and the Central Trade Unions and other mass organisations affiliated to them had at that time a much tighter grip on the working people. But they were becoming utterly clueless in a world where the Tien-an Men Square massacre had occurred, where the East European bureaucratized workers states had taken the path of capitalist restoration and even the Soviet Union was about to collapse. The Stalinist ideology and politics most of these parties followed was in its death throes. On the other side was the decades long class collaborationist practice in independent India. This was the time when the BJP had begun its ascent, over the campaign to destroy the Babri Masjid. As a result, in the belief that resisting fascism demanded an alliance with the so-called democratic sections or the anti-fascist sections of the bourgeoisie, they were not willing to take up the fight against the first round of neo-liberal offensive seriously. Indeed, frozen in their doctrinaire position that India needed a two-stage revolution and that globalization was the imposition of imperialism, they did not even realise how much the new policies were brought about in the interests of the Indian ruling class itself. The capitalists globally made no such mistake. A World Bank report at that time said that unlike in many other countries, in India they did not meet with hostility from government bureaucrats and banks when they put forward their Structural Adjustment proposals, but were instead met with similar proposals from the opposite side. This simply means that the Indian capitalist class had decided that further capital accumulation needed a great deal of economic liberalisation. Those leftists who were busy hunting for the “progressive national bourgeoisie: were the ones who did not understand this." - Statement BY radical socialist on "The Political Significance of the All India Strike and the Revolutionary Movement in India".

Question is - who among us being as a Marxist, believe bourgeoisie of India, have ability to produce some solution to suffering of poor and stand against neo liberal policies?

Question is - why and when we submitted our self to national bourgeoisie?

I have tried to believe that it may strategical Technic of GMSS, KMSS to thrives on national bourgeoisie and give its shoulder to "Assamese nationalism." Although its has it own conflicts of identity, as already right wing brahmonical super structure is exposed. Natural to its division in many dimensions such as religion, ethnicity etc. If we emphatic to “progressive national bourgeoisie" for their kind resolution to Assamese Identity, it should be more economic in structure by characteristic, so "Assamese" nationality will be provided a patronage of its own kind. But It was hammered under British hegemony of capital , ( ie - sad case of MANIRAM DEWAN.) eventually cultural hegemony of imperialist order is placed and consumerism devoured everything.No hope insight for independent industrial capital that will grows from Assam and will provide proper patronage for Assamese nationalism". So by default it will under oppression from big capitalist from India and state will serve interest of big capitalist from in and out of India, of course in also colonial manner.

KMSS is playing a vital role in political scenario of Assam, much ahead of Stalinist left parties in terms of socio political role and engagement. Dynamic in approach and application. KMSS able to provide as Lenin stated ""the amalgamation of the workers of all nationalities in a given state in united proletarian organisations" ie amalgamation of the peasants from all ethnic communities from Assam, this is very significant role to a proletariat struggle or mass movement. But once the leadership deviated the movement to a nationalist in characteristic it will loose credential in decisive proletariat struggle. National bourgeoisie is very good at back stabbing, logger-heading. It is historic call for working class people around the world to overcome all barrier of nationalities and join struggles in solidarity for common a cause. So in this scenario KMSS, dynamic and militant in approach should think of necessity to join the "Maruti sukuki workers struggle", "women workers struggle from Kerala", "unorganized workers struggle movement from Kolkatta" etc and many working class movement from India, without a solidarity unity movement from common platform a local movement cant reach to its goal irrespective of its popularity , it will sink to its own doom, middle class opportunity will take over. Above all its important for KMSS who has formed a political organization as GMSS, to understand hidden dynamics of working class scenario of India, more then middle class, national bourgeoisie, it should build a party on basis of advance working class that back by peasantry and continuous preaching and advocating class consciousness among poor classes from all communities, stand with their all economic demands, because a dynamic movement cant go along with frustrated middle class, they are no hope anymore, it will be wasting of time and efforts to engage with national bourgeoisie or degraded middle class who already falls to trap of consumerism and under complete domination of cultural hegemony.

Fascism and liberal democrats:

In an informal discussion with Vivek Chiber, he stated that there will be never full fledged fascism in India as per masters of globalization are there. But all kind assault on its own people by state to serve its master will be immanent. But on going assault on democratic values in India, does not give enough comfort to progressive National bourgeoisie, its duty for liberal democrats to fight against it for bourgeoisie democratic values, for freedom expression , for secularism etc at least. Otherwise it will be too late, within crisis of capitalist dominion, confrontation will be brutal in all angle.

মইনা চৰাইটি, মাত মাত মাত মিঠা মাতটি…

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 06:27:00 +0000

‘মেডমেক্স-ফিউৰি ৰ’ড’ৰ মাতৃতান্ত্ৰিকতা

ভাৰতবৰ্ষৰ চৰকাৰে দুদিনমানৰ আগত জাপান চৰকাৰৰ লগত পৰমাণুৰ শক্তিৰ এখন চুক্তি কৰিছে। সেই জাপান, যি জাপানে পৰমাণু শক্তিৰ ধ্বংসাত্মক ৰূপৰ অভিজ্ঞতা নাগাছাকি আৰু হিৰোছিমাৰ জৰিয়তে বাৰুকৈয়ে লাভ কৰিছিল। তাৰ পিছতো বোধহয় ফুকুশ্বিমাৰ বিভীষিকা জাপানৰ লগতে পৃথিৱীৰ সকলোৰে অৱগত। তাৰ পাছতো কিয় এই চুক্তি? বোধহয় আন্তঃৰাষ্ট্ৰীয় ব্যৱসায়-বাণিজ্যৰ কথা আহে। বা টকা-পইচাৰ আদান-প্ৰদানৰ কথা আহে। এই পৰমাণু শক্তিৰ নাৰকীয় বিভীষিকাৰ কথা তল পৰি যায়‌। ‘মেডমেক্স-ফিউৰি ৰ’ড’ নামৰ চলচ্চিত্ৰখনৰ পটভূমি পৰমাণু শক্তিৰ নাৰকীয় বিভীষিকা। অৰ্থাৎ ইয়াৰ পটভূমি তৈয়াৰ হৈছে পৰমাণু শক্তিৰ ভুল ব্যৱহাৰৰ পাছত পৃথিৱীত হোৱা অপায়-অমংগলসমূহৰদ্বাৰা। ইতিমধ্যে সমগ্ৰ পৃথিৱী মৰুভূমিলৈ ৰূপান্তৰিত হৈছে। গছ-লতা আদি নোহোৱা হৈ গৈছে। যিবোৰ স্থানত প্ৰাকৃতিক সম্পদসমূহ আছে সেয়া কিছুমান যুদ্ধবাজ গোটৰ কবলত আছে। তেনে এটা যুদ্ধবাজ গোটৰ দলপতি হ’ল ইমৰটান জ’। তেওঁ এজন নিষ্ঠুৰ দলপতি।

তেওঁৰ প্ৰজাগণ অভাৱী, অনাখৰী আৰু ভোকাতুৰ ৷ অলপ পানীৰ বাবে তেওঁলোকৰ হাহাকাৰ ৷ এনে সময়ত পানী, মাতৃদুগ্ধ, মানুহৰ তেজ আৰু পেট্ৰল হ’ল আটাইতকৈ মূল্যৱান পণ্য ৷ ইমৰটান জ’ৱে পানীৰ সমস্ত ভাণ্ডাৰ তেওঁৰ কবলত ৰাখিছে ৷

চিনেমাখন আৰম্ভ হৈছে আৰু চলচ্চিত্ৰখনৰ এজন মূল চৰিত্ৰ মেক্স ৰকাটানন্ধিৰ এটা মনলগৰদ্বাৰা৷ তেওঁৰ বৰ্তমান সময়ৰ দুৰ্দশাৰ কথা বৰ্ণনা কৰিছে ৷ তেওঁক ইতিমধ্যে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ যুদ্ধবাজ সেনানীসকলে কৰায়ত্ত কৰিছে আৰু যুদ্ধবাজ এজন সেনা “নাক্স”ৰ বাবে জীৱন্ত তেজৰ যোগান হিচাপে ব্যৱহাৰ হৈছে ৷

আৰু আন এটা প্ৰধান চৰিত্ৰ ইমৰটান জ’ৰ এজন সেনাপতি “ইপ্ৰেৰেটৰ ফিউৰিচা”ই এখন পানীৰ টেংকাৰ লৈ পানীৰ বিনিময়ত গেছলিন আনিবলৈ যাত্ৰা কৰিছে ৷ ইয়াৰ পিছৰপৰাই সমগ্ৰ চলচ্চিত্ৰখন এখন এক্সনধৰ্মী চলচ্চিত্ৰ হিচাপে দেখিবলৈ পাওঁ ৷ কাৰণ ফিউৰিচাই ইমৰটানে জ’ৰ পাঁচগৰাকী পত্নীক পলুৱাই লৈ গৈছে নতুন জীৱনৰ সন্ধানত ৷ আৰু এই বিষয়টোক লৈয়ে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ ক্ৰমাগত অনুসৰণ আৰু যুদ্ধ ঘোষণা ৷

ইতিমধ্যে Sight and sound নামৰ এখন চিনেমা সম্পৰ্কীয় সন্মানীয় পত্ৰিকাই লোৱা পৃথিৱীৰ বিভিন্ন দেশৰ ১৬৮ জন শীৰ্ষ চিনেমা সমালোচকৰ ভোট অনুসৰি ২০১৫ চনৰ ২০ খন শ্ৰেষ্ঠ চিনেমাৰ ভিতৰত “Madmax-Fury road” ৰ স্থান হৈছে তৃতীয়৷

বহু দিনৰ আগতে ‘Terminator – Judgement day’ নামৰ এক্সনধৰ্মী চলচ্চিত্ৰ এখন চাই ভাল লাগিছিল তাত থকা সাংগীতিক লয়ৰ গাঁথনিৰ বাবে৷ এই গাঁথনি অপূৰ্ব আছিল আৰু গাণিতিকভাৱে মাপ-জোখ কৰি লোৱাৰ দৰে নিখুঁটভাৱে বহুৱাই দিয়া হৈছিল বিভিন্ন শ্বটসমূহ , বিভিন্ন শ্বটসমূহৰ পৰ্দাত স্থায়িত্ব আছিল সঠিক অনুপাতত৷ কোনো এটা শ্বটেই অবাবত দীঘল নহয় তথা চুটিও নহয়, যেন প্ৰয়োজনীয়ভাৱে খাপ খাই পৰা আৰু ফলত লয়টো অনুভৱ কৰিব পাৰি বা বাৰে বাৰে চালেও নতুনত্ব এটা থাকে। যিকোনো চলচ্চিত্ৰ পৰিচালকৰ বাবে ইয়াক আয়ত্ব কৰিব পৰাটো ইমান সহজ নহয়৷ কেমেৰাৰ অৱস্থান, এংগল আদিৰ সৈতে বিষয়বস্তু তথা পৰিচালকৰ মনোজগতৰ এক আত্মিক সম্পৰ্ক স্থাপন কৰিব নোৱাৰিলে চলচ্চিত্ৰ এখনৰ সেই ভাল লগাটো হৈ নুঠে৷ (সচৰাচৰ বলিউদী মচলা-ধৰ্মী চলচ্চিত্ৰ সমূহে সাধাৰণ দশৰ্কৰ wish fulfillmentঅৰ দ্বাৰা তেওঁলোকৰ জীৱনৰ পোৱা-নোপোৱাবোৰৰ আৰু সহজাত আবেগৰ শোষণ চলাই যোৱা পৰিলক্ষিত হয় আৰু কেমেৰাই তেনে অৱস্থানেই লয়৷ আমি এখন অসমীয়া চিনেমা কিয় নচলে বুলি কাৰণবোৰৰ কথাও ভাৱোঁ, তেনেহ’লে উপৰোক্ত চলচ্চিত্ৰৰ গাঠনিৰ কথাটোও এটা অন্যতম কাৰণ, আৰু ইয়াক যে সকলো অসমৰ চলচ্চিত্ৰ পৰিচালকে তেওঁলোকৰ প্ৰচন্দ “ভাল এখন চিৰিয়াচ ছবি বা মচালা-ধৰ্মী চিনেমা” বনোৱাৰ অভিপ্ৰায় সত্বেও আয়ত্ব কৰিব পাৰিচেনে নাই সেইটো লক্ষ ৰাখিব লাগিব, ফলশ্ৰুতিত উপযুক্ত গাঠনিবিহীন তেনে চিনেমা এখন দশৰ্কে নাকচ কৰি দিয়ে৷ দশৰ্কেও বোধহয় কাৰণটো ফহিয়াই নাচায়, তেওঁলোকৰ ভাল নালাগিল “কিবা কাৰণত” আৰু চিনেমাখন নচলিল৷ কিন্তু সেই অন্তৰ্গত কাৰণটোৰ বাবে পৰিচালকৰ দক্ষতাৰ কথাটোও আমি এক অন্তৰ্গত অন্যতম কাৰণ বুলি ভাবি চোৱাৰ অৱকাশ আছে, পোনচাতেই দশৰ্কক “অসমীয়া চিনেমা নাচায়” বুলি অভিমান কৰি দোষ দিয়াতকৈ৷)

‘Madmax – Fury road’তো তেনে এটা অনুভৱ হয় ৷ বিভিন্ন শ্বটসমূহ আমি প্ৰতিনিয়ত গতিশীল ৰূপত অৱলোকন কৰোঁ আৰু সমগ্ৰ এক্সন দৃশ্য গাণিতিকভাৱে খাপ খুৱাই দিয়া হৈছে ৷ এয়া মূলতঃ পৰিচালকৰ কৃতিত্ব ৷ আমি এটা ছিম্ফনি বা সাংগীতিক লয়ৰ আৰোহণ, অৱৰোহণ, আৱাহন, সুৰ, ক’ৰাছ আদিৰ গাঁথনি এটা মনেৰে গঠন কৰি লওঁ অজানিতে ৷ এনে সাংগীতিক কাঠামোৰ যদি আমি উদাহৰণ লওঁ, তেন্তে আমি দেখোঁ – প্ৰথম শ্বটটোত মেক্সে মনলগত কথা কৈ আছে, স্থিৰ দৃশ্য, কেমেৰাৰ অৱস্থান স্থিৰ ৷ শান্ত সময় ৷ হঠাত উত্থান আৰু কলৰৱ, আকৌ শান্ত সময় পৰ্দাত৷ তাৰ পিছত আকৌ গাড়ী কিছুমান জঁপিয়াই আহে কেমেৰাৰ ওপৰেৰে ৷ পুনৰ এক আৰোহণ৷ তীব্ৰ গতিৰ গাড়ীসমূহ , long shot, কিন্তু এটি সাংগীতিক moveঅৰ দৰে ৷ ইয়াৰ পিছত তীব্ৰ গতিৰ গতিশীল চলন কেমেৰাৰ, ইমৰটান জ’ৰ থলিত পূৰ্ণ ব্যস্ততা ৷ এক সাংগীতিক লহৰ ৷ সেয়া শান্ত হয়, আকৌ ফিউৰিচাৰ ফ্ৰেমত প্ৰৱেশত ৷ পিছত আমি দেখো মৰুভূমিৰ ধুমুহাত ফিউৰিচাৰ পিছে পিছে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ সেনাসমূহ, এই দৃশ্যটো যেন উচ্চহাৰত সমস্বৰত ক্ৰমাত শিৰ্ষগামী সুৰৰ ঐকতান৷

কিন্তু মূলতঃ ইয়াকো ক’ব লাগিব যে ‘Madmax – Fury Road’ এখন এক্সনধৰ্মী চলচ্চিত্ৰ ৷ পৰিচালক জৰ্জ মিলাৰে এই চলচ্চিত্ৰখনৰ জৰিয়তে কিছুমান সামাজিক বিষয়ো গুৰুত্বপূৰ্ণভাৱে উপস্থাপন কৰিছে আৰু দশৰ্কৰ মাজলৈ প্ৰেৰণ কৰিছে ৷ সেয়া হ’ল পৃথিৱীৰ মানৱজীৱনৰ প্ৰাচীন মাতৃতান্ত্ৰিকতা আৰু ইয়াৰ ঐতিহাসিক ভূমিকা ৷ গতিকে এই চলচ্চিত্ৰখন নায়ক বা পুৰুষপ্ৰধান হোৱা সত্ত্বেও ই মূলতঃ এখন মাতৃতান্ত্ৰিক চলচ্চিত্ৰ, কিন্তু নাৰীবাদী নহয় ৷

‘Madmax – Fury road’অৰ যিটো বিষয় চকুত লগা বা মনত চাপ পৰিব পৰা বিষয় সেইটো হ’ল – ইয়াৰ নিৰ্মাণশৈলী, ইয়াৰ চিনেমাট’গ্ৰাফি, চৰিত্ৰসমূহৰ বেশ-ভূষা, গাড়ীসমূহৰ বিভিন্নধৰণৰ ডিজাইন, যুদ্ধৰ দৃশ্যসমূহ আৰু stuntmenসকলৰ বিভিন্ন কলাকৌশল আৰু অভিনয় ৷ বিশেষকৈ ফিউৰিচাৰ ৰূপত অভিনয় কৰা হলিউডৰ এগৰাকী প্ৰতিভাশালী অভিনেত্ৰী চাৰ্লি থেৰনৰ অভিনয় ৷ লাস্যময়ী এই অভিনেত্ৰীগৰাকীয়ে কঠোৰ, প্ৰবল নেতৃত্ব দিয়া এগৰাকী সেনাৰ ভূমিকাত বাস্তৱসন্মত ৰূপত অৱতীৰ্ণ হৈছে ৷

উপৰিউক্ত সকলোবোৰ উপাদানক অতি সুচাৰুৰূপে পৰিচালকে মূল বিষয়বস্তুৰ সৈতে বাংময় ৰূপত প্ৰকাশ কৰিছে, ইয়াতেই চলচ্চিত্ৰখনৰ কৃতিত্ব ৷ ই যিটো বিষয় উপস্থাপন কৰিব বিচাৰিছে ইয়াক আন কাৰুকৌশলে ঢাক খাই পেলোৱা নাই, যিটো হলিউডৰ চলচ্চিত্ৰত সচৰাচৰ ঘটে ৷ মূল চৰিত্ৰত আমি মেক্সক দেখোঁ যদিও লাহে লাহে ই প্ৰতিফলিত হয় যে তেওঁ চলচ্চিত্ৰখনত আহি পৰা এক সংযোজিত চৰিত্ৰহে ৷ বৰং সময়ৰ লগে লগে বেছি দীপ্ত হৈ উঠে ফিউৰিচা চৰিত্ৰটোহে ৷

এই ফিউৰিচাই ইমৰটান জ’ৰ পাঁচ পত্নী এংহাৰেড, কেপেবল, টষ্ট, দাগ আৰু চিব’ক পলুৱাই লৈ আহে জ’ৰ কবলৰপৰা আৰু বিদ্ৰোহৰ সূচনা কৰি দিয়ে ৷ এংহাৰেড হ’ল গৰ্ভৱতী, তেওঁ ইমৰটান জ’ৰ সন্তান ধাৰণ কৰি আছে ৷ ইমৰটান জ’ৱে তেওঁলোকক ভল্টৰ দৰে কোঠা এটাত আবদ্ধ কৰি ৰাখে ৷ এই পাঁচগৰাকী পত্নীৰ তাৎপৰ্য কেৱল সন্তান ধাৰণ কৰা, জ’ৰ ঔৰসত ৷
ইমৰটান জ‘ৰ প্ৰতিনিধিত্ব :

ইমৰটান জ’ এজন পুৰুষতান্ত্ৰিক যুদ্ধবাজ cult leader ৷ তেও নিজাববীয়া সেনা আছে, পানীকে আদি কৰি পেট্ৰ’ল আদি প্ৰাকৃতিক সম্পদৰ ওপৰত সম্পূৰ্ণ দখল ৰাখি তেওঁৰ প্ৰজাগণক নিয়ন্ত্ৰণত ৰাখে ৷ নাৰী তেওঁৰ বাবে ভোগ আৰু সন্তান জন্ম দিয়াৰ আহিলা ৷ তেওঁ নাৰীসকলক দুগ্ধ উৎপাদনৰ বাবেও ব্যৱহাৰ কৰে ৷ এটি দৃশ্যত দেখা যায় যে বৰ্তমান সময়ৰ কোনো এক মটৰ কাৰখানাৰ Assembly lineঅৰ দৰে মাতৃদুগ্ধ উৎপাদনৰ বাবে মহিলাসকলক বহাই দুগ্ধ উৎপাদন কৰি থকা হৈছে ৷ ইমৰটান জ’ বৃদ্ধ, দেহত যৌন ৰোগৰ চাপ আৰু তেও উশাহ ল’বৰ বাবে লাওখোলা আকৃতিৰ এটা মুখা ব্যৱহাৰ কৰে ৷ পৰিচালকে এই চলচ্চিত্ৰখনৰদ্বাৰা বৰ্তমান সময়ৰ পৃথিৱীৰ বহু ঠাইত সংঘটিত হৈ থকা যুদ্ধ-বিগ্ৰহ আৰু যুদ্ধবাজ নেতাসমূহৰ কথাও অৱচেতনভাৱে ৰূপায়িত কৰিছে ৷ ধৰ্মীয় মৌলবাদীসকলৰ মানসিক গঠন তথা নাৰীবিদ্বেষী মনোভাব, দৃষ্টিভংগী এই চলচ্চিত্ৰখনত প্ৰতিফলিত হৈছে ৷ ইমৰটান জ’ৰ আচল মুখখন দেখুওৱা নহয় ৷ তেওঁ লাওখোলাসদৃশ এখন মুখা পিন্ধি থাকে, যাৰদ্বাৰা তেওঁ উশাহো লয় ৷ গতিকে এনেকৈ মুখহীন চানেকিৰদ্বাৰা ই বিভিন্ন ধৰ্মীয় যুদ্ধবাজসকলৰ নাৰীবিদ্বষী মনোভাব একত্ৰিতভাৱে প্ৰকাশ কৰে ৷ দৰ্শক হিচাপেও আমাৰ এনে অনুভৱেই আহে যে তেওঁ বৰ্তমানৰ সকলো প্ৰতিক্ৰিয়াশীল, কট্টৰ পুৰুষতান্ত্ৰিক, নাৰীবিদ্বেষী চেতনা তথা কাৰ্যাৱলীকেই প্ৰতিনিধিত্ব কৰিছে ৷
ফিউৰিচাৰ পৃথিৱীখন :

ফিউৰিচাই যেতিয়া ইমৰটান জ’ৰ পাঁচগৰাকী পত্নীক পলুৱাই লৈ আহিছিল তেওঁ সেই চন্দুকসদৃশ আবদ্ধ কোঠালিত ইমৰটান জ’ৰ প্ৰতি বাৰ্তা দি আহিছিল – “Our babbies will not be war lords”, “We are not things” আদি ৷

এই ফিউৰিচাকেই ইমৰটান জ’ই অপহৰণ কৰি আনিছিল য়ুৱালিনী মাতৃসকলৰ এটা ফৈদৰপৰা শিশু অৱস্থাত ৷ আৰু শিশু অৱস্থাৰপৰা বিভিন্ন অত্যাচাৰত ডাঙৰ-দীঘল হোৱা ফিউৰিচাৰ মনত এটা প্ৰচণ্ড ঘৃণা হৈছিল ইমৰটান জ’ৰ পুৰুষতান্ত্ৰিকতাৰ প্ৰতি। ইতিমধ্যে তেওঁ এখন হাতো হেৰুৱাইছিল যুদ্ধক্ষেত্ৰত। ফিউৰিচাই এই পাঁচগৰাকী পত্নীক লৈ যাব বিচাৰিছিল এখন ‘সেউজীয়া ঠাই’লৈ। যি ঠাইত তেওঁ ডাঙৰ হৈছিল আৰু সেই যুৱালিনী মাতৃসকলক বিচাৰি উলিয়াইছিল যাতে তেওঁ পুৰণা ফৈদৰ সৈতে মিলিত হ’ব পাৰে। ইতিমধ্যে দক্ষ শ্বুটাৰ বুলি জনাজাত ফিউৰিচাই বহু বীৰত্বৰ প্ৰমাণ দিছিল। মেক্সৰ কান্ধত বন্দুক ৰাখি বুলেট ফাৰ্মাৰ বুলি নেতাজনক ফিউৰিচাই অন্ধ কৰি দিছিল। কিন্তু যেতিয়া ফিউৰিচাই সেই যুৱালিনী মাতৃসকলক লগ পালে, তেওঁলোকৰপৰা গম পালে যে ‘সেউজীয়া ঠাই’খন নাই। ইতিমধ্যেই সেই ঠাই পাৰমাণৱিক যুদ্ধত নষ্ট হৈ গৈছে। সেই ঠাইৰ মাটি বিষাক্ত। আৰু ফিউৰিচা ভাগি পৰিছে। এই যুৱালিনী মাতৃসকলে যাতায়াতৰ বাবে মটৰ বাইক ব্যৱহাৰ কৰে আৰু সকলো প্ৰায় ষাঠি বছৰৰ ঊৰ্ধ্বৰ। তেওঁলোকেই সেই বিভিন্ন প্ৰজাতিৰ গছ-গছনিৰ বীজবোৰ লগত লৈ ফুৰে। ক’ৰবাত কোনো ঠাইত ৰুই সেই আগৰ পৃথিৱী ঘূৰাই পাবৰ বাবে।
যুদ্ধযুৱক নাক্স :

এই চলচ্চিত্ৰখনত এটা গুৰুত্বপূৰ্ণ চৰিত্ৰ আছে, সেয়া হ’ল “নাক্স” ৷ নাক্স হ’ল এজন যুদ্ধৰ সেনানী যাক সৰুৰেপৰা যুদ্ধবাজ হিচাপেই পালন কৰা হৈছে, সেই অনুসৰি অনুশীলন কৰোৱা হৈছে ৷ নাক্সৰ শৰীৰ ঠিক নহয়, গতিকে বন্দী মেক্সক নাক্সে blood bank হিচাপে ব্যৱহাৰ কৰে ৷ ইমৰটান জ’ৱে যেতিয়া ফিউৰিচাৰ বিপক্ষে যুদ্ধ ঘোষণা কৰে নাক্স উদ্বাউল হয় আৰু যুদ্ধত অংশ ল’ব বিচাৰে ৷ কিন্তু তেওঁৰ আবেদনক নাকচ কৰি দিয়া হয়, কিয়নো নাক্স হ’ল এজন বেমাৰী যোদ্ধা ৷ কিন্তু শেষত মেক্সৰ গাড়ীত বান্ধি লৈ নিৰন্তৰ তেজৰ যোগান লৈ যুদ্ধত নমাৰ প্ৰতিশ্ৰুতি দিয়াত নাক্সক অনুমতি প্ৰদান কৰা হয় ৷

নাক্সকে ধৰি যিসকল যুদ্ধযুৱক সকলোৰে এটাই সপোন – ইমৰটান জ’ৰ বাবে জীৱন আত্মোৎসৰ্গ কৰা, যুদ্ধক্ষেত্ৰত যাতে তেওঁলোকে ছহিদ হয় আৰু মৃত্যুৰ পিছত “Valhalla”লৈ যাব পাৰে, যি পশ্চিমীয়া সংস্কৃতিৰ এটা মিথ ৷ যেনেকৈ ইছলামিক ধৰ্মযোদ্ধাসকলৰ বাবে “জন্নৎ” আৰু হিন্দুসকলৰ বাবে “স্বৰ্গ” ৷ এই “ছুইছাইড” আক্ৰমণ তথা ছহিদি বৰণৰদ্বাৰা স্বৰ্গপ্ৰাপ্তি, এই ধাৰণাটোৱেই আজিৰ সময়ৰ বিভিন্ন ধৰ্মীয় যুদ্ধবাজ মৌলবাদীসকলৰ প্ৰপাগাণ্ডা তথা মগজ ধুলাই কৰা প্ৰক্ৰিয়াটোৰ বিষয়ে সম্যক ধাৰণা দাঙি ধৰে, যে ই কি ধৰণেৰে এজন সেনাৰ মনত ক্ৰিয়া কৰে , কেনেকৈ তেওঁ ইয়াৰদ্বাৰা উদ্বুদ্ধ হয়। তেনে এটা দৃশ্যত যেতিয়া দেখোঁ ইমৰটান জ’ৱে নাক্সক কয়, “ফিউৰিচা আৰু সংগীবোৰক হত্যা কৰ্ আৰু মই তোক নিজ হাতেৰে দাঙি লৈ Valhallaলৈ লৈ যাম”৷

আমি দেখোঁ, নাক্সৰ মুখৰ ক্ৰমাৎ ভাবালেশ সলনি হৈছে আৰু এক মানসিক সন্তুষ্টি, দীপ্তি লৈ “ছুইছাড” আক্ৰমণৰ বাবে সাজু হৈছে ৷ তিনিবাৰ সুযোগ পায়ো মৃত্যুবৰণ কৰিব নোৱাৰি কেপেবলৰ ওচৰত দুখত ভাগি পৰিছে ৷

শেষৰ ফালে আমি দেখো, নাক্সৰ মনোভাব ক্ৰমান্বয়ে সলনি হৈছে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ এগৰাকী ষোড়শী পত্নী তথা breeding wife কেপেবলৰ সান্নিধ্যত ৷ কেপেবলে নাক্সৰ প্ৰতি সহমৰ্মিতা দেখুৱাইছে আৰু দুয়োৰে মাজত এটা আত্মিক সংযোগ প্ৰকৃতিৰ নিয়মৰ ফলতেই স্থাপিত হৈছে ৷ শেষত নাক্সে ফিউৰিচা আৰু ফিউৰিচাৰ সংগীসকলৰ প্ৰাণ বচাবৰ বাবে নিজৰ প্ৰাণ উৎসৰ্গা কৰিছে ৷
মেক্স ৰকটানক্সিৰ সহযোগিতা :

এই মেক্সক নিজৰ জীৱনৰ পুৰণি দুঃস্বপ্নই খেদি ফুৰে ৷ কাৰণ তেওঁৰ পত্নী, জীয়াৰী আৰু সমন্ধীয় লোকসকলক মেক্সে ৰক্ষা কৰিব নোৱাৰিলে ৷ এই দুঃস্বপ্নৰ বাবে মেক্স প্ৰতিনিয়ত এঠাইৰপৰা সিঠাইলৈ পলাই ফুৰে ৷ এনে এটি যাত্ৰাতেই মেক্সৰ ফিউৰিচাৰ লগত আকষ্মিক যোগাযোগ হয় আৰু দুয়ো নিজা নিজা কাৰণত ইমৰটান জ’ৰ বিৰুদ্ধে থিয় হয়, দুয়ো তেওঁৰ সহযোদ্ধালৈ পিছত ৰূপান্তৰিত হয়‌। ইমৰটান জ’ৰ বন্দিত্বৰপৰা মুক্ত হ’বলৈ আপ্ৰাণ চেষ্টা চলোৱা মেক্সৰ নিজৰ স্বাৰ্থৰ বাবেই ফিউৰিচাৰ সৈতে একেলগে আগ বাঢ়িবলগা হয় এক নিৰ্দিষ্ট পৰিকল্পনা মতে‌ ক্ৰমান্বয়ে এটি দীঘলীয়া পৰিভ্ৰমণৰ অন্তত। একেলগে কৰা সংগ্ৰামৰ অন্তত দুয়োৰে মাজত আন্তৰিকতা আৰু স্বাভাৱিক সহমৰ্মিতা প্ৰতিষ্ঠা হয় ৷ মূলতঃ কমকৈ হোৱা কথা-বতৰা কিন্তু বিভিন্ন মুহূৰ্তত সহযোগিতা তথা যুদ্ধক্ষেত্ৰত হোৱা camaraderieৰ ফলত এক নিৰৱ বিশ্বাসৰ বান্ধোন গঠন হয় ৷ য়ুৱালিনী মাতৃসকলক লগ পোৱাৰ পিছত “সেউজীয়া ঠাই”খন ধ্বংস হৈ যোৱাৰ কথা জানিব পাৰি ফিউৰিচা ভাগি পৰিছিল, সেই মুহূৰ্তত কেমেৰাই মেক্সৰ মুখৰ ভাবালেশৰ ক্ল’জ শ্বট লয়৷ আমি দেখো মেক্সৰ মুখৰ ভাবান্তৰ তথা চেপি ৰখা আৱেগ৷

ফিউৰিচা আৰু য়ুৱালিনী মাতৃসকল যেতিয়া নতুন ঠাইলৈ যাবলৈ সাজু হয়, মেক্সেই প্ৰস্তাৱ দিয়ে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ সৈতে পোনপটীয়া যুদ্ধত লিপ্ত হ’বৰ বাবে৷ য়ুৱালিনী মাতৃসকল আৰু ফিউৰিচা মান্তি হয় ৷ তেওলোকে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ প্ৰাকৃতিক ভাণ্ডাৰসমূহ দখল কৰি প্ৰজাসকলক মুক্তি দিবৰ বাবে নিজকে যুদ্ধৰ বাবে প্ৰস্তুতি চলাবলৈ সাজু হয়৷ বোধহয় চলচ্চিত্ৰখনত শেষলৈ আমি নাৰীবাদী দৃষ্টিভংগীতকৈ এটা মানৱীয় সংগ্ৰামৰ আভাস পাওঁ৷ কিন্তু এই ক্ষেত্ৰত য়ুৱালিনী মাতৃসকলৰ ভূমিকা নিৰ্ণায়ক, কাৰণ পৃথিৱীৰ ধ্বংসাত্মক পৰিস্থিতিত তেওলোকেই বিভিন্ন গছ-লতাৰ বীজসমূহ লগত কঢ়িয়াই লৈ ফুৰিছে৷

সেই মইনা চৰাইৰ মাত বিচাৰি ফুৰিছে উদং ধূসৰ বিষাক্ত পৃথিৱীত৷

ফিউৰিচা আৰু মেক্সৰ মাজত প্ৰথমবাৰৰ বাবে লগপোৱাৰ সময়ত যুদ্ধ, তেওঁলোকৰ পাৰস্পৰিক অনাস্থা, ভয় আৰু জীৱন সংগ্ৰামৰ অভিলাস৷ এই চলচ্চিত্ৰখন মূলতঃ ছেপিয়া ৰঙৰ প্ৰধান্যৰে নিৰ্মাণ কৰা হৈছে৷ যাৰ বাবে গোটেই চিনেমাখনত এটা ৰুক্ষ ভাৱ ফুটি উঠে। ‘টাৰমানেটৰ – জাজমেন্ট দে’ৰ মূল ৰঙৰ আধাৰ আছিল নীলা, “মেট্ৰিক্স” যি সকলে চাইছে তেওঁলোকে জানিব সেই চলচ্চিত্ৰখনত সেউজীয়া মূল ৰঙেৰে বুলোৱা হৈছিল৷ ‘মেদ মেক্স – ফিউৰি ৰ’দ’ এই চলচ্চিত্ৰখনক মূলতঃ কমলা ৰঙেৰে ধৌৱাই পেলোৱা হৈছে৷

মেক্স আৰু ফিউৰিচাৰ মাজত ভৰসা, সহমৰ্মিতা, সহযোগ আৰু আন্তৰিকতা প্ৰতিষ্ঠাপিত হৈছে৷ সেইয়া হৈছে সময়ৰ পৰিমাপত দুয়োৰে এখন উমৈহতীয়া যুদ্ধৰ মাজেদি৷ মেক্সে সহায়ৰ হাত আগবঢ়াইছে৷ আমি দেখোঁ মেক্সৰ কান্ধত বন্দুক থৈ ফিউৰিচাই যুদ্ধবাজ ‘বুলেট খেতিয়ক’ক দূৰৈৰ পৰা নিখুটভাৱে নিচানা লগাই অন্ধ কৰি পেলাইছে৷ এই আন্তৰিকতা সহযুদ্ধ নাৰী আৰু পুৰুষ এখন উমৈহতীয়া সংগ্ৰামলৈ পৰিণত হৈছে৷

ইমৰটান জ’ৱে নিজৰ লাওখোলাসদৃশ মুখা পৰিধান কৰিছে৷ এওঁ এনে এজন নেতা যাৰ আচল মুখখন দেখা নাযায়৷ অতি নিষ্ঠুৰ, নিৰ্দয় এজন যুদ্ধবাজ দলপতি, ইমৰটান জ’ৰ যোগেদি বৰ্তমান সময়ৰ যুদ্ধবাজসকলৰ প্ৰতিছবি এখন পাব পাৰি৷

বৰ্তমানৰ বাস্তৱ সময়ৰ এজন যুদ্ধবাজ নেতা, যিয়ে একে লাওখোলাসদৃশ মুখা পৰিধান কৰি আছে৷

ইমৰটান জ আৰু তেওঁৰ যুদ্ধবাজ সেনানী৷ আজিৰ পৃথিৱীৰ এক পৰিচিত দৃশ্য, সেইয়া আফ্ৰিকা, দক্ষিণ আমেৰিকা, মধ্যপ্ৰাচ্য আদি সকলোতে বিৰাজমান৷

ইমৰটান জ’ৰ পানীৰ ভাণ্ডাৰ৷ সকলো প্ৰাপ্ত প্ৰাকৃতিক সম্পদ ইমৰটান জ’ৱে নিজৰ দখলত ৰাখে এটা যুদ্ধবাজ সেনাৰ যোগেদি৷ বোধহয় বৰ্তমান সময়ৰ তেল, পানী আদি খনিজ-পণ্যসমূহৰ ওপৰত হোৱা অধিকাৰৰ এটা ৰিজনী পোৱা যায়৷ তেল, পানী, ৰক্ত আৰু মাতৃ দুগ্ধৰ দ্বাৰা শাসন৷

ইমৰটান জ’ৰ ভোকাতুৰ, অতৃপ্ত, এটোপা পানীৰ বাবে আতুৰ প্ৰজাগণ৷

ইমৰটান জ’ৰ আত্মহত্যাৰ যোগেদি শ্বহীদবৰণ কৰিব বিচৰা এজন সেনা, যি সেই ধৰণৰ এক আক্ৰমণ শত্ৰুৰ ওপৰত চলাবলৈ লৈছে৷ তেওঁক এনেদৰে মগজ-ধোলাই কৰা হৈছে যে এনেদৰে যুদ্ধত আত্মৎৰ্সগৰ দ্বাৰা মৃত্যু হ’লে তেওঁৰ ‘ভালহাল্লা’ প্ৰাপ্তি হ’ব৷ এই বাইবেলিকেল মিথ – যাৰ সমাৰ্থক হিচাপে আমি পাওঁ আন দুটা ধৰ্মত ‘জন্নত’ আৰু ‘স্বৰ্গ’৷ সেই একেই প্ৰৰোচনা-ত্যাগৰ বিনিময়ত স্বৰ্গত বৈষয়িক সুখ লাভ৷

শিশু যুদ্ধবাজ সকল৷ শিশু অৱস্থাত তেওঁলোকক মগজু-প্ৰক্ষালণ কৰি যুদ্ধবাজ বনোৱা হয়৷ গাত একে ৰং একে পোচাক৷

বৰ্তমান সময়ৰ বাস্তৱিক শিশু যুদ্ধবাজসকল৷ যাৰ শৈশৱ এক দুঃস্বপ্ন৷

যুদ্ধৰ দৃশ্য৷ এটা সুন্দৰ কৰিঅ’গ্ৰাফী আৰু মিউটেণ্ট যুদ্ধ-গাড়ীসমূহ৷ এইখন চলচ্চিত্ৰত প্ৰায় ২০০০ Visual Effects Shot ব্যৱহাৰ কৰা হৈছে৷ Conceptual design আদিৰ বাবে পাঁচজন শিল্পীক লৈ প্ৰায় ৩৫০০ পেনেলৰ ছবি আঁকি পেলাই storyboard প্ৰস্তুত কৰা হৈছিল৷

এটা যুদ্ধদৃশ্যৰ সুন্দৰ composition ৷ শ্বটটোৰ এটা আৱয়িক সামগ্ৰিকতা৷ আগ্ৰাসী শত্ৰুপক্ষৰ সেনা, সংগ্ৰামী মেক্স, গাড়ীচালক তথা নিয়ন্ত্ৰণত ফিউৰিচা আৰু ফিউৰিচাৰ তত্বাৱধানত ইমৰটান জ’ৰ পাচ পত্নী৷

ইমৰটান জ’ৰ পাঁচ পত্নী৷ পত্নী মানে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ বাবে তেওঁৰ সন্তান জন্ম দিয়াবৰ বাবে মাধ্যম৷ পানী, তেল আদিৰ দৰেও নাৰী তেওঁৰ বাবে পণ্য সামগ্ৰী তথা উৎপাদনৰ বাবে ব্যৱহৃত মেচিন৷

তলত পৰি থকা লোহাৰ ত্ৰিকোণ বন্ধনি কেইডাল হ’ল এই পাঁচ পত্নীৰ যৌনাংগসমূহ তলাবন্ধ কৰি থ’ব পৰা ব্যৱস্থা, যাতে ইমৰটান জ’ নিশ্চিন্ত হ’ব পাৰে যে তেওঁলোকৰ দ্বাৰা উৎপাদিত সন্তান কেৱল তেওঁৰেই৷ যি সচৰাচৰ পুৰুষতান্ত্ৰিকতাৰ এক মূল উপাদান৷

‘য়ুৱালিনি’ ফৈদৰ মাতৃসকল৷ পৰিস্থিতিয়ে এওঁলোকক যুজাৰু হিচাপে পৰিগণিত কৰিছে৷ এই মাতৃসকলে বিভিন্ন গছলতাৰ বীজ কঢ়িয়াই লৈ যাযাবৰী জীৱন যাপন কৰে৷

বাস্তৱ পৃথিৱীৰ কুৰদিশ নাৰী যোদ্ধাসকল ৷ এখেত সকলে ISIS মৌলবাদী সকলৰ বিৰুদ্ধ অস্ত্ৰ তুলি লৈছে আৰু এক মৰণপণ যুদ্ধত লিপ্ত হৈছে৷

ফিউৰিচাই তেওঁৰ ফৈদৰ সৈতে মিলিত হৈছে৷ সেই সহমৰ্মিতা, সেই একেই যান্ত্ৰণা— মানসিক শাৰীৰিক৷ দুয়ো সেই প্ৰাচীন দুখত ভাগি পৰিছে৷ এক সংঘাত আৰু মিলনৰ দৃশ্য৷

ফিউৰিচা, ‘সেউজীয়া ঠাই’খন পাৰমানৱিক যুদ্ধত তথা পাৰমানৱিক শক্তিৰ অপপ্ৰয়োগত হেৰাই যোৱাৰ দুখত ভাগি পৰিছে৷

এটা ব্যৱহাৰ নোহোৱা শ্বট৷ ইয়াৰ দ্বাৰা যুদ্ধকালীন বিভীষিকা ধৰিব পৰা যায়৷

এটা বাস্তৱিক দৃশ্য৷ দ্ৰোণৰ দ্বাৰা আক্ৰমণত নিহত এটি শিশু৷

ফিউৰিচা আৰু পাঁচ পত্নীয়ে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ বাবে দি যোৱা বাৰ্তা – “Our babies will not be warlords.”

বিদ্ৰোহী পত্নী আংহাৰেদে নিজৰ গৰ্ভৱতী অৱস্থাটোক ইমৰটান জ’ৰ বিপক্ষে ঢাল হিচাপে ব্যৱহাৰ কৰিছে তেওঁৰ সহযোগীসকলৰ নিৰাপত্তাৰ বাবে৷ নিজৰ সন্তান আংহাৰেদৰ গৰ্ভত স্থিত বাবেই ইমৰটান জ’য়ে আক্ৰমণ চলাব পৰা নাই৷ ই এটা অতি শক্তিশালী আৰু তাৎপয্যপূৰ্ন শ্বট৷

নাক্স আৰু কেপেবল৷ দুয়োৰে মাজৰ এটা আন্তৰিক সহমৰ্মিতাৰ দৃশ্য৷ নাক্সৰ জীৱনবোধ সলনি কৰাত কেপেবলৰ ভূমিকা উল্লেখযোগ্য৷ এই চলচ্চিত্ৰখনিত সচৰাচৰ চিনেমাত ব্যৱহাৰ হোৱা voyeuristic নাৰী দেহৰ তেনে প্ৰদৰ্শনকামিতা নাই৷ এটা আন্তৰিক সন্মান সহ নাৰীসম্বলিত দৃশ্যসমূহ ফ্ৰেমত আৱদ্ধ কৰা হৈছে৷ এইয়া পৰিচালকৰ এক অনন্য অৱলোকন আৰু প্ৰজ্ঞাৰ পৰিচয়৷

নাক্স আৰু কেপেবল, নাক্স নিজৰ দুদল্যমান অৱস্থাৰ পৰা মুক্ত হৈছে৷ ইতিমধ্যে ফিউৰিচাৰ পক্ষ লৈছে৷ কেপেবলৰ মৰমী সান্নিধ্যই নাক্সৰ জীৱনবোধ উজ্বিৱীত কৰিছে৷

ফিউৰিচা জয়ী হৈ ঘূৰি আহিছে৷ প্ৰজাসকলে অভিবাদন জনাইছে৷

ৰাইজৰ জয়ধ্বনীৰ মাজেৰে যুদ্ধত বাৰুকৈয়ে আঘাত প্ৰাপ্ত ফিউৰিচা মঞ্চত উপৱিষ্ট হৈছে৷ কাষত ‘টোষ্টে’ তেওঁক এগৰাকী য়ুৱালিনি মাতৃয়ে দিয়া ‘বীজ’ৰ বাকচটো লৈ আছে৷ জীৱনৰ বীজ এগৰাকী নাৰীৰ পৰা আন এগৰাকী নাৰীয়ে উত্তৰাধিকাৰসূত্ৰে গ্ৰহণ কৰিছে৷

ফিউৰিচাৰ শৈশৱকালীন অভিজ্ঞতাৰ ‘সেউজীয়া ঠাই’৷ যি ইতিমধ্যে পাৰমানৱিক শক্তিৰ ধ্বংসকামী ব্যৱহাৰত নষ্ট হৈ গৈছে৷ এক বিষাক্ত পৰিবেশ৷

ইমৰটান জ’ৰ কৱলত থকা মাতৃসকল যাক মাতৃদুগ্ধ উৎপাদনৰ আহিলা হিচাপে ব্যৱহাৰ কৰা হৈছিল৷ জীৱনদায়িনী দুগ্ধ দিয়া এই নাৰী সকলেই প্ৰজাৰ বাবে ইমৰটান জ’ৰ পানীৰ ভাণ্ডাৰ ৰাইজৰ বাবে খুলি দিছে৷

য়ুৱালিনি বাইক৷ বিভিন্ন গছলতাৰ বীজৰ উপৰিও জীৱন ধাৰণৰ প্ৰায় সামগ্ৰীয়ে এই মটৰ বাইকখনত উপলব্ধ৷ শেষত য়ুৱালিনি মাতৃসকলে মেক্সক এনে এখন বাইক উপহাৰ দিয়ে৷

ইলেক্ট্ৰিক গীটাৰ বজাই থকা এজন যুদ্ধবাজসকলক প্ৰমোদ দিয়া সেনা৷ এটি চৰিত্ৰটিৰ অন্তভুক্তিয়ে চলচ্চিত্ৰখনত এক কমিক অনুষংগৰ সৃষ্টি কৰে ইয়াৰ মোহময় উপস্থাপনৰ দ্বাৰা৷ ইমৰটান জ’ৰ সেনা বাহিনীত এনে এটা hard rock, heavy metal band ও থাকে৷ তেওঁলোকে অনবৰত সংগীত বজাই থাকে, যুদ্ধ চলি থকা সময়তো৷

পৰিচালক জৰ্জ মিলাৰ (সোঁফালে), এখেতৰ সজীৱ, প্ৰাণৱন্ত আৰু প্ৰজ্ঞাৰ ফলশ্ৰুতিতেই ‘Mad max- Fury road’ এখন বাংময় তথা বিশিষ্ট চলচ্চিত্ৰ হিচাপে পৰিগণিত হৈছে৷ লগত প্ৰখ্যাত চিনেমাট’গ্ৰাফাৰ জন চিল (বাওঁফালে), যিয়ে কমলা ৰঙৰ প্ৰাধান্য দি চলচ্চিত্ৰখনৰ দৃশ্যসমূহ জীৱন্ত আৰু বহল কেনভাচত মৰুভূমিৰ ৰুক্ষতা প্ৰকট কৰি তুলিছে৷

Richness of urban minds and mystical smell "MOHMOHIYA "

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 09:45:00 +0000

In memory of Comrade Amalendu Guho

Nagendra narayan Chaudhuri, prolific writer from Assam, what I know (or said in lighter note by NNC) that he was indulging in writing because of putting Goalpara in main stream Assam against ignorance and to connect it culturally with main stream Assam. The Second science fiction story in Assamese language was written by him and I still hold that "Rokhayan" is still best of 3 science stories in Assamese language till now. The urge to write in "main stream sanskritized Assamese" is justified as it was time of renascence period of modern Assamese nationalism.

And later many prominent writers from lower Assam put their contribution to Assamese literature. ie - in language of main stream "ASSAMESE".

But with sociopolitical changes, ethnic uprising, conflicts, influences of neo economic liberal economy etc,, we are witnessing an era of uprising and identity crisis around the world. So Northeast India also part of those many changes and unrest. Obviously in this whole process of global phenomenon, regional literature and cultural activities are under attack and under influences of neo-globalization.

In counter action in various fields in various countries, awareness, consciousness of new bourgeoisie, a progressive flow is evolved through in this process.

If Nagendra Narayan Chaudhuri had written for a cause, we have seen Shilobhadra, Mamoni roysom Goswami were came out with another conscious innovative efforts in their writings. They incorporated local, colloquial languages in their writings and experimented with it. Saurav Kumar Chaliha had written a story with full colloquial language , probably 1rst one to understand richness of these many colloquial languages of Assam, gave due respect to all these colloquial languages with his story" Hahichompa" and open a way to others or for future generation.

We see here two important factors in action.

Cultural hegemony and counter action of Subalterns.

"The initial, theoretic application of cultural domination was as a Marxist analysis of economic class (base and superstructure), which Antonio Gramsci developed to comprehend social class; hence, cultural hegemony proposes that the prevailing cultural norms of a society, which are imposed by the ruling class (bourgeois cultural hegemony), must not be perceived as natural and inevitable, but must be recognized as artificial social constructs (institutions, practices, beliefs, et cetera) that must be investigated to discover their philosophic roots as instruments of social-class domination. Hegemony is the geopolitical method of indirect imperial dominance, with which the hegemony (leader state) rules subordinate states, by the threat of intervention, an implied means of power, rather than by direct military force — that is, invasion, occupation, and annexation. Which is practice by imperialist order and neo liberal elite ruling class of every countries in this world."

So anything we see in day to day life that resembles above words, yes.. we are witnessing it in every hour of our life. Lumpen cultural practices are dominating and ruling the society and states are in stand by. Intellectuals have became pimps and opportunist.

The crisis of bourgeoisie is gone far deep, its suffocating for mass. The crisis in bourgeoisie lead to other dysfunctional syndromes of existing society, from moral and cultural degradation etc to all kind of mess.

There is nothing left for the whole majority of poor working class and peasants, only to do "halla boll", revolt against humiliations, to protest against in injustice.

"In Marxist theory, the civil sense of the term subaltern was first used by the Italian Communist intellectual Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937). In discussions of the meaning of the "subaltern" in Gramsci's writings, Spivak and others have argued that he used the word as a synonym for the proletariat (a code-word to deceive the prison censor to allow his manuscripts out the prison), but this interpretation has been contested, with evidence indicating that it was a novel concept in Gramsci's political theory. In several essays, the postcolonial critic Homi K. Bhabha, emphasized the importance of social power relations in defining subaltern social groups as oppressed, racial minorities whose social presence was crucial to the self-definition of the majority group; as such, subaltern social groups, nonetheless, also are in a position to subvert the authority of the social groups who hold hegemonic power."

"The Eurocentric discourse on Africa is in error, because those foundational paradigms, which inspired the study, in the first place, were rooted in the denial of African agency; political intellectualism bent on its own self-affirmation, rather than objective study. " — The Removal of Agency from Africa , this is true same way to Asia, and to Assam also.

In a simple way if Eurocentric, USAcentric "khana, pina, gana, nasna" etc embedded to bourgeoisie all the way, its created a relay race among bourgeois of all societies that divided under nationalism.

Trotsky illustrating the concept of "Uneven and combined development"

"...the entire history of mankind is governed by the law of uneven development. Capitalism finds various sections of mankind at different stages of development, each with its profound internal contradictions. The extreme diversity in the levels attained, and the extraordinary unevenness in the rate of development of the different sections of mankind during the various epochs, serve as the starting point of capitalism. Capitalism gains mastery only gradually over the inherited unevenness, breaking and altering it, employing therein its own means and methods. In contrast to the economic systems which preceded it, capitalism inherently and constantly aims at economic expansion, at the penetration of new territories, the surmounting of economic differences, the conversion of self-sufficient provincial and national economies into a system of financial interrelationships. Thereby it brings about their rapprochement and equalizes the economic and cultural levels of the most progressive and the most backward countries. Without this main process, it would be impossible to conceive of the relative leveling out, first, of Europe with Great Britain, and then, of America with Europe; the industrialization of the colonies, the diminishing gap between India and Great Britain, and all the consequences arising from the enumerated processes upon which is based not only the program of the Communist International but also its very existence. By drawing the countries economically closer to one another and leveling out their stages of development, capitalism, however, operates by methods of its own, that is to say, by anarchistic methods which constantly undermine its own work, set one country against another, and one branch of industry against another, developing some parts of world economy while hampering and throwing back the development of others. Only the correlation of these two fundamental tendencies – both of which arise from the nature of capitalism – explains to us the living texture of the historical process. Imperialism, thanks to the universality, penetrability, and mobility and the break-neck speed of the formation of finance capital as the driving force of imperialism, lends vigor to both these tendencies. Imperialism links up incomparably more rapidly and more deeply the individual national and continental units into a single entity, bringing them into the closest and most vital dependence upon each other and rendering their economic methods, social forms, and levels of development more identical. At the same time, it attains this “goal” by such antagonistic methods, such tiger-leaps, and such raids upon backward countries and areas that the unification and leveling of world economy which it has effected, is upset by it even more violently and convulsively than in the preceding epochs." - Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, part 1, section 4

To summarize above concept we witness:

[1) A more backward, primitive country would adopt parts of the culture of a more advanced, or more modern society, and a more advanced culture could also adopt or merge with parts of a more primitive culture – with good or bad effects.

2) Cultural practices, institutions, traditions and ways of life belonging to both very old and very new epochs and phases of human history were all combined, juxtaposed and linked together in a rather unique way, within one country.

3) In turn, this meant that one could not really say that different societies all developed simply through the same sort of linear sequence of necessary developmental stages, but rather that they could adopt/utilize the results of developments reached elsewhere, without going through all the previous evolutionary stages which led up to those results. Some countries could thus "skip", "telescope" or "compress" developmental stages which other countries took hundreds of years to go through, or, very rapidly carry through a modernization process that took other countries centuries to achieve.

4) Different countries could both aid or advance the socio-economic progress of other countries through trade, subsidies and contributing resources, or block and brake other countries as competitors from making progress by preventing the use of capital, technology, trading routes, labour, land or other kinds of resources.

5) In Trotsky's theory of imperialism, the domination of one country by another does not mean that the dominated country is prevented from development altogether, but rather that it develops mainly according to the requirements of the dominating country. For example, an export industry will develop around mining and farm products in the dominated country, but the rest of the economy is not developed, so that the country's economy becomes more unevenly developed than it was before, rather than achieving balanced development. Or, a school system is set up with foreign assistance, but the schools teach only the messages that the dominating country wants to hear.

6) The main tendencies and trends occurring at the level of world society as a whole, could be also found in each separate country, where they combined with unique local trends – but this was a locally specific “mix”, so that some world trends asserted themselves more strongly or faster, others weaker and slower in each specific country. Thus, a country could be very advanced in some areas of activity, but at the same time comparatively retarded in other areas. One effect was that the response to the same events of world significance could be quite different in different countries, because the local people attached different "weightings" to experiences and therefore drew different conclusions.]

Now in this above situation,

"Lokhaitara" by Priynka Das and "The chair" by Pradyumno kumar gogoi are fresh wind and cool lime juice for hot days in summer.

Both stands completely at opposite side, but at the same time two significant innovative intuitions are unfold, two bonded by dialectics. Both determined and constructive in their approach. Both careless to limping literature, able to create flawless tales for readers.

"Lokhaitara" is unleashed the journey again that once Saurav Kumar Chaliha initiated. Its like a traditional takeover. Priyanka das is locating and start building a bridge to its reader layers on layers in her verses. Colloquial expressions tend to sneak in as writers, being part of a society, are influenced by the way people speak in that society. Naturally, they are bound to add colloquial expressions in their vocabulary. However, writers use such expressions intentionally too as it gives their works a sense of realism, this is something Shilobhadra and MRG had practiced. But Priyanka Das has chosen the path of "Hahichompa" to establish "Kamrupia, Goalporia, Koch rajbongsi" etc as all can be mode of totalitarian expression. A geographical diverse Diaspora /phenomenon like Northeast India will be flourish only by healthy development of all spoken language/dialect of many communities and use of Colloquial languages in literature, film etc or in any art forms from this Diaspora. Interestingly this process is complete opposite to that NNC had once want to establish. Just to remember also "Ningni Bhaoria" also, an wonderful our own Charlie Chaplin, a vagabond character in "Goalporia" literature which never got its due from main stream, probably never attempted in film, theatre etc.

"Lokhaitara" a river came as a metaphor, it has provocation, storylines in many dimensions. Socio Political annotation, rudeness in narrative, yet very sensitive outlook, hurried but short objective words play is demonstrated with confidence of writer . This "verse" has gone to many parts... like "Lokhaitara" 1, 2, 3 etc.....disclosed seriousness in approach of writer, love for mother tongue and own land, loyalty to a language with a deep sense of responsibility. First, with its first layer, that language, reader will be hit back by its language. Because we are usually not prepared to accept what can be described as counter subalterns view. We are entitled to accept only ..only main stream or whispered daily by bigger cooperates power to live through under cultural hegemony of cultural imperialism. Yes, if a reader able cross the barrier of the language of this verse or unlock the usual mind set, he/she may be allowed to step in next phase of "Lokhaitara", that is content. When one hooked in the content he/she probably able swim in lyrical ocean of its narrative, so words now slowly, gradually unveiled to reader, it will awaken and teleport reader to another realm. Now hang on there, and listen, sound of the river, sense the rawness of soil and possibly in this phase the reader will be connected to the realm of "Lokhaitara".

"Lokheitara pugly", "lokheitarai dhowa dag" and "aar ekbar lokheitara" are metaphorical, beautiful emblem of a river, providing an abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a love tale of an young couple, a society.

বগা ঢকঢকে চাদৰখান মেলি

ব্লেক এন্ড হোৱাইট সপোনটু উৰে যায়৷

পিছে পিছে লখেইতৰাই দাউৰে৷

থাপমাৰি ধৰা সপোনটু পিছলি যায়৷

ভাগেৰি-জুগেৰি

কেকো-জেকোকৈ

লখেইতৰাই চায় থাকে সপোনটু৷

"Lokheitara pugly" is a wonderful representation of a river in human form, a restless, wild and independent soul. Someone wild at heart, free by soul.

Lokheitara is running after a "black and white" dream, in this colorful world "black and white" dream is a choice. She has refused "colors". For her those imposed colors are just river mud, she never has care for them.

A sensual expression for a clear, transparent dream and freedom. Lokheitara, the river wish to fly, because she believe" the dream" has a sky. More then live of a shadowy river with mud, she has willingness to escape for sunshine and rain.

flow of lokheitara is halted by another reality. The dream became an irony.

সপোনটুৰ আকাশ এখান আছে৷

বৈৰহান পৰে,ৰ'দ দেই৷

সেই বৈৰহানোত লখেই ভিজে৷

টুপটুপা হৈ

আতাঘাটিকে

আৰু দাউৰে

ব্লেক এন্ড হোৱাইটটুৰ পিছে পিছে ৷

বৈৰহানোৰ পিছোৰ ৰ'দটুৰ কথা

লখেইৰ খেয়ালোত নাহে৷

ৰ'দটুৰ জিভেই চেলকি নিয়া

শুখে কৰাল বান্ধা

লখেইৰ ৰূপ দেখি

লখেই নিজে কান্দে৷

She is trying to manage her own perish and start a complete negation with herself.

ইপাৰে-সিপাৰে

হাবিয়ে-জংঘালে

কান্দানটু বাজি থাকে৷

ৰৈ ৰৈ৷

ফাটা ঢোল এটা কুবেই

লখেই কান্দানটু নুশনা হবা খোজে৷

Lokheitara, who live through a black and white dream, in a contradictory reality sunshine mocked her, rain forgot her, she is called now as "witch" ,"insane lokheitara".

Her freedom is buried.

From - :lokheitarai dhowa dag"

ধান শুখেবাৰ দিপ্ৰে

চোকা ৰ'দ জাকতকৰিও চোকা নখটুইদি

সি আচৰি দিছিল তাইৰ ফাটা চোলাটুইদি অলে থাকা বগা মঙাহখেন্তি ৷

Sensual words play is curated here with wild erotic undertone. The aggression and submission both in display. In a casual harsh day , hot sun up there, those forces of nature strikes physically two organism, two living beings with opposite sex in wilderness. The act of original sins.

ৰঙা পৰা চিনটো পিহি পিহি ফিৰদিনা তাই পানীত নামছিল,

লখেইতৰাত ৷

ধুই নিবা দিছিল লখেইতৰাক ৰঙাৰ পে কজলে পৰা দাগটু ৷

লখেইতৰাই বুজলাক !

মানুহগিলাই নুবুজলাক ৷

তাইৰ দাগটু চাবাকলেগি সেহঁতোৰ টানা-আজৰাত আৰু এটা দাগ হ'ল,

তাইৰ কইলজেত ৷

বুকুৰ ভিতেৰোত ৷

In a calmness after thunderstorm, she submitted herself to "Lokheitara". Water, the original source of life, she has merged in there in a lonely act. Conflict is evolved between the fear for constituted, manipulative social strata in a specific time of history and temptation, longingness, she is bestowed upon by nature. . She is condemned for life.

Probably since time of "Draupodi", she is carrying a scar, the time when dwindling matriarchy is taken over by patriarchy till now.

Remembering that famous feminist jab "Fat diya basumoti patale lukau", from story of Sita's returning to earth here as resembles to this verse. We see, Sita, A female deity of agricultural fertility, according to the Ramayana, Sita was discovered in a furrow when Janaka was ploughing. Sita is considered to be the child of the Mother Earth, produced by the union between the king and the land. Sita is a personification of the Earth's fertility, abundance, and well-being.

After humiliation caused by Lord Rama, Sita sought final refuge in the arms of her mother earth. Hearing her plea for release from an unjust world and from a life that had rarely been happy, the Earth dramatically split open, appeared in form of a woman and took Sita away.

গইধলাবেলা মায়েকে বহি থাকলাক

লখেইতৰাৰ পাৰোত ৷

লখেইতৰাক শাও দি ৷

ফিৰদিনা লখেইতৰাই তাইক

তুলি ধৰলাক উপেৰোত ৷

ধুৱেই-পখলেই…

দাগটু নহা কৰি --

কইলজেৰটু ৷

মায়েকে তিত্তেও শাও দি থাকলাক ৷

আজিও দেই!

লখেইতৰাক ৷

Empathetic view of mother here in this verse at the same time we see anguish, its helplessness of women in a patriarchal society.

ইত্তেও কেতেবা লখেইতৰা গন্ধে ৷

তাই তাই !!!

Her body is drowned and later is floated above Lokheitara. Ultimately she became Lokheitara, the river.

From : "aru ekbar lokheitara."

সৰু বাঁহীটুত ওঁঠ দুটে লগেই

সি সুৰ তুলছিল ভালপাৱাৰ৷

নদীৰ সিপাৰে কাপোৰ ধুই থাকা তাই

শুনে

মনে মনে৷

মিচিক-মাচাক কে তাইৰ ওঁঠোত

ভালপাৱাৰ হাঁহি৷

A tale of murder, mystery and politics is carried by Lokheitara.

We can witness richness of word power in this "Kamrupia Langauge". In deliberation we can argue that which way main stream Assamese language wish to evolve? Retaining Its current sanskritized version or is it ready to embrace all other colloquial languages of Assam? Answer is almost negative. An initiative taken by Dr Devabrat Sarma, as "Oxomiya jatiya abhidhan" with inclusion of many colloquial languages of Assam. It is late approach toward build a progressive nationality, but an important approach to give respect to colloquial languages of Assam.

তাৰ সুৰটুই ঠন ধৰে…

মহমহকে গোন্ধ এটা উঠে

দুয়োৰ' মাজোত৷

What will be the smell of a couple when they are deeply in a relationship? This "Kamrupia Langauge" is provide us a word "MOH-MOHAI". Its prolific, phonically beautiful.

সি জানা নাছিল

কোনো মাও বা গুৱেভাৰাক…

জংঘালোৰ মাজোত অধিকাৰ বিচৰাৰ

হেপাঁহো নাছিল তাৰ

সি চিনি প নাছিল কোনো

জলফেই ৰঙোৰ পোছাক পিন্ধা

তেজেইদি হাত ধোৱা মানুহ৷

কলপইতে ৰঙোৰ সোপান এটাহে

দেখছিল সি

লখেইতৰাৰ পাৰোত

তাইৰ লগোত৷

Lokheitara makes ripple through socio political scenario of Assam also. Static rhythm of life torn apart by collateral damages. The man play flute ultimately decide to become revolutionary, who wish to wear olive green trouser and shirts (or freedom fighter) with out knowing name of Mao and Che Guevara. But He is killed for his desire to become revolutionary by those gun men. He is hunted down finally.

সেটু পাৰে তাইৰ মুখোত সোপা দি

ৰঙগিলা তাইৰ পে আজৰি লৈ গুচি গেছিল সেহাঁত…

দমৰাটুই কিন্তু হেম্বেই আছিল৷

লখেইতৰাও বৈ আছিল

বোবা হৈ৷

জোতাৰ গচাকোত ভাঙা বাঁহীটু

বুকুত সামেৰি সুতেৰি লৈ

তাই মোলান পৰা আত্মাটু চোঁচৰেই গুচি গেল তাৰ পে৷

Story continues something similar way as stories of states that controlled by AFPSA law , she is taken to jungle, raped, colors of her life is snatched brutally. Another story of "Manoroma" is mirrored probably. Dumped, crushed and silenced.A man who played flute is silenced.

গোন্ধখিনি কিন্তু থাকি গেল

মহমহেই…

একেই গোন্ধ

একেই পানী

একেই বতাহোত কঁপা

চাদৰোৰ মেথেনি

কিন্তু নাছিল

গণ্ডাই-গণ্ডাই সৰি পৰা

তাই আৰু তাৰ

মিচিক-মাচাক হাঁহি !!

But that smell "Mohmohai" is retained. The smell "Mohmohai", the splendor of antiquity is keep possessing others, light up hearts eternally.

In this case, in this era when a society is failed to see laughter of young people that accumulated in high size, its then collective failures of a zombie society, which is thoroughly became impotent and opportunistic.

"Lokheitara" saga is goes on, author of Lokheitara have written other more verses of Lokheitara.

Now lets look in another literary piece "The chair" by Pradyumno kumar Gogoi.

Its an wonderful observation and intelligent creation. Probably I have not read in Assamese language such emblematic representation of media frenzy world and accurate appropriation of current propaganda model so intelligibly and as a profound literary piece which has ability to claim its authority on time.

মানুহজনৰ ঘৰত এখনো চকী নাই। এদিন তেওঁৰ চকীত বহিবলৈ মন গ'ল। সেয়ে তেওঁ চকী এখন বনাবলৈ অৰ্ডাৰ দিয়ালে। চকীত বহাৰো বিভিন্ন ধৰণ আছে- গাটো হলাই অথবা আঁউজি মূৰটো ওপৰলৈ কৰি, ভৰি দুটা তুলি লৈ মুখখন আঁঠু দুটাত গুজি, অথবা ভৰি দুটা মাটিত থৈ ,... , ... ...- মানুহজনে ভাবিবলৈ ধৰিলে চকীখন সাজি হোৱাৰ পাছত কেনেদৰে বহিব!

"self-reflexiveness, metafiction, eclecticism, redundancy, multiplicity, discontinuity, intertextuality, parody, the dissolution of character and narrative instance, the erasure of boundaries, and the destabilization of the reader" , these are characteristics of postmodernism and one might attribute to literary magic realism also.

"The chair ", a story deploys the ambiguity and dubious narrator characteristic of modernism, along with some suspense and humor elements. the story, in reading whose meaning could change dramatically depending on his/her belief on social system on each reading, one may argued further for socio-economic aspect of the story.

[A postmodern literary work tends not to conclude with the neatly tied-up ending as is often found in modernist literature . Postmodern authors tend to celebrate chance over craft, and further employ a style self-consciously and systematically draw attention to a work's status as an artifact. It poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection to undermine the writer's authority. Another characteristic of postmodern literature is the questioning of distinctions between high and low culture through the use of pastiche, the combination of subjects and genres not previously deemed fit for literature.]

So they intend to became "pogha singa moh, ji sab tohilong korar moti goti rakhe".

পাছদিনাখনৰ ঘৰৰ গাৰ্ডেনত, বাৰান্দাত মানুহজনক চকীখনত বহি থকা দেখা গ'ল। ৰাস্তাৰে পাৰ হৈ যোৱা সকলোৱে তেওঁক গাড়ীৰ গ্লাচ নমাই অভিবাদন-অভিনন্দন জনাই থৈ যায়, পুলিচবিলাকে চেল্যুট আৰু ঠেলাৱালাবিলাকে ভৰি মালিচ কৰি দিয়েহি। বেণ্ডপাৰ্টিবিলাক তেওঁৰ ঘৰ পায় হৈ যাওঁতে প্ৰশস্তি গাই যায়। চিত্ৰশিল্পীবিলাকে পদূলীত ৰৈ ঘণ্টা ধৰি তেওঁৰ ছবি আঁকি পাৰ কৰে আৰু ফটোগ্ৰাফাৰবিলাকে বিভিন্ন এংগোলত ফটো উঠায়। মানুহজনে নিৰ্বিকাৰ চাৱনীৰে সকলোকে সন্তুষ্ট কৰে।

We found Kafkaesque element in "the chair", "the chair" apply real-life occurrences and situations that are incomprehensibly complex and illogical. The hopelessness and absurdity as emblematic of existentialism are seen in the story. Themes of alienation and persecution although present in "the chair", reading "the chair" while focusing on the futility of characters' struggles reveals writer's play of humour, writer of the story is not necessarily commenting on problems, but rather pointing out how people tend to invent problems. It is noticed writer has created malevolent, absurd worlds in his other creations also and it can be proposed that writer's inspirations for characteristic situations came both from growing up in a megalomaniac media frenzy and living in a bourgeois democratic state.

ৰেকৰ্ডিং ষ্টুডিঅ', এফ.এম.বিলাক তেওঁৰ প্ৰশস্তিগীতবোৰেৰে উত্তাল হৈ থাকিল, তেওঁৰ নামত অজস্ৰ চিৰিয়েল উলাল, 'বহিখোৱা' নামেৰে চিনেমা নিৰ্মাণ হৈ উলাল- ব্লেকত টিকট বিক্ৰী হ'ল আৰু ব্লেকাৰবিলাকে কেইবাদিনলৈ ভগৱানৰ সলনি তেওঁৰ নাম লৈ থাকিল, আলোচনীবিলাকৰ কবিতা শিতানত তেওঁৰ প্ৰশস্তিসমূহে আলোড়ন সৃষ্টি কৰিলে, একঝিবিশ্যন ৱালবিলাক তেওঁ চকীত বহি থকাৰ ফটোগ্ৰাফী-পেইণ্টিঙেৰে ভৰি পৰিল, গুণমুগ্ধসকলে ডাইনিং ৰুমবিলাক তেওঁৰ ছবিৰে সজাবলৈ লাগিল।

'বহিখোৱা' নামেৰে এটা ট্ৰেণ্ড-ফেশ্যনৰ সৃষ্টি হ'ল।

জুইশলা বাকচৰ পৰা চিমেণ্ট কোম্পানীৰ এডভাৰটাইজলৈকে চকীৰ ছবি দেখা গ'ল- মজবুত চেয়াৰ কে লিয়ে মজবুত ফাউণ্ডেশ্যন। বাতৰী কাকতৰ চাৰ্কুলেশ্যন-নিউজ চেনেলৰ টিআৰপি তেওঁৰ ওপৰত নিৰ্ভৰ কৰা হ'ল। অফিচ-বজাৰ-বাছষ্টেণ্ড-বাৰ-বেশ্যালয়-মদৰ আড্ডা জমি উঠিল। মদাহীবিলাকে মাজৰাতি তেওঁৰ নামত দম্ভালি মাৰি ফুৰিলে। তেওঁৰ নাম লটাৰী খেলা হ'ল।

The story include instances in which media overpower people, often in a surreal, nightmarish milieu which evokes feelings of senselessness, disorientation, and helplessness. Characters in the story setting often lack a clear course of action to escape a rabbit hole situation. Now fascism continues to seep into today’s political events and consciousness in a way that means that it is absolutely necessary to strike back. And that is the point, the story evaluates that people are trapped as being obsessives and yet coporates media/bureaucracy/ruling class are performing a vital public service in preventing all of us from thinking that we, as a nation and people, are somehow better than others and that we therefore have some inalienable right to rule.

এদিন ৰাতিপুৱা তেওঁৰ ঘৰৰ আগত গোটখোৱা গুণমুগ্ধ-ফটোগ্ৰাফাৰ-সাংবাদিক-চিত্ৰকৰসকলে আৱিষ্কাৰ কৰিলে- বহিখোৱাই হাস্যকৰভাৱে ভৰি আঁউজা চকীখনত ভৰি দুটা 'দ'ৰ দৰে ভাঁজ কৰি বহাখনত মূৰটো থৈ শুই আছে। গুণমুগ্ধসকলে হাঁহি হাঁহি বাগৰি পৰিল, ৰাস্তাৰে পাৰ হৈ যোৱা গাড়ীবিলাকৰ গ্লাচ গুচাই মানুহবিলাকে মানুহজনক লৈ কৌতুক কৰিলে, পুলিচ-ঠেলাৱালাবিলাকে হাঁহি মুখেৰে চাদা মোহাৰি মোহাৰি পায়চাৰি কৰি ফুৰিলে, বেণ্ডপাৰ্টিবিলাকে হাস্যকৰ গান এটা ঠাওকতে সাজি পৰিৱেশন কৰিলে, ৰেকৰ্ডিং ষ্টুডিঅ'-এফ.এম.বিলাকত হাস্যকৰ গানেৰে উত্তাল হৈ পৰিল, তেওঁৰ নামত অজস্ৰ ব্যংগ চিৰিয়েল উলাল, 'বহিখোৱা ৰিটাৰ্ণছ' নামৰ ব্যংগ চিনেমা নিৰ্মাণ হ'ল আৰু ব্লেকত টিকট বিক্ৰী হ'ল, একজিবিশ্যন ৱালবিলাক বিভিন্ন হাস্যকৰ পেইণ্টিং-ফটোগ্ৰাফীৰে ভৰি পৰিল, গুণমুগ্ধবিলাকে তেওঁৰ শুই থকা হাস্যকৰ ফটোসমুহ শোৱাৰুমত আঁৰি ৰাখিলে, আলোচনীসমূহত ব্যংগ কবিতাই আলোড়ন তুলিলে, নিউজ চেনেলসমূহত হাস্য-ব্যংগানুষ্ঠান পৰিৱেশন হ'ল, বাতৰি কাকতত কাৰ্টুন ছাপা হ'ল, অফিচ-বজাৰ-বাছ ষ্টেণ্ড-বাৰ-মদৰ আদ্দাবিলাক কৌতুক-গজৱেৰে ভৰি পৰিল... ... ...

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have established a "propaganda model" which purports to explain this bias.

"The hypothesis is that the process is decentralized and operates as a confluence of factors, that includes the overt pressure from owners and advertisers,but also by the gradual internalization of the biases and values of the corporate owners, leading to self-censorship. Other factors include the tendency of journalists to avoid doing original research, instead obtaining news from the same few wire services."

Bagdikian notes that in the 1980s, "less than 1 percent of all corporations, have 87 percent of all sales. [The corporates] are the aristocrats of the American Industrial economy; the remaining 359,500, in terms of their national power, are the peasantry." This conflict continues to arise as "dominant media companies are further [integrating] into the ruling forces of the economy." The directorates of major companies interlock with others and control the content of multiple dominating media and information distribution (i.e., newspapers, magazines, radio and television companies, book publishers, film industries, and even multinational banking investors). They become directly influenced by still other powerful industry, creating the "Endless Chain" of mass media and economic aristocracy (Wardrip-Fruin, 479).

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,

[the propaganda model views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media's "societal purpose", Chomsky writes, "... the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature".

The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are: Ownership of the medium, Medium's funding sources, Sourcing Flak and Anti-communism and fear ideology."]

"The chair" proclaim here that it seems enjoy to stepped in as opposite side and ready to face them unquestionably and unconditionally.

It is witnessed many writers/artist/filmmaker/socio political critic etc from new generation in various field already are taking the grip firm-way. Literature, film, poetry etc from NE States in safe hands and they refused to do "sorbit sorvan" ....damn ..some real bad ass boys n girls....... :P

no way out from conformism, opportunism and careerist engagement in creative filed , but to establish a forward looking dynamic culture should be in agenda.

Kardom :)

[quoted text are taken from Internet source]

Statement by Women’s and Progressive Groups and Individuals Condemning Sexual Violence and Opposing Death Penalty

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:25:00 +0000

DECEMBER 24, 2012

On 16 December, 2012, a 23-year old woman and her friend hailed a bus at a crossing in South Delhi. In the bus, they were both brutally attacked by a group of men who claimed to be out on a ‘joy-ride’. The woman was gang raped and the man beaten up; after several hours, they were both stripped and dumped on the road. While the young woman is still in hospital, bravely battling for her life, her friend has been discharged and is helping identify the men responsible for the heinous crime.

We, the undersigned, women’s, students’ and progressive groups and concerned citizens from around the country, are outraged at this incident and, in very strong terms, condemn her gang rape and the physical and sexual assault.

As our protests spill over to the streets all across the country, our demands for justice are strengthened by knowing that there are countless others who share this anger. We assert that rape and other forms of sexual violence are not just a women’s issue, but a political one that should concern every citizen. We strongly demand that justice is done in this and all other cases and the perpetrators are punished.

This incident is not an isolated one; sexual assault occurs with frightening regularity in this country. Adivasi and dalit women and those working in the unorganised sector, women with disabilities, hijras, kothis, trans people and sex workers are especially targeted with impunity – it is well known that the complaints of sexual assault they file are simply disregarded. We urge that the wheels of justice turn not only to incidents such as the Delhi bus case, but to the epidemic of sexual violence that threatens all of us. We need to evolve punishments that act as true deterrents to the very large number of men who commit these crimes. Our stance is not anti-punishment but against the State executing the death penalty. The fact that cases of rape have a conviction rate of as low as 26% shows that perpetrators of sexual violence enjoy a high degree of impunity, including being freed of charges.

Silent witnesses to everyday forms of sexual assault such as leering, groping, passing comments, stalking and whistling are equally responsible for rape being embedded in our culture and hence being so prevalent today. We, therefore, also condemn the culture of silence and tolerance for sexual assault and the culture of valorising this kind of violence.

We also reject voices that are ready to imprison and control women and girls under the garb of ‘safety’, instead of ensuring their freedom as equal participants in society and their right to a life free of perpetual threats of sexual assault, both inside and outside their homes.

In cases (like this) which have lead to a huge public outcry all across the country, and where the perpetrators have been caught, we hope that justice will be speedily served and they will be convicted for the ghastly acts that they have committed. However, our vision of this justice does not include death penalty, which is neither a deterrent nor an effective or ethical response to these acts of sexual violence. We are opposed to it for the following reasons:

We recognise that every human being has a right to life. Our rage cannot give way to what are, in no uncertain terms, new cycles of violence. We refuse to deem ‘legitimate’ any act of violence that would give the State the right to take life in our names. Justice meted by the State cannot bypass complex socio-political questions of violence against women by punishing rapists by death. Death penalty is often used to distract attention away from the real issue – it changes nothing but becomes a tool in the hands of the State to further exert its power over its citizens. A huge set of changes are required in the system to end the widespread and daily culture of rape.

1. There is no evidence to suggest that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to rape. Available data shows that there is a low rate of conviction in rape cases and a strong possibility that the death penalty would lower this conviction rate even further as it is awarded only under the ‘rarest of rare’ circumstances. The most important factor that can act as a deterrent is the certainty of punishment, rather than the severity of its form.

2. There is no evidence to suggest that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to rape. Available data shows that there is a low rate of conviction in rape cases and a strong possibility that the death penalty would lower this conviction rate even further as it is awarded only under the ‘rarest of rare’ circumstances. The most important factor that can act as a deterrent is the certainty of punishment, rather than the severity of its form.

3. As seen in countries like the US, men from minority communities make up a disproportionate number of death row inmates. In the context of India, a review of crimes that warrant capital punishment reveals the discriminatory way in which such laws are selectively and arbitrarily applied to disadvantaged communities, religious and ethnic minorities. This is a real and major concern, as the possibility of differential consequences for the same crime is injustice in itself.

4. The logic of awarding death penalty to rapists is based on the belief that rape is a fate worse than death. Patriarchal notions of ‘honour’ lead us to believe that rape is the worst thing that can happen to a woman. There is a need to strongly challenge this stereotype of the ‘destroyed’ woman who loses her honour and who has no place in society after she’s been sexually assaulted. We believe that rape is tool of patriarchy, an act of violence, and has nothing to do with morality, character or behaviour.

5. An overwhelming number of women are sexually assaulted by people known to them, and often include near or distant family, friends and partners. Who will be able to face the psychological and social trauma of having reported against their own relatives? Would marital rape (currently not recognised by law), even conceptually, ever be looked at through the same retributive prism?

6. The State often reserves for itself the ‘right to kill’ — through the armed forces, the paramilitary and the police. We cannot forget the torture, rape and murder of ThangjamManoramaby the Assam Rifles in Manipur in 2004 or the abduction, gang rape and murder of Neelofar and Aasiya of Shopian (Kashmir) in 2009.Giving more powers to the State, whether arming the police and giving them the right to shoot at sight or awarding capital punishment, is not a viable solution to lessen the incidence of crime.

Furthermore, with death penalty at stake, the ‘guardians of the law’ will make sure that no complaints against them get registered and they will go to any length to make sure that justice does not see the light of day. The ordeal of Soni Sori, who had been tortured in police custody last year, still continues her fight from inside aprison in Chattisgarh, in spite of widespread publicity around her torture.

7. As we know, in cases of sexual assault where the perpetrator is in a position of power (such as in cases of custodial rape or caste and communal violence), conviction is notoriously difficult. The death penalty, for reasons that have already been mentioned, would make conviction next to impossible.

We, the undersigned, demand the following:

- Greater dignity, equality, autonomy and rights for women and girls from a society that should stop questioning and policing their actions at every step.

-Immediate relief in terms of legal, medical, financial and psychological assistance and long-term rehabilitation measures must be provided to survivors of sexual assault.

- Provision of improved infrastructure to make cities safer for women, including well-lit pavements and bus stops, help lines and emergency services.

-Effective registration, monitoring and regulation of transport services (whether public, private or contractual) to make them safe, accessible and available to all.

-Compulsory courses within the training curriculum on gender sensitisation for all personnel employed and engaged by the State in its various institutions, including the police.

-That the police do its duty to ensure that public spaces are free from harassment, molestation and assault. This means that they themselves have to stop sexually assaulting women who come to make complaints. They have to register all FIRs and attend to complaints. CCTV cameras should be set up in all police stations and swift action must be taken against errant police personnel.

-Immediate setting up of fast track courts for rape and other forms of sexual violence all across the country. State governments should operationalise their creation on a priority basis. Sentencing should be done within a period of six months.

-The National Commission for Women has time and again proved itself to be an institution that works against the interests of women. NCW’s inability to fulfil its mandate of addressing issues of violence against women, the problematic nature of the statements made by the Chairperson and its sheer inertia in many serious situations warrants that the NCW role be reviewed and auditedas soon as possible.

-The State acknowledges the reality of custodial violence against women in many parts of the country, especially in Kashmir, North-East and Chhattisgarh. There are several pending cases and immediate action should be taken by the government to punish the guilty and to ensure that these incidents of violence are not allowed to be repeated.

-Regarding the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2012, women’s groups have already submitted detailed recommendations to the Home Ministry. We strongly underline that the Bill must not be passed in its current form because of its many serious loopholes and lacuna. Some points:

- There has been no amendment to the flawed definition of consent under Sec 375 IPC and this has worked against the interest of justice for women.

- The formulation of the crime of sexual assault as gender neutralmakes the identity of the perpetrator/accused also gender neutral. We demand that the definition of perpetrator be gender-specific and limited to men. Sexual violence also targets transgender people and legal reform must address this.

- In its current form, the Bill does not recognise the structural and graded nature of sexual assault, based on concepts of hurt, harm, injury, humiliation and degradation. The Bill also does not use well-established categories of sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault and sexual offences.

- It does not mention sexual assault by security forces as a specific category of aggravated sexual assault. We strongly recommend the inclusion of perpetration of sexual assault by security forces under Sec 376(2).

Endorsed by the following groups and individuals:

New Socialist Initiative (NSI), Citizens’ Collective against Sexual Assault (CCSA), Purnima, Nirantar, New Delhi, Sandhya Gokhale, Forum Against Oppression of Women, Bombay, Deepti, Saheli, Delhi, Mary John, Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi, Jagori, Delhi, Vimochana, Bangalore, Stree Mukti Sanghathan, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh Mahila Manch, Kavita Krishnan, AIPWA, New Delhi, Anuradha Kapoor ,Swayam, Calcutta, Kalpana Mehta, Manasi Swasthya Sansthan, Indore, Nandita Gandhi, Akshara, Bombay, Indira, Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression, (WSS), New Delhi, National Alliance of people’s Movements (NAPM), Mallika, Maati, Uttarakhand, Meena Saraswathi Seshu, SANGRAM, Sangli, GRAMEENA MAHILA Okkutta, Karnataka, WinG Assam, Arati Chokshi, PUCL, Bangalore, Action India, Delhi, Majlis Law, Legal Services for Women, Mumbai, Sahiayar (Stree Sangathan), Vadodara, Gujarat, Vasanth Kannabiran (NAWO, AP) Asmita, Sheba George, SAHRWARU, SAMYAK, Pune, Shabana Kazi, VAMP, Sruti disAbility Rights Centre, Kolkata, Forum to Engage Men (FEM), New Delhi, MASVAW( Men Action for stopping Violence Against Women), UP, Breakthrough, New Delhi, V Rukmini Rao, Gramya Resource Centre for Women, Secunderabad, LABIA, a queer feminist LBT collective, Mumbai, Law Trust, Tamil Nadu, Men’s Action to Stop Violence agaisnt Women (MASVAW), UP, National Forum for Single Women’s Rights, NAWO-AP, Arunachal Pradesh Women’s Welfare Society (APWWS), Indigenous Women’s Resource Centre (IWRC), Gabriele Dietrich, Pennurimai Iyakkam, Sangat, a South Asian Feminist Network, Stree Mukti Sanghatana, Mumbai, SWATI, Ahmedabad, Tamil Nadu Women Fish Workers Forum, Subhash Mendhapurkar,SUTRA, H.P, Mario, Nigah, queer collective, New Delhi, Sushma Varma, Samanatha Mahila Vedike, Bangalore, Priti Darooka, PWESCR (The Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), New Delhi, Pushpa Achanta (WSS, Karnataka), AWN, Kabul, AZAD and Sakha Team, Delhi, Ekta, Madurai, Empower People, Vrinda Grover, Chayanika Shah, Bombay, Aruna Roy, Kalyani Menon-Sen, Feminist Learning Partnerships, Gurgaon, Nandini Rao, Pratiksha Baxi, Amrita Nandy, Farah Naqvi, Writer & Activist, Delhi, Nivedita Menon, Urvashi Butalia, Kaveri R I, Bengaluru, Dunu Roy, Harsh Mander, Anil TV, Laxmi Murthy, Journalist, Bangalore, Rahul Roy, Rituparna Borah, queer feminist activist, Ranjana Padhi, New Delhi, Trupti Shah, Vadodara, Gujarat, Vasanth Kannabiran, Sudha Bharadwaj, Veena Shatrugna, Hyderabad, Kamayani Bali Mahabal, Kiran Shaheen, Journalist and activist, Lesley A Esteves, journalist, New Delhi, Devangana Kalita, assam, Aruna Burte, Anita Ghai, Mohan Rao, New Delhi, Rakhi Sehgal, New Delhi, Geetha Nambisan, Charan Singh, New Delhi, Manjima Bhattacharjya, Jinee Lokaneeta,Associate professor, Drew University, Madison, NJ, Kavita Panjabi, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, Albertina almeida, Goa, Satyajit Rath, New Delhi, Prerna Sud, New Delhi, Priya Sen, New Delhi, Aarthi Pai, Bangalore, Kalpana Vishwanath, Gurgaon, Aisha K. Gill, Reader, University of Roehampton, London, Ammu Abraham, Mumbai, Anagha Sarpotdar, Activist and PhD Student, Mumbai, Anand Pawar, Anuradha Marwah, Ajmer Adult Education Association (AAEA), Ajmer, Asha Ramesh, activist/researcher/consultant, Bondita, Gauri Gill, New delhi, Sophia Khan, Gujarat, Niranjani Iyer, Chennai, Dyuti Ailawadi, Gandimathi Alagar, Gayatri Buragohain – Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT), New Delhi, Geetha Nambisan, Delhi, Sadhna Arya, New Delhi, Vineeta Bal, New Delhi, Suneeta Dhar, Geeta Ramaseshan, Advocate, Chennai, Sonal Sharma, New delhi, Anusha Hariharan, Delhi/Chennai, Jayasree.A.K, Gautam Bhan, New Delhi, Jayasree Subramanian, TISS, Hyderabad, Jhuma Sen, Advocate, Supreme Court,Teena Gill, New Delhi, Kannamma Raman, Karuna D W, Shalini Krishan, New Delhi, Lalita Ramdas, Secunderabad, Manasi Pingle,Madhumita Dutta, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Manoj Mitta, Pamela Philipose, Parul Chaudhary, Preethi Herman, Sunil Gupta, New Delhi, Radha Khan, Rama Vedula, Rebecca John, Renu Khanna, SAHAJ, Rohini Hensman (Writer and Activist, Bombay), Rohit Prajapati, Environmental activist, Gujarat, Roshmi Goswami, Shipra Nigam, Consultant Economist, Research and Information Systems, New Delhi, Shipra Deo, Agribusiness Systems International Vamshakti, Pratapgarh, Rukmini Datta, Sridala Swami, Sarba Raj Khadka, Kathmandu, Satish K. Singh, CHSJ, Shinkai Karokhail, from the Afghanistan Parliament, Sima Samar, Kabul, Smita Singh, FTII, Pune, Subhalakshmi Nandi, Sujata Gothoskar, Swar Thounaojam, Inayat Sabhikhi, Jaya Vindhyala, Hyderabad.

famous Assamese recipe - duck curry with gourd

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:00 +0000

Haah aru Kumura Aanja (duck curry with gourd)
by Ruprekha Mushahary

Indigenous Assamese cuisine is incomplete without this particular dish. In the upper region of the state of Assam, this dish is regarded very highly. In the olden times and even today, when a dear friend or a respected guest is invited over a meal, this delicacy takes the place of the main course. I remember as a young girl, whenever a reputed person or a respected guest is invited to the house, instead of the cook, either my Aaita, Maa or aunt would be doing the honours of cooking this particular dish with utmost care.

Although duck meat is found and eaten any time of the year, it tastes best during December-January. During this time of the season the ducks are full of fat. Harvesting season starts from the month of November and during this time ducks get to eat a lot of freshly harvested seeds of paddy. This is believed to be the reason behind the taste of duck meat during this time of the year.

After toiling all year round, when harvesting is over, its time to celebrate and merrymaking. In mid January Assam celebrates one of the three Bihus. In this Bihu, called the Maagh Bihu or the Bhogali Bihu, duck becomes the most preferred meat.

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Trotsky, Lenin and the Stalinist General Line

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:08:00 +0000

BY Kunal Chattopadhyay

Trotsky’s greatest sin, it seems, was that he often disagreed with the “general line” of the party. Or so the contemporary devotees of Joseph Stalin would still like us to believe. Perhaps this should be viewed, rather, as Trotsky’s continuing commitment to the pre-Stalinist Marxist tradition, for which commitment to working class democracy, viewed as more expansive than the best that bourgeois democracy could afford to offer, and hence as his greatest legacy for socialists in the twenty-first century if they do not want to bow movingly to market forces, yet want to be relevant. For the days when one could say in a commanding tone, “this is the party line”, and expect everyone to lie down and play dead like tame dogs, are gone forever.

When Karl Marx started his political career, he began as a democrat. Unlike many earlier and contemporary socialists and communists, he did not advocate aneducational dictatorship of the party (or a group of wise and enlightened elite, by whatever name) over the working people. And his call for a “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” was not a call for party dictatorship. One has to remember that in the Paris Commune, there were very few people holding close to Marx’s views, and that moreover it was an elected body with laws far more democratic than anything that then existed in any liberal state. Yet both Marx and Engels unhesitatingly called the Commune a dictatorship of the proletariat.

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Striving for Just Society

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 09:10:00 +0000

BY Ram Puniyani

The verdict of magistrate Dr. Jyotsna Yagnik, sentencing Dr. Maya Kodnani, Babu Bajrangi and others to long imprisonment (31 August, 2012) has come as a big relief to the victims of Naroda Patiya, for whom it was like return of Eid to their houses. Naroda Patiya had witnessed horrific carnage and acts of rape in 2002 and this judgment will give a solace to the victims and their near and dear ones’. This judgment came as a culmination of the mammoth efforts of the human rights activists, the victims, the witnesses and the team of legal activists who stood all the opposition form every conceivable quarter to ensure that justice is done in the case. The adage that ‘there can’t be peace without justice’ has been redeemed with this court judgment.

This judgment also puts right various misconceptions deliberately propagated by communal forces. First and foremost was that the Gujarat violence was a reaction to the Godhra train burning. By now this is believed by most of the sections of society, more so by the communalized sections of society all over and more so in Gujarat. The judge made it clear that “thousands of persons…attacked weaponless and frightened victims with intention, pre planning while sharing common objects”. It was not a spontaneous reaction to burning of train in Godhra. Rather Godhra train burning was used subtly as a justification for the preplanned pogrom. Communal forces tried to pass it off as ‘natural anger’ which the state could not control. Contrary to this perception, now court has ruled that it was a deliberately planned carnage, using the Godhra incident as a mere pretext to consolidate communal polarization in the state of Gujarat.

India has witnessed so many communal riots, acts of violence. Lately these riots have been assuming the form of well organized pogroms. This finding of Human Rights groups and the report of Citizens for Justice and peace gets validated through this judgment, for sure. So far the trend has been that the innocents have been killed in the violence and the perpetrators of violence have gone scot free. Now it seems that with the human rights defenders tightening their belts can set right the adverse trend, where guilty were getting away without any punishment. In this case human rights defenders have put in all the efforts to reverse the prevalent trend due to which the perpetrators of crime were more or less sure that they can get away with their crimes and consolidate their politics.

For once the message is loud and clear that the automatic mechanisms of justice delivery system are not effective and a super human efforts by dedicated human rights defenders like Teesta Setalvad, Gagan Sethi, Harsh Mander, Yusuf Muchala, Mukul Sinha, Govind Parmar and many others like them, working through different angles, supplementing each other’s efforts can ensure that justice is done. They had to plug the leaks in the system to ensure that victims are protected, witnesses are protected, the complaints, FIRs are properly recorded, and to see that all the hurdles to justice are overcome.

The first question which comes to mind is, will this state of affairs continue like this where nothing short of super human efforts, protecting-sustaining the victims and witnesses against heavy odds will be needed for getting justice. Society and the nation needs to plug the loopholes in the policing system, in the bureaucratic apparatus and in the attitude of political leadership so that the justice delivery becomes a matter of routine rather than an exception. Victims of so many riots, pogroms are still awaiting justice, Bhagalpur, Delhi and Mumbai to name the few, still have not got the justice.

This brings to our attention another aspect of the violence, those who led it. Dr. Maya Kodnani came up through Rashtra Sevikasamiti, an organization subordinate to Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, RSS. One notes incidentally that in RSS worldview, women don’t have a swayam (Self) as is manifest in the name of Rashtra Sevikasamiti. Also that Maya Kodnani was sitting MLA, and after the pogrom and her role in it, inciting the mob, distributing fuel and armaments, she was promoted to the level of minister and once she was charged with the role in violence, she was dumped from the ministry and disowned by the state Government. Section of RSS followers in VHP etc. are protesting against the judgment. As such the standard technique for RSS stable is that, once its members-followers undertake the crime, murder of Gandhi, burning of Pastor Stains, or play their part in terror attack, they are declared not to be having any association with the parent organization, whose ideology they are living and breathing through their actions. Kodnani for certain reasons did say that she was victim of politics! What does this mean? While this statement is a mystery, one hopes the meaning of this victimhood comes out one of the days in future.

Babu Bajrangi is another character, whose revelations in Tehelka were nothing less than shocking. He said they have been given time for three days, and that his team-associates are playing not the test cricket but one day match, where high score is to made in short time. And that after killing the hapless Muslims he felt like Rana Pratap. One wishes he knew that Rana Pratap was not killing in the name of religion, he was fighting other kings for power and that in his army there were Muslims soldiers as well. One of the his army generals who died while fighting for Rana Pratap was Hakim Khan Sur, whose tomb is there in the Haldi Ghati even now. How distortions of medieval history are done deliberately to incite hate becomes clear again.

And what is happening to the conscience of Narendra Modi, who has been the major beneficiary of the carnage of 2002? Any remorse, any tears for at least those who were reporting to him during the carnage, whom he promoted for their role in the violence and now are being punished by the due process of law?

One hopes that we recast our laws and system to ensure that the violence is punished in due course and that this punishment acts as a deterrent and ensures that in future such inhuman dastardly acts don’t repeat themselves. This welcome judgment also leaves a few questions, what about those who faulted in the discharge of their duties to protect the innocents, to register their legitimate complains, and to nail the guilty as a matter of their assigned duty? We do need to work towards a system where to begin with such hate crimes don’t take place, and if by chance such a tragedy is engineered by some political forces, we have the system in place which can check it right away and punish those who are either conspiring, or executing or are not controlling those dastardly acts. One hopes that the human rights defenders will be on their tip toes to come forward with such yeomen efforts to have a society with justice and peace.

Economic Perspectives 2012 - INDIA

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:47:00 +0000

By Youvraj B

Last year in March 2011 a confident FM presenting union budget forecasted Indian economy to grow at 9%. One year after that and we see the growth rate plunged to 6.5%, way below what was anticipated an year before. This year’s economic survey puts it as:

“For the Indian economy this was a year of disappointing growth performance. During each of the previous two years, 2009-10 and 2010-11, India’s gross domestic product GDP (at factor cost) grew by 8.4 per cent per annum. Further, in 2010-11, the GDP at market price grew by a remarkable 9.6 per cent. This performance, coming in the wake of one of the biggest global recessions in history, was outstanding. It fed expectations that India’s short economic downturn in 2008-9, when the GDP grew by 6.7 per cent, was behind us and the economy was on its way to full-fledged recovery. That did not happen.”

Notwithstanding hype created by bourgeoisie economist and media, all the available facts that are now emerging has completely rubbished the so called decoupling theory as responsible for the India’s economic performance in FY10 and FY11 (FY – Fiscal Year). Instead it was the temporal factors like dollar carry trade, fiscal stimulus that led to cushioning the economy. Subsequently when these factors waned out the economy grew at 6.5%, lowest in past 9 years starting 2003-04 (except obviously FY09).

What propelled the growth?

One needs to take a look at the very process of growth to analyse the current juncture. There were broadly two aspects that scripted the Indian growth story. One is private capital investment. Very act of India signing SAP (Structural Adjustment Program) implied policies pursued would be all about promoting investment of private capital. Neo-liberal reforms are nothing but steps that make terms of investment favourable to big corporations. This agenda was carried out diligently by subsequent governments irrespective of their political affiliations. More and more sectors of economy that were till then reserved for public investments or cottage industries were thrown open to private capital, framework of regulation was replaced by policy formulations that enticed private investments. Soon sectors like mining, communication saw private capital gushing in. State steadfastly anchored and committed itself for the protection of private capital at any cost.

Credit system was reworked by a spate of banking reforms by liberalizing it and one could see auto loans available at 7% to buy brand new Mercedes-Benz while farmers ended up paying 60% interest to buy agricultural inputs. Fiscal policy too was revamped and export industry hosted in SEZ granted tax holidays to ‘attract’ private investments. As a result private investment both domestic and foreign soared up leading to higher growth.

But where did demand or consumption come from? Capitalist would not invest into anything that could not be sold. That is second aspect we need to consider. Demand came from roughly 3 quarters. One is foreign demand. Services like IT and the spurt in mining were mainly meant for foreign consumption. Export of these commodities (in addition to tax incentives) saw their traders becoming billionaires. Rest of the consumption however is domestic (measured as PFCE – private final consumption expenditure), something much touted by bourgeoisie economists who declare the growth as ‘robust’ one based on domestic consumption.

A detailed analysis of PFCE dispels the notion though. PFCE analysis of 2004-05 to 2007-08 (above figures) indicates as much as 18.8% i.e. just less than 1/5 of expenditure on ‘Transport and Communication’. In fact 3 headings of this segment viz. Personal transport equipment, Operation of personal transport equipment and purchase of transport services put together accounts for whooping 17.09%. Just to put this in perspective, this was 12.97% in 1999-00 and soared to 18.09% in just 5 years. This indicates what types of expenses are fuelling economic growth. Now in the country where millions are impoverished or to go by Arjun Sengupta committee 77% of people live on Rs. 20 a day, can we say it is mass consumption propelling economic growth? Well, the answer is simple.

It is elite consumption on trendy cars, SUVs and extravagant foreign tours that is the driving force and not mass consumption. But is it just elites? What about the budding middle class? That is the third source of demand though with a caveat attached. Availability of cheap credit had played a major role here. In years before 2007 interest rates had been much lower and boom in many sector thrived on it. Construction that had 8% share in GDP last year is one of such debt-driven sector that witnessed boom. Thus on the basis of demand from sources discussed above and a gush of private capital investment in response to government’s ‘business-friendly’ approach resulted in Indian economy growing at 9% or higher.

What went wrong?

Things started changing since 2007 both globally and domestically. Inflation as indicated by WPI (Wholesale Price Index) touched 7% following price rises in global market. Government pre-occupied with growth kept on ignoring it until late 2009 when it reached threatening proportion. Only then RBI kicked in and increased interest rates 13 times since Jan 2010 in an attempt to cool down inflation. On one hand, this hampered credit driven consumer expenditure while on other hand cost of borrowing went up for capitalists making a dent into their profitability. Its impact on consumption and hence demand cannot be missed.

2011 census data released by Census directorate indicated as many as 3.7 million houses in Maharashtra lying vacant, with Pune alone accounting for 5,78,090 houses. Growth rate of construction sector too reflects the trend. It must be noted that this sector has been key driver of growth in boom period (FY04-08). Along with this, a slump in US, Eurozone and other parts of world has resulted in reduction in foreign demand and exports have gone down as well reflected in worsening of BOP (Balance of Payment) situation. It directly impacted merchandise export and subsequently trade deficit has ballooned from $32.52 bn Q3 FY11 to $47.72 bn in Q3 FY12.

This is just a part of it. Another important and an overriding factor is mobility of capital in search of profits & higher profits. Its frantic inward movements especially in emerging economies create an illusion of growth inflating investment bubbles while its exit only bursts it. In past 2 decades economies ranging from erstwhile 7 South-East Asian Tigers (Malaysia, Indonesia etc) to eastern European countries have experienced this. The precarious situation in Europe resulted in foreign investors pulling out funds in favour of safer heavens – US treasuries bringing down inflow of foreign capital. Statistics released by RBI show that net portfolio investment fell dramatically from $6.299 bn in Q3 FY10 to $1.898 bn in Q3 FY11. It must be borne in mind that such speculative money has always played a key role in driving India’s growth. When economy sank in FY09 following global meltdown, the gush of speculative money (made available by US Federal reserve throwing dollars at negative interest rates in real terms) in the form of dollar carry trade propped up the economy and boosted elite consumption creating an illusion of growth. And this is what made the Indian bourgeoisie prematurely cheer success of ‘decoupling theory’ that only stands shattered in the wake of recent events. Domestic investors too sought out for safer investments. These investors and wealthy sections of the society turned to precious metals especially gold for their investments. Subsequently Import of gold zoomed up to $61.5 bn recording a growth of 44.4%. (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/indians-import-gold-worth-rs-3.41-lakh-cr-in-fy12/960771/). This in itself led to worsening of trade deficit that surged from $118.7 (in FY11) to $184.9 bn (in FY12). Gold along with silver and petroleum products contributed as much as 44.4% of total imports. All this i.e. plunge in global demand lowering exports, investment into precious metal leading to whooping increase in imports and global investors pulling out funds (indicated by depreciation of INR) has culminated in BoP crisis. Thus the crisis of Indian economy is of its own making.

Capital, State and Class power

The capitalists in the country are frustrated; what looked like (or they imagined like) an unstoppable dream run of their gravy trains has its wheels log-jammed. For them it was an era of unprecedented loot and current downturn in Indian economy increasing threatens to eclipse it. They are flush with money but downturn has changed terms of investment for them. Consequently rate of GCF is dwindling. On 27th Dec. 2011 Economic Times reported ‘Ajay Piramal has got tons of cash but nowhere to invest’. It laments that Piramal sitting on a mountain of cash ($3.8 bn) is struggling to find ways for investment.

That’s what is the real question for capitalists. It doesn’t mean they are not investing or not earning enough profits. That’s not the point. The point is dealing with ever increasing stock of capital. Process of capital accumulation is a fundamental to capitalism and along its journey it only multiplies – in a geometric progression first and then exponentially. It haunts the capitalists like a dreadful ghost. Capital can survive only as long as it grows; if it ceases to grow its existence is seriously threatened.

When pie of economy expands, the process of capital accumulation marches like a the procession of victorious warriors. Crumbs off the table of capitalists are fed to starving, destitute masses who are told that trickle would grow thicker and thicker. Its advance looks like a secular and benign march. However matter of time and pie beings to implode under self-weight of inner contradictions of capitalism. It throws the spanner in the process of accumulation; whole dynamics of the process changes. As multiplication of capital is obstructed, its very survival is endangered and system descends into chaos and crisis. That’s what is the current crisis of Indian bourgeoisie. And who they turn to in this period of crisis? State. Long back Marxists have pointed that capitalism can never rise beyond the straight jacket of the State.

Free market ideology of capitalism reduces state to the role of facilitator of private investment; rest everything is to be left to market forces that work to achieve equilibrium through the rules of demand and supply. State intervention is an absolute taboo as it interferes with market forces and distorts equilibrium. Pundits of neo-liberalism utter this mantra all the way but only until the boom period or bubble lasts. Once it bursts, they summon State in its service. But why State?

When victorious march of capital accumulation is obstructed it doesn’t stop instead turns violent. For its survival it must crush all obstacles along its path though but it means increasing confrontation with working class. That is where it requires State. If State bound by its compulsions to ‘keep the struggle within bounds’ pleads for restraint, capitalist class unleashes flurry of fury against it. That’s what is happening now. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, once a blue-eyed boy of investors all over the world, has turned into whipping boy with none to shed tears for him.

Article mentioned above (Economic Times, 27th Dec) moves on stating: “The frustration of India’s business elite with corruption, political paralysis, log-jammed approvals, regulatory flip-flops, lack of access to natural resources and land acquisition battles – to pick a few of the top complaints – has reached a pitch perhaps not heard since India began liberalizing its economy in the early 1990s.”

On one side they are not happy with that State that is not pushing forward neo-liberal reforms (paving the way for further expanding their sphere of free rein of capital) while on other it has failed to crush what they perceive as irritants like mass resistance against land acquisition or day-light plundering of resources. The discontentment among capitalist class played its role in last year’s Anna Hazare campaign when corporates liberally sponsored it and media controlled by them turned it into ‘second struggle of independence’. Equally conspicuous is Indian entrepreneurs including Azim Premji, Anu Aga, Deepak Parekh writing two open letters to Prime minister expressing their concern at ‘growing governance deficit’. Notwithstanding their insipid attempts to acquire high moral ground, it did contribute in creating fervour over a failed State.

With the passage of time this trend has only strengthened; domestic and global investors are now openly and fiercely stinging Indian government hard accusing it of ‘policy paralysis’. The Economist carried a cover page story ‘India losing its magic’ in March 2012 stating ‘the muddle at the top’ could make economy go back to auto rickshaw rate of growth. It lists an array of issues obstructing growth and then moves on to convict “Every one of these problems involves the state, still huge and crazy after all these years”. James Lamont, a columnist in an article ‘India: Direction Uncertain’ in The Finance Times (dated 16th April) laments how they misjudged Manmohan Singh when in 2009 his re-election led to much euphoria amongst investors. He further expresses his deep shock at having failed to imagine Singh, a man who ushered through era of neo-liberalism and presided over a five-year period of unprecedented growth of 9 per cent is now presiding over a rapid fall of Indian economy. In fact he discovered ‘left instincts’ in Sonia Gandhi that allegedly underestimates Singh’s authority.

Another round of criticism was hurled in last week of May when Q4 estimations showed growth having dipped to 5.3%. HSBC termed India ‘a gasping elephant’. Commercial media in India too have adopted aggressive stand and every other tom, dick and harry in it is crying hoarse over ‘policy paralysis’. Credit rating agencies, an organ of global capitalist system too have joined the band-wagon with S&P threatening to downgrade India’s ratings.

Making Working People pay for the crisis

If things are to move further, the process of capital accumulation has to turn violent. Capitalist class’s call for another wave of reforms needs to be seen in this context. They loudly demand cutting interest rates and we saw RBI yielding to the pressure when on 16th April it cut rates by 0.5%. Now they are calling for cutting it further arguing inflation has already come down. Notwithstanding their malicious claims inflation has not ceased its northward march and any further cut in interest rate could only spur it. (Even from capitalist point of view it is not an easy decision. Stagflation is now being openly discussed and that would be a dreadful situation for capitalism).

Another point on neo-liberal agenda is what they call rationalization of (non-existent) petroleum subsidies. Acting in this direction on 23rd May OMCs declared whooping hike of Rs. 7.5 in petrol price. Not content with this, they are now demanding increase in diesel prices and that is a dangerous thing to do. Being a universal intermediary it would have profound effect on inflation that is already at much higher level. Yet another point on their agenda including permitting FDI in retail, a sector employing millions who would be thrown out of the labour market. Then it speaks of PFRDA bill prying on pensions of millions of workers. And most importantly they want ‘archaic’ labour laws to be reformed. Situation is alarming. All of this is bound to wreck havoc. While working class is already reeling under back-breaking inflation and there are no more jobs, with persistent calls for carrying out these reforms capitalist class is pouncing hard demanding ‘more blood, more flesh’. And all this so that astronomical amount of capital they have accumulated could be invested and they could reap higher and yet higher profits from it. Let us not underestimate this – It is akin to calling war against working class.

And how is Indian State fairing? Why is it not obliging to summons of its masters when it is being desperately called for? No one should have illusion that it is not. It is and it has been obliging to its commands all way along and would continue to do so. BUT, it is bound by its compulsion to ‘hold class antagonisms in check’ and its task becomes ever daunting in the times of crisis when very objective situations sharpens these antagonisms and interests of warring classes directly and irreconcilably confront each other.

It is not an easy deal for Indian state to inject another booster dose of neo-liberal policies. Very nature and timing of these ‘reforms’ poses the challenge and brings the State (representing interests of capitalist class) in direct confrontation with masses of the nation in general and working class in specific. In current scenario when political system is rapidly loosing its credibility and capitalist system is unable to create enough number of jobs, these measures could evoke wider discontent damaging the government trading on thin ice.

Inflation, unemployment and all other socio-economic ailments rooted in capitalist systems bites hard and deep to common ordinary men and women of the society. Now inflation has been at higher level for almost 4 years now and petrol prices have gone up as many as 13 times in past 2 years. The capitalist class and State would like to seek solace in the fact that previous petrol price hikes saw only sporadic protests and passionate outbursts from masses without culminating into any sustained campaign against it. And it has been often cited even by few on left to present a gloomy picture of masses being passive and unresponsive.

Point often missed is democratic political framework of the nation though not representative of aspirations of masses is not entirely independent of their plight as well. For example can State be fully relaxed and unconcerned on the eve of petrol price hike? No it can’t be. And more so when it primarily deals with urban working class. It is an easy deal for the state to brutally crush down resistance of marginal sections of the society be it tribals in jungle fighting against naked loot of their precious surroundings providing them with means of survival or to gloss over suicides of reorganized peasants doomed by the introduction of neo-liberal policies in agriculture. But it is qualitatively different when it comes to urban working class. Issues of diesel and cooking gas hike are as inflammable as the products themselves. Decision on FDI in retail too is not an easy one. The sector is relatively labour intensive employing millions. Also petty- sections of society that own many of small retail businesses have significant influence at local-level politics and they can’t be wished away just like that. PFRDA bill too would be strongly opposed by trade unions.

On other front one can see an array of big projects being strongly stalled by mass protests – be it POSCO, Jaitapur or Koodankulam. While it may take longer time for these various struggles of masses against land acquisitions or inflation or for higher wages to acquire shape of mass class consciousness against capitalist system as a whole, rapidly deteriorating economic and social situation is making ordinary man’s struggle for survival more acute and continued onslaught of neo-liberal reforms could only propel him to streets to fight back his very survival. The luxury of being blissfully ignorant of these repercussions can be enjoyed by bourgeois intellectuals or columnist crying hoarse over ‘stalled’ reforms but not by by their political agents in the parliament.

While it might be little early to declare, most likely the current crisis of Indian economy could be drawn out one lasting for longer period unless there is any dramatic revival of global economy. Presently what may appear as mere contradiction between capitalism and democratic framework may soon descend into class warfare. Not fantasizing a revolution, but certainly there would be an escalation in class antagonism in the coming period and we must prepare to intervene.

Robert Bresson: CINEMA

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 11:25:00 +0000

To me, cinema is the art of having each thing in its place. In this it resembles all the other arts. Like the anecdote of Johann Sebastian Bach playing for a student. The student gushes with admiration, but Bach says, "There's nothing to admire. You just have to hit the note at the right time, and the organ does the rest".

... The scene was on paper. But there's a world of difference between writing it and filming it. To me, the most important part of a film is its rhythm. Everything is expressed by the rhythm. Without rhythm, there's nothing... everything you say happens, didn't happen during filming, but during editing. It's the editing that creates these things, that brings them forth. The camera simply records. It's precise, and fortunately, unbiased. The camera is extremely precise. The drama is created in the cutting room, when images are juxtaposed and sound is added, that's when "love blossoms".

read more here : Robert Bresson: CINEMA

Saving the Cinema....here is IMAX

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:17:00 +0000

Is the movie theater on it’s death bed? Have piracy, digital distribution, high ticket prices, and an influx of mediocre films brought the theater to an early demise? It seems so. Even though Avatar, a film released less than six months ago, just broke the box office revenue records, after closer inspection it is clear that the film wasn’t seen by as many people as the previous record holder, Titanic. So how do we, the filmmakers of tomorrow, change course on this road to destruction? Well it’s simple, we’ve got to give audiences ample enough reason to go to the cinema. We have to give them an experience.

read full story HERE

Drum Stick Flower, Baby Potatoes and Eggs FRY : a tasty one

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 07:09:00 +0000

Aakhol Ghor, the Assamese Cuisines and Foods from Assam: Sojina Ful, Xoru Alloo Koni Bhoja: Well, this one is a quick fix. I do it when sometimes I need a side dish very fast. Translating the Name to English, Drum Stick Flower, Bab...

Aakhol Ghor, the Assamese Cuisines and Foods from Assam: Assmese Pork Recipes

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:34:00 +0000

Aakhol Ghor, the Assamese Cuisines and Foods from Assam: Assmese Pork Recipes:

Aakhol Ghor means Kitchen in Assamese. Assamese traditional Kitchens normally has two parts. First the dining area plus a small cooking space for tea etc. And the next bigger and more functional room is the actual kitchen with at least two earthen fire places (chowka).If you are a food lover you can hope to see a lot of authentic Assamese Recipes in this place......
visit the blog: Its all about Food and Food Habits from the land of blue hills and red river, Assam.
aakholghor

Genesis of Trotskyism

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:21:00 +0000

-Max Shachtman

January 1933

Foreword

November 1933

Since this pamphlet was first written, a number of events have taken place which should be borne in mind in reading what follows. Outstanding among these events is the cruel defeat suffered by the German working class at the hands of triumphant Fascism. The victory of the barbaric capitalist reaction in Germany was made possible essentially by the impotence of the proletariat. In turn, that was induced by the craven treachery of the party of the Second International, and the bankruptcy into which the official Communist party was thrown by Stalinism.

The collapse of the German Communist party removes from the dwindling ranks of the Communist International the last of its sections possessing any mass following or influence. What is left of this organization lies prostrate, bleeding from a thousand wounds, rendered incapable of rising again as a revolutionary or progressive force by the stranglehold of the Russian Soviet bureaucracy.

The defeat of the German proletariat and its Communist party is the terrifying payment they were forced to make for the demoralization, disorientation and bureaucratic Centrism to which they were subjected for ten years by the Stalinist machine. The German working class must now suffer all the diabolical torture of the Hitlerite savages, and as a consequence, the working class of the entire world is also set back. Not because the triumph of Fascism was inevitable. Quite the contrary. Had the German proletariat been mobilized in the united front movement for which we agitated unremittingly, and for which we were condemned as counter-revolutionists and “social-Fascists,” the Brown Shirts would have been crushed and never have reached the seat of power. The social democrats on the one hand, and the Stalinists on the other, stood like boulders in the path of the working class. Instead of the accelerator of the revolution, the Stalinists acted as a brake upon it.

This foreword can pretend only to the briefest reference to the new problems, for a more extensive elucidation of which the voluminous literature of our movement must be consulted. Suffice it to say that the German events, and the bureaucratic self-contentment and unconcern, deepening of the errors and disintegration of Stalinism and its parties which followed them, have brought us to the ineluctable conclusion: That the Communist International has been strangled by Stalinism, is bankrupt, is beyond recovery or restoration on Marxian foundations; That the internally devoured Stalinist parties which proved so impotent at the decisive moment of struggle against the class enemy in China, then in swift succession in Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, now in Czechoslovakia, tomorrow elsewhere – will never be able to deal with the burning problems of the struggle in any of the other countries; That this holds true especially, and above all, of the situation in the Soviet Union, where the dangers to the workers’ state multiply without a corresponding growth of strength of the proletarian organizations; That the wealth of past experience and the whole of the present world situation dictate to the earnest revolutionist the course of breaking relentlessly and completely with the decadent Stalinist apparatus and embarking upon the course of building up a new Communist International and new Communist parties in every country of the world. The Left Opposition, breaking with its past policy of acting as a faction of the official party, has solemnly dedicated itself to this tremendous historical task. To the new movement it offers that rich and comprehensive experience, that tested and verified body of revolutionary ideas and criticism which it developed in the ten years of its existence as a distinct current in the revolutionary movement. It came into being as the direct heir and executor of fundamentally the same tendency which originated with Marx and Engels, was first victorious in the Russian revolution, and will find its full fruition in the world revolution for the liberation of human kind.

The Left Opposition and the Communist Movement

The Communist movement throughout the world is passing through a terrific crisis. From the day the Communist International was founded in Moscow in 1919, it has experienced several critical periods. A clear dividing line, however, cuts those into two principal parts. One covers the first five years of the International, during which are generally recorded crises of growth, in which the parties were purged of accidental and non-Communist elements. On the other side of the line are the last nine years, with an almost uninterrupted crisis of decline, during which the revolutionary wing was amputated from the parties.

The marks of this crisis are evident for all who have eyes to see with. In its early years the Communist International was a virile, growing movement whose authority, prestige and success rose in every land under the guidance of Lenin and Trotsky. The present leadership of the International has reduced it to stagnation or decline. A crisis which shakes the capitalist world as it has never been shaken since the world war, finds the International powerless to act. In Spain, a popular uprising of the masses offers the Communists their first big opportunity to lead a proletarian battle for emancipation; only, there is no Communist party. In England, France, the United States, Czechoslovakia, the Scandinavian countries, Poland, China, India – in all those countries where Communism was once represented by mass parties or parties on the road to embracing masses – the section of the International writhes in the agony of impotence.

With insignificant exceptions, not one of the authentic leaders of world Communism during the first years of its organized existence, is to be found in its ranks today -including, and primarily, the Russian party. Everywhere, the Communist parties have become sieves into which ever new sections of the working class are poured by the capitalist crisis, only to be lost through the holes of bureaucratism and false policies. Almost thirteen years after the founding of the International, the overwhelming majority of its greatly reduced membership has not been in the party ranks for longer than two years; the old members have been lost or expelled.

Why is this disastrous situation of concern to every worker conscious of his class interests? For the following reasons:

Communism is the hope of the whole working class. A classless socialist commonwealth cannot be attained without the overthrow of the rule of capitalism. To accomplish this aim is the historic mission of the working class. The sharpest and most effective instrument at the command of the workers in the struggle against their class enemy, is the revolutionary political party. Such a party is not the work of one day or one man. It grows out of the needs of the class whose interests it represents, until it embraces the most advanced, the most militant and the best tested fighters.

When the ruling class has lost the following of the masses, when it can no longer satisfy even their most elementary daily needs, and when the masses transfer their confidence to their own class party -the ranks of the latter are strengthened and steeled to the point where it is enabled to fight the final battle. In raising the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, a new page is opened up in human history, for the workers cannot liberate themselves without emancipating the whole of humanity. To lead the proletariat in this titanic inspiring struggle modern history offers as the most highly developed, as the only possible leadership – the Communist party.

The only other party that presumes to speak in the name of labor is the social democracy, or the socialist party. But in reality, it is the party of the petty bourgeoisie, the last pillar of capitalist democracy. From a defense of “democracy in general,” it switches to the defense of “democracy in particular,” that is, a defense of its specific capitalist fatherland. It sacrifices the interests of the world proletariat to the interests of its own national labor aristocracy and middle class.

During the war, the socialists were the main instruments of imperialism in the ranks of the working class. They supported the imperialist war, each in the interests of his own ruling class. After the war, the socialists missed no opportunity to range themselves on the side of the capitalist class in the fierce struggle to put down the revolutionary proletariat -- by force of arms, if necessary.

From its foundation day, the Communist International declared pitiless war against socialist treachery, against corruption and degeneration in the working class, against bureaucratism and opportunism. The Communist parties everywhere were born and grew up in combat against socialist reaction. The torn confused and scattered ranks of the revolutionary movement throughout the world were reunited under the banner of the Russian revolution and world Communism. Into the darkness of reaction which the socialists had propped up firmly in the saddle, the Communists brought the light of working class progress. They broke the strangulating noose of class collaboration which the socialists had tightened around the neck of the proletariat. The masses were once more led upon the road of class struggle. In every field of proletarian endeavor -- in the trade unions, in strikes, in parliament, in demonstrations, in the cooperatives, in the sports organizations – the Communists reawakened the depressed spirit of the workers, fortified them with new courage, enlightened them with new ideas, inspired them to new militancy. The postwar reaction in every land found only the young Communist movement standing up to give warning to the blood and profit soaked bourgeoisie -- not merely that its offensive against labor would not proceed without resistance, but that labor itself was taking the offensive to uproot the decaying old society and to found a new one.

Communism -the ideal revived by the Russian Bolshevik revolution -was and’ remains the hope of the op- pressed and exploited. But if the party of Communism is incapable of successfully leading the struggle for emancipation, no other force will ever unseat the rule of capital. This is why the condition and development of the Communist International vitally affects all workers. Our internal disputes and struggles are not, therefore, a private affair. They concern the whole working class.

The Left Opposition, organized in this country as the Communist League of America (Opposition), was born out of the crisis in the Communist International. Its efforts are directed at solving this crisis. This stupendous task requires the cooperation of the greatest possible number of Communist and class conscious militants. In order to gain this cooperation and so that it may be of greater value than mere sentimental sympathy, it is necessary to understand the origin and the nature of the crisis in Communism at the most important points in its development. In examining into them, the reader will at the same time be able to check the views of the Left Opposition against the actual course of events; nothing can serve as a more conclusive test of conflicting views in the revolutionary movement.

The Fight for Party Democracy

Like the Communist International itself, the Left Opposition quite naturally was formed in the crucible of the world revolution, the Soviet Union. It took shape for the first time as a distinct grouping in the Communist party in 1923, headed by Leon Trotsky, who stood with Lenin as the outstanding leader of the Russian revolution and the Communist International.

The workers’ republic was at that moment passing through a difficult period. With the New Economic Policy (NEP), adopted in 1921, a large measure of success had been obtained in restoring the economic life of the country. The relationships between the workers and peasants, upon which rests the security of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia, were strengthened. Most of the rigors of the “War Communism” days, when the revolution fought against civil war and imperialist intervention, were overcome. At the same time, however, new problems were arising, sometimes so acutely that they took on the forms of a crisis.

To use the commonly accepted term coined by Trotsky, the workers’ republic was passing through a “scissors” crisis. The “opening” of the scissors represented the gap created by the rise in the price of manufactured commodities and the decline in the price of agricultural products. The problem was to bring prices in both sectors into closer harmony with each other.

Factories were finding it difficult to dispose of their products and production was consequently slowed down. Wages were paid with decreasing regularity and paid in a depreciated money which failed to satisfy the needs of the workers. Not only did unemployment grow, but the workers and peasants found it increasingly hard to purchase manufactured goods. The discontentment of the workers even took the form of strikes.

The situation also accentuated the dissatisfaction of the members of the Communist party. While the “War Communism” atmosphere was largely eliminated from the country’s economy, after the counter-revolution had been smashed and the NEP put into effect, it still prevailed within the party. The intensely military regime imposed upon the party by the demands of the civil war, had not merely outlived the war period itself but had, in some respects, become more dangerous. A vast hierarchy of appointed officials had taken the place of a freely elected party apparatus. The initiative and independence of the rank and file party member were being stifled. The entrenchment of a bureaucratic caste was producing clandestine factional groupings in the party, with Menshevik or anarcho-syndicalist coloration, it is true, but nevertheless reflecting a deep dissatisfaction of the party membership.

The danger of bureaucratism and the need for workers’ democracy in the party had been openly indicated by Lenin before his illness compelled him to withdraw from active party life. He had not only written some scathing passages against bureaucratism and the bureaucrats, but he had even urged Trotsky to undertake, on behalf of both of them, an energetic campaign in the party to purge it of this destructive cancer. The Tenth Party Congress, under Lenin’s direction, had already adopted a resolution for the vigorous execution of the policy of party democracy. After the Twelfth Congress, which reaffirmed the resolution, it was still permitted to remain a dead letter, and the increasingly bad situation was not improved to any degree.

A picture of conditions in the party was given at that time by so staunch a supporter of the leading faction as Bucharin himself:

“If we conducted an investigation and inquired how often our party elections are conducted with the question from the chair, ‘Who is for?’ and ‘Who is against?’ we should easily discover that in the majority of cases our elections to the party organizations have become elections in quotation marks, for the voting takes place not only without preliminary discussion, but according to the formula, ‘Who is against?’ And since to speak against the authorities is a bad business the matter ends right there.

“If you raise the question of our party meetings, then how does it go here... Election of the presidium of the meeting. Appears some comrade from the District Committee, presents a list, and asks, ‘Who is against?’ Nobody is against, and the business is considered finished ... With the order of the day, the same procedure... The chairman asks, ‘Who is against?’ Nobody is against. The resolution is unanimously adopted. There you have the customary type of situation in our party organizations. It goes without saying that this gives rise to an enormous wave of dissatisfaction. I gave you several examples from the life of our lowest branches. The same thing is noticeable in a slightly changed form in the succeeding ranks of our party hierarchy.”

To meet this situation, Trotsky addressed a letter to the Central Committee of the party on October 8, 1923, expressing his views on the condition of the national economy and the party. He was followed by a letter signed by 46 of the party leaders who joined hands with him on most of the essential ideas he had set down. In addition, Trotsky devoted a series of articles to the situation which were assembled into a pamphlet called The New Course the phrase used to define the turn which Trotsky urged the party to make in the realm of economics and within its own ranks. The fight made by Trotsky, in which he was immediately joined by what was called the “Moscow Opposition,” centred around the demand for a genuine application of the resolution on workers’ democracy and the coordination of industry with agriculture on the basis of a plan in economy.

The Opposition’s demand, contrary to the absurd arguments of the ruling faction, had nothing in common with the Menshevik fight for “pure democracy.” The Mensheviks and other Right wing socialists everywhere have always stood on the platform of overthrowing the proletarian dictatorship in Russia and restoring a regime of capitalist “democracy.” Under it the Russian socialists would be able to operate in the same treacherously respectable manner that has made their brethren the world over so odious.

The Opposition demanded workers’ democracy in order to prevent a bureaucratic degeneration of the party and the proletarian dictatorship. The warnings of Trotsky in 1923, in which he merely elaborated Lenin’s words that “history knows degenerations of all sorts,” were denounced as slanders by that very same “Old Guard” and “Leninist Central Committee” which broke into dozens of fragments in the years that followed.

The program for restoring workers’ democracy and eliminating the bureaucratic deformities which were beginning to cripple the party and the dictatorship, had another important aspect. From the very beginning, it was coupled with the perspective of speeding up the industrialization of economically backward Russia.

Trotsky pointed out that the workers’ republic could overcome the obstacle of a primitively organized and managed agriculture and enter the broad highway towards socialism, only by laying a solid foundation in the form of big-scale machine industry. With such a base, the proletariat would be able to satisfy the needs of the peasantry for cheap manufactured products. By pursuing a policy of systematically reducing the economic and political importance of the exploiting peasants (the Kulaks), it would commence in earnest the socialist transformation of an agriculture provided with the technical equipment of large industry.

To accomplish these ends, Trotsky advocated the centralization of national economy and its harmonized direction by means of a national, long-term plan, pointing to the successes attained in 1920 by planned economy in the field of restoring the efficiency of railroad transportation. The antagonism which the proposal for economic planning met in the party leadership in those days is astounding in the face of the general acceptance of the idea a decade later and the tremendous progress made by applying planned economy five years after it, was first advanced in the party by the Opposition.

The essence of the dispute on this score was not put badly by Zinoviev, a violent opponent of Trotsky at the time and spokesman for the Stalin-Bucharin-Zinoviev majority faction, in his speech of January 6, 1924:

“It seems to me, comrades, that the obstinate persistence in clinging to a beautiful plan is intrinsically nothing else than a considerable concession to the old-fashioned view that a good plan is a universal remedy, the last word in wisdom. Trotsky’s standpoint has greatly impressed many students. ‘The Central Committee has no plan, and we really must have a plan!’ is the cry we hear today from a certain section of the students. The reconstruction of economics in a country like Russia is indeed the most difficult problem of our revolution ... We want to have transport affairs managed by Dzherzhinsky; economics by Rykov; finance by Sokolnikov; Trotsky, on the other hand, wants to carry out everything with the aid of a ‘state plan’.”

In this as in every other case where the majority came into conflict with the Opposition, the course of the class struggle took it upon itself to justify a hundred times over the point of view originally advanced by Trotsky and his comrades. The majority met the Opposition’s program for planned economy with the only weapons at their command – ridicule, abuse, and misrepresentation. In the end they were reluctantly compelled to borrow wholesale from the very same program to vote against which they had years before mobilized the whole Communist movement.

Unable to meet the Opposition on the questions which it actually raised, the party leaders resorted to all manner of demagogy. What Trotsky actually wrote was twisted and distorted beyond recognition. Where he advocated drawing the young Communist generation closer into the leadership so that it might restore its vitality, his standpoint was presented to the party as if he stood for pitting the “young” against the “old” – the timeworn trick of an opportunistic bureaucracy. Where he pointed out that the principal cause for the formation of so many factions in the party resided in the repression of all initiative and criticism from the ranks, he was charged with defending factions as a principle. Where he pointed out that all history revealed that no leadership was immune from degeneration, that the party must take drastic measures to guard against the rise of bureaucratism – the others charged him with declaring that the party had degenerated and the revolution had been swamped by a bureaucracy. Where he pointed out that the town must lead the country, the worker the peasant, and industry agriculture he was subjected to the reactionary accusation of “under-estimating the peasantry.”

With the tremendous apparatus at their command, the party leaders were able to swing to their support a majority of the party members. The control of the machinery of the Communist International further facilitated the “voting down” of the Opposition in the parties abroad, in which not one-tenth of the members had ever seen or read what Trotsky himself actually wrote and stood for!

One of the main reasons for the comparative ease with which a majority was rigged up against the Left wing of the party was the event which took place almost at the same time as the Russian discussion. This was the October 1923 retreat of the Communists in Germany, which had a powerful effect not only on the Russian discussion but also on the life of the international Communist movement for several years to come.

The Lessons of October

Germany in the autumn of 1923 was confronted with a revolutionary situation favourable in the highest degree to the proletariat. The Communist party was not only growing steadily, but the ruling class encountered new difficulties every day. The occupation of the Ruhr by France re-enacted the World War on a smaller scale and brought to the breaking point all those contradictions of European capitalism which the Versailles Treaty had only accentuated. So ripe was the situation that, as Trotsky wrote,

“it became quite clear that the German bourgeoisie could extricate itself from this ‘inextricable’ position only if the Communist party did not understand at the right time that the position of the bourgeoisie was ‘inextricable’ and did not draw the necessary revolutionary conclusions.”

Yet this is precisely what the Communist party failed to understand and to do. The high point of the revolutionary situation was reached in October. The leadership, steeped in the habits of the gradual and normal accumulation of forces on the side of the party, remained entirely passive or kept to the old pace. The desperate bourgeoisie attacked in military formation, overthrew the socialist-Communist coalition governments in Saxony and Thuringia, and won a decisive victory without the party firing a shot. At the crucial moment, the Communist leaders sounded the call for an ignominious retreat. The party was thrown into despair and the masses into confusion.

The policy pursued by the party leaders in Germany was not peculiar to Brandler and Thalheimer. It was derived from the leadership of the Communist International and the Russian Communist party, that is, of the same faction which had launched the war against Trotsky a few months previously. The fatal policy of hesitation, doubt, of counting up the armed forces on both sides of the barricades to see which class had a majority of one soldier – was injected into the veins of the already sluggish and timid German party leaders by the equally timid and hesitant Russian party leaders.

Here is what Stalin wrote to Zinoviev and Bucharin in August 1923 about the situation in Germany:

“Should the Communists (at the present stage) strive to seize power without the social democracy? – are they ripe for this already? – this in my opinion is the question ... If now in Germany, the power, so to say, will fall and the Communists will seize it, they will fall through with a crash. This is in the ‘best’ case. And in the worst -they’ll be smashed to bits and thrown back. The thing is not in this, that Brandler wants to teach the masses, but that the bourgeoisie plus the Right social democracy would surely turn this teaching-demonstration into a general slaughter (at present they have all the chances for it) and would destroy them. Certainly the Fascists are not napping, but it is more advantageous to us for the Fascists to attack first: this will rally the whole working class around the Communists. (Germany is not Bulgaria.) Besides, the Fascists in Germany, according to the data we have, are weak. In my estimation the Germans must be restrained, not spurred on.”

What Stalin did was simply to set down in a letter what was uppermost in the minds of all the other members of his faction. Together with Zinoviev, he failed to heed the criticisms which Trotsky made of the German party leaders, weeks and months before the crucial hour struck. On the contrary, they jumped to the defense of Brandler and Thalheimer. In the official material issued on the September 1923 Plenum of the Russian party Central Committee, weeks before the German retreat, they wrote:

“Comrade Trotsky, before leaving the session of the Central Committee, made a speech which greatly excited all the Central Committee members. He declared in this speech that the leadership of the German Communist Party is worthless and that the Central Committee of the German CP is allegedly permeated with fatalism and sleepy-headedness, etc. Comrade Trotsky declared further that under these conditions the German revolution is condemned to failure. This speech produced an astounding impression. Still the majority of the comrades were of the opinion that this philippic was called forth in an incident that occurred at the Plenum of the Central Committee which had nothing to do with the German revolution and that this statement was in contradiction to the objective state of affairs.”

It was only after the crushing October defeat that Brandler and Thalheimer were made the scapegoats by Zinoviev and Stalin. They were held to be exclusively responsible for the course to which they had been inspired by the leadership of the Comintern. The establishment of Brandler’s culpability in the German situation constituted the beginning and the end of the analysis made by the bureaucracy. And a very convenient analysis it was, for it shifted from the shoulders of Stalin and Zinoviev their own heavy responsibilities for what happened -as well as for what did not happen – in Germany.

But if they were remiss in their duty, the task of examining the German October was brilliantly performed by Trotsky in his Lessons of October. The essence of this document lies in a masterful comparison of the problems confronting the Russian Bolsheviks on the eve of the insurrection, and how they solved them successfully, with the problems confronting the German and Bulgarian parties and how they failed to solve them. (In September, a month before the October defeat, the Bulgarian Communist party had also suffered a crushing blow which set it back for years.) In summing up his study, which was calculated to -educate the Communist parties in the acute problems of the proletarian uprising – seen in the light of a great victory and a grave defeat – Trotsky wrote later on:

“The German defeat of 1923 naturally had many national peculiarities. But it already contained many typical features, also, which signalized a general danger. This danger can be characterized as the crisis of the revolutionary leadership on the eve of the transition to armed uprising. The depths of the proletarian party are by their very nature far less susceptible to bourgeois public opinion. Certain elements of the party leadership and the middle layers of the party will always unfailingly succumb in larger or smaller measure to the material and ideological terror of the bourgeoisie. Such a danger should not simply be rejected. To be sure, there is no remedy against it suitable for all cases. Nevertheless, the first step towards fighting it – is to grasp its nature and its source. The unfailing appearance of the development of Right groupings in all the Communist parties in the ‘pre-October’ period is on the one hand a result of the greatest objective difficulties and dangers of this ‘jump’ but on the other hand the result of a furious assault of bourgeois public opinion. There also lies the whole import of the Right groupings. And that is just why irresolution and vacillations arise unfailingly in the Communist parties at the moment when it is most dangerous. With us, only a minority within the party leadership was seized by such vacillations in 1917, which were, however, overcome, thanks to the sharp energy of Lenin. In Germany, on the contrary, the leadership as a whole vacillated and that was carried over to the party and through it to the class. The revolutionary situation was thereby passed up... All these were not of course the last crisis of leadership in a decisive historical moment. To limit these inevitable crises to a minimum is one of the most important tasks of the Communist parties and the Comintern. This can be achieved only when the experiences of October 1917 and the political content of the Right Opposition inside our party at that time are grasped and contrasted with the experiences of the German party in 1923. Therein lies the purpose of the Lessons of October.”

It is precisely this analysis which the Russian party leaders sought with might and main to avoid. When Trotsky spoke of the Right wing in the Russian party in 1917, everybody knew that he referred to Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, Stalin and the others who had, at one time or another in the months preceding the Bolshevik uprising, taken a stand against the socialist revolution towards which Lenin and Trotsky were steering the party. They knew, further, that an examination into this highly-important phase of the German retreat would reveal that these same leaders had not risen very much higher on the revolutionary scale in 1923 than they had in 1917.

As a result, the rich lessons afforded the working class and Communist movements by the defeats in Germany and Bulgaria were not drawn by the leadership of the Communist International. It resolved to sacrifice them in the interests of the struggle against “Trotskyism” which they invented in order to cover up their own disastrous course. The official press was filled with interminable articles and speeches by the party leaders, denouncing and distorting Trotsky’s position, boasting of their own “Leninist purity,” and demanding that the whole International record itself against the Opposition.

An example of how the Communist International registered itself against Trotsky is offered by the voting in the American party. Although the “Lessons of October” was never printed by the party in the English language and never read by ninety-nine percent of the membership or leadership in the United States, they were all compelled to cast a solemn vote in support of the “Leninist Old Guard” and in condemnation of Trotsky’s views. This pernicious system was later extended and sanctified to such a degree that in every subsequent dispute between the bureaucracy and the Opposition, it was taken for granted that the latter was wrong. It had to be attacked even though its viewpoint was never made public to the Communist workers.

This corruption of the parties became the characteristic feature that distinguished all the following years of the campaign against the Left Opposition, down to this very day. Nor could it be otherwise. Whoever is sure of his position need not fear the presentation of the opposing standpoint. Only those who are obliged to defend a false position, must use the bureaucratic means of suppressing the contrary standpoint, for in an objective and democratically organized discussion the incorrect view would be unable to stand up under fire.

The Theory of Socialism in One Country

The defeat of the September 1923 insurrection in Bulgaria and the October retreat in Germany, followed a few months later by the crushing of the Reval uprising in Estonia, opened up a new period of development in Europe, replete with far-reaching consequences. The retreat in Germany gave the bourgeoisie the breathing space it sought and needed. A few months later, the enfeebled system of German capitalism was reinvigorated by the injections of gold it received under the Dawes plan. In England, the MacDonald Labor government came into power for the first time. In France, the liberal Herriot ministry was established and the immediate danger of a new “Ruhr attack” upon Germany receded into the political background.

Among the terrific effects of the fatal German retreat, could already be discerned the following: the big post-war tidal wave of revolution had definitely ebbed. A period of bourgeois democratic pacifism was opening up in Europe. In Central Europe, at the very least, the Communist movement was weakened by the defeats suffered: and these same defeats had given the social democracy a new lease on life.

None of these symptoms of the period was acknowledged by the Comintern leadership. When they were pointed out by Trotsky, who proposed that the International should direct its course in harmony with the newly created situation, he was simply attacked as a ... liquidator. As late as the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, in 1924, Stalin, Zinoviev, Bucharin and all the other Trotsky-baiters proclaimed that the revolutionary situation was right ahead, that the October defeat was a mere episode and that the Opposition had lost faith in the revolution!

As the weeks extended into months, they threw a cold light upon this light-minded analysis. It became clear to all that the revolutionary wave had actually receded. In the minds of those who accused the Opposition of “liquidationism” arose the conviction that the revolution in Western Europe was postponed for a long, long time to come. What remained to be done, thought the bureaucrats, was to consolidate what had already been conquered – Russia – and to cease expending energy upon a western European revolution which had dropped to the bottom of the agenda.

It is under these circumstances, and with this pessimistic frame of mind into which the Centrist and Right wing party bureaucracy worked itself, that the theory of “socialism in one country” was developed. According to this theory, which deals with the fundamental question dividing the Left Opposition from the Right wing and the Centrist faction in the Communist movement, a classless socialist society can be built up in one single country alone, the Soviet Union, even if the proletariat in the more advanced countries does not succeed in seizing power.

The mere formulation of the theory reveals that its authors could have produced it only if their belief in the world revolution was shattered. It is impossible to conceive that Russia will complete a classless society sooner than the workers of one country or another in Europe will seize power.

Losovsky, the head of the Red International of Labor Unions, only expressed what was uppermost in the minds of his associates at that time when he wrote that the stabilization of Europe would last for decades. (This was some time after the Dawes Plan, when even the Stalinists were compelled to acknowledge the advent of a precarious capitalist stabilization.) If that were the case, the Leninist dictum that we are living in a period of wars and proletarian revolution no longer held good. In any case, the revolution was a long way off. Then what point is there in bending our energies upon revolutions outside of Russia which will not take place, especially when there is so much to be “done at home,” and more especially, when “we have all the prerequisites needed to build up a socialist society by ourselves”?

Utopian socialists and nationalists have advocated the theory of socialism in a single country before this time. In Germany today, the theory of an “independent” national economy, which progressively diminishes its connection with world economy to the vanishing point “autarchy,” as it is called – is the reactionary ideal of Hitler’s Fascists.

In the Communist movement this idea was never heard of until the fateful days of 1924. Marx and Engels specific ally polemicized against the idea of a national socialist utopia in all their writings. Even Stalin was compelled to admit that the two founders of scientific socialism never entertained the idea, when he said that the possibility of building socialism in a single country was “first formulated by Lenin in 1915.” (As will be seen, even the reference to Lenin is entirely unfounded.)

The program of the Bolshevik party under which it carried out the 1917 revolution, does not contain a reference to this theory. The program of the Young Communist League of Russia, adopted in 1921 under the supervision of Bucharin and the Central Committee of the party, says that Russia “can arrive at Socialism only through the world proletarian revolution, which epoch of development we have now entered.” The draft of an international program at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922, submitted by Bucharin and Thalheimer, says not a word about the possibility of building a socialist society in one country alone. The same congress, in its unanimously adopted resolution on the Russian revolution, “reminds the proletarians of all countries that the proletarian revolution can never be completely victorious within one single country, but that it must win the victory inter nationally, as the world revolution.”

In 1919, Bucharin, one of the later prophets of the evangel of national socialism, wrote that “the period of the great development of the productive forces (to say nothing of completing a socialist society! – M.S.) can begin only with the victory of the proletariat in several large countries.” Lenin asserted

“in many of our works, in all our speeches and in the whole of our press that matters in Russia are not such as in the advanced capitalist countries, that we have in Russia’ a minority of industrial workers and an overwhelming majority of small agrarians. The social revolution in such a country can be finally successful only on two conditions: first, on the condition that it is given timely support by the social revolution of one or several advanced countries... Second, that there be an agreement between the proletariat which establishes the dictatorship or holds State power in its hands and the majority of the peasantry. We know that only an agreement with the peasantry can save the social revolution in Russia so long as the revolution in other countries has not arrived.”

Stalin himself, who first formulated the theory of national socialism, wrote in the first edition of his Problems of Leninism that

“the main task of socialism – the organization of socialist production – still remains ahead. Can this task be accomplished, can the final victory of socialism in one country be attained, without the joint efforts of the proletariat of several advanced countries? No, this is impossible ... For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist construction, the efforts of one country, particularly of such a peasant country as Russia, are insufficient. For this the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are necessary.”

It is only in the second edition of the same work, printed in the same year, that he turned this clear and definite conclusion inside out and presented the still cautious formula which has since been developed into an unrestrained nationalistic gospel:

“After the victorious proletariat of one country has consolidated its power and has won over the peasantry for itself, it can and must build up the socialist society.”

Nothing that has ever been said can refute our characterization of the origin and essence of this theory, born in the womb of reaction and conceived by a defeatist state of mind. The Left Opposition argued that to build a socialist society in the Soviet Union, the aid of the proletarian revolution in a more advanced country or countries would be required. Together with Stalin and Bucharin, the international apparatus of the Comintern argued that a socialist society could be built up without the “state aid” of the workers in other countries – pro vided there is no military intervention from the foreign bourgeoisie! And to prevent this intervention, to act merely as frontier guards for the Soviet Union, has now become the principal task of the Communist parties. The emphasis is significant. Previously, the main task of the various parties was the revolution in their respective country, the victory of which is the highest guarantee for the victory of world socialism – including socialism in Russia. Now the Communist parties have been reduced to the position of “Friends” of the Soviet Union.

The “practical” significance of this theoretical dispute cannot be overstated. Socialism is not built in one day. Only petty-bourgeois anarchists believe that the “free society” will be established on the morrow of the overthrow of the bourgeois state. The Marxists know that “the road of organization,” in Lenin’s words, “is a long road, and the task of socialist construction demands a long-drawn out, stubborn work and real knowledge which we do not possess to a sufficient degree. Even the next generation, which will be further developed, will probably hardly be able to achieve the complete transition to socialism.” If it is argued, as Stalin does, that this long road will be travelled its full length “alone,” before the workers in the other countries have overthrown their bourgeoisie, then the world proletarian revolution has been postponed – at least in one’s mind – for an indefinite period.

The Opposition believed and declared: The proletarian revolution in the West is far closer to realization than is the abolition of classes and the establishment of a socialist society in Russia. If it is not closer, then the proletarian revolution in Russia is doomed!

This simple truth was repeated a thousand times by Lenin, who had not a grain of “pessimism” or “disbelief in the Russian revolution” in his makeup. “We do not live,” he wrote, “merely in a state but in a system of states and the existence of the Soviet republic side by side with imperialist states for any length of time is inconceivable.” This idea is permeated to the letter with realistic Marxian internationalism.

What is this internationalism? It is no mere loose sentimental addition of national links, uniting the workers of the world in a fairy-chain of phraseological solidarity. It arises directly out of the development of world economy. The imperialist stage of capitalism, its expansion on a world scale, the tremendous and vital importance of exports and imports for the maintenance of capitalism, monopolies extending to the ends of the earth, the mutual dependence of one country upon another – these are some of the phenomena of world economy.

Capitalism has not matured for the socialist revolution in this or that country, large or small, backward or advanced. It has matured for socialism on a world scale. This fact not only creates the basis for a living internationalism, but also for the transformation of the old society by the triumphant proletariat.

But if each country can build an enclosed socialist society by the efforts and resources of its own proletariat, then internationalism becomes a sentimental phrase for holiday resolutions. If it can be completed in backward Russia alone, then surely it can be done in more advanced Germany, in France, in England, and certainly in the United States. What need then have the Communists for a highly centralized international of action of their own?

Furthermore: the development of all existing society up to now, and particularly of modern capitalist society, has been towards increasing world interrelations and inter dependence. Capitalism reaches its highest stage of evolution, it develops to its most majestic economic heights, not by retiring into its national shells, but by projecting from each national territory those links which bind it inseparably to the rest of world economy. The economy of the United States, or of France, or of India, is merely the “national” manifestation of a world economy. The countries of the most backward culture, technique and living standards are those that play the smallest role in world economy; and vice versa.

Socialism assumes a vastly higher stage of development than that reached by capitalism in its most flourishing days, a higher culture, technique, and living standard. It means not only the abolition of classes, but the elimination of the difference between worker and peasant, between town and country, the abolition of agriculture by means of its industrialization. But this, in turn, means that a socialist society must develop much further along the economic and technical (that is, the cultural) road than capitalism.

The theory of socialism in one country implies (and its spokesmen state explicitly) that this is to be accomplished by rendering the Soviet Union entirely independent of the rest of the world. But this can be “accomplished” only by taking the road back from capitalist evolution which went in the opposite direction. The Marxists, in opposition to this reactionary, Utopian idea, declare that the road to socialism presupposes an increasing participation in world economy, not only in the future socialist world economy, but right now, under the conditions of the capitalist world market. For this capitalist world economy is one to which, according to Lenin, “we are subordinated, with which we are connected and from which we cannot escape.”

Against the Stalinist theory, the Opposition put forward again the classical formula of Marx and Engels: the Revolution in permanence. This formula, first advanced by the founders of scientific socialism to express the interests of the proletariat at the time when the progressive bourgeoisie, having come to power, sought to establish “order” and bring the revolutionary advance to a halt, was first outlined by Trotsky at the time of the first Russian revolution. In his conception, the approaching revolution in Russia could not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage after the overthrow of Czarist absolutism, but would be driven on inexorably to the socialist stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But it could not remain at this point, either, for the contradictions facing a socialist dictatorship in a single country, and a predominantly agricultural land at that, could be solved only on the international arena. The proletariat, therefore, far from setting itself the Utopian goal of a nationally isolated socialist re public, would inscribe upon its banner the slogan of the permanent revolution; that is, the maintenance of the dictatorship in one land was dependent upon the extension of the proletarian revolution on a world scale, or at least in several of the advanced capitalist countries of Europe.

But if the proletarian revolution in the West is, nevertheless, delayed in coming -what shall we do then? Shall we give up power in the Soviet Union? is the “annihilating” poser put by the Stalinists. Not at all! Lenin and Trotsky, who never believed in the utopia of national socialism, stood for six years at the head of the proletarian dictatorship and never once proposed to “give up power.” What they did and what the Left Opposition today proposes to do, was to retain the power in the first fortress conquered by the proletariat. In this fortress, while looking forward to the assistance of the workers in other countries, the position of the socialistic elements in the country must be strengthened as against the capitalist elements. Thigh means the utilization of the “two levers” at the command of the proletariat: the long lever of international revolution and the shorter lever of laying and strengthening the foundation for a socialist economy at home.

What it certainly does not mean is that the workers and peasants of Russia should be duped with the grandiloquent illusion that at the end of another five years, “socialism will have been established” – on the basis of Russia alone and regardless of what happens to the revolution in Europe, Asia and America. For there will be terrific consequences to account for when the reckoning must be given.

This pernicious theory, which was finally written into the fundamental program of the Communist International in 1928, has brought the greatest harm to the revolutionary movement inside of the Soviet Union and out. From it flowed that unbroken chain of blunders, defeats, catastrophes and setbacks which the Communist movement has suffered since 1924. Among the first of the events in which this theory disclosed its significance was the British General Strike of 1926.

The British General Strike of 1926

After the German October retreat, the Opposition advanced the idea that the immediately revolutionary situation was at an end. The official viewpoint, propounded at the Fifth Comintern Congress in 1924, was that the revolutionary wave was first beginning to break. Four months after the decisive German defeat, Zinoviev announced that “Germany is apparently approaching a sharpened civil war.” Stalin added: “It is false that the decisive struggles have already been fought, that the proletariat has suffered a defeat in these struggles and the bourgeoisie has grown stronger as a result.”

Entirely blind to the fact that a period of capitalist stabilization had set in as a result of their own blunders and shortcomings, the party bureaucracy oriented the Comintern on the basis of an imminent revolutionary upheaval and civil war. But when it became clear even to the blind that the perspective of the Fifth Congress was utterly false, the bureaucracy, intent upon maintaining its own prestige, bolstered up its now discredited predictions by inventing revolutionary phenomena. In a word, the ultraradical phrasemongering of the Fifth Congress led the officialdom directly to opportunism, to painting in revolutionary colors those movements and men who had little or nothing in common with the revolution.

As the revolution did not appear where it was predicted (in Germany and Bulgaria), strenuous efforts were made to discover the revolution where it did not exist. It was in this period, therefore, that scarcely a shrewd petty bourgeois or labor politician on three continents was not hailed as an “acquisition” to the revolutionary movement.

Bourgeois agrarian leaders like Green of Nebraska, Raditch of Yugoslavia, the Catholic adventurer Miglioli of Italy were hailed as the “leaders of the revolutionary peasants” in the hotch-potch of the “Red Peasants’ International.” The World League Against Imperialism was formed by the Comintern as a refuge for those discredited labor politicians, pacifists and bourgeois nationalists standing in need of protection from the rising militancy of the masses who were losing their illusions. American White House lobbyists, Arabian princes, Egyptian nationalists, British labor misleaders, French Freemasons and bourgeois journalists, German and Austrian and Czech doctors and lawyers, guerrilla chiefs and unemployed politicians from Mexico, Catalonian irredentists, Gandhists from India – all of them found a haven in the anteroom of the Comintern. The Kuomintang of the Chinese bourgeoisie was admitted against Trotsky’s vote, as a fraternal party into the councils of the Communist International!

Of all the discoveries made in this quest after will-o’ the-wisps that were to prop up the fantastic edifice of the Fifth Congress, the Anglo-Russian Committee proved to be one of the most pernicious. The Committee was made up of the Councils of the trade unions of England and Russia, formed as a result of a British trade-union delegation’s visit to the Soviet Union at the end of 1924.

The original aim of the Committee was to further the establishment of international trade-union unity.

“The creation of the Anglo-Russian Committee,” wrote the Opposition in 1927, “was, at a certain moment, a thoroughly correct step. Under the influence of the Leftward development of the working masses, the liberal labor politicians, Just like the bourgeois liberals at the commencement of a revolutionary movement, took a step towards the Left in order to retain their influence in the masses. To hold them there was entirely correct.”

But the scope and attributes of the Committee were speedily extended far beyond its original objective. From a temporary bloc between a revolutionary and a reformist organization for a clearly defined and limited goal, the Committee was endowed by Stalin and Bucharin with capacities and objectives which it could not possibly have. It became, according to Stalin in 1926, “the organization of a broad movement of the working class against new imperialist wars in general and against an intervention in our country, especially on the part of England, the mightiest of the imperialist states of Europe.” The Moscow committee of the party announced that “it will become the organizatory center that embraces the international forces of the proletariat for the struggle against every endeavor of the international bourgeoisie to begin a new war.”

In vain did the Left Opposition argue against the falsity of this conception which set up the British labor leaders of the Purcell, Cook, Hicks, Swales and Citrine stripe as the revolutionary organizers of the world’s working class against imperialist war and for defense of the Soviet republic. As had become the custom, its arguments were not dealt with. It was simply accused of opposing the united front policy and of being in the pay of Sir Austen Chamberlain!

The Stalinist conception of the role and nature of the Anglo-Russian Committee flowed directly from the theory of socialism in one country. According to the latter, Russia could build up its own nationally isolated socialist economy,

“if only foreign military intervention could be staved off. This is the idea which impelled the Stalinists to search frantically for ‘anti-interventionists’ and to convert the Communist parties into Soviet border patrols. Purcell, who needed the alliance with the Soviets as a shield from the attacks of the revolutionary militants in England, was hailed as one of the organizers of the struggle against the military intervention, which alone could prevent Russia from building a socialist society. The trade-union bloc quickly became a political bloc between the reformists of England and the Russian party bureaucracy, not for a moment but for a long time. Hymns of praise were sung to these British labor lieutenants of the bourgeoisie in all the languages of the Comintern. The Committee was designated as the staunch bulwark of the world proletariat against war and intervention. Only the Opposition declared that the “more acute the international situation becomes the more the Anglo-Russian Committee will be transformed into a weapon of English and international imperialism.”

Later events fully confirmed this unheeded warning.

The first really serious test of the Anglo-Russian Committee was the British general strike of 1926, which broke out in the midst of the great miners’ strike. Just as metals are best tested in fire, so all the assurances of friendship for Russia, of loyalty to British labor and enmity to British imperialism, freely given by Purcell and Co., were subjected to a decisive test in the flames of the genera] strike. And just as the Opposition had warned, the British General Council, its Left wing as well as its Right, displayed a disgraceful cowardice and treachery, an unshaken loyalty to the ruling class, a hatred and fear of the revolutionary proletariat.

After nine days of the general strike, when a revolutionary situation was engendered in which the power of the ruling class rested not so much in itself as it did in the strength which the labor leaders enjoyed in the working class, the General Council deliberately delivered the death blow to the struggle. In face of the extremely militant mood of the workers, the pitiful helplessness of the bourgeoisie, of such occurrences as the refusal of numerous armed regiments to proceed against the strikers – all the trade-union lackeys of the bourgeoisie rushed to the government buildings to confer with the king’s ministers on how to crush the movement.

The “red” veneer with which the Left labor leaders had coated themselves was wiped off in a patriotic frenzy. The financial aid sent to the striking miners from Russia was indignantly rejected with the epithet of “that damned Russian gold.” The red flag was hastily dropped for the Union Jack. Purcell and his colleagues proved to be not “the organizatory center that embraces the international forces of the proletariat for struggle,” but a most reliable prop of a desperate ruling class. A more annihilating indictment of the Stalinist view and corroboration of the Opposition’s, could hardly be imagined.

Where was the Committee as a whole during those stir ring days of struggle and treachery? As Kautsky said plaintively about the Second International in 1914: It was only an instrument of peace; in times of war it was worthless.

More correctly, it was worthless to the revolutionists, to Russia. To the British partners in the concern, it had a distinct value. Purcell, Swales and Hicks utilized to the maximum the prestige accruing to them out of their formal and inexpensive collaboration with the Bolshevik representatives in the Anglo-Russian Committee. Instead of helping to emancipate the British masses from the chains of their false leaders, the A-RC served these leaders as a “Bolshevik” shield from the blows of the rank and file, particularly of the Communists. Purcell, under attack of “his own” Communists, could easily defend his treason by saying: The Russian Communists are different; they do not attack us as you do. Quite the contrary, they sit together with us in harmonious conference.

The Opposition promptly demanded that the prestige enjoyed among the British workers by the A-RC and its Russian half in particular, be employed to expose the treachery of the British leaders. It demanded a demonstrative break with Purcell and Co. so that the latter could no longer hide behind the Russian trade unions. Stalin and Bucharin violently opposed the break – just as violently as, a few years later, they opposed any and every united front not merely with the Purcells but with the “social-fascist” workers who still followed the reactionary leaders.

For more than a year after the abominable betrayal of the General Strike, Stalin continued to maintain his “united front” with Purcell. The Anglo-Russian Committee would prevent British intervention in Russia and there by enable the Soviet republic... to build up socialism undisturbed.

This fatal course was pursued until the Berlin conference of the Committee in April 1927. Did the Committee protest against the bombardment of Nanking by British gunboats? Did it protest against the police raid upon the Arcos, the Soviet trading organization in London? Did it say a single word about the treachery of its British partner during the general strike and the miners’ strike? It did none of these things. But for that, it did adopt an astounding resolution in which Russians and Englishmen both declare:

“The only representatives and spokesmen of the trade union movement are the Congress of the British Trade unions and its General Council;

“... esteems, at the same time, that the fraternal union between the trade union movements of the two countries, incorporated in the Anglo-Russian Committee, cannot and must not violate or restrict their rights and autonomy as the directing organs of the trade union movement of the respective countries; nor interfere in any manner whatsoever in their internal affairs.”

This document, which could not but have a stunning effect upon the British Communists, and the Minority Movement in particular, registered the high-water mark of capitulation to Purcell and Co. (who in turn “capitulated” to Bald

The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution

When the full history of the second Chinese revolution (1925-1927) is written, it will stand out as an everlasting monument of condemnation to the leadership of Stalin Bucharin in the Russian party and the International.

Victory lay within reach of the hand for the Chinese workers and peasants, but something unprecedented in history took place: the leadership, clothed in all the for mal authority of the Russian revolution and the Communist International, stood in the way like a solid wall. Stalin and Bucharin prohibited the proletariat from taking power. In the Chinese revolution the epigones played to the end, and with tragic results, the role which Lenin’s struggle in the Bolshevik party in April-May 1917 pre vented them from playing in the Russian revolution.

The policy of the ruling faction during the most decisive period of the Chinese revolution was, as Trotsky put it, a translation of Menshevism into the language of Chinese politics. The theory of Stalin, Bucharin and Martynov may be summed up as follows:

They proceeded from the standpoint that China, as a semicolonial country, was being submitted to the yoke of imperialism, which pressed down upon the whole nation, and upon all the classes in it, with equal severity. The bourgeoisie was conducting a revolutionary war against imperialism and had to be supported by the masses of workers and peasants. In this struggle victory would be attained with the establishment of a “democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants.” The “revolutionary anti-imperialist united front” was to be constituted as a “bloc of four classes” – composed of the workers, the peas- ants, the petty and large bourgeoisie. The embodiment of this “bloc” was the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang, the party of Sun Yat-sen, and after his death, of Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Chin-wei. The Kuo Min Tang, according to Stalin, was a “revolutionary parliament,” a “workers’ and peasants’ party” which the Chinese Communist party was forced to enter as a subordinated group.

Since the bourgeoisie, according to this conception, was conducting an anti-imperialist war against the foreign brigands, the clasp struggle at home was considered liquidated. For the workers and the Communists to make any serious attacks upon the Chinese bourgeoisie would be to disrupt the “bloc of the four classes.” That is why Stalin compelled the Chinese Communists to submit quietly to the decisions of the Nationalist government which established compulsory arbitration in strike struggles. For the same reason, the peasants’ movement was checked with an iron hand in telegraphic commands from Moscow. Similarly, the Communists were instructed not to organize Soviets. First, because “Soviets are the instruments of power of the proletarian dictatorship”; secondly, because to form Soviets would mean to overthrow the “revolutionary center” as Stalin called the Nationalist government of the bourgeoisie.

This was the guiding line of the leaders of the Comintern. And it led directly to the victory of the bourgeois counter-revolution, to the massacre of the vanguard of the Chinese proletariat and peasantry by the very “allies” whom Stalin had chosen for them.

What was the “bloc of four classes” in actuality? It was the form selected by Stalin and Co., in which the Communist, that is, the genuinely revolutionary vanguard, was subordinated, bound hand and foot, and delivered to the Chinese bourgeoisie. In the “bloc” the Chinese Communist party did not retain a shadow of its own independence. The party, in a joint manifesto with the Kuo Min Tang, announced that it differed with the latter only “in some details,” that the “united anti-imperialist front” had to be maintained at all costs, and that the Communists pledged themselves not to criticize the petty bourgeois doc trines of Sun-Yat-senism. At the height of the revolutionary storm the Communists played such an insignificant role that they did not possess a daily paper of their own, and even their weekly periodicals were published irregularly. In whole sections of the territory conquered by the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-shek, the Communist party and the trade unions continued to remain illegal.

The party did not become the leader in arousing and preparing the masses against the bourgeoisie. Instead, it was the instrument of the bourgeoisie restraining the workers from striking against their Bourgeois “allies” and preventing the peasants from rising to take the land and drive out the rich peasants. Rendered impotent in the revolutionary situation, Stalin nevertheless left the Chinese party sufficient strength for it to hand over to the bourgeoisie the proletarian and peasant masses it should have led against Chiang Kai-shek.

What conception did the Opposition defend? It took as its point of departure the fact that the semi-colonial position of China made the struggle against foreign imperialism an immediate task of the democratic revolution. But, it pointed out, it is precisely this position that makes inevitable the coming agreement between the national bourgeoisie – seeking customs autonomy -and the imperialists, both of them bound together by a common fear of the Chinese masses.

The democratic revolution sets the task not only of liberation from the imperialist yoke but also the solution of the agrarian question. In China, however, the country usurer and landowner is so intimately bound up with the urban big bourgeoisie, the compressors, and in the last analysis, the foreign bourgeoisie, that the agrarian revolution can only be carried out in violent struggle against all these elements. Will the bourgeoisie or even the petty bourgeoisie lead the masses to a solution of this problem? Quite the contrary. Only the proletariat of China can lead the peasantry in the struggle for liberation and the establishment of their own power’. In the struggle, it is necessary to establish a bloc which is led by the proletariat whose vanguard is organized into a separate Communist party, subordinated to no other party and acting independently.

What guarantees must the proletariat and the Communists establish for the victory of the revolution? Primarily, to rely upon themselves, upon their own apparatus, and in the end, upon their own state machinery. The Canton government is not our government just as the Nationalist armies are not our armies and the Kuo Min Tang is not our party. They are the armies and party of the bourgeoisie. The same holds true of the Wuhan government established by the “Lefts” after Chiang Kai-shek’s coup d’etat in Shanghai.

Everywhere, therefore, the workers and peasants must form Soviets, for which they are already fighting instinctively.

For advancing this course of action, the whole apparatus of the Russian party and the International was converted into a machine to crush the Left Opposition. From Stalin and Martynov down to the last functionary, an international campaign was conducted to prove that Chiang Kai-shek was a reliable ally. After he had massacred the Shanghai proletariat, his place of honor in the campaign was taken by Feng Yu-hsiang and Wang Chin-wei. The whole Communist press lauded the bourgeois generals as “our own.” The Kuo Min Tang, which the Russian Political Bureau had decided (against Trotsky’s solitary vote) to admit into the Communist International as a “sympathizing” party, was presented to the world as only one step removed from Communism. To such lengths had Stalinism gone in the International that when Chiang Kai-shek’s forces entered Shanghai to consecrate in proletarian blood the victory of the counter-revolution, the French Communist party sent him a telegram of congratulations on the formation of the “Shanghai Commune”!

The proposals of the Opposition for an independent Communist party in China were unsparingly attacked. This would mean, cried Stalin and Bucharin, to leave the Kuo Min Tang, to “desert our allies,” to drive away the bourgeoisie from the “united front,” to “skip over stages.” The bourgeoisie had to be supported, they con tended, and the bloc maintained. It is true that in the “bloc” it was the bourgeoisie who ruled and the proletariat who served, but this fatal “detail” was overlooked completely in the interests of the “national revolution.”

Even after the second Chiang Kai-shek coup, Stalin doggedly maintained his course. Only, in place of the “Kuo Min Tang center” of Chiang Kai-shek which was sup posed to be leading the “anti-imperialist revolution,” was now put the “Kuo Min Tang Left” of Wang Chin-wei, which was supposed to be leading the “agrarian revolution.” After Chiang Kai-shek had led his troops to Shanghai in order there to join forces with the foreign imperialists against the Chinese masses, the government of the “Left” bourgeoisie was set up in Wuhan.

The ghastly experiment in Menshevism was now continued on a “higher scale.” Stalin called the Wuhan government of bourgeois politicians the “revolutionary center” of the South. According to Stalin, the Wuhan clique was becoming the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.” And if this was the case, the proposal of the Opposition to form Soviets in the Wuhan territory was, you see, a criminal adventure. For if we al ready have the “democratic dictatorship” set up, what purpose is there in organizing Soviets, which are organs of power and must consequently be aimed at overwhelming the existing regime? This is how the Stalinists argued.

Into the Wuhan government were sent two Communist ministers, one as the minister of labor and the other, Tang Ping-shan, who had already distinguished himself in Moscow and China in the struggle against “Trotskyism” because it underestimated the peasantry, as minister of agriculture. How did this bourgeois government, the “organ of the agrarian revolution,” proceed to act? In the customary manner of all bourgeois governments that exist only by grace of the ignorance, disorganization and weakness of the revolutionary masses. It sought to crush the workers’ and peasants’ movement, and in this task it found the signal support of the two Communist captives who served the Chinese bourgeoisie as ministers under instructions from Moscow. Wuhan proceeded to “organize the agrarian revolution” by sending the Communist minister and anti-Trotsky expert into the countryside at the head of an armed division for the purpose of sup pressing the insurrectionary peasants! In this one episode is illumined the whole counter-revolutionary course which Stalinism pursued in the Chinese revolution. The Communist vanguard was transformed by Stalin into the club with which the bourgeoisie smashed the masses into submission.

At the very moment when he was sharpening the knife for the neck of the Shanghai proletariat, Chiang Kai-shek was being lauded in Moscow by Stalin, who pro claimed him a loyal ally, and condemned the Opposition for proposing measures against him. Stalin suffered the same inevitable disappointment with the Wuhan government. It followed with almost staged accuracy in the foot- steps of Chiang Kai-shek. The “Left Kuo Min Tang” leaders proved to be not one whit more revolutionary than their Right wing brothers-under-the-skin. The fantastic “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,” which Lenin had kicked into the dustbin of history in April 1917, proved to be, a decade later in China, a noose around the necks of the proletariat and peasantry.

With his “workers’ and peasants’ party,” with his “anti- imperialist united front,” with his “bloc of four classes,” with his “revolutionary parliament of the Kuo Min Tang,” with his “democratic dictatorship” and opposition to the formation of Soviets under proletarian leadership – with all this Stalin played the reactionary part in China which Tseretelli and Chernov sought unsuccessfully to fill in the Russian revolution of 1917. At every stage in the struggle, the Opposition defended the tested doctrines of Marxism. The Centrist apparatus crushed the Left Opposition. But in doing so it only crushed the Chinese revolution.

Planned Economy: Industrialization and Collectivization of Agriculture

While conducting its fight against the ravages of Stalinism on the international field, the Opposition was simultaneously engaged in a sharp struggle against the policies of the bureaucracy at home. The Communist worker whose head has been systematically pumped frill of lies and who has been taught a history of the past ten years which never took place, frequently answers the criticisms of the Oppositionist with a general reference to the undoubted successes of the Five Year Plan. In nine cases out of ten, however, he is not aware of the fact that it took years of struggle (1923-28) by the Left Opposition merely to have a Five Year Plan adopted by the party leadership.

The introduction of plan into Soviet economy can be traced as far back as July 1920. The whole railroad sys tem was a wreck. The party put Trotsky in charge of re storing transportation and on the date mentioned the famous “Order No.1042” was issued as the first of a series of systematic measures which finally brought order and regularity where chaos and collapse had prevailed before. Lenin spoke of it as an example of what had to be done in the other branches of industry. The report made by Trotsky to the Eighth Congress of the Soviets based on the experience, and the theses he prepared together with Emshanov, were warmly defended by Lenin against the “skeptics who say: ‘What good is it to make forecasts for many years ahead?’”

The question of long-term planned economy was raised more sharply in 1923 by Comrade Trotsky. Unaided this time by Lenin, who had already been compelled to with draw from the party councils, Trotsky laid before the party his arguments for the elaboration of plan in economy in order to carry out successfully an industrialization of the country and a collectivization of its backward, scattered, individualistic agriculture. The critics of the Opposition, be it said in passing, never stopped to explain the contradiction (created by themselves) between their two claims: first, that Trotsky was opposed to building socialism in Russia, and secondly, that he was too extreme in his proposals for industrializing the country and particularly its agriculture.

From 1923 on, the Opposition pointed out that the only material foundation for socialism is large machine industry capable of reorganizing agriculture as well. Russia’s backwardness made the speedy development of such an industry especially imperative in view of the retardation of the international revolution. In addition, the Left wing showed, the vast mass of the peasantry was undergoing a process of differentiation in which the rich peasant (the Kulak) was growing stronger and making dangerous advances which only the organization of the poor peasants and their systematic introduction to collective farming would be able to impede. The Opposition demanded an industrial progress that would be able to dominate and reorganize agriculture, satisfy the needs of the peasantry on a cheap basis, and provide the economic basis for abolishing the petty bourgeois strata of the village population.

How did the bureaucracy reply? These “practical people,” who would not allow themselves to be taken in by “fantastic ideas” about planning for years in advance, launched a furious assault upon Trotsky. Rykov hastened to report to the Fifth Congress of the Comintern that Trotsky’s proposals were a petty-bourgeois deviation from Leninism, that the Russian party leadership was doing all it could do and all that could be expected of it in the field of industry and agriculture. Stalin sneeringly replied to the Opposition’s arguments with the comment that it wasn’t a plan that the peasant needed, but a good rain for his crops! The danger of the rising kulak was derided.

But the Kulak was growing in strength and becoming the dominant figure in the countryside. Moreover, he was permeating the party -a whole section of it -with his ideology. The first two years of struggle of the Opposition finally bore fruit in the revolt of the revolutionary Leningrad proletariat in 1925, which compelled its leaders – men like Zinoviev who had fathered the campaign against “Trotskyism” – to combine in a bloc with the 1923 Opposition. The alarm felt by the Leningrad proletarians at the inroads being made by the Kulak and his urban associate, the Nepman, was not, howsoever, shared by the crust-hardened bureaucracy. Instead of adopting the proposals for a systematic industrialization of the country, the Stalin-Bucharin leadership steered a course towards that same Kulak whom, later on, when they took fright at his growth, they sought to “liquidate” by decree at one blow.

To the already well-to-do peasants Bucharin cried out the advice: Enrich yourselves! Kalinin made speeches denouncing the poor peasants as lazy good-for-nothings because they did not accumulate, and praising the diligence and industry of the “economically powerful peas ant,” that is, of the kulak. Pravda (in April 1925) urged that the “economic possibilities of the we’ll-to-do peasant, the economic possibilities of the Kulaks, must be unfettered.” The Commissariat for Agriculture of the Georgian Soviets, in harmony with the prevailing atmosphere in the ruling strata of the party, elaborated a project for the denationalization of the land. In 1926, the Kulak course of Stalinism was pushed so far that for a time the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets granted the vote to exploiting peasants. In all this period, the belated present-day upholders of the Five Year Plan “as against Trotsky,” not only had industrialization and collectivization furthest from their minds, were not only its staunchest opponents, but actually steered a directly opposite course.

In 1925, that is, even before the 1927 platform of the Opposition bloc, Trotsky once more wrote in detail about the tremendous possibilities which the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a proletarian dictatorship offered for the progress of socialism, even on the basis of an isolated workers’ state. In Whither Russia? he advanced the idea that even with an independent reproduction based on socialist accumulation, the Soviet republic could show a speed of industrial progress unknown and impossible under capitalism. His prediction of a possible 20 percent annual growth (six years later this was proved to be an entirely moderate figure, entirely attainable), was the subject for great merriment among the functionaries assembled at one of the party congresses, caused by the “ironical” ridicule which Stalin showered upon the prediction. The official position was expressed by Bucharin when he put forward the perspective that Russia would build socialism “with the speed of a tortoise,” at a snail’s pace!

The 1927 platform of the Opposition was the most elaborate and definite proposal it had presented to the party, and this was undoubtedly one of the reasons why it was so rabidly attacked. It was officially suppressed by the bureaucracy, which refused to print it. Its circulation in mimeographed form was made a crime punishable by imprisonment or exile. There are Bolsheviks in Siberia today for having distributed the ideas which Stalin was himself compelled to adopt in large measure two years later. In the Platform, the Opposition demanded a categorical condemnation of the first Five Year Plan elaborated by Rykov and Krzhizhanovsky, and adopted by the party leaders. This timid, worthless plan proposed an annual growth of 9 percent for the first year and a decreasing percentage every year thereafter until it would reach a 4 percent growth at the end of the plan.

The bolder proposals submitted by the Opposition, which36 later were proved to be infinitely more realistic and applicable, met with just as strong a condemnation from the Stalinists. On all sides the Opposition spokesmen were taunted by the bureaucrats with the question: Where will you get the means? -although the expenditures for industrial development proposed at first by the Opposition were greatly exceeded when the current Plan finally got under way. And when the Opposition presented its proposals for raising the means by a forced loan from the Kulaks, by a lowering of prices based on cutting over head and the bureaucratic apparatus, by a skillful utilization of the foreign trade monopoly, etc., the bureaucrats raised a hue and cry against the “counter-revolutionary Trotskyists.”

In the days of the French revolution the reaction sought to overthrow the rule of the city artisans and revolutionary petty bourgeoisie by inciting the peasants against them, by arousing every one of the backward, reactionary prejudices of the French peasants against the “predatory capital.” Such a cry is the distinguishing feature of reaction. And true to themselves, the bureaucracy which had come to the top on the basis of the post-1923 reaction, made use of the same methods. Stalin, Rykov and Kuybischev signed a manifesto to the whole Russian people announcing that the Opposition proposed “to rob the peasantry.” The lesser bureaucrats carried on an even more reactionary propaganda in the villages against the Left wing. In the cities, in the meantime, the disturbed proletarians were assured by Stalin and Bucharin that there was no danger whatsoever from the Kulaks, that there were some, it is true, but not enough to worry about. The professional statisticians were put to the job of presenting tables to prove the “insignificant percentage” of the Kulaks. The need for collectivization was minimized to the vanishing point. As late as 1928, the principal agrarian “specialist” of the apparatus, Yakovlev, the commissar for agriculture, declared against the Opposition that collective farming would for years to come “remain little islets in the sea of private peasant farms.” At the Fifteenth party Congress, where the Opposition leaders were all expelled, Rykov hectored the Opposition with the question: If the kulak is so strong why hasn’t he played us some trick or other? As will be seen further on, Rykov did not have long to wait.

Finally, only a few months were required in the application of the original Five Year Plan of Rykov-Stalin in order to demonstrate how well-founded had been the Opposition’s criticism of its inadequacy. The apparatus was compelled to revise it virtually from stem to stern.

Without the persistent years of struggle of the Left Opposition, it is entirely doubtful that even those measures of progress which have been made thus far would have been accomplished. Left to themselves, unhampered by the demands of the Opposition, there is every reason to believe that the Stalin-Bucharin bloc would have continued to go further into that reactionary, nationalist swamp where the Kulak and the other classes hostile to the October Revolution were steadily pulling it.

The essential, positive features of the Five Year Plan, the phenomenal success which a proletariat in power has been able to show in the realm of industrial progress – these are a debt which is owed exclusively to the unremitting struggle of the Opposition. That is how the records of history will register it.

The Break-up of the Bloc Between the Right Wing and the Center and the Launching of the ‘Third Period’

The struggle conducted on an international scale against the Left Opposition was led jointly by the Centrist faction and the Right wing. In their endeavors to beat down the Marxian wing of the International no distinctions could be perceived between Brandler and Thaelmann, Jilek and Gottwald, Sellier and Thorez, Lovestone and Yoster, Kilboom and Silen. This unity was symbolized by the combination of Stalin. and Bucharin who established them selves as the “incorruptible Leninist Old Guard.”

It was no mere fictitious unity. On all questions of inter national and domestic policy, of principle and tactics, these two sections of the ruling bloc held a common view. They went hand in hand against “Trotskyism,” and hand in hand with Purcell and Chiang Kai-shek. Together they defended the theory of socialism in one country, of “two class workers and peasants parties. “They jointly introduced to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928 the revisionist program adopted by the delegates.

But at the end of 1927, the ebb-tide of reaction which had brought the regime into power was giving way to a Leftward turn in the ranks of the international proletariat. In Russia itself, the “bloodless kulak uprising” of 1928 had a sobering effect upon the workers and they began to press upon the leadership for a turn of the helm to the Left. It was in this atmosphere that Stalin was compelled to steer in the opposite direction from the one he had been sailing for five years. Starting cautiously with an attack upon obscure representatives of the Right wing, he succeeded so quickly in stripping the latter of its support that he was able in 1929-1930 to make a frontal attack upon its real leadership: Rykov, Bucharin and Tomsky.

To a Communist public dumbfounded by the unexpected ness of the attack, the three leaders of the Right wing were presented by Stalin .as the banner-bearers of the capitalist restoration. The president of the Communist Inter national, the head of the Soviet government, and the leader of the Soviet trade unions were depicted by Stalin as the agents of the Thermidorian counter-revolution! But it is precisely this “trio” with whom Stalin had for five-six years been in the most intimate “indissoluble” alliance against the Left wing of the party.

If Stalin’s indictment of the Right wing had any meaning at all – and it did – it was, at the same time, a murderous arraignment of the Centrist faction itself. For what pretense could it make to Bolshevism when it had admittedly been in indistinguishable solidarity for half a decade with restorationists? Where in all history could an instance be found of the genuine revolutionary tendency having been in an inseparable bloc with another tendency which, within virtually twenty-four hours, proved to be the champion of black reaction?

Given the fact that both sections of the leadership had a common-principle basis, given the fact that to cut off the Right wing Stalin had to borrow copiously from the ideological arsenal of the Left Opposition (the Right wing did not hesitate to accuse him of “Trotskyism” just as Trotsky foretold in 1926!), Stalin’s campaign against the Right wing served at the same time as a deadly self revelation of Centrism, and an involuntary tribute to the justice of the whole Opposition struggle.

Let it not be forgotten that the whole Fifteenth Russian party Congress condemned the Oppositionists as panic mongers for warning against the growing Kulak danger. Just as Rykov had taunted the Opposition with the question: If the Kulak is so dangerous why hasn’t he played us some trick? – so Molotov cried impatiently in December 1927 that the Kulak was nothing new, that there was no need of alarm or of special measures beyond those already in force. Everybody “agrees,” argued Molotov, who insistently minimized the magnitude of the exploiting farmers, “it exists, and there is no need to speak about it.”

Only a few brief weeks later the whole Soviet Union was violently shaken by a demonstration of the tremendous power which the Kulak had amassed all the while that Bucharin-Stalin-Molotov-Rykov had been covering him up from Trotsky’s criticisms. In January 1928, right after the congress and emboldened by their success in having the Left wing cut off from the party, the Kulaks rose in what came to be known as their “bloodless uprising.” Powerful and confident, they refused to turn over their hoarded stocks of grain and, in effect, declared: Unless the Soviet power yields to our demands for prices above those fixed by the proletarian state we shall keep our stores and starve the cities, the working-class centers, into submission!

So effective and alarming was their resistance that for the first time in many long years, the Soviets were compelled to requisition the villages’ grain by armed force. All the official philosophy of “Enrich yourselves!” the vicious self-consolation about the insignificance of the Kulak, the rabid hounding of the Opposition for its timely warnings, were now whipped to tatters by the realities The revolutionary spirit of a now alarmed working class, which had by no means been entirely eliminated by the campaign against the Opposition, forced its way into the open in spite of the obstacles put in its path by the bureaucratic regime. It is this pressure from below which gave the real impulsion to the break-up of the hitherto solid Right-Center bloc. This still unclear revolt against the previous line of yielding to the capitalist elements inside and outside the country, jerked the helm out of the hands of the Right and forced a change in the course.

On the basis of this Leftward current in the masses, the Stalinist faction opened up a new phase of its development, the “third period” of its blunders on a Soviet and an international scale. This flight of the frightened bureaucrats from yesterday’s rank opportunism to adventurism is embraced in what has become known as the “third period.”

The arbitrarily defined period does not commence in the Comintern’s history with its proclamation at the Sixth Congress, but even more definitely at the Ninth Plenum of the CI early in 1928. At that time the first signs of a working-class resurgence in Europe could be detected, but only the first signs. The vote cast for the Communist parties, particularly in Germany, was increasing, but with it, also, the vote cast for the social democracy. In a number of other countries, however, the working class was either writhing in the pain of a still unsurmounted defeat, as in China, or else passive under the soporific effects of a temporary economic boom, as in France and the United States.

The Ninth Plenum, instead of establishing the precise stage of development of the international labor movement, proclaimed the rise of a “new and higher” stage of the Chinese revolution (not counter-revolution, but revolution!), gave its blanket endorsement to guerrilla adventurism, and announced from the mouth of Thaelmann and the other spokesmen of the Comintern that the working masses throughout the world were becoming “more and more radicalized.” The warnings against this light minded conception of an automatic, horizontal pr ogress of the revolutionary movement were of no avail, for they were uttered by the Opposition. Trotsky’s clear-sighted analysis of the real status of the movement was not only passed over in silence at the Sixth Congress to which it was presented, but it was not even given to the assembled delegates.

The Sixth Congress in the middle of 1928 carried the Ninth Plenum a few steps further in absurdity. Formally, it marked the culminating point of the collaboration between Centrism and the Right wing (Stalin and Bucharin). Actually, it incorporated into the foundation of the next period a mixture of opportunist premises and ultra-Left deductions which have been at the root of all the confusion and defeats suffered by Communism since that time.

The Sixth Congress had many points of similarity with the Fifth, which was held in 1924 after the defeat in Germany. In 1924, no defeat was acknowledged; on the contrary, the revolution was proclaimed to be right ahead. In 1928, the same error was made with regard to the Chinese revolution. In the period of the Fifth Congress, Stalin made the novel discovery that the “social democracy was the most moderate wing of Fascism.” In 1928, the Sixth Congress laid the basis for the unique philosophy of “social-Fascism.” The Fifth Congress celebrated the victory of “Bolshevization” and “monolithism,” at a time when the very basis under the various “Bolshevik leaderships” imposed upon the national sections was being undermined. In 1928, the most violent internal struggles were being fought behind the scenes of the “unified Communist International.” The Fifth Congress, with all its ultra-Leftist palaver, contained not merely the germs of a brief spurt to the Left but also a protracted swing to the Right, to the period of the Anglo-Russian Committee, of the Chiang Kai-shek alliance, the Anti-Imperialist League and the “Peasants’ International.” The Sixth Congress, for all its endorsement of adventurist conclusions, consecrated the revisionist theory of socialism in one country and established the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” (that is, the Kerenskiad or the Kuo Min Tang tragedy) as an iron law governing the destinies of the revolution on three-quarters of the earth.

The struggle against the “Right danger” launched at the Sixth Congress, which Bucharin had resisted only as recently as the Fifteenth Congress of the Russian party, was platonic and anonymous. Its value may be estimated from the fact that it was proclaimed from the Congress tribune by the international leader of the Right wing, Bucharin. In this manner, the formal unification of the ruling bloc was preserved and used to cover up the bitter internal dispute.

It is instructive to observe that at the very time that Stalin was busily engaged in sapping the ground under Bucharin and Co., going so far as to organize an unofficial congress of his own, simultaneously with “Bucharin’s Congress,” he nevertheless took the leadership in condemning any rumors about disagreements in the Russian party leadership as “Trotskyist slanders.” In a special report on the subject made by Stalin himself to the Council of Elders at the Congress, he repudiated all rumors regarding differences in the Russian Political Bureau. He emphatically denied that there were any Right wingers or Right wing views in the Political Bureau or even the Central Committee, and, to confirm his assertions, introduced a resolution, signed by himself and every other member of the Political Bureau which declared:

“The undersigned members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union declare before the Council of Elders of the Congress that they most emphatically protest against the circulation of rumors that there are dissensions among the members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU.”

Needless to say, the assembled marionettes listened solemnly and approvingly to this criminally ludicrous deception of the Communist International, concocted jointly by Stalin and Bucharin.

The dissolution of this state of affairs was not long delayed. In almost less time than it takes to tell it, virtually all the leading spokesmen of the Sixth Congress were either crushed organizationally, expelled outright, or saved from expulsion by humiliating capitulation. Just as the leaders of the Fifth Congress lasted but a brief moment in the seats of power, so did the Sixth Congress “Bolsheviks” meet with a speedy end. Bucharin, the political leader of the Congress, the reporter on the program, the president of the Comintern, was denounced a few months later as the leader of the capitalist-restorationist tendency in the Soviet Union (no less!). Lovestone, Gitlow and Wolfe were unceremoniously expelled as agents of the American bourgeoisie. Roy, who had made a livelihood denouncing Trotsky as an agent of Chamberlain, found himself designated in exactly the same manner. Jilek and Co. in Czechoslovakia, Kilboom in Sweden, Brandler (and almost Ewert) in Germany, Sellier and Co. in France, and a host of others, were expelled or withdrew from the Comintern.

The removal of any Right wing restraint made possible the climb to the heights of absurdity at the Tenth Plenum in 1929, to the very peaks of the “third period.” The Tenth Plenum was the reductio ad absurdum of the Sixth Congress with a number of novelties added by Stalin and Molotov on their own account. It was the Plenum par excellence of the “third period”, the same “third period” which was at first denounced as an opportunistic idea by the Thaelmann-Neumann delegation to the Sixth Congress.

The “third period,” its proponents explained, was characterized by a constantly increasing radicalization of the masses, simultaneously in every country. There can be no fourth period, announced Molotov, for the third period ends with revolution. The present “heightened political sensitivity of the broad masses,” added Losovsky, “is a characteristic sign of the eve of a revolution.” Moireva, a member of the ECCI [Executive Committee of the Communist International], declared:

“It is my opinion from the May events as well as from the recent Polish events that there were a series of elements in them that recall our July days. The fact alone that the Communist parties had to restrain the most advanced sections of the working class in their surge forward, speaks for a rapidly approaching revolutionary situation.”

This extravaganza is illuminated only if it is remembered that “our July days” were the direct precursor of the October insurrection in Russia. It should be borne in mind that all these fantasies were presented to the official Communist world as unshakable articles of faith more than three years ago!

From this “third period” with its incessantly rising radicalization of the masses in virtually every country in the world, in which France was solemnly announced to be at the head of the revolutionary list (in 1929!), flowed the theory of social Fascism, a disease of senile decay from which the Comintern is suffering to this day. With Stalin’s ingenious formula of 1924 in mind, Manuilsky now announced that “the fusion of the social democracy with the capitalist state is not merely a fusion at the top. This fusion has taken place from top to bottom, all along the line.” Improving on Lenin, Manuilsky announced that Noske back in 1918 was already a social Fascist.

The master strategist, Bela Kun, who destroyed the Hungarian revolution by failing to understand the nature of the social democracy in 1918, now tried some ten years later to repair the damage by advancing an even worse interpretation:

“Social-Fascism is the type of Fascist development in those countries in which capitalist development is more advanced than in Italy ... In this stage of development, social reformism dies out: it is transformed partly into social demagogic elements and partly into the element of mass violence of Fascism.”

From this Manuilsky drew the conclusion concerning the united front policy that “we have never considered it as a formula for everybody, for all times and people. Today we are stronger and proceed to more aggressive methods in the struggle for the majority of the working class.” What the lesser functionaries had to con tribute to the question may easily be imagined from these few quotations.

The official motivation for the establishment of the “third period” and all its commandments was false from beginning to end. But this does not mean that there was not a profound reason for the 180 degrees turn in the course of the Comintern. Centrism, bereft of any anchor in principles, possessing no platform distinctly its own, was driven to the Left by the pressure of events and criticism. Having no real foundation, it must base itself upon an artificially preserved prestige. In order to maintain the continuity of its prestige, that is, in order to explain away the head-over-heels turn to the Left, or more precisely, in order to justify the change without in any way leaving room for criticism of its preceding course, the “third period” was called into existence.

By its proclamation the Centrists were able to justify the “united front from the top” with Chiang Kai-shek and Purcell as well as no united front at all. Both were justified by one brilliant theory: the arbitrary establishment of “periods.” In the “second period,” according to this convenient dogma, it was the essence of Bolshevism to maintain a united front with proved strikebreakers in return for their “struggle to defend the Soviet Union” from British imperialism. In the “third period,” however, all social democrats from Purcell down to the socialist worker in the shop had become Fascist and the Communist must therefore have nothing to do with them. The “third period” formulae were the philosophy by which Centrism linked together the two mutually supplementary periods of its blunders, crimes, and ideological disorder without prejudice to itself: at least, that was the intention of its artificers.

The “third period” was, and to the extent that the remnants of it still clutter the road it still is, a milestone of Centrism’s road of bankruptcy and decay. The more than three years since its proclamation have witnessed a new series of defeats added to those accumulated between 1923 and 1928.

It is in this period that the rise of Fascism in Germany could proceed without encountering any effective resistance by the Communists, who were prohibited by the dogma of “social Fascism” from making a united front with the social democratic workers. Disoriented by the fantastic prediction of Molotov that France stood at the head of the list for revolutionary struggle, the Comintern was taken totally unawares by the upheaval in Spain. When it was finally shaken out of its stupor, the Spanish Communist party was rendered impotent by the extreme sectarianism of its policy, by its rejection of the tactic of the united front.

In the United States the unparalleled opportunities for revolutionary work afforded by the convulsions of the crisis were lost, one after the other, by the application of tactics which repelled hundreds of thousands of workers moving in the direction of Communism. In England, France, Czechoslovakia – in a word, in every important country, the theory and practice of the “third period” brought the Communist movement to its knees, introduced confusion into its mind, paralyzed its limbs and isolated it from the masses. If the international social democracy is still a big power to be reckoned with today, if it still retains its sway over millions of workers, it has the blunders of Stalinism to thank for it.

The passionate desire of the masses for a united front to resist the encroachments of the bourgeoisie was repulsed by the bureaucratic demand of the Communist parties for a “united front from below” or a “Red united front,” that is, a united front dependent upon the acceptance in advance by non-Communist workers of Communist leadership. The hatred of Fascism manifested by socialist workers, as well as Communists, was never utilized by the Stalinists. Instead, they repelled the socialist workers by their empty chatter about “social Fascism” and their alliance – in Germany, at any rate – with the Hitler bands in the notorious “Red” Referendum in Prussia. The resistance which the socialist workers were eager to offer to the capitalist attacks, was further weakened by the sectarian policy of splitting the unions and forming tiny Communist trade union sects.

The Comintern’s isolation from the masses on the political field as well as in the trade unions, which the Opposition forecast in time, has proceeded hand in hand with an unprecedented ideological and moral degeneration in the ranks of official Communism. This could not be expected to continue over a long period without ending in a terrific crash, be it inside the Soviet Union or outside of it.

The accumulated effects of this degeneration within the Soviet Union have brought in their train the dangers of Thermidor and Bonapartism, just as they threaten the whole Communist International with discreditment and dissolution.

The Dangers of Thermidor and Bonapartism

The Great French Revolution of the eighteenth century is rich with instructive lessons for the working class today. Only a priest will declare that there is any absolute guarantee against the fall of the Russian revolution. The revolutionist will stand on guard against it; his vigilance will be keener if he understands the nature of the dangers that threaten and what measures must be taken to ward them off.

The French revolution experienced two periods of defeat: Thermidorian reaction and the Bonapartist dictatorship. On the Ninth of Thermidor (July 27, 1794) the revolutionary Jacobins, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, Lebas – “the Bolsheviks of the French revolution” – were overthrown by a combination of the Right wing Jacobins, the vacillators and the royalist reaction. The guillotine which sent 21 Jacobin intransigeants to death the next day bit no longer into the reaction. In its turn, the Thermidorian epoch was climaxed a few years later with the ascension to power of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Thermidorian reaction was made possible by a degeneration and corruption of the revolutionary party of that time -the Jacobin clubs. It was facilitated by a yearning for “peace and tranquility” of certain sections of the people and above all by the politicians’ wearying of the revolutionary struggle and moving off to the Right; It gained momentum from the pressure of royalists and reactionaries who adapted themselves to the revolutionary customs and speech of the times in order to save their own hides. The weak-kneed and weak-minded among the revolutionists yielded to the social pressure of the reactionary class.

The Thermidorian overthrow was not the open counter revolution. On the contrary, it took place under the old banner and with the old watchwords scarcely altered. The Left-wing Jacobins were denounced by the Thermidorians as “agents of Pitt” (just as Oppositionists in Russia were denounced as “agents of Chamberlain”). They were charged with being merely a “few isolated individuals,” “malevolent aristocrats” who were undermining the united fatherland. The Right-wing Jacobins, who were unwittingly blazing the trail for the starkly counter-revolutionary Bonapartist dictatorship, calumniated the men they executed, imprisoned and banished, as “counter-revolutionists.”

The Bolshevik party today is not the party which took power in October 1917. It has gone through a period of social and political reaction. Its doctrine has been sapped at the foundation, distorted and corroded. It has swollen into a vast, shapeless mass by having hundreds of thousands of indiscriminately commanded workers and peasants poured into its ranks until it has lost that distinctness and independence essential to a revolutionary party. It has been deprived of its principal functions by a usurpatory, bureaucratic apparatus which raised itself above it and replaced it. Its revolutionary wing has been violently tom from it by the Thermidorian expulsions of the Left Opposition.

The systematic crushing of the leading party of the proletariat, without which the dictatorship cannot be exercised in a revolutionary sense, not only accentuates the danger of Thermidor in the Soviet Union but, at a given point, also the threat of Bonapartism. On the road of degeneration which leads to the counter-revolutionary triumph, Thermidor and Bonapartism do not present stages differing in their class foundation. In the Great French revolution, Bonapartism swiftly succeeded the Ninth of Thermidor and the Directory. But this succession is as little ordained and inevitable as is the certainty of counter-revolution altogether; a fusion of the two stages, a modification of one or the other under the conditions of a new social epoch – these and many other possibilities are quite conceivable. The Right wing in the Russian party had its strength essentially in the classes and not in the ranks, more specifically, not in the apparatus of the party. The Right wing was so easily crushed on a party scale because it was not prepared to make an open appeal for support to the class interests it represented: the Kulak, and the Nepman dependent upon him. The victory by the Stalinist center over the Right wing triumvirate halted, for the time being, the advance of the Thermidorian forces, of those dark and backward agrarian interests which had been whipped up and nurtured in the reactionary years of struggle against the Left Opposition. Only, this victory did not result in eliminating the other, and more acute, phases of the counter-revolutionary danger.

While both the Right and the Left wings of the party in the Soviet Union represent well-defined class forces and interests, the same cannot be said of the Centrist apparatus. Classic petty-bourgeois force, the graph of its policy reveals a broken line of leaps to the Left and to the Right which become shorter and more frequent with the aggravation of the crisis. It leans now upon the proletarian core of the country, as during the campaign against the Right wing, now upon the reactionary forces, as during the fight against the Left. It cannot find for itself a firm class foundation from which to operate; the closest it came to such a base was during the period of the idealization by the Stalin faction of the “middle peasant,” a shifty social stratum which, far from serving as a solid class foundation, required one itself.

The Stalin faction, however, has its strength in the party bureaucracy: it is the party bureaucracy. In the process of watering down the party until it is a bloated, shapeless mass, the apparatus has, at the same time, raised itself above the party to an unapproachable level and constituted itself a bureaucratic caste. The diffused party mass is unable to reach this caste in order to change it, or to have it reflect the interests of the mass itself. The apparatus, on the other hand, after having strangled the party, must stifle all life within itself. We say “must” because it cannot refer any disputes in its ranks to the party mass below for fear of unleashing a force that is inherently inimical to it. The whole bureaucratic system, consequently, moves inexorably toward a condition in which a decreasing number of individuals decide and speak for all; the number of these individuals today, to all practical purposes, is one, and his name is Stalin.

Devoid of a class basis, the apparatus is permeated principally with the desire for self-preservation and self perpetuation. Its policies, in all their zigzags, are subordinated essentially to this aim. The sickening Byzantine flattery of Stalin which is compulsory for every official, the conversion of the army and particularly of the GPU into an instrument with which the Secretariat operates ever more exclusively – combined with the suppression of workers’ democracy in general, and party democracy in particular, that is, of the principal guarantees against, a degeneration of the proletarian dictatorship – these are the signs of the present period in the Soviet Union. They disclose “the preconditions of the Bonapartist regime in the country.”

Tacking desperately between the various classes and social strata, the apparatus satisfies none of them. In this fact lies the danger that the mounting discontent of all sections of the population, and above all of the peasantry, will explode the very foundations of the Soviet power, that is, of the proletarian dictatorship. If the crisis breaks out into the open and reveals that the proletariat and its party have been so weakened that they cannot act decisively and victoriously, then the counter-revolution will probably assume the form of Bonapartism, of the iron man or men “standing above the classes” and apparently mediating between the contending forces, resting for the time being upon the strength of the military forces and the experienced cohesion of the bureaucratic apparatus. It is this prospect which reveals the Stalinist faction as the potential reservoir of the Bonapartist danger.

Superficial examination alone permits one to exclude this possibility, as well as the possibility of a Thermidorian overturn, on the ground of the so-called “liquidation of the Kulak.” If this were actually the case, the danger would undoubtedly be considered diminished, although even then, not eliminated. But a more careful scrutiny will reveal that the “liquidated Kulak” is still a substantial force, more threatening in this respect, that his present activities and progress are not only concealed behind the administratively established collective farms but are facilitated by the rupture of the relations between town and country, worker and peasant, rendered inevitable by the whole course of the Stalin bureaucracy.

“The French farmers,” wrote Marx in his classic study of Bonapartism, “are unable to assert their class interests in their own name, be it by a parliament or by convention. They cannot represent one another, they must themselves be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power, that protects them from above, bestows rain and sunshine upon them. Accordingly, the political influence of the allotment farmer finds its ultimate expression in an executive power that subjugates the commonweal to its own autocratic will.”

Such an executive power is present in the bureaucratic apparatus of the party and the Soviets. For it to be fully fledged as a Bonapartist ruling machine, it must first receive baptism in the blood shed by a civil war, that inevitable concomitant to the overthrow of the proletarian dictatorship which the reaction cannot hope to avert. The overthrow itself, however, can be averted, but only by restoring the party of the proletariat, the crushing of which has made possible the accumulation of all the internal contradictions and the maturing of the counter revolutionary factors. It is to achieve this restoration, to bring closer the day of its attainment, that the strength and activities of the Left Opposition are dedicated.

The International Left Opposition

The International Left Opposition has been constituted in every important country. It stands today formally outside of the official Communist parties, not as a matter of choice but of compulsion. In every case, its ranks are made up chiefly of Communist militants whose defense of the foundations of Leninism brought about their expulsion from the party.

The crisis in the Communist International has divided it into three camps: the Right wing opposition (Brandler, Lovestone, Roy); the bureaucratic Centrist faction of Stalin; and the Left Opposition group of the Bolshevik-Leninists. The fundamental standpoint upon which the first two are united despite other differences, is the reactionary, nationalist theory of socialism in one country. This marks the main dividing line between us and the combined Right wing and Center. The Left Opposition, in opposition to this theory, defends the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution, that is, of the uninterrupted development of the world revolution which, starting in one country, can be maintained only by its extension on an international scale.

The Left Opposition was and remains the irreconcilable opponent of the international social democracy, the principal defender of bourgeois democracy. The Right wing is a bridge from the Communist movement to the social democracy. In the United States, Germany and Czechoslovakia, sections or the whole of the Right opposition have already passed over into the camp of the social democracy. What remains of this faction has no stable basis and no right to a separate existence. It vacillates constantly between social democracy and capitulation to Stalinism, with which it has no fundamental differences. The Centrist faction supports the social democracy from the “Left.” By its opportunism, at one stage, and ultra Leftism at another, it has enabled the social democratic leaders to retain their control over millions of workers.

At every stage of its struggles as a distinctive grouping, the Left Opposition has defended the fundamental principles which its spokesmen and leaders incorporated into the Russian revolution and the Communist International in the early days of their existence. These principles, worked out theoretically by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, and tested through and through by decades of struggles, wars and revolutions, are the primary weapons of the world proletariat in its historic fight to emancipate itself and the whole of humanity. These principles have been undermined, distorted and violated by the ruling regime in the Soviet Union and the Communist International. In doing this, it has led the Communist movement, and consequently the working class, from one defeat to another, until the fatherland of the working class, the Soviet republic, is endangered and the organized revolutionary movement is in the throes of its severest crisis.

The Left Opposition, in its struggle for the regeneration of the Communist movement, is fighting for the present and the future of the whole working class!

The Classes of India and Their Political Roles: A Thesis of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:13:00 +0000

From the Fourth International, Vol3, No.3, March 1942

Editorial Note from the editors of Fourth International: At this moment when India takes a central place in the International arena, there opportunely arrives from our Indian comrades a series of documents and the most encouraging news.

The following document is a section of a thesis adopted in the latter part of last year by the Formation Committee of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India as the program on which all Marxist revolutionists could form a single revolutionary party. Together with certain other groups, the original committee has now constituted the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India as an adherent of the Fourth International. The party is now centering its agitation on the central slogan of the Constituent Assembly (see the Editorial Comment in this issue).

Together with the Ceylon Socialist Party (the Lanka Sama Samaja Party) and a recently-formed organization in Burma, our Indian comrades have established the Federation of Bolshevik-Leninist Parties of Burma, Ceylon and India, for the revolutionary destiny of these three peoples is closely linked together.

All three parties stand firmly on the program of the Fourth International. On the decisive question of defense of the Soviet Union and the character of the USSR as a workers’ state, they stand with Trotsky and the Socialist Workers Party against the petty-bourgeois opposition of Burnham and Shachtman who abandoned Trotskyism.

In documents which we have received, the parties of the Federation make unambiguously clear their agreement on the Russian and all other questions with the Fourth International against the petty-bourgeois opposition, which has been spreading false stories about the position of the Indian and Ceylonese comrades.

Readers of our magazine have been previously informed of the successes of the Ceylon Socialist Party (see particularly our September, 1989 issue), the leading proletarian organization in this important colony of six millions bordering India. For some years it functioned as an unaffiliated organization. In 1941 it adopted a new program and declared for affiliation to the Fourth International. This document we shall publish next month. Although a number of its leaders have been imprisoned since the beginning of the war and the party itself is illegal, it has nevertheless managed to continue publishing its three newpapers – a Sinhalese organ for Ceylonese workers and peasants, an English one for students and certain other purposes, and one in Tamil, the language of the Hindu immigrant laborers from India who form a tenth or more of Ceylon’s population.

The rich experience of our Ceylonese comrades In organizing trade unions and peasant organizations in Ceylon, where they have played the leading role in a surging mass movement, will undoubtedly be invaluable to the new party in India during the coming great days. They have already contributed greatly to the theoretical foundations of the new party.

The document which we print below demonstrates by irrefutable facts that to the great masses of India the question of independence is inextricably connected with the agrarian revolution. Of no avail will be the deals in Washington and London with the Indian bourgeoisie whom Nehru and Gandhi represent. The laws of the permanent revolution will sweep those agreements into the discard.

Every advanced worker should carefully study this document. Though written nearly a year ago, it will tell him far more about what is going on in India than the abundantly publicised reports of the negotiations between Cripps and Churchill, Nehru and Gandhi, Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek. With the collapse of British armed power in the Far East, the revolution has begun in India!

The Native Princes

The revolt of 1857 represented the last attempt of the old feudal ruling class of India to throw off the British yoke. This revolt, which despite its reactionary leadership laid bare the depth of mass discontent and unrest, alarmed the British rulers, and led to a radical change in policy in India. Seeking for bases of social and political support, the British abandoned the policy of annexing the Indian states within British India, instead guaranteeing the remnants of the feudal rulers their privileged and parasitic positions in innumerable petty principalities, buttressing their power and protecting them against the masses, and receiving in return the unqualified support of these elements for the British rule. The princes of the Indian states, maintained at the cost of a chaotic multiplication of administrative units, are today only the corrupt and dependent tools of British imperialism, and the feudatory states, checker-boarding all India as they do, are no more than a vast network of fortresses erected by the British in their own defense. The variety of the states and jurisdiction of the feudal princes defies a generalized description, but they bolster alike the reactionary policies of imperialism in India. The despotism and misgovernment practiced by the great majority of these rulers in their territories have created and perpetuated conditions of backwardness extreme even in India, including the most primitive forms of feudalism and slavery itself. Their collective interests are represented by the Chamber of Princes, instituted in 1921, which is the most reactionary political body in India.

The Landlords

The most solid supporters of British rule in India, after the princes, are the landlords. In fact the majority of the princes are no more themselves than glorified landlords, playing the same parasitic role as the landlords of British India. The landlords of India have a record of medieval oppression, of rack-renting and usury, and of unbridled gangsterism over a disarmed peasantry, which has made them the most hated exploiters in India. The rapid extension of landlordism in modern times through the development of intermediary and new parasitic classes on the peasantry, has not only increased the numbers of those who receive land rents, but firmly linked their interests with those of the Indian capitalist class, by ties of investment and mortgage. The political role of the landlords has always been one of complete subservience to British imperialism, as well as the greatest obstacle in the Way of agricultural development which demands a thorough-going democratic revolution in the agrarian field and the liquidation of landlordism in all its forms.

The second half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of an Indian capitalist class in Bombay and other industrial centers. The Indian bourgeoisie of the early period, conscious of its own weakness and dependent position in economy, offered no challenge whatever to British rule. But the deep economic conflict between their own interests and those of their British competitors drove them from the first decade of the twentieth century, to utilize the national political movement to strengthen their bargaining power against British imperialism.

The Indian Bourgeoisie

The bourgeoisie, in the absence of any competing class and especially of an independent proletarian movement, assumed complete leadership of the national political movement through its party, the Indian National Congress. The bourgeois leadership of the movement was clearly demonstrated in 1905, by the choice of the economic boycott of foreign goods as the method of struggle against the partition of Bengal. The aims of the bourgeoisie were defined during this period as the attainment of “colonial self-government within the Empire” as junior partners of the imperialists. They abandoned the struggle and adopted a policy of cooperation with the British after the grant of the MorleyMinte reforms, their own aims being satisfied for the moment.

The last years following the first World War, and the years which immediately followed it, were marked by the development, for the first time since 1857, of a mass struggle on a national scale against imperialism based on the discontent and unrest of the peasantry and the working class. This discontent was especially marked in Bombay, where the wave of working-class strikes was on a scale hitherto unknown in India, and reached its highest point in 1920 for which year the number of strikes reached the gigantic total of 1½ millions. The Montague-Chemsford reforms were designed to meet this rising threat by buying off the bourgeois leadership, and they succeeded to an extent, that section of the bourgeoisie who wanted whole-hearted cooperation with the government seceding from the Congress to form the Liberal Federation (1918). But the growth of the mass movement compelled the Congress bourgeoisie either to enter the struggle or be isolated from the masses. Launching under its own banner the passive resistance movement, and later the mass civil disobedience movement of 1921-22, the Congress entered the struggle, but only to betray it from the inside.

The mass movement which, despite its timid and unwilling leadership, had attained the undeniable character of a mass revolt against the British Raj, was abruptly called off when at its height by the bourgeois leader Gandhi, and a period of demoralization followed for the masses. The reactionary and treacherous character of the bourgeois leadership was shown clearly in the Bardoli Resolution of 1922, which condemned the no-tax campaign of the peasantry and insisted on the continuation of rent payments to the landlords, assuring the zamindars (landlords) that the Congress “had no intention of attacking their legal rights.” The bourgeoisie thus demonstrated its reactionary attitude toward the land question in which lies the main driving force to revolution in India.

With the worsening conditions of the late 20’s, the mass struggle developed again at a rising tempo, and was again led to defeat by the Congress (1930-34). The aims of the new struggle were limited by Gandhi beforehand to the celebrated 11 points which represented exclusively the most urgent demands of the Indian bourgeoisie. Nevertheless the movement developed in 1930 far beyond the limits laid down for it by the Congress, with rising strikes, powerful mass demonstrations, the Chittagong Armory raid, and the risings at Peshawar and Sholapur. Gandhi declared openly to the Viceroy that he was fighting as much against the rising forms of revolt as against the British imperialists. The aim of the bourgeoisie was henceforward to secure concessions from imperialism at the price of betraying the mass struggle in which they saw a real and growing threat to themselves. The Gandhi-Irwin settlement was a settlement against the mass movement, and paved the way for a terrific repression which fell on the movement during its ebb in 1932-34.

Since 1934 Gandhi and the leaders of the Congress have had as their chief aim that of preventing the renewal of a mass struggle against imperialism, while using their leadership of the national movement as a lever to secure the concessions they hope to obtain from imperialism. They see in the rising forces of revolt, and especially in the emergence of the working class as a political force, a threat to their own bases of exploitation, and are consequently following an increasingly reactionary policy. Reorganizing the party administration so as to secure to the big bourgeoisie the unassailable position of leadership (1934), they transferred the center of activities to the parliamentary field and to working the new Constitution in such a way as to secure the maximum benefits to the bourgeoisie, until the intransigence of the British parliament and the Indian government in the war situation and the withdrawal of many of the political concessions of provincial autonomy again forced the Congress into opposition (1939). The Congress bourgeoisie then engaged in a restricted campaign of individual “non-violent” civil disobedience with narrowly defined bourgeois aims, and under the dictatorial control of Gandhi himself. By this move they hoped to prevent the development of a serious mass struggle against imperialism, the leadership of which will be bound to pass into other hands.

The main instrument whereby the Indian bourgeoisie seeks to maintain control over the national movement is the Indian National Congress, the classic party of the Indian capitalist class, seeking as it does the support of the petty bourgeoisie and if possible of the workers, for its own aims. Despite the fact that under these conditions revolutionary and semi-revolutionary elements still remain within the fold of the Congress, despite its mass membership (five millions in 1939), and despite the demagogic programmatic pronouncements (Constituent Assembly, Agrarian Reform) which the Congress has repeatedly made, the direction of its policy remains exclusively in the hands of the bourgeoisie as also the control of the party organization, as was dramatically proved at Tripuri and after. The Indian National Congress in its social composition, its organization, and above all in its political leadership can be compared to the Kuomintang, which led the Chinese revolution of 192527 to its betrayal and defeat.

The characterization of the Indian National Congress as a multi-class party, as the “National United Front,” or as “a platform rather than a party,” is a flagrant deception and calculated only to hand over to the bourgeoisie in advance the leadership of the coming struggle, and so make its betrayal and defeat a foregone conclusion.

The more open reactionary interests of the Indian bourgeÃ±sie find expression in many organizations which exist side by side with the Congress. Thus the Liberal Federation (1918) represents those bourgeois elements who cooperate openly with the imperialists. The sectional interests of the propertied classes are represented by various communal organizations, notably the Moslem League (1905) and the Hindu Maha Sabaha (1925) which are dominated by large landlords and bourgeois interests and pursue a reactionary policy in all social and economic issues, deriving a measure of mass support by an appeal to the religious and communal sentiments of the backward masses.

The Petty-Bourgeois Intelligentsia

Because of their position of dependence on the capitalist class, and in the absence of a real challenge to their leadership from the proletariat, the various elements of the urban petty bourgeoisie and of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia have always played a satellite role to the bourgeoisie. The radicalization of the petty bourgeoisie under imperialism found its first and strongest expression in the prolonged terrorist movement in Bengal and elsewhere, the failure of which, despite the heroism of its protagonists, demonstrated finally the utter inability of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia to find an independent solution of its own problems.

Today the urban petty bourgeoisie finds its political reflection mainly in the various organizations within the fold of, or under the influence of the Indian National Congress, such as the Forward Bloc, the Congress Socialist Party, the Radical Democratic Party of M.N. Roy, etc.

Within the Congress, the petty-bourgeois leaders have repeatedly lent themselves to be used by the bourgeoisie as a defensive coloration before the masses, bridging with their radical phrases and irresponsible demagogy the gap between the reactionary Congress leadership and the hopes and aspirations of the masses. Thus the demagogy of Bose and Nehru, as well as the “socialist” phrases of M.N. Roy and the Congress Socialist Party, to say nothing of the “Marxism” of the National United Fronters of the Communist Party of India, have in turn served the Gandhian leaders as a smoke screen for their own reactionary maneuvers.

The humiliating capitulation of the Congress Socialist Party to the Congress leadership, the conversion of M.N. Roy and his Radical Democrats to imperialist war-mongering, and the departure of Subhas Chandra Bose from the Indian scene, are symptoms of the diminishing political role of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, which however theatrically it may posture before the masses in normal times, exposes in times of growing crisis its political bankruptcy, and exists only to be utilized by the bourgeoisie in its deception of the masses.

The Peasantry

The peasantry comprises the vast majority of the Indian population (70 per cent). The stagnation and deterioration of agriculture, the increasing land hunger, the exactions of the government, the extension of parasitic landlordism, the increasing load of rural debt, and the consequent expropriation of the cultivators, are together inevitably driving the peasantry on to the revolutionary road. Peasant unrest, leading frequently to actual risings (Santhal Rebellion of 1855, Deccan Riots of 1875), have been a recurring motif in Indian history. In the last two decades, and especially since the world economic crisis (1929), the peasant movement has been on the rise, and has taken on a more and more radical character.

It is precisely the depth and scope of the agrarian crisis that places the revolution against imperialism on the order of the day, contributing to it the driving force and the sweep which are necessary to accomplish the overthrow of the ruling power. Nevertheless the agrarian revolution requires the leadership of another class to raise the struggle to the level of a national revolution. The isolation and the scattered character of the peasant economy, the historical and political backwardness of the rural masses, the lack of inner cohesion within the peasantry, and the conflicting aims of its various strata, all combine to make it impossible for the peasantry to play an independent role in the coming revolution.

The invasion of moneyed interests has sharply accelerated the disintegrating tendencies within the peasantry. The creation of a vast army of landless peasants, sharecroppers and wage-laborers on the land has immensely complicated the agrarian problem, and rendered necessary revolutionary measures of the most far-reaching character. The basic antagonism between landlord and peasant has not been reduced by the entry of finance capital into agriculture, since this did not bring with it any change for the better in farming methods or in the system of land tenure. On the contrary, the landlord-peasant antagonism has been given a sharper emphasis by the extension of parasitic claims on the land, and the overthrow of landlordism by the transference of the land to the cultivator remains the primary task of the agrarian revolution. Nevertheless, this basic antagonism has been supplemented by a new one, which is reflected in the growth of an agricultural proletariat in the strict sense of the word. Besides this, the invasion of finance capital has made the problems of mortgage and of rural debt more pressing in some parts of India than in others, and these facts taken together will probably give to the agrarian revolution, at least in some areas, an anti-capitalist character at a very early stage.

Leadership of the Peasantry

The leadership of the revolution, which the peasantry cannot provide for itself, can come only from an urban class. But the Indian bourgeoisie cannot possibly provide this leadership, since in the first place it is itself reactionary through and through on the land question, sharing as it does so largely in the parasitic exploitation of the peasantry. Above all, the bourgeoisie, on account of its inherent weakness and its dependence on imperialism, is destined to play a counterrevolutionary role in the coming struggle for power.

The leadership of the peasantry in the petty-bourgeois democratic agrarian revolution that is immediately posed can therefore come only from the industrial proletariat, and an alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is a fundamental prerequisite of the Indian revolution. This alliance cannot be conceived in the form of a “workers’ arid peasants’ party” or of a “democratic dictatorship” in the revolution. The revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and peasantry can mean only proletarian leadership of the peasant struggle and, in case of revolutionary victory, the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship with the support of the peasantry.

The Peasant Movement

The growth of the peasant movement in recent times has led to the formation of various mass organizations among the peasantry, among which the most important are the Kisan Sanghs (Peasant Committees) which are loosely linked up in a district, provincial, and finally on an all-India scale in the All-India Kisan Sabha, whose membership in 1939 was 800,000. These associations, whose precise character varies from district to district, are in general today under the control and influence of petty-bourgeois intelligentsia elements who, as pointed out before, cannot follow a class policy independent of the bourgeoisie, although the growing mass pressure upon them is reflected in the more sharply radical demands they are forced to put forward.

There is no means of deciding in advance the exact role of the Kisan Sanghs in the coming revolution. This will be determined by the correlation of forces within them, which in turn will depend largely on the consciousness and militancy of the lower layers of the peasantry and the measure of control they exercise in the Kisan Sanghs. But it can be stated beforehand, on the basis of the experience of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, that the existence of Kisan Sanghs on however wide a scale does not offer a substitute for the separate organizations of poor peasants and agricultural laborers in rural Soviets, under the leadership of the urban working class. Only the Soviets can assure that the agrarian revolution will be carried out in a thorough-going manner.

The Working Class

The industrial proletariat is the product of modern capitalism in India. Its rapid growth in the period since 1914 can be illustrated by a comparison of the Factory Acts Statistics for 1914 and 1936:

Year........ No. of Factories........ No. of workers employed

1914........ 2,936.......................... 950,973

1936........ 9,329...........................1,652,147

The numerical strength of the industrial proletariat can be estimated at five millions, distributed mainly as follows (1935 figures)

(a) Workers in power driven factories (including those of the Native States):1,855,000; (b) Miners: 371,000; (c) Railwaymen:636,000 (d) Transport workers: 3,61,000 (e) Plantation workers:1,00,00,00

The Indian working class is chiefly employed in light industry (cotton, jute, etc.) but also to some extent in the iron, steel, cement, and coal mining industries. The degree of concentration in industrial establishments is relatively high, owing to the recency of industrial development and the typically modern character of many of the new enterprises. The proletariat holds a position in Indian society which cannot be gauged by its actual size; the true gauge is the vital place it occupies in the economy of the country.

The wage rates of the Indian proletariat are among the lowest, the living conditions the most miserable, the hours of work the longest, the factory conditions the worst, the death rate the highest in the civilized world. The fight to remedy these intolerable conditions and to protect themselves against the steadily worsening conditions of exploitation bring the workers directly to the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and the capitalist system, the destruction of which is necessary for their emancipation.

Working Class Struggles

The record of proletarian struggle in India dates back to the last century; but the movement took on an organized character only in the post-war period. The first great wave of strikes (1918-21) signaled the emergence of the Indian working class as a separate force, and gave to the national political movement during this period a truly revolutionary significance for the first time in its history. In 1920, on the crest of this strike wave, the Indian Trade Union Congress was formed. The second great strike wave of the late twenties, especially in Bombay, showed an immense advance in the working-class movement, marked by its growing awakening to communist ideas. The increasing millions of the workers and the growing influence of the Communists caused the trade union movement to be split in two by those leaders who sought the path of collaboration with the bourgeoisie. Thus the reactionary Trade Union Federation was formed in 1929. This policy of the reactionary labor leaders was facilitated by the disastrous “Red Trade Union” policy followed by the Communist Party of India on orders from the Comintern bureaucracy. With the arrest of the Communist leaders on a trumped-up charge (the Meerut Conspiracy case) and the further splitting of the Trade Union Congress in 1931, the wave of working-class struggle subsided once more. It was in this period (1930-31) that the Communist Party of India, which commanded the confidence of the awakening workers, made the grievous political mistake of standing aside from the mass movement which was again assuming revolutionary proportions.

The tendency towards economic recovery commencing in 1936, combined with the mass activities in connection with the election campaign of the Congress led to a revival in the mass movement which entered once again on a period of rise. The Congress Ministries saw a resurgence of the working-class strike movement with the Bengal jute strike (1937) and the Cawnpore textile strike (1938), a resurgence which was arrested only by measures of increased repression introduced by the government since the outbreak of war; but not before the Indian working class had clearly demonstrated its attitude towards the imperialist war, particularly by the mass political anti-war strike in Bombay of 80,000 workers.

Left Groups

The Communist Party of India, which alone in the last two decades could have afforded the Marxist leadership that above all things is needed, made instead a series of irresponsible mistakes, which find their expression in bureaucratically-conceived policies of the Comintern. In conformity with its false central programmatic aim, the “democratic dictatorship” of the proletariat and the peasantry, the CPI fostered the growth of workers’ and peasants’ parties from 1926 to 1928, at the expense of an independent working-class party. This policy was shelved in 1929 to make way for an ultra-left sectarian policy (in the celebrated Third Period days of the Coinintern), the signal expression of which came in the splitting of the trade union movement by the formation of “Red Trade Unions.” This sectarian policy of the CPI led to its isolation from the mass struggle of 1930-31, and made the bourgeois betrayal of the struggle so much the easier. In the period of ebb which followed (1934) the CPI was illegalized and has remained so since. From 1935 onwards, the CPI (again at the behest of the Comintern now openly and flagrantly the tool of the Soviet bureaucracy), reversed its policy once more and held out the hand of collaboration to the bourgeoisie through the policy of the National United Front which credited the bourgeoisie with a revolutionary role. The CPI was transformed into a loyal opposition within the Congress, having no policy independent of that organization, a state of things which continues today.

Mechanically echoing every new slogan advanced by the Comintern to suit the changing policies of the Soviet bureaucrats, the CPI has shown its reactionary character by its attitude towards the imperialist war. With its false theory of national united front, the CPI is making ready to repeat its betrayal of the Chinese revolution by handing over the leadership of the revolutionary struggle to the treacherous bourgeoisie. The Communist Party of India, because of the prestige it seeks to obtain from the Russian revolution and the Soviet Union, is today the most dangerous influence within the working class of India.

Openly preaching collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and today with the British imperialists at war, is the party of M.N. Roy. With a narrowing base within the working class, Roy has turned for a following to the labor bureaucrats supporting the war, and to the bourgeoisie itself.

The Congress Socialist Party (1934) has from the beginning followed a policy of utter subservience to the Congress bourgeoisie, and remains today completely without a base within the working class. Surrendering its claim to an independent existence, the CSP has been split wide open by the Communists who worked inside it, and is today an empty shell devoid of political substance.

To the left of the Communist Party, disgusted with its bureaucratic leaders and its reactionary policies, there exists a number of small parties and groups, occupying more or less centrist positions. Such are the Bengal Labor Party (Bolshevik Party of India), the Red Flag Communist (Communist Party) led by S.N. Tagore, etc. Without a clear-cut revolutionary policy and without making a decisive break organizationally and politically with the Comintern, these parties and groups are unable to offer the working class the independent leadership it requires.

Nevertheless these groups and parties contain many tried fighters and able Marxist theoreticians, who would be invaluable in a revolutionary working-class party.

This party can be only the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, the party of the Fourth International in India, which alone with its revolutionary strategy based on the accumulated experience of history and the theory of permanent revolution in particular, can lead the working class of India to revolutionary victory. This party has still to be built on an all-India scale, though many groups exist already whose fusion in the Formation Committee of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India has provided the nucleus for its formation.

Despite its subjective weakness in organization and consciousness, inevitable in a backward country and in the conditions of repression which surround it, the working class is entirely capable of leading the Indian revolution. It is the only class objectively fitted for this role, not only in relation to the Indian situation but in view of the decline of capitalism on a world scale, which opens the road to the international proletarian revolution.

The Permanent Revolution

India faces a historically belated bourgeois-democratic revolution, the main tasks of which are the overthrow of British imperialism, the liquidation of a semi-feudal land system, and the clearing away of feudal remnants in the form of the Indian Native States. But although bourgeois-democratic revolutions occurring in the advanced capitalist countries in previous centuries found leadership in the then rising bourgeoisie, the Indian bourgeoisie appearing on the scene only after the progressive role of the bourgeoisie in the world as a whole has been exhausted, is incapable of providing leadership to the revolution that is unfolding in India.

Connected with and dependent on British capital from the beginning, the Indian bourgeoisie today displays the characteristics of a predominantly compradore bourgeoisie, enjoying at the best the position of a very junior partner in the firm British Imperialism & Co. Hence, while they have been prepared to place themselves through the Indian National Congress at the head of the anti-imperialist mass movement for the purpose of utilizing it as a bargaining weapon to secure concessions from the imperialists, the bourgeois leaders have restricted the scope of the movement and prevented its development into a revolutionary assault on imperialism.

Incapable from the very nature of their position of embarking on a revolutionary struggle to secure their independence, and fearful of such a struggle, the bourgeois leaders have maintained their control over the mass movement only to betray it at every critical juncture.

Secondly, unlike the once revolutionary bourgeoisie of former times which arose in opposition to the feudal landowning class and in constant struggle against it, the Indian bourgeoisie has developed largely from the landowning class itself, and is in addition closely connected with the landlords through mortgages. They are therefore incapable of leading the peasants in the agrarian revolution against landlordism. On the contrary, as is clearly demonstrated by the declared policy and actions of the Congress both during the Civil Disobedience movements and in the period of the Congress Ministries, they are staunch supporters of zamindari interests.

Finally, unlike the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of former times, the revolution in India is unfolding at a time when large concentrations of workers already exist in the country. The industrial proletariat numbering five millions occupies a position of strategic importance in the economy of the country which cannot be measured by its mere numerical strength. It is important to remember, moreover, that a hitherto uncalculated but indubitably very high proportion of these workers is employed in large concerns employing sever-al hundreds of thousands of workers. The high degree of concentration of the Indian proletariat immeasurably advances its class consciousness and organizational strength. It was only in the post-war years that the Indian working class emerged as an organized force on a national scale. But the militant and widespread strike waves of 1918-21 and of 1928-29, which were the precursors of the mass Civil Disobedience movements of 1920-21 and of 1930-33 testify to the rapidity of the awakening. These workers are in daily conflict not only with the British owners of capital, but also with the native bourgeoisie. Faced by the threat of the working class, the Indian bourgeoisie has grown more conservative and suspicious. With every advance in organization and consciousness of the workers, the bourgeoisie has drawn nearer to the imperialists and further away from the masses. It is clear that not a single one of the tasks of the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution can be solved under the leadership of the Indian bourgeoisie. Far from leading the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the Indian bourgeoisie will go over to the camp of the imperialists and landlords on the outbreak of the revolution.

The urban petty bourgeoisie, daily becoming declassed and pauperized under imperialism and declining in economic significance, cannot even conceive of playing an independent role in the coming revolution. Since, however, there is no prospect whatever of improving their conditions under imperialism, but on the contrary they are faced with actual pauperization and ruin, they are forced onto the revolutionary road. The peasantry, the largest numerically and the most atomized, backward and oppressed class, is capable of local uprisings and partisan warfare, but requires the leadership of a more advanced and centralized class for this struggle to be elevated to an all-national level. Without such leadership the peasantry alone cannot make a revolution.

The task of such leadership falls in the nature of things on the Indian proletariat, which is the only class capable of leading the toiling masses in the onslaught against imperialism, landlordism and the native princes. The concentration and discipline induced by its very place in capitalist economy, its numerical strength, the sharpness of the class antagonism which daily brings it into conflict with the imperialists who are the main owners of capital in India, its organization and experience of struggle, and the vital position it occupies in the economy of the country, as also its steadily worsening condition under imperialism, all combine to fit the Indian proletariat for this task.

But the leadership of the working class in the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution poses before the working class the prospect of seizing the power and, in addition to accomplishing the long overdue bourgeois-democratic tasks, proceeding with its own socialist tasks. And thus the bourgeois-democratic revolution develops uninterruptedly into the proletarian revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only state form capable of supplanting the dictatorship of the Indian bourgeoisie in India. The realization of the combined character of the Indian revolution is essential for the planning of the revolutionary strategy of the working class. Should the working class fail in its historic task of seizing the power and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolution will inevitably recede, the bourgeois tasks themselves remain unperformed, and the power will swing back in the end to the imperialists without whom the Indian bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself against the hostile masses. A backward country like India can accomplish its bourgeois-democratic revolution only through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The correctness of this axiom of the theory of permanent revolution is demonstrated by the victorious Russian revolution of October 1917, and it is confirmed on the negative side by the tragic fate of the Chinese revolution of 1925-27.

In India, moreover, where the imperialists are the main owners of capital, the revolutionary assault of the workers against imperialism will bring them into direct and open conflict with the property forms of the imperialists from the moment the struggle enters the openly revolutionary stage. The exigencies of the struggle itself will in the course of the openly revolutionary assault against imperialism demonstrate to the workers the necessity of destroying not only imperialism but the foundations of capitalism itself. Thus, though the Indian revolution will be bourgeois in its immediate aims, the tasks of the proletarian revolution will be posed from the outset.

But the revolution cannot be stabilized even at this stage. The ultimate fate of the revolution in India, as in Russia, will be determined in the arena of the international revolution. Nor will India by its own forces be able to accomplish the task of making the transition to socialism. Not only the backwardness of the country, but also the international division of labor and the interdependence – produced by capitalism itself – of the different parts of world economy, demand that this task of the establishment of socialism can be accomplished only on a world scale. The victorious revolution in India, however, dealing a mortal blow to the oldest and most widespread imperialism in the world will on the one hand produce the most profound crisis in the entire capitalist world and shake world capitalism to its foundations. On the other hand it will inspire and galvanize into action millions of proletarians and colonial slaves the world over and inaugurate a new era of world revolution.

Trotsky on India

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:30:00 +0000

The Revolution in India: Its Tasks and Dangers

-Leon Trotsky

India is the classic colonial country as Britain is the classic metropolis. All the viciousness of the ruling classes, every form of oppression that capitalism has applied against the backward peoples of the East is most completely and frightfully summed up in the history of the gigantic colony on which the British imperialists have settled themselves like leeches to drink its blood for the past century and a half. The British bourgeoisie has diligently fostered every remnant of barbarism, every institution of the Middle Ages which could be of service in the oppression of man by man.

It forced its feudal agents to adapt themselves to colonial capitalist exploitation, to become its links, its organs, its convoys to the masses. The British imperialists boast of their railroads, their canals and industrial enterprises in India in which they have invested close to four billion gold dollars. Apologists for imperialism triumphantly compare present day India with what it was prior to colonial occupation. But who can doubt for a moment that a gifted nation of 320,000,000 people would develop immeasurably quicker and more successfully were it freed from the burden of systematic and organized plunder? It is enough to recall the four billion gold dollars which represent the British investment in India to imagine what Britain extracts from India in the course of only some five or six years.

Allowing India carefully weighed doses of technique and culture, exactly enough to facilitate the exploitation of the riches of the country, the Shylock of the Thames could not however prevent the ideas of economic and national independence and freedom from penetrating more and more widely into the masses.

Just as in the older bourgeois countries, the various nationalities that exist in India can only be fused into a nation by means of a binding political revolution. But in contradistinction to the older countries, this revolution in India is a colonial revolution directed against foreign oppressors. Besides this, it is the revolution of a historically belated nation in which the relations of feudal serfdom, caste divisions and even slavery exist alongside of the class antagonisms of the bourgeoisie and proletariat which have grown greatly in the last period.

The colonial character of the Indian revolution against one of the most powerful oppressors masks to a certain extent the internal social antagonisms of the country, particularly to the eyes of those to whom such masking is advantageous. In reality the necessity of throwing off the system of imperialist oppression, with all its roots intertwined with the old Indian exploitation, demands the greatest revolutionary effort on the part of the Indian masses and by that itself assures a gigantic swing of the class struggle. British imperialism will not abandon its positions voluntarily; while dropping its tail before America, it will direct the remains of its energy and its resources against insurgent India.

What an instructive historical lesson it is that the Indian revolution, even in its present stage, when it has not yet broken loose from the treacherous leadership of the national bourgeoisie, is being crushed by the ‘socialist’ government of MacDonald. The bloody repressions of these scoundrels of the Second International who promise to introduce socialism peacefully in their own home countries represent so far that small deposit which British imperialism brings in today on its future accounting in India. The sweet social democratic deliberations about reconciling the interests of bourgeois Britain with democratic India are a necessary supplement to the bloody repressions of MacDonald, who is of course ready, between executions, for the thousand-and-first commission of reconciliation.

The British bourgeoisie understands too well that the loss of India would not only mean the crash of its sufficiently rotted world power but also a social collapse in its own metropolis. It is a struggle of life and death. All forces will be set in motion. This means that the revolution will have to mobilize irresistible energy. The many-millioned mass has already begun to stir. They showed their half-blind force to such an extent that the national bourgeoisie was compelled to come out of its passivity and master the movement in order to break the edge of the revolutionary sword. Gandhi’s passive resistance is the tactical knot that combines the naivete and self-denying blindness of the disunited and petty bourgeois masses with the treacherous manoeuvres of the liberal bourgeoisie. The fact that the chairman of the Indian Legislative Assembly, that is, the official organ of the machinations with imperialism, gave up his post to head the movement for the boycott of British goods, is of a deeply symbolic character. ‘We will prove to you,’ say the national bourgeoisie to the gentlemen on the Thames, ‘that we are indispensable for you, that without us you will not calm the masses; but for this we will present you with our own bill.’

By way of reply, MacDonald puts Gandhi in jail. It is possible that the lackey goes further than the master intends, being conscientious beyond reason in order to justify his faith. It is possible that the Conservatives, serious and experienced imperialists, would not at the present stage go so far with repressions. But on the other hand the national leaders of the passive opposition are themselves in need of repression as support for their considerably shaken reputations. MacDonald does them this service. While shooting down workers and peasants, he arrests Gandhi with an abundance of forewarning such as the Russian provisional government used to arrest the Kornilovs and Denikins.

If India is a component element in the internal rule of the British bourgeoisie, then on the other hand, the imperialist rule of British capital over India is a component element of the internal order of India. The question cannot at all be reduced to one of the mere expulsion of some tens of thousands of foreign exploiters. They cannot be separated from the internal oppressors and the harder the pressure of the masses will become the less will the latter want to separate. Just as in Russia the liquidation of Tsarism together with its indebtedness to world finance capital became possible only because to the peasantry the abolition of the monarchy grew out of the abolition of the landowning magnates, to the same degree also in India the struggle with imperialist oppressions grows out of the countless masses of the oppressed and semi-pauperized peasantry, out of the necessity of liquidating the feudal landlords, their agents and intermediaries, the chinovniks and sharks.

The Indian peasant wants a ‘just’ distribution of land. That is the basis of democratism. And this is at the same time the social basis of the democratic revolution as a whole.

At the first stages of their struggle the ignorant, inexperienced and disunited peasantry which, in single villages, opposes the individual representatives of the hated regime, always resorts to passive resistance. It does not pay rent, does not pay taxes, it escapes to the woods, or deserts from military service, etc. The Tolstoyan formulae of passive resistance were in a sense the first stages of the revolutionary awakening of the peasant masses. Gandhi does the same in regard to the masses of the Indian people. The more ‘sincere’ he is personally, the more useful he is for the owners as an instrument for the disciplining of the masses. The support of the bourgeoisie for peaceful resistance to imperialism is only a preliminary condition for its bloody resistance to the revolutionary masses.

From passive forms of struggle, the peasantry has more than once in history passed over to the severest and bloodiest wars against their direct enemies: the land owners, the authorities and the loan sharks. The Middle Ages were full of such peasant wars in Europe; but they are also full of merciless suppression of peasant wars. Passive resistance of the peasantry as well as its bloody uprisings can be turned into a revolution only under the leadership of the urban class which thus becomes the leader of the revolutionary nation and after the victory—the bearers of the revolutionary power. In the present epoch such a class can be only the proletariat, even in the Orient.

It is true that the Indian proletariat occupy a smaller numerical place in the composition of the population than even the Russian proletariat on the eve of 1905 and 1917. This comparatively small size of the proletariat was the main argument of all the philistines, all the Martinovs, all the Mensheviks against the perspective of the permanent revolution. They considered fantastic the very thought that the Russian proletariat, thrusting the bourgeois aside, would take hold of the agrarian revolution of the peasantry, would give it a bold swing, and rise on its wave to the revolutionary dictatorship. Therefore they considered realistic the hope that the liberal bourgeoisie, leaning on the masses of the city and village, would complete the democratic revolution. But it turned out that their social statistics of the population are far from measuring the economic or the political role of single classes. The October revolution, by experience, has proved this once and for all and very convincingly.

If today the Indian proletariat is numerically weaker than the Russian this in itself does not at all pre-determine the smaller swing of its revolutionary possibilities, just as the numerical weakness of the Russian proletariat compared to the American and British was no hindrance to the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia. On the contrary all those social peculiarities which made possible and unavoidable the October revolution are present in India in a still sharper form. In this country of poor peasants, the hegemony of the city has no less clear a character than in tsarist Russia. The concentration of industrial, commercial and banking power in the hands of the big bourgeoisie, primarily the foreign bourgeoisie, on the one hand; a swift growth of a sharply-defined proletariat, on the other, excludes the possibility of an independent role of the petty bourgeoisie of the city and to an extent the intellectuals and transforms by this the political mechanics of the revolution into a struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie for the leadership of the peasant masses. So far there is ‘only’ one condition missing: a Bolshevik Party. And that is where the problem lies now.

We were witnesses to the way the leadership of Stalin and Bukharin carried out the Menshevik conception of the democratic revolution in China. Armed with a powerful apparatus this leadership had the opportunity of applying the Menshevik formulae in deeds and by that alone was compelled to carry them to a conclusion. In order best to secure the leading role of the bourgeoisie in the bourgeois revolution (this is the basic idea of Russian Menshevism!) the Stalinist bureaucracy transformed the young Communist Party of China into a subordinate section of the national bourgeois party. In connection with that, according to the terms officially arrived at between Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek (through the intermediary of the present People’s Commissar of Education, Bubnov), the Communists had no right to occupy more than one third of the posts within the Kuomintang. The Party of the proletariat this way entered the revolution as an official captive of the bourgeoisie with the blessings of the CI. The result is known: the Stalinist bureaucracy slew the Chinese revolution. History has never known a political crime equal in extent to this one.

For India, just as for all countries of the Orient in general, Stalin advanced in 1924 simultaneously with the reactionary idea of socialism in one country, the no less reactionary idea of ‘dual composition worker and peasant parties’. This was another formula for the same rejection of independent policy and of an independent party of the proletariat. The unfortunate Roy, has ever since that time become the apostle of the super-class and supra-class ‘peoples’ or ‘democratic’ party. The history of Marxism, the development of the nineteenth century, the experience of the three Russian revolutions, everything passed for these gentlemen without leaving a trace. They have not yet understood that the ‘worker-peasant party’ is conceivable only in the form of a Kuomintang, that is in the form of a bourgeois party leading behind itself the workers and peasants in order later on to betray and crush them. History has not yet invented another type of a supra-class, or intra-class party. After all, not in vain was Roy the agent of Stalin in China, the prophet of the struggle against ‘Trotskyism’, the executor of the Martinovist ‘bloc of four classes’, in order to become the ritualistic scapegoat for the crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy, after the inevitable defeat of the Chinese revolution. Six years passed in India in weakening and demoralizing experiments with the realization of the Stalinist prescription for the two-class worker-peasant parties. The results are at hand: impotent, provincial ‘worker-peasant parties’, which waver, limp along or simply melt away and are reduced to nothing precisely at a moment when they are supposed to act, that is, at a moment of revolutionary tide. But there is no proletarian party. It must still be created in the fire of events and at that it will be first necessary to remove the garbage piled up by the leading bureaucracy. Such is the situation! Beginning with 1924, the leadership of the Comintern has done everything that could be done to render impotent the Indian proletariat, to weaken the will of the vanguard, and to clip its wings.

While Roy and the other Stalinist pupils were wasting precious years in order to elaborate a democratic programme for a supra-class party, the national bourgeoisie utilized this dawdling to the maximum in order to seize the trade unions. If not politically, then in the trade unions, the Kuomintang has been accomplished in India, true, with the difference that the creators have in the meantime become frightened by their own handiwork, and have jumped aside heaping slander on the ‘executors’.

This time the centrists jumped, as is known, to the ‘Left’, but matters did not improve by this. The official position of the Comintern on the questions of the Indian revolution is such a tangled ball of yarn which is apparently intended especially to derail the proletarian vanguard and bring it to despair. At any rate, half of it goes on because the leadership strives constantly and willfully to conceal its mistakes of yesterday. The second half of the tangle must be credited to the hapless nature of centrism.

We have in mind at present not the programme of the Comintern which ascribes to the colonial bourgeoisie a revolutionary role, completely approving the constructions of Brandler and Roy who still continue to wear the Martinov-Stalin cloak. We also do not speak of the innumerable editions of the StalinistQuestions of Leninism where, in all the languages of the world, the discourse on the dual composition worker and peasant parties continues. No. We limit ourselves to the present, to today’s latest posing of the question which is in conformity with the Third Period mistakes of the Comintern in the Orient.

The central slogan of the Stalinists for India, as well as for China, still remains the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants. Nobody knows, nobody explains, because nobody understands what this formula signifies at present, in the year 1930, after the experience of the past fifteen years. In what way is the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants supposed to be distinguished from the dictatorship of the Kuomintang which massacred the workers and peasants? The Manuilskys and Kuusinens, will perhaps answer that they now talk about the dictatorship of three classes (workers, peasants and the city petty bourgeoisie) and not four as it was in China where Stalin had so happily attracted to the bloc his ally, Chiang Kai-shek.

If so, we reply, then make an effort to explain to us why you reject the national bourgeoisie in India, that is that ally for the rejection of whom in China you expelled Bolsheviks from the Communist Party and then imprisoned them? China is a semi-colonial country. In China, there is no powerful caste of feudal lords and feudal agents. But India is a classic colonial country with a mighty heritage of the feudal caste regime. If the revolutionary role of the Chinese bourgeoisie was deduced by Stalin and Martinov from the presence in China of foreign oppression and feudal remnants, then for India each of these reasons should hold with doubled force. This means that the Indian bourgeoisie, according to the exact basis of the programme of the Comintern, has immeasurably more rights to demand its inclusion in the Stalinist bloc than the Chinese bourgeoisie with its unforgettable Chiang Kai-shek and the ‘true’ Wang Ching-Wei. And if this is not so, if in spite of the oppression of British imperialism and the whole heritage of the Middle Ages, the Indian bourgeoisie is capable only of a counter-revolutionary and not a revolutionary role—then condemn mercilessly your treacherous policy in China and correct immediately your programme in which this policy has left cowardly but sinister traces!

But this does not exhaust the question. If in India you construct a bloc without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie, then who will lead it? The Manuilskys and Kuusinens will perhaps answer with their characteristically gentle ardour: ‘The proletariat, of course!’ Good, we answer, it is quite complimentary. But if the Indian revolution will develop on a basis of a union of workers, peasants and the petty bourgeoisie; if this union will be directed not only against imperialism, feudalism, but also against the national bourgeoisie which is bound up with them in all basic questions; if at the head of this union will stand the proletariat, if this union comes to victory only by sweeping away the enemies through armed uprising and in this way raises the proletariat to the role of the real all-national leader—then the question arises: in whose hands will the power be after the victory if not in the hands of the proletariat? What is the significance in such a case of the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants in distinction to the dictatorship of the proletariat leading the peasantry? In other words: in what way will the hypothetical dictatorship of the workers and peasants be distinguished in its type from the actual dictatorship which the October revolution established?

There is no reply to this question. There can be no reply to it. By this course of historical development the ‘democratic dictatorship’ has become not only an empty fiction but a treacherous trap for the proletariat.

That slogan is correct which admits the possibility of two diametrically opposed explanations: in the sense of the dictatorship of the Kuomintang and in the sense of the October dictatorship! There can be nothing in between these two. In China, the Stalinists explained the democratic dictatorship twice, at first as a dictatorship of the Kuomintang of the Right, and afterwards of the Left. But how do they explain it in India? They are silent. They are compelled to keep silent for fear of opening the eyes of their supporters to their crimes. This conspiracy of silence is actually a conspiracy against the Indian revolution. And all the present extremely Left or ultra-Left noise does not improve the situation one iota for the victories of the revolution are not secured by noise and clatter but by political clarity.

But what has been said does not yet unwind the tangled yarn. No. Here is precisely where new threads are twisted into it. Giving the revolution an abstract democratic character and permitting it to pass to the dictatorship of the proletariat only after some sort of a mystical or mystifying ‘democratic dictatorship’ is established, our strategists at the same time reject the central political slogan of every revolutionary democratic movement, which is precisely the slogan of the Constituent Assembly. Why? On what basis? It is absolutely incomprehensible. The democratic revolution signifies equality to the peasant—above all equality in the distribution of land. On this is based the equality of rights. The Constituent Assembly, where the representatives of the whole people formally draw the balance with the past and the classes actually draw the balance with each other, is the natural and inevitable combination of the democratic tasks of the revolution not only in the consciousness of the awakening masses of the peasantry but also in the consciousness of the working class itself. We have spoken of this more fully with regard to China and we do not see here the necessity of repetition. Let us only add that the provincial multiformity of India, the variegated governmental forms, and their no less variegated bond with the feudal caste relations, saturates the slogan of the Constituent Assembly in India with a particularly deep revolutionary democratic content.

The theoretician of the Indian revolution in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at present is Safarov, who with the price of a happy capitulation transferred his injurious activities to the camp of centrism. In a programmatic article in the Bolshevik about the forces and tasks of the revolution in India, Safarov carefully circles around the question of the Constituent Assembly just like an experienced rat circles around a piece of cheese on a hook: this sociologist does not by any means want to fall into the Trotskyist trap a second time. Disposing of the problem without much ceremony he counterposes to the Constituent Assembly such a perspective:
"The development of a new revolutionary ascent on the basis of struggle for the proletarian hegemony leads to the conclusion that the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in India can be achieved only in the Soviet form." (Bolshevik, 1930, No. 5, page 100).

Amazing lines! Martinov multiplied by Safarov. Martinov we know and about Safarov Lenin said not without tenderness: ‘Safarchick will go Leftist, Safarchik will pull boners.’ The above-mentioned Safarovist perspective does not invalidate this characterization. Safarov has gone considerably Leftist and it must be admitted that he did not upset the second half of Lenin’s formula. To begin with, the question of the revolutionary ascent of the masses of the people develops ‘on the basis’ of the struggle of the Communists for proletarian hegemony. The whole process is turned on its head. We think that the proletarian vanguard enters or is preparing to enter or should enter a struggle for hegemony on the basis of a new revolutionary ascent. The perspective of struggle, according to Safarov, is the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. Here, for the sake of Leftism, the word ‘democratic’ is shaken off. But it is not said frankly what kind of a dual composition dictatorship this is: a Kuomintang or an October type. But for that we are assured on his word of honour that this dictatorship can be accomplished ‘only in the Soviet form’. It sounds very noble. Why the slogan of the Constituent Assembly? Safarov is ready to agree only with the Soviet ‘form’.

The essence of epigonism—its contemptible and sinister essence—lies in the fact that from the actual processes of the past and its lessons it abstracts only the bare form and converts it into a fetish. This is what has happened to the Soviets. Without saying anything about the class character of the dictatorship—a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, like the Kuomintang, or a dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, like the October?—Safarov lulls somebody and primarily himself, by the Soviet form of the dictatorship. As if the Soviets cannot be a weapon for deceiving the workers and peasants! What else were the Menshevik-Socialist Revolutionary Soviets of 1917? Nothing but a weapon for the support of the power of the bourgeoisie and the preparation of its dictatorship. What were the social democratic Soviets in Germany and Austria in 1918-1919? Organs for saving the bourgeoisie and for deceiving the workers. With the further development of the revolutionary movement in India, with the greater swing of mass struggles and with the weakness of the Communist Party—and the latter is inevitable with a Safarovist muddle prevailing in its mind—the Indian national bourgeoisie itself may create workers’ and peasants’ Soviets in order to direct them just as it now directs the trade unions, in order thus to slaughter the revolution as the German social democracy, by getting at the head of the Soviets, slaughtered it. The treacherous character of the slogan of the democratic dictatorship lies in the fact that it does not close tightly to the enemies, once and for all, such a possibility.

The Indian Communist Party, the creation of which was held back for six years—and what years!—is now deprived, in the circumstances of revolutionary democratic ascent, of one of the most important weapons for mobilizing the masses, precisely the slogan of the democratic Constituent Assembly. Instead of that, the young Party which has not yet taken its first steps is inflicted with the abstract slogan of Soviets as a form of abstract dictatorship, that is, a dictatorship of nobody knows what class. It is truly an apotheosis of confusion! And all this is accompanied as usual with disgusting colouring and sugaring of an as yet difficult and not in the least sweet situation.

The official press, particularly this same Safarov, depicts the situation as if bourgeois nationalism in India is already a corpse, as if communism either has got or is getting at the head of the proletariat, which, in its turn, is already almost leading the peasantry behind it. The leaders and their sociologists, in the most conscienceless manner, proclaim the desired as the existing. To put it more correctly, they proclaim that which might have been with a correct policy for the past six years, for what has actually developed as a result of the false policy. But when the inconsistency of the inventions and realities are revealed, the ones to be blamed will be the Indian Communists, as bad executors of the general inconsistency which is advanced as a general line.

The vanguard of the Indian proletariat is as yet at the threshold of its great tasks and there is a long road ahead. A series of defeats will be the reckoning not only for the general backwardness of the proletariat and the peasantry but also for the sins of the leadership. The chief task at present is a clear Marxist conception of the moving forces of the revolution, and a correct perspective, a far-sighted policy which rejects stereotyped, bureaucratic prescriptions, but which, in the accomplishment of great revolutionary tasks, carefully adjusts itself to the actual stages of the political awakening and the revolutionary growth of the working class.

Written on 30th May, 1930 and published in Byulleten Oppozitsii, June-July 1930

Perspectives of Indian Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:54:00 +0000

BY Youvraj B

Certain policy decisions transcend their visible peripheries and acquire more of strategic significance especially so when they read out political statement of the regime in response to changed socio-economic circumstances. Decision to de-regulate petroleum prices taken last year (in July 2010) is one of such. After creating rumble last year the issue is back on agenda after on 15^th May OME (Oil Marketing Enterprises) declared price hikes in petrol by Rs. 5 and again on 24^th June in diesel and LPG. Considering the onslaught of globalization over past 2 decades and commitment of UPA government under leadership (?) of Manmohan Singh to neo-liberalism, this should have been merely a step further in that direction. However significance of petroleum prices on socio-economics of the country and a peculiar backdrop of global crisis of capitalism highlights its strategic prominence. Country largely depends on import (around 85%) for crude oil and later profoundly influences union budget and overall economic scenario. Any upward surge in prices only fuels inflation higher. Considering this dependence on import and its knock on effect on inflation the petroleum prices were kept under regulation since 1973. Though Indian economy was ‘opened up’ in 1991 subsequent governments of both Congress and BJP repeatedly dodged the decision of deregulating these products for last 2 decades and maintained status quo. On this backdrop the decision taken by UPA government on this reflects major shift in policy & attitude in dealing with politically and socially sensitive issues that have bearing on economic growth of the country. With the view of analyzing changed circumstances that led to such shift in policy the article reviews the post-recession economy and draws out perspectives for the coming period.

Global Recession and Indian Economy –

Let us first consider the peculiar backdrop of global and Indian economy in 2010 when the decision to deregulate petroleum products was announced. The collapse of Lehman Brothers wrecked havoc in 2008 and Indian economy like other major economies went deep into coma. Though things improved marginally over next 2 years many of the economies were still in ICU. But not so for Indian economy. By 2010 it was well recovered. Share market index graphically illustrates this. On 15^th Sept BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) was at 14402. Following collapse of Lehman Brothers share markets all over the world raced to bottom and BSE too reached its lowest in next few weeks. After lingering at bottom for next 6 months the index turned northwards from March 2009 and on 25^th May 2009 i.e. in merely 8 months it reached 14625, pre-crisis levels.

BSE

(http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^BSESN#chart3:symbol=^bsesn;range=20071001,20110527;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off)

On the contrary Dow Jones (American Stock Exchange) took 20 months to regain its pre-crisis level.

Though complete meltdown of global economic system was somehow avoided, leading economies were still grappling hard in 2009 and 2010. On the contrary Indian economy showed the signs of relatively stronger recovery from mid-2009. Obviously it boosted the morale of Indian bourgeoisie and its rulers. The decision to deregulate petroleum prices well reflects the elated sprit and hence audacity of this class.

Analyzing the recovery –

Here we must analyze the recovery of Indian economy deliberating over its reasons and more importantly its character. The key role in this recovery was played by huge surge of liquidity in the market with carry trade in US dollars. In response to credit crunch Federal Reserve and ECB (European Central Bank) drastically reduced their interest rates as shown below.

Fed interest rate that was above 5% in 2007 was brought down to 2% through 2008 and has been maintained at lowest level of 0.25% from Jan 2009 till date. (Bank of England has maintained it at 0.5 %). Accounting into inflation, the funds were made available at practically negative interest rates. This was done to encourage capitalists to borrow money for investment that could generate employment, demand and get the jammed wheels of economy moving.

http://www.gecodia.com/India-Repo-Rate--Reserve-Bank-of-India-Repo-Rate_a1256.html

Interest rate in India too came down from 9% to 4.5% in 2009. Still that was significantly higher than that of advanced countries. Over next few months international speculators flooded Indian and other emerging markets with huge inflow of borrowed funds. In 2009 FIIs invested $ 17.23 bn in Indian market through this route flushing it with liquidity and share market index soared up.

Another factor was stimulus package declared by the government. In particular implementation of Sixth Pay Commission recommendations made additional funds available to public sector workers while huge tax sops were declared to corporate sector. This along with boosted liquidity and availability of cheaper credit boosted demand for industrial goods to some extent. Also giant stimulus package of $ 585 bn and investments in infrastructure by China benefited exports further boosting industrial production in second half of 2009. Subsequently IIP (Index of Industrial Production) reached 16.7 in Q1 of 2010.

The specific stage of liberalization of financial institutes in the country too played a significant role. Though liberalization was carried out in banking and insurance sector, nationalized banks and institutes still dominate the finance sector. Few like ICICI and HDFC banks with larger proportion of foreign capital holding do not reflect the general state of Indian finance institutes. The functioning of nationalized banks was re-oriented towards market in this period. Instead of financing priority sectors like agriculture, small scale industries these banks financed real estate, private automobiles and other commodities thus stroking and sustaining ‘debt driven consumption’ and in turn ‘consumption led growth’. However their sphere of functioning has been mainly domestic market. Consequently their exposure to US Sub-prime market was only negligible. C.V. Kamath, then President of CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) remarked that this exposure amounting to $ 450 mn could be less than 0.5% of banks’ balance sheet. (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Citi-UBS-like-subprime-debacle-not-to-repeat-in-India-Kamath/articleshow/3001816.cms) Of this $450 mn the share of nationalized banks was merely $90 mn highlighting their role in limiting the scale of exposure to the crisis. Of course the bourgeoisie and its executives in the parliament do not deserve any credit for this. Instead it was trade unions, left organizations and to some extent left parties that staunchly opposed wholesale privatization of public sectors banks. Was it not for this, the Indian economy too would have gone burst. What happened to Iceland speaks for itself. In 2007 the country with highest per capita income was declared ‘happiest nation’ on the earth. In the boom period 3 banks of the country invested feverishly in sub-prime market earning huge profits (and as usual IMF and other institutes applauded them for this). With onset of sub-prime crisis these banks literally went bust. Now the country with $ 14 bn GNP is weighed down under public debt of $ 100 bn.

During this period Indian capitalists resorted to indiscriminate job cuts to sustain their profit levels. This was true for not only unorganized but for organized sectors as well. Information Technology business depends solely on human labor and hence job cuts is the quickest way to prevent profits from dropping lower. IT companies in India brutally resorted to these tactics leading to large scale job cuts. For IT workforce that enjoyed feverish growth in 2000s the period was literally like reign of terror. An employee could receive a call from HR Dept anytime threatening to resign ‘voluntarily’ or else he or she could be blacklisted with NASSCOM (Software service providers’ association) precluding them from obtaining any other job in future. Thus for the very first time IT workforce experienced what could be termed as ‘dictatorship of bourgeoisie’. A worker of one of the leading IT Company harassed by HR bosses in this way ultimately lodged police complaint against the company. (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-12-03/software-services/28076769_1_wipro-employees-wipro-technologies-wipro-officials). Another worker from the same company committed suicide by jumping off 11^th floor of the office. Given the vast experience of Indian bourgeoisie in dealing with such ‘trivial incidents’ no wonder the cases were suppressed. This however highlights the hideous and ugly face of IT capitalists masquerading as the blue-eyed boys of shining India.

Blissfully Ignorant Indian Bourgeoisie

It would not be inappropriate to classify the period of Indian globalization as pre-recession and post-recession given the scale and scope of global recession. Dialectical analysis of the changed global scenario and its implications on Indian economy holds key in drawing perspectives of Indian economy for the coming period. Though bourgeoisie has managed to orchestrate some kind of recovery globally things are far from being settled for them. Sovereign debt crisis in Europe threatens to pull the global economy into yet another deeper crisis; US has failed to achieve any structural growth while Britain, France, Germany too are grappling in the dark. Failure to achieve any spectacular growth and create jobs has led popularity ratings for Obama sinking lower. Though he is banking on ‘capital’ of killing Bin Laden to prevent his vote ‘bank’ from melting down, it is yet to be seen if such an ‘investment’ would be sufficient to earn ‘dividend’ of next Presidential election.

On this backdrop the performance of Indian economy stands out or at least that is how it is being projected – an economy that weathered the crisis owing to its strong fundamentals. Obviously what we discussed above exposes hollowness of such claims. Huge injection of foreign funds by global speculators in order to boost their profits and a particular stage of liberalization of Indian finance institutes really helped it avoid worst. And yes their (hereditary) ability to suck blood and sweat of masses through class and caste exploitation did play a critical role. A holistic view of the entire episode only highlights the fickle, flimsy and parasitic nature of its recovery and hence of Indian capitalism. A closer look at capital movement reveals it. In 2008 as clouds gathered thicker and thicker on markets investors started pulling out money and in first 9 months itself FIIs withdrew $ 11.1 bn from Indian markets. Indian bourgeoisie was badly shaken and BSE that was at 20,000 in Jan 2008 plunged to 10,000 in matter of 10 months. As a knock on effect INR (Indian Rupee) depreciated drastically from 39.20 to 48.86 and RBI (Reserve Bank of India) could somehow avert its further fall only by injecting $28.5 bn. If anything, it gives glimpse of how things could have moved had it not been for massive injection of dollars through carry trade by end of 2008. The crisis yet again underlined the neo-colonial character of Indian economy and its dependence (along with complementary nature) on global economy.

Blissfully ignorant, Indian bourgeoisie is cheering and celebrating its ‘strong fundamentals’. Quoting some of global leaders or those of IMF, WB they and media houses owned by them are creating jingoism devoid of any serious or objective analysis of the crisis. In reality this is the deepest crisis facing capitalism since 1930s and has had capitalist class all over the world deeply shaken by its sheer scale. On 20^th Sept 2008 Finance Times, mouthpiece of global capitalists declared ‘Capitalism in Convulsion’. Tsunami of the crisis caused intellectual paralysis to bourgeoisie economists and intellectuals and few even frantically shuffled through Karl Marx’s ‘Capital’ in order to make sense out of what had happened. Though superficially, some of them attempted to ponder over the future of capitalism. Al Gore, former vice president of US declared ‘Time if up for short term thinking’ in one of the articles in Finance Times (dated 26^th Nov 2009). The article discussed the myopic nature of erstwhile capitalism and called for ‘sustainable capitalism’. Michel Barnier, Commissioner (internal markets) of EU called for ‘Capitalism for entrepreneurs rather than capitalism for speculators’. Needless to say both had been day-dreaming.

And when we look at the Indian bourgeoisie intellectuals what strikes is complete lack of any serious analysis. Their analysis didn’t go beyond lame criticism of bankers’ greed and ritual mention of widening disparity in the country (for which their solution is to further accelerate the growth). As picture of India’s alleged recovery got sharper their tone got more and more confident and rather arrogant. They declared that the crisis vouched decoupling theory. Politicians and capitalists used to occasion to scratch each other’s back. Below incident indicates the arrogance of this class. In 2009 when stock markets rallied upward few commentators rightly expressed the fear of another bubble being blown up. Reacting to this Swaminathan Iyer, a leading bourgeoisie analyst advised investors to not to be worried and instead make max out of it commenting in Times of India (dated 22^nd Nov 2009) “secret of staying ahead is to ride the bubbles when they are inflating and get off before they burst. Right now, it’s time to ride” As if 2008 never happened!

A huge paradox emerges when overall picture is considered. On one hand we have a global bourgeoisie deeply shaken by the crisis that exposed yet again the rottenness of capitalist system and its utter inability to progress human society and hence obsolescence of the system; on the other hand we have relative recovery of Indian economy on flimsy basis and Indian bourgeoisie that notwithstanding the reality has turned jubilant and arrogant as a consequence. The dialectic analysis of this contradiction would help the prognosis of the Indian economy.

Casino Economy and Intellectual Chauvinism

While intellectual bankruptcy is one of the reasons behind such smug and complacent state of bourgeoisie another is objective necessity to remain so. This necessity stems from organic character of capitalism. It is a mode of production inherently based on anarchy of markets. Without any central planning production is done at the perceived indications of market and with lust for higher and yet higher profits at the core of it. Consequently boom and recession are organic to this system. Finance capitalism has taken this chaos to yet higher level and could be termed as super-anarchy of markets. In fact it has reduced itself to casino economy. Last decade saw Investment Banks coming up with an array of sophisticated and complicated instruments like sub-prime lending to CDS (that Warrant Buffet calls ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’) to swindle trillions of dollars that capitalists have accumulated over decades. It would be naïve to believe that these investment bankers holding masters degrees or doctorates from the most renowned universities in the world and with the most sophisticated means of knowledge at their fingertips betting on such huge sums were completely unaware of risks involved. But their belief on the sustainability of the capitalist system and the casino economy is the driving force that keeps them moving. As Karl Marx proved money is nothing but universal expression of value. Considered from this perspective these trillions of dollars do not even remotely have any relation to Value. And today this huge sum of money completely divorced from its Value is like a hanging sword on the head of Capitalist system. Even capitalist class and its intellectuals do have a vague idea of this. But having their stakes involved, they have no option of quitting but to only keep on betting. Long back foregone is the stage where surplus value extracted from labor could be put to use for further industrialization (and there is no going back unless devastation to the scale of world war takes place). And there is no alternative to speculation to keep its surplus value invested and further recycled into more capital. This is the objective (or material) necessity of the capitalist class that further begets intellectual necessity to whip up theories dwelling upon eternal exuberance of the system. In the period of boom or favorable changes on socio-political forum this intellectual necessity soon acquires the form of intellectual chauvinism. Francis Fukuyoma declaring ‘End of History’ following disintegration of Soviet Union is one such example. Another is ‘laissez-faire model of capitalism’ implemented by Alan Greenspan during his 20 years tenure from 1986 to 2007 as Fed Chairman. Mr. Greenspan rejecting any form of market regulation summarizes his ‘laissez-faire’ doctrine as "It is precisely the greed of the businessman, or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking, which is the unexcelled protector of the consumer." The doctrine that legitimized capitalists’ lust for profit only represents the chauvinism prevalent on Wall Street in 2000s following one of the longest periods of boom. The intellectual chauvinism doesn’t remain merely at intellectual level but governs its actions and maneuvers which in turn are offered social and legal legitimacy by such doctrines. This legitimacy has its own significance especially in liberal democracy and proponents of such doctrine are often cheered as champions of the society. No wonder Alan Greenspan, a devoted disciple of Ayan Rand’s Objectivism school that approves ‘laissez-faire capitalism’ as the only legitimate system exercised absolute power over Fed for 20 years.

Union Budgets of last 3 years –

Though Indian bourgeoisie is yet to reach such high degree of chauvinism, its arrogance is too pronounced to escape. A cursory glance at government decisions and policies over last 3 years reveals – Notwithstanding the scale of crisis, fundamental weaknesses exposed by it and pertinent questions raised on very future of capitalist system, the capitalist class and their executives in the parliament have made up their mind to go full throttle on the road of neo-liberalism. Deregulation of petroleum products was a key milestone in the journey. As mentioned earlier, rulers were well aware of its potential socio-political implications and hence it reflects strong determination on their part. Union budgets of 2010 and 2011 too consolidate this trend. In 2010 it reversed earlier policy of garnering more revenue through direct taxation than indirect tax and thus causing lesser burden on common man. By restructuring income tax (direct tax) slabs it offered huge tax sops to high income individuals and professionals. Resulting loss of revenue in direct taxes to the tune of Rs. 26,000 crore was compensated by steep hike in indirect taxes. Later amounted to Rs. 46,400 crore much higher than required to compensated for lost revenue due to direct tax concessions. Food and fertilizer subsidies were cut by Rs. 800 crore. Tax concessions to Corporate sector amounted to Rs. 4,99,340 crore, astonishingly 79% of total tax revenue.

Fiscal deficit conservatism is one of the core principles of neo-liberal policies. In 2003 India enshrined this principle by enacting FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management) act that imposed limits on fiscal deficit. In the period of crisis bourgeoisie all over the world resorted to Keynesianism and allowed fiscal deficit to inflate. India too followed the suite with deficit mounting to 6.7% in 2009-10 though immediately in the next budget it pledged to bring it down to 5.5%. Indiscriminate public expenditure cuts and indirect tax increases described above though making life precarious for working masses are nonetheless important to further fuel neo-liberal growth of the country.

Indian Economy – An adjunct to global capitalism

In last 63 years since independence Indian bourgeoisie has come a long way and is undoubtedly far stronger than many of its peers in other Asian and African countries liberated near around same time. Having said this in past 2 decades it has established a peculiar relationship with global capitalism under the auspices of globalization, the relation that is servile though complimentary as well to some extent. The neo-liberal framework of policies dictated by global capitalist institutions (including WB, IMF, credit rating agencies) now defines the operational periphery of Indian bourgeoisie. It not only dictates the overall direction of Indian economy but also prescribes parameters to assess its success or failure. Religiously obliging to this the modes de operandi of Indian capitalist class has been to score maximum on these parameters by exploiting its class monopoly along with pre-existing institutions of exploitations like caste and patriarchy it ‘inherited’. Everything dictated is pious and it has neither any will nor the guts to challenge any of these. When compared with its neighbor China that can assert itself strongly (in relative terms), the dwarfishness of Indian bourgeoisie stands out.

Two parameters in assessing the success of the economy are GDP or growth rate and tab on fiscal deficit. A country could be penalized severely by global capitalists if it fails to score on these 2 parameters leading to derailment of its economy. Even today any pull out of capital invested in markets by FII could cause havoc for Indian economy.

To uphold its position on global forum and thereby sustaining the inflow of global capital and thereby maintaining its higher growth rate mandates Indian bourgeoisie to further accelerate implementation of neo-liberal policies i.e. privatization, liberalization. Only by doing this it can keep Indian economy ‘attractive’ enough for global capitalists though considering ‘foot looseness’ of later that isn’t particularly easy. It requires more and more sectors of economy thrown open to FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), further disinvestment of public sector enterprises (including banks), keeping wages depressed to ensure steady flow of cheap labor and more importantly to sustain the consumption level in domestic market. Though domestic petroleum market is yet to be open to foreign players, its deregulation is a step in that direction. Yet another decision awaiting final nod and has global capitalists their mouths salivating is allowing FDI in multi-brand retail, market that is worth $ 560 bn. Single brand and wholesale cash and carry are already opened up for foreign investment and there is lot of pressure on government to do so for multi-brand. The decision process has gone quite far and it is matter of time that decision will be announced.

Real challenge is sustaining the consumption level or demand in domestic market. It is quite obvious that restructuring income tax slabs thereby making big tax cuts for higher income individuals and granting huge tax sops to big businesses was a move intended at fuelling demand on one hand and encouraging investment on another. These policies are inspired by what is termed as ‘supply side economics’, theory that blatantly proposes to offer higher tax rebates to rich and those filthy rich.

There are 2 aspects to this process of further accelerating liberalization and privatization. One economic and other socio-political. From economic stand point, though these policies could help sustaining the demand (or to be precise preventing it from depressing further) in short term, it would lead to imploding domestic market (that is already narrow) and capitalist economy based on it in longer term. As capitalist system is utterly incapable of achieving inclusive development creating mass employment and thereby wider base of consumers with purchasing power, it has to rely increasingly on smaller and smaller section of society for consumption. An example could be real estate. Boom in the real estate did contribute to boosting GDP. Though over last few years availability of cheaper credit along with increasing prices sustained the demand, in reality skyrocketed prices have simply pushed off millions of perspective consumers in cities from the market. As per recent survey 20% newly constructed flats in Pune are vacant. Experts comment that the trend is temporary due to higher interest rate and there is substance of truth in that. It directly boils down to the relationship between purchasing power and credit. In the absence of purchasing power of masses capitalism has often relied upon cheaper credit to stimulate market. Real estate is no exception and sooner than later the sector would stagnate. For other sectors that registered impressive growth over last decade it may not be possible to maintain growth rate. Best example is IT (Information Technology). Over last 10-12 years IT giants posted 20% YOY (year on year) profits on an average and this was simply dazzling. In this decade most likely its growth would considerably lower or at the best stagnate. The sector played an important role in expanding markets for various commodities in cities and hence any slowdown here will have knock on effect on other sectors as well (including real estate).

Under capitalist relations of production capitalist class denies of due share of wealth generated to working class (responsible for creation of that wealth) and subsequently it leads to contraction of market. This is an organic contradiction of capitalism and Indian capitalism is no exception. Faster the process of neo-liberalization is carried through; larger and deeper would this contradiction grow with Indian capitalist system heading for a major structural crisis.

Perspectives of Class struggle –

This is an economic aspect. Equally if not more important is another aspect – social and political implications of accelerating neo-liberal onslaught. To put it simply as onslaught gets brutal, wider and stronger would be struggles against it. Even today there are struggles against globalization all over the nation from POSCO to Jaitapur. Daring entire state machinery, military and police, masses are fighting tooth and nail. No doubt struggles would get fierce and this would not be merely quantitative but qualitative change.

When we think of elements of society that were worst hit by the globalization in past 2 decades – they have been small farmers that were already handicapped by caste based ownership of land and were further devastated by introduction of free market policies in agriculture; rural people who found their lands, the only means of subsistence being snatched away by capitalist vultures; and adivasis (tribal) living in the areas rich in natural resources. Free market policies ripped off very basis of their livelihood. The picture in urban area was ‘relatively’ different. Though working masses especially those in unorganized sector had more hardships in making both ends meet and thus surviving among rampant commercialization of everything around them, it was not as devastating as sections of society mentioned above. Discussing about organized working class we need to consider few things. In a way Globalization stimulated the economy that had been long stagnated (referred to as ‘Hindu growth rate”) in 1970s and 1980s. Subsequently there was an expansion of service sector in urban areas and new jobs created in IT, Finance sectors. With free movement of capital there has been abundant supply of commodities in market both indigenous and exotic; this coupled with liberal and cheaper supply of credit resulted in broadening of commodity markets in cities. LPG cylinder, 2 wheelers / 4 wheelers, telephone connection etc. that were earlier required to be booked months if not years in advance could now be obtained on the same day. Sprawling malls, 7 star townships, multiplexes, abundantly available electric gadgets - . The glitter and blitz of globalization was too dazzling for impoverished masses of the poor nation. It helped mass media and audio-visual media build an illusionary picture of growth and prosperity. It was obvious that these economic, social and equally important cultural transformations have had an effect on class consciousness of workers. Working class was already bogged down by historic defeats of trade union struggles in 1980s, disintegration of Soviet Union in 1991 and subsequent ideological confusions among left and lull in the movement. All put together resulted in working class disassociating itself from any struggles against globalization.

Obviously the process was not monotonous. In parallel working class was being attacked by large scale casualization, contract labor in both manufacturing and services along with intensification of labor. Rising inflation, privatization and gross commercialization of education, health and other public services have been rapidly transforming aspects of urban life. They are increasingly making struggle of survival harsher and more acute. Here what needs to be considered is parameters of life (and hence of consciousness as well) of working masses in cities are far different than those in rural or semi-urban areas. A working youth earning Rs. 10,000 in cities still has multiple issues haunting him –his marriage, buying home for his family, bringing up children and expenses of their education and health. Prevalent economic and social conditions weigh heavily against him and his desperate struggle for maintaining his social existence shapes his life and in turn his consciousness. As discussed above for India maintaining growth rate of economy is going to be increasingly challenging and reckless implementation of neo-liberal reforms based on ‘widening’ and deepening of class and caste exploitation is a pre-condition to it. And it is going to engulf urban working masses. In such times delusion of growth and prosperity so ingeniously built by capitalists and their media starts fizzling out rapidly and class consciousness escalates in leaps. Dimensions of exploitation hidden so far appears crystal clear to working class and it turns out to be a prologue to a new stage of struggle against not only the regime but the system.

The aim of article is not to pain the rosy picture of working class revolting tomorrow and uprooting capitalism. Instead it attempts to critically analyze the qualitatively changed economic conditions and social processes begot or influenced by these changes. Duly acknowledging the complications and challenges involved in subjective response of working class and its leadership, the analysis of the objective changes nonetheless helps gauge the renewed possibilities of struggles both locally and internationally.

It's the time to party!

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:10:00 +0000

By - Abhijit

Everyone, get ready! It's time to party once again. Let us stop bothering about the 2G and Adarsh Scams, let us forget that one more budget has given nothing to people, let us forget that the petrol prices and inflation are now going through the roof, let us also stop bothering about the nuclear catastrophe in Japan and the upcoming one at Jaitapur... because, the great party of all times is coming! Yes, India meets Pakistan in the semi-final of the world cup! That is the one thing we have been waiting for years, that is the magic cure of everything and it is here! Let 's party folks !

We are common people and common people have nothing to bother about the mundane problems like poverty, illiteracy, health and environment... All we need is our daily dose of media extravaganza and hysteria and we'll happily forget everything! See, when the likes of PMs, CMs, Prince Charming, Cricket Minister who also sells onions, and even the heart-throbs of Bollywood are dying for this event, how can we, their loyal followers, be left behind! We were, we are, we'll be there!

Tomorrow we'll religiously watch all the commercials, and forget that in the end, it is the sponsors who win and not India or Pakistan. One a side note, we don't have to forget it, because we never wanted to care for it -- that we the people of India not only SHARE ALL OUR PROBLEMS, BUT SHARE THE CRICKET HYSTERIA TOO with the Pakistanis. Tomorrow, we'll have only one thing to achieve in life -- beat Pakistan in the match. Nothing else, even recovering of all the money of 2G scam from Reliance, Tatas, Birlas, Mittals, will match it!

We'll happily buy all the products that Dhoni will sell to us, and just keep dreaming of those products for which we don't have that much money, because it is THEY WHO SOLVE all our problems. How does it matter even if that is only for one day, is there anyone else who can solve it even for one day?

Earlier they used to say that liquor is the solution. It makes you forget what you are, helps you forget agonies of your life, and takes you to that heaven where the world looks faltoooo..... Today that place is taken by Cricket. What a wonderful world we are living in. No longer individual solutions -- now we live on the mass consumption of the mass's addiction - cricket!

Well, we never demanded it... we never demanded one after another cricketing matches.. Just 7 days after the world cup and IPL will start... we did not demand that also. But you know, there some people who are always caring for our problems, and they knew how to solve them. So they created the IPL and the world cup and see.. the world is going ahead. Earlier there used to be one cup every 4 years, now there is one almost every 3 months.

We really love this manufactured life, consciously created world of cricket! 100 years back when the Gandhis and Bhagat-Singhs were fighting for freedom, could they ever imaging this kind of a solution to the problems of the country? Never! It is only the Airtels, Coca Colas, Hondas, Tatas, Arevas, POSCOs, Reliances, and all their brethren who could think of it! How kind of them of bestowing us with the honour of watching one cup after another!

Ignorance is bliss.Tomorrow the entire nation will curse Pakistan, taking revenge of all the hunger, poverty, corruption, illiteracy and everything! What a wonderful way to solve the problems. The Pakistanis, we're sure will do the same thing! But ultimately the one who wins the match has got the problems solved -- so we must win the match! Sachin, you must score your grand-ton, otherwise how can India's score on Human Development Index rise?

On a more personal note, we the people of Pune also want India to win because some restaurant has promised one Misal-Pav free on another if India Wins, Some Car seller has promised discounts, Some NGO has promised us free dessert on purchased food ... We're sure the government will announce holiday for one day if India wins!

Don't worry that Bastar is burning, bring all the fiddles, we are ready to play them!

Abhijit's blog

the serpent on the moon

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 16:07:00 +0000

the serpent on the moon

the serpent, with a husky voice

lay upon a stone in the board earth light

start sliding down to interior of a crater

half of the body under extreme hot

and half of it under extreme cold

as he cares both

he is listening to the trembling sound of a collided comet

and whispering to cosmos in anger

in every full circle of moon rotation

he looks straight in to the eyes of few dark suited human

seems unforgiving

he takes out his tongue out

to measure heart pulsation of child

to hear

sweet sound of heart beating

still there

the serpent keeps data on his skin

and dragging them everywhere on the moon surface

he is swimming in the void between planets and galaxies

the serpent

the serpent land on a colony of worms

their skin glowed in the earth light

the serpent push his fangs in to deeper on their body
a Dracula bite
phosphorus poured out from their body

shiny

the serpent speak to a frog elsewhere in earth

the alienated frog cried

the lonely frog

the lonely and abandoned

the serpent speak to crows elsewhere in earth

they defy curfew

they on the street

they in protest

the dirty serpent crushed a sky bound building

before it touched the moon

the lazy, the romantic serpent

lie on the surface of the moon in silent

standstill

always....since long back...

CWG: Showcase of the Nation’s Progress?

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 05:09:00 +0000

By Youvraj Bagade

Now it’s almost a month that Commonwealth Games (CWG) 2010 hosted by Delhi concluded (14^th Oct) after 12 days of competition. Games witnessed participation of 6000 athletes from 71 nations competing in 17 sports. Earlier in 2003 Delhi had fought stiff competition from Canada, Ontario, Hamilton to host the event promising higher amount to participating countries along with other free largesse. Indian bourgeoisie was determined to use this as opportunity to showcase country’s development and growth. Looking back it’s clear that CWG truly showcased India’s growth and development but only in a caricatured manner.

Games Ridden with Corruption

Mega projects like hosting CWG games offers a huge opportunity to make big bucks and corrupt ruling classes leave no stone unturned to make max out of it.

Financial regularities were widely observed across all projects executed under CWG umbrella and issuing of tenders was equally dubious. In one such project work was actually allotted to a bidder quoting highest price jumping off all procedural norms while in another instance contractor that won the bid after quoting lower price was allowed to change the figures later. Sleaze and perfidy of politicians could not take more vulgar form as deals on overlays. Even the most expensive treadmill would cost 10,000 GBP at the most expensive malls in London but that didn’t deter Organizing Committee to pay Rs. 975,000 (around 14,000 GBP) for the machine. And if you are not shocked enough, then this is the amount not to buy the treadmill but only to hire it and that too just for 45 days. Similarly murky were dealings of chair, refrigerator and so on. Often such dealings ‘transcend’ political and even national boundaries. One of the firms that supplied overlays was owned by nephew of a BJP (opposition party) leader and another supplier Nussli is a Switzerland based firm. In another such transaction huge amount of funds totalling around 450,000 GBP were transferred to an obscure event management firm in UK.

Obviously issue of corruption acquired centre stage, as it often does in run up to the event. Intellectuals and column writers severely criticized politicians and bureaucrats involved. However often their analysis indicts them as immoral and fallen individuals bringing disgrace to the country. Not mentioned is how corruption is product of underlying social and economic structure of the society. In fact widespread corruption is prevalent not just in India but a common phenomenon characterizing colonial countries. Absence of bourgeois revolution implies corruption has not acquired pure ‘corporate’ form as in advanced countries. Instead co-existence of bourgeois, petty bourgeois and feudal interests found its expression in rampant corrupt practices followed at every step of life.

Be it contractor treacherously changing prices after allotment of work in CWG or a senior bureaucrat being gifted a luxurious flat for ‘facilitating’ a land deal in Mumbai or a minister openly taking bribe for clearing a file, if one looks at them closely these are absolutely ‘crude and rustic’ forms of corruption when compared with ‘sophisticated and legitimized’ forms in advanced countries. However later form of corruption is no more monopoly of imperialist nations alone. In India too there is large scale legitimization of corrupt practices to quench profit thirst of the economic interests. Deregulation of petroleum prices that directly results in windfall profits to private petroleum companies like Reliance, Essar is its recent example. While big industrial houses effectively use Parliament, Union Government and even judiciary to skew policies in their favor weaker sections of bourgeoisie along with petty bourgeois and feudal elements often have to rely more on lame malpractices linked to crony capitalism and nepotism.

It might be apt here to mention that involvement of international businesses in corruption in neo-colonial countries is not new though in their home countries they speak high of corporate morals. Be it mining deals in Africa or Oil exploration rights in South America international businesses have often resorted to corruption (in addition to other instruments of imperialism like military might) to push forward their commercial interests.

On the blood and flesh of working class

Bourgeoisie and mainstream media often make lofty claims about employment provided by organizing such events. Multiple projects related to CWG employed 415,000 workers. Impressive! However a closer look at nature and conditions of employment would reveal appalling truth behind figures.

Majority of labor in this mega project was employed by construction contractors. This industry employs around 8.5 million workers, one of the most vulnerable segments of unorganized sector in India – workers that build beautiful bungalows, apartments and stadiums but themselves are condemned to live in slums and migrate from a place to place all their lives. Reeling under a perpetual threat to life and working for uncertain hours, they have only contractual and temporary relationship to their employer. Speaking of social security would be a cruel joke; having enough food to feed their children makes them content. Given India’s social fabric this unorganized labour is mostly drawn from backward castes that are compelled to migrate from a site to another in order to make their living.

CWG truly ‘showcased’ the horrendous condition of country’s unorganized labor. Workers were made to work day and night at work places that were extremely unclean, unhygienic and unsafe. No safety appliances confirming to national standards were used or issued by private contractors in order to boost their profits. Under such work conditions accidents took place frequently resulting in death or permanent disability. A panel appointed by Delhi High Court discovered 43 workers killed building venues for CWG projects.

Equally scandalous were wages paid to these labors. Unskilled workers were paid around Rs. 90 while skilled ones around Rs. 120. Both these figures are significantly lower than Rs. 152, minimum wage for 8 hours stipulated by Delhi state government. Considering that workers worked for 14-16 hours a day they were in effect paid only around 1/3 of their due wages.

And all this under the very nose of Union Government, Parliament and Labor ministry. While opposition stormed parliament over charges of corruption trying to corner Congress party in power at centre as well as Delhi we never heard them protesting against death of so many workers or at their sub-human work conditions.

Disarticulation of funds

This has been the most expensive CWG games in history with total budget of around $ 6 bn including infrastructure projects. This is 4 times higher than previous one hosted at Melbourne for $1.4 bn. While for giant corporates it may be a routine figure for million of Indians it is not. This is huge sum of money that could have been spent on building thousands of schools providing accessible and free education to children that are compelled to toil along with their parents. It may have been just enough to make medical services available to thousands dying from curable diseases in ‘shining’ India.

Even if one keeps aside this issue of prioritization and considers allocating the funds for development of sports, was the money spent furthered the cause? Or was the money spent on sports at all? Jaypal Reddy, Urban Development Minster confessed in Parliament that of Rs. 165 billion given to Delhi Government only Rs. 6.7 billion has been spent directly on games. Rest has been spent on infrastructure development not directly related to games. So just 4% of the total sum spent on games! And by the way what is this infrastructure development? A significant amount has been spent on road scrapping, widening, building flyovers and bridges. All that abets indiscriminate growth of private vehicles posing very serious (if not disastrous) challenges to sustainable development of the city and living standards of its inhabitants. However it perfectly fits into Indian bourgeoisie’s plans to boost GDP growth. Who cares for sustainability and living standards? Truly, contractors both Indian as well as foreign along with steel, cement companies have reaped astounding amount of profits from infrastructure projects.

What about 4% money spent on games? At least that should have created new sporting facilities. As a matter of fact most of the money was spent on renovating stadia constructed earlier! Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main complex for the event itself had been built for 1982 Asiad games and merely renovated this time though after spending a whooping sum of Rs. 10 bn. Same is the case of Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium. Thus whatever amount spent on games under CWG has hardly improved abysmal state of sports infrastructure in the country. So inept is this bourgeois state that even this infrastructure may be abandoned to gather dust after the event. In Pune a similar sports village constructed earlier for national games and later used for Commonwealth Youth Games 2008 has turned itself into white elephant.

Argument is not against allocation of funds for development of sports. Sports is quite an important aspect of social life especially for youths to sharpen and demonstrate their physical as well as psychological capabilities. However under capitalism that has been reduced a mega event, commercial harvest for bourgeoisie but at the cost of development of sports. IPL (Indian Premier League) may be its most grotesque manifestation where players are auctioned openly for crores of rupees. At international level too games like soccer have transformed themselves into entertainment industry.

National Jingoism:

Bourgeoisie and media controlled by it grabbed the opportunity to whip up jingoism across the nation. Holding games successfully was a matter of national pride and prestige, announced the leaders. Anyone not agreeing was a traitor, anti-national element. As games approached and filthy conditions at games village threatened the very commencement of games, media severely criticized Organizing Committee and government. However this criticism was not against trampling of workers rights nor was it against their gross exploitation but stemmed more from fear of shoddy hosting of the event tarnishing India’s global image. It was just nervous that games could turn into ‘national shame’. So occupied was the media with national pride and shame that it hardly found any space to report horrifying working conditions of workers or their deaths. Perhaps it didn’t consider them as fellow ‘citizens’ of nation they were referring to. After all slaves can not have citizenship and their death hardly means anything. In fact it becomes ‘too trivial’ when ‘few’ lives are lost while bringing glory to the nation. So reckless was bourgeoisie that it was not even ashamed to divert funds worth Rs. 7.45 bn earmarked for welfare schemes of Scheduled caste and tribes (SC/ST). It was yet another ‘small price’ paid in the honor of national glory.

In final medal tally India shot to second place claiming 101 medals and bourgeoisie shocked by initial guff up found a great solace in it. While we welcome achievements of sports persons, it may be far fetched to perceive it as a sustainable trend. General state of sports infrastructure and facilities continues to be abysmal. In urban areas various sports clubs, fitness gyms are springing up and at times it may create an impression that sports culture is slowly permeating through society. However as with other sphere of life class bias asserts itself harshly in sports as well. Let us take a small example. Swimming pool is the basic infrastructural requirement for swimming and related sports. In Pune there may have been 100 odd swimming pools constructed over past decade. Some of them have state-of-art facilities along with availability of experienced coaches. But all of them are enclosed within fortified enclaves of luxury townships duly guarded by security guards to ensure no ‘outsiders’ intrude into. For vast majority there are hardly any public swimming pools built. Same is the story with other sports facilities as well. Few municipalities have even found space amounting to few acres for golf clubs while children in surrounding areas play cricket in narrow lanes of their settlements.

Though bourgeoisie is putting brave face citing India’s medal tally and grand opening ceremony, it has miserably failed in achieving lofty goals it set when bidding for CWG. Games were to demonstrate that one day India would bid to host Olympics instead the world witnessed it struggling to host even CWG. As Wall Street Journal pointed in an article dated 15^th Oct 2010 “India exceeded the world’s low expectations for the CWG after a chaotic run-up to the athletic event but the organizers fell far short of their goals of showcasing the nation’s economic progress and burnishing its global image”.

We obviously disagree with this ‘imperialist’ analysis. To be honest the games did ‘showcase’ nation’s economic progress. It thoroughly showcased how this growth is built on the exploitation of its working masses. It did demonstrate how economic ‘progress’ has made its media more ‘progressive’ to ignore deaths of workers. It very well showcased its children laboring over construction sites. And it did showcase how amidst all this its bourgeoisie could indulge in gala celebrations with dazzling light- shows lightening skies.

One Day on Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:36:00 +0000

One Day On Earth

Join on 10.10.10 for an unprecedented event. Every Nation, 24 hours and You.

Across the planet, documentary filmmakers, students, and inspired citizens will record the human experience over a 24-hour period. By participating in this historic event, you will help capture the diversity of life and culture on this planet.

One Day on Earth is a documentary and new media project about the amazing diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that occurs in one 24-hour period on Earth. More than a film, One Day on Earth is a multi-platform participatory media project. The flagship of this project is a feature length documentary to be released theatrically. Through the One Day on Earth platform, we will establish a community that not only watches, but participates.

[So, now pick up your movie camera (any format) and get ready to capture....... :) ]

Into The Universe With Stephen Hawking - The Story Of Everything

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:10:00 +0000

Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking is an epic new kind of cosmology series, Hawking gives us the ultimate guide to the universe, a ripping yarn based on real science, spanning the whole of space and time, the nature of the universe itself and lot more.

Hylozoism: an Holistic Documentary

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Hylozoism
by cormacscanlan

Cormac Scanlan’s movie Hylozoism is a ‘Holistic Documentary’ which, whilst offering no answers, uses associational form to encourage its audience to ponder life's big questions. Alluding to topics as varied as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, urbanity and evolutionary biology, the film invites viewers to think about who we are and where we came from. Hylozoism asks questions about how are we connected to each other and our planet, ponders about where are we headed as species and examines our purpose as both an individual and a part in a larger society and history.

Filmmaker name:Cormac Scanlan

The Real Helen Keller

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:52:00 +0000

More than forty years after her death, Helen Keller is still known internationally as the little deaf-blind girl, the "miracle child" who triumphed over adversity. It is an image that endures through the Hollywood film "The Miracle Worker" - but Keller never chose that image, and she battled against it all her life. Hidden from the public gaze was the real Helen Keller, a flesh-and-blood woman, writer and radical activist, suffragette and socialist.

some illustrations

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:29:00 +0000

On Payroll

noreply@blogger.com (Noni) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:50:00 +0000

Dissolved summer

Wealthy winter again

Autumn is waiting on the vacant corridor

The planet look tired

Merchants are busy on buying and selling

So be it

We are all in

[On vacation now..will be back on feb 2010]