womaniya

Statement of the Central Committee of Communist Ghadar Party of India

“Sab ke saath, sab ka vikaas!” (Together with all, for the development for all!) This is the slogan with which the BJP led by Narendra Modi has swept to power at the centre, capturing 52% of the seats and reducing Congress Party to a small minority in the Parliament. We are now being asked to expect acche din or good times!

Is this BJP-led government going to create a modern universal public distribution system, to ensure the availability of all essential consumption articles at affordable prices for all? Will it establish public control over foreign and large-scale internal trade in order to ensure this?

Will this government make sure that workers’ wages will always rise by more than the cost of living? Will it guarantee a living wage and pension for every worker, without exception? Will it guarantee that no worker can be forced to work more than 8 hours a day? Will it defend the right of workers to form unions of their choice and the right to strike? Will it release the arrested Maruti workers from jail immediately?

Is this government going to eliminate the insecurity of livelihood that has driven lakhs of our peasant brothers and sisters to suicide? Will it undertake the required public investments to provide irrigation, seeds, fertiliser, electric power and other inputs to the peasants at stable and affordable rates? Will it create a reliable public procurement system to ensure stable and remunerative prices for all agricultural produce?

Can we expect this BJP-led government to provide education, health and housing for all? Will it halt the unproductive drain of public funds, including debt servicing, militarisation and tax holidays to capitalists, without which the central government will not have enough money to provide education, health and housing for all?

This government cannot and will not do any of these things because it is committed to guarantee maximum profits for the Tatas, Ambanis, Birlas and other monopoly houses, and to foreign investors.

It is the combined toil of workers and peasants that produces the gross national product or GDP every year. An increasing share of the value created by our labour is extracted and pocketed by the capitalist class in the form of profits, both legal and illegal. Fulfilling the greed of monopoly capitalists for maximum profits means intensified exploitation of workers and robbery of peasants, adivasis and others. Attracting foreign capital in as many sectors as possible means to offer our labour and natural resources at the cheapest possible rates.

Is this government going to defend every Indian’s right to conscience? Will it end all forms of religious persecution and arbitrary arrests in the name of fighting terrorism? Will it punish the guilty of communal massacres as in 1984, 1992-93 and 2002? Will it protect women from all forms of violence? Will it end the deployment of army and paramilitary troops against our own people as in Kashmir and the Northeast? Will it permanently repeal fascist laws including the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act?

We cannot expect this government to do any of these things because it is committed to defend the existing political order and State, which is oppressive, backward and communal to the core. Historical experience has shown that both BJP and Congress Party have perfected the art of wielding this State to harass and persecute people on the basis of religion, nationality and race, and to incite them against one another, to advance the agenda of the ruling class. Communal violence and state repression serve the capitalist class to carry on with its exploitative rule.

In the class divided society in which we live, any government will have to either serve the capitalist class, with the monopolies at its head, or serve the toiling majority of people, with the working class at the head. It will have to either defend the capitalist system and the existing State, or work for their revolutionary overthrow.

The BJP-led NDA Government is a capitalist government. It is committed to guarantee good times for the capitalist class, which means to further attack the livelihood and rights of workers and peasants.

Along with “development for all”, the Modi campaign promised parivartan, or change. However, the first few actions of the new government show that its agenda is to implement the same capitalist reform program.

The new Minister for Civil Aviation has indicated that he will soon take steps to accelerate the process of privatisation of Air India. The new Minister for Environment & Forests has been asked to clear as many big capitalist project proposals as possible in the mining, steel and power sectors, which have been stalled due to environmental concerns or due to opposition by tribal groups.

On the controversial question of land acquisition, BJP supports the Land Acquisition Act passed by the Lok Sabha at the initiative of the Congress-led UPA government. This Act permits the government to forcibly acquire peasants’ land and transfer it into the hands of capitalist companies, even when such land is being cultivated.

In other words, there is not going to be any substantive change. This government is committed to implement the same policy and program of enriching the big capitalists at the expense of the toiling masses and the natural environment. BJP’s slogan of “development for all” is not qualitatively different from the Congress Party’s slogan of “inclusive development”. BJP and Congress Party are of the same mould. They represent the same class interest. They propagate what the people like to hear, and when in power, they act strictly in the interest of the big capitalists who finance their activities.

What the big capitalists want is a government that will ensure that their greed and global ambitions are fulfilled, through maximum exploitation of the working class and robbery of the peasants, artisans and tribal communities, without any interruption and any delays.

The fundamental problem in our society is that the entire process of social production is driven by the greed of capitalists for maximum profits. The principal means of production including mines and factories, means of exchange, transport,andcommunication are in the hands of capitalist corporations. Productive investments are made only when and where the big capitalists can reap maximum profits. When they do not expect maximum profits, they divert their capital to speculation and other parasitic activities.

The concentration of private wealth is so high that monopoly capitalists dominate all public affairs. The government enables them to keep pocketing maximum profits. It spends enormous amounts of money in the process, keeps accumulating “public debt” and keeps adding to our economic burdens, through a multiplicity of taxes and through inflation to cover its deficit.

To ensure good times ahead for all working people, it is essential to invest in our living standards and productive capacity. To ensure such investments, it is essential to convert the principal means of production and exchange into social property. There is an immediate and urgent need to nationalise and socialise finance and trade. These are necessary steps for creating a modern universal public distribution system linked to a public procurement system.

It is obvious that no party backed by capitalists will implement such measures to reorient the economy to fulfil human needs, instead of fulfilling capitalist greed. Such a reorientation requires the working class to wield political power in alliance with the peasants and all oppressed classes and strata of society. It requires a radical change in the system of democracy and its political process.

We who toil are the majority in society, but we have no say in setting its course in the existing political system. Parties backed by different capitalist groups dominate the entire electoral process, starting from the process of candidate selection. The biggest capitalists use the periodic elections to replace one party that has become discredited by another one to fool the people and push ahead with their self-enrichment program. A political party that gets votes from 21% of the electorate is able to gain control of 52% of the seats in Parliament, as the BJP has just done.

The existing system of democracy is in essence the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It is the rule of an exploiting minority over the workers, peasants and other working people. The bourgeoisie rules through the ballot and the bullet. The parivartan we need is to replace this with a superior system in which the workers, peasants and other working people are the rulers, with a state that defends their rights. We need a state and political process which ensure that people are sovereign and the elected bodies are subordinate to them.

We need a political process in which parties cannot dominate candidate selection and use money power to fill the elected bodies with representatives of the minority class of capitalists. Workers and peasants must be able to select and elect their best representatives to the highest decision-making bodies, and to participate in setting the agenda. A political party in such a system will be duty-bound to enable the toiling majority to exercise their right to rule.

Workers and peasants must not be compelled to hand over all decision-making power into the hands of elected representatives, which is the case at present. They must be able to hold those elected to account and to recall the one they elected at any time. They must have the right to make and change laws, including the right to re-write the constitution.

We need to establish a new Constitution that guarantees the sovereignty of the people and the inviolability of human rights, democratic and national rights. In short, we need a new State and government of workers and peasants. This is the alternative to the existing system.

The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie must be replaced with the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, the rule of the toiling majority. . Only a new political power of those who toil can reorient the economy, to ensure that those who work are respected and get to enjoy the benefits of the wealth their combined labour creates. Indian society will then rise on new foundations, as a modern civilised society.

Communist Ghadar Party uses the electoral arena to expose the existing system and build political unity around the program for its revolutionary transformation. We participated in the recent electoral campaign with a Manifesto that boldly put forward the alternative program of reconstituting the Indian Republic and reorienting the economy to provide for all. We believe that if all parties and organisations of working people unite around this program, a revolutionary opposition force will emerge in the political scene.

Our goal is not merely a “Congress-mukht Bharat” (an India free of Congress Party). Our goal is an India that is free from the rule of the capitalist class, free from the exploitative economic system and the exclusive and oppressive political system. Workers’ and peasants’ rule will end the exploitation and plunder of our land and labour by domestic and foreign capital. It will sweep away all remnants of colonialism, feudalism and the caste hierarchy.

We call on working class activists to join our party and work for the cause of the revolution and socialism! Come and strengthen the leading organ of the proletarian class struggle!

We call on all communists, irrespective of party affiliation, to focus their energies on building the united worker-peasant opposition as a revolutionary political front to contest the ruling bourgeois class and its anti-social program. Let us work towards restoring the unity of communists at the head of a politically united working class leading all the exploited and oppressed masses.

We call on all workers’ and peasants’ unions and organisations of women and youth to unite around the program to reconstitute the political system to vest sovereignty in the people; and to reorient the economy to provide for all!

Let us prepare for ushering in workers’ and peasants’ rule and opening the path for all-round progress of our society, so that our people can actually enjoy good times!

Location

New Delhi,