Volume 7, No. 4, April. 2006

 
Editorial

MAY DAY CALL:
Workers and oppressed masses of India, unite to save the country from becoming a neo-colony of US Imperialism!
Fight against the traitorous policies of the UPA govt. led by Manmohan Singh!!
Build uncompromising Struggles by exposing all forms of Capitulation!!!


In Imperialist globalization is creating devastation on a scale rarely seen before in India and all countries of the world. The magnitude of the devastation is horrifying. It is a silent genocide unleashed by the monarchs of finance and their lackeys throughout the world. Wars of conquest add to the horrors. And amidst this devastation a handful have made unimaginable wealth. The recent visit of the biggest international gangster, Bush, to India was nothing but a step forward to increase the loot of the country and scheme with his servile agents in the country to make India a pawn in its geo-strategic plans in Asia. The fawning servility of the Indian rulers as they fell at his feet, inspite of being kicked around, shows to what extent the UPA rulers and their hangers on have stooped to sell off the country to these wolves of finance capital.
The extremes in wealth and poverty in India and globally are getting obscene. Such acute levels of destitution on the one hand, and voluptuous and vulgar display of wealth on the other, bring the contrasts into sharp focus. On the one hand we have a devastated Indian countryside where impoverishment is so acute that suicides have reached epidemic levels; on the other hand urban pockets are seeing a proliferation of malls and elite urban enclaves. Internationally it is to be seen in the ghettoisation at one extreme and glitter of the fabulous and wealthy on the other.
What exists today is not only obscene, it is brutally unjust, inhuman, cruel and catastrophic — it is inexcusable to tolerate it for even a single day. For, each day that it continues means thousands of more deaths, lakhs suffering the agony of starvation and millions living life in utter destitution on the brink of life and death.
But not satisfied with this devastation, the fundamentalists of the market economy are each day seeking greater and greater devastation and destruction to maximize their profits even further. Removal of all remaining subsidies to the poor, cutting welfare expenditure, reducing pensions and Provident Funds, hiking enormously health and medicine charges, increasing charges of electricity, fuel and even water by leaps and bounds, etc. etc.— are all on the agenda of the market megalomaniacs in India and worldwide.
And for those who don’t obey, there is the gun, bombs and all the latest in WMDs. Iraq is being bombed back to the dark ages. So also Afghanistan. Iran is the next target, unless they capitulate before the imperialist vampires on their nuclear programme.
Opposition is tolerated and even encouraged if it is harmless; and acceptable if one plays by the rules that they lay down. Foreseeing the likely opposition to their devastation, the rulers press into service their own stooges to act as ‘safety valves’ for this over-heated system. From the days of the second international the revisionists have proved to be the most faithful props of the establishment while pretending to be in opposition. Of course, with many openly joining the rulers (as the CPI/CPM in India) and their masks having got torn off, new elements have been found in the form of the postmodernists and the NGO crowd. These have been proliferating like mice gnawing away into the genuine opposition and demobilizing many a genuine dissident.
The situation can only go from bad to worse unless the masses resist this offensive in all ways. The reason for the continuing retrogression in the world economy is that finance capital is today a hundred times more parasitic and moribund even from the times Lenin spoke of it. This can be seen from the fact that there has been a massive leap in financial services compared to actual production. Financial services no doubt generate huge profits, but its profits not created through the production process but extracted through speculation and other such methods, as part of the growing casino economy. This must necessarily be exceedingly fragile, creating a bubble economy, and jobless ‘growth’. Such an economic structure brings unbelievable wealth to the owners of big capital while pushing large sections of the population outside its ambit. It is this huge, and growing, world of marginalized masses that is resulting in its alienation on a scale never seen before. Because of a weak communist alternative it is tending, in some places, to take a religious (and particularly Islamic) form.
Some facts show the extent to which the economies of the world have been distorted by the present so-called globalization. For example, in the year 2004 the worldwide trade in financial instruments in a single day was more than exports of goods for the entire year. In 2004 the trade in derivatives and on foreign exchange markets was a huge $7.6 trillion per day; while that of merchandise exports for the whole year of 2003 was $7.3 trillion (one trillion is equal to 1000 billion). Take another example in the growth of the financial markets. In the early 1980s the volume of transactions of bonds and securities between domestic and foreign residents accounted for about 10% of GDP in the US, Germany and Japan. By 1993 the figure had risen to 135% for the US, 170% for Germany and 80% for Japan. By end 2003 the figure rose to massive $15.7 trillion.
On the other hand while such huge sums travel around the world with the speed of lightening, made possible by the dot.com discoveries, generating fabulous profits, the marginalized world reels in poverty and destitution on a scale rarely seen.
Take the case of Africa which has been ravaged by internecine wars instigated by imperialist lobbies and powers. As per the UN’s own report from 2000, 1,200 people are dying every day in Congo — since 1997, 4 million have died. In Sudan, 2 million civilians remain homeless three years after the Dafur conflict ignited. According to the Red Cross hunger grips entire East Africa with 7 million people affected by severe drought in Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Somalia. In 1994, eight lakh Tutsis were massacred in Rwanda while the UN ‘peacekeepers’ looked on. Many other countries are ravaged by civil wars backed by different imperialists, like the Ivory Coast and about ten other countries; and in South Africa a quarter of the population have AIDS and a decade after the ANC took power 80% of the land is still owned by whites. And amidst all this devastation the imperialists continue to extract their fortunes. According to a 2003 World Bank report the maximum returns on every dollar invested abroad are got from Africa. The British war industry has made massive profits from Africa with arms sales rising to record levels. Over the last four years between 1999 and 2004 it has quadrupled reaching the $ 1 billion mark. The British imperialists give bullets not bread to the starving millions of Africa so that they may continue to kill each other in civil strife. And the US has imposed a ruthlessly exploitative Act to ravage the African people even more. The US-African Growth and Opportunity Act (between the US and Africa) forces African trade ‘partners’ to withdraw subsidies given to local industries and insists on privatization of social services even in countries that are prone to drought.
In India the situation is much the same. The entire countryside is being devastated and yet the government has plans to disband the PDS and raise the prices of foodgrains further. It is dismantling the state purchase of food grains, cotton and other agricultural commodities, destroying the already devastated peasantry even more. Subsidies are being cut and welfare expenditure reduced. India has the lowest public spending on health care in the world (except for four other tiny countries) and today over 20% are not able to afford the rising costs of medical care and are forced to die agonizing deaths. Debt has swamped the countryside pushing thousands and thousands of farmers to suicide each year. The figures only keep mounting as government policy only acts to destroy them further. With companies and the government resorting to labour-saving methods unemployment keeps rising and only the more well-off English-speaking elite can hope to find decent jobs in the ICE (Info-tech, Communications and Entert-ainment) and financial sectors. The situation here too is going from bad to worse.
On the other hand enormous wealth has been amassed by the wealthy. The 10 rich-est people on earth have a combined net worth of $255 billion — roughly 60% of the income of Sub-Saharan Africa. The world’s 500 richest people have more than the total annual earnings of the poorest three billion people (i.e. about 60% of the world’s population). Even from the poorest countr-ies the elite have staked away in foreign countries a gigantic sum of $ 5 trillion.
The acute impoverishment of the millions is the material basis for the wealth of the few. As, the greater the poverty the larger is the surplus value or profits extracted. The two classes today stand diametrically opposed to each other more than ever before. The ruling elites are not prepared to allow even a paisa of their profits to be reduced. In India and worldwide the profits of the big companies have increased by 50 to 80% and more in the last year.
But the declining market for commodities and the extreme parasitic nature of finance capital today is pushing it from one crisis to the next. This has resulted in a new round of bankruptcies taking the number of acquisitions to record levels in 2005. In that year M & As (Mergers and Acquisitions) reached a gigantic figure of $2.7 trillion. The crisis is particularly deep in the US — which is the largest economy in the world and the sole superpower — with its gigantic (and rising) trade and budget deficits. This is leading to greater contention amongst the major imperialist powers, wars of aggression (particularly by the US), and intensified loot of the backward countries. As yet the contention is taking the form of diplomatic maneuvering, trade wars and minor skirmishes of puppet forces particularly in Africa. All reactionaries throughout the world, with the US in the lead, are resorting to increased fascist methods passing off under the signboard of ‘war against terror’.
But, this wave of reaction is not going without a fight, even if not under communist leadership. Iraq and Afghanistan have become a hell for the aggressors. Particularly the great Iraqi resistance refuses to die down even after fake elections and desperate attempts by the US to pit Shias against Sunnis. The working class movement in the West continues to revive, even if haltingly. So, also the anti-globalisation/anti-war movement continues unabated. US Imperia-lism’s worldwide hegemonic designs face not only problems in the Middle East but in other parts of the world as well. Its attempts to build a Free Trade Area in Latin America have failed; not only that in six countries of South America governments have been voted to power that are in varying degrees anti-US. In Central Asia a number of countries have kicked out the US bases and Russian imperialist re-assertion has put the US on the defensive in these countries. Even in Palestine after nurturing a total puppet after the Arafat era, they have got the militant Hamas in power, upsetting their calculations. In the new flashpoint of Iran threats of sanctions and missile attacks by the US-Israeli combine (supported by Europe) have created resentment throughout the world, and further hatred for these gangsters.
In addition the Maoist movements worldwide continue to grow in the face of the most brutal repression. However weak, wherever they have some roots in the masses, they continue to act as the vanguard of the struggle against imperialism and all reaction, in spite of the attempts by the revisionists and NGOs to isolate them.
In India too there has been a revival of the working class movement inspite of the domination of the revisionist leadership. The militant response at Gurgaon, Kalinga Nagar, etc is accompanied by a strike wave in a number of MNC and comprador companies. In the last six months there have been 25 cases of industrial action resulting in a temporary shutdown in manufacturing activities. Major companies that have witnessed workers actions in the last six months are big names like Grasim Industries, JCT Ltd, Gujarat Ambuja, ACC, Crompton Greaves, NRB bearings and Esab. The prolonged agitation at the Toyota factory in Bangalore continues. In October last year workers at the Hairhar factory of Grasim brought production to a halt. So also the Gujarat Ambuja plant and the NRB Bearing Hyderabad plant saw similar strike activity in January and February this year.
Besides this the peasants are rising against the neo-liberal policies as in Rajasthan and elsewhere. The tribals, as Kalinga Nagar have shown, have vowed to fight the mining mafia to the end that threatens their very existence. There is growing assertion amongst dalits who refuse to continue living under upper-caste domination under the horrendous practice of untouchability inculcated over centuries. Women are more and more coming forward discarding the yoke of patriarchy. And the minorities, particularly the Muslims, are not taking the attacks by the Hindu fascists and State lying down. There is a general discontent throughout the country, but it lacks a cohesive revolutionary leadership.
But with the genuine Maoists of the country now united (to a large extent) into a single Party the hopes of all sections are growing. Though weak, it is the only hope for the oppressed masses. Yet, with the unity, its striking power has increased, hitting powerful blows at the enemy/government forces. The arms raid in Giridih and Madhuban, the continuous actions on the paramilitary forces in the wake of the State-sponsored terrorist onslaught called SalwaJudum in Chhathisgarh, and the Jehanabad jail break are just a few of the indicators of its growing striking capacity. For the first time in our country the party of the proletariat is equipped with a peoples’ army (however rudimentary) to take on the ruthless and barbaric force of the state.
On this May Day let us intensify the struggle against all forms of reaction, against the massive imperialist onslaught, particularly the US, and against the most degrading sell-out of the interests of our motherland to the imperialists, particularly the US imperialists, by the comprador government of UPA led by Manmohan Singh. The Red Carpet welcome given to the No.1 International terrorist George Bush by the Manmohan Singh government is a great insult to the billion plus population of our country. The nefarious Indo-US nuclear deal concluded by the Congress-led UPA government with the full backing of the BJP-led NDA coalition during the visit of Bush has placed even the nominal sovereignty and independence of the country at the feet of the US. Through this notorious agreement these traitors have placed the country firmly in the US orbit. In the name of strategic partnership with the US, the Indian ruling classes have become accomplices in the innumerable crimes being committed by the warmongering, criminal Bush. By voting against Iran in the IAEA and strengthening its ties with the Zionist expansionist Israel, the Indian expansionist ruling classes have proved themselves to be the tail of US imperialism—the principal enemy of the world people. Let us resolutely fight against this sell-out to US imperialism that paves the way for our country being transformed into a neo-colony. Let us fight against the policy of appeasement of the revisionist CPI and CPI(M), which have been sustaining the Manmohan Singh government in the Centre, while making harmless noises about its neo-liberal agenda and surrender to US imperialism. These revisionists have placed the interests of the working class and the oppressed masses at the feet of the comprador ruling classes despite their radical rhetoric. Let us support the heroic struggles waged by the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestinian territories, the growing militant protests in Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan and all over the world against US aggression, intervention, blackmail and bullying. In India too let us further intensify the vast upsurge that developed against the Bush visit into a powerful anti-imperialist movement. Let us unite the vast masses of our country and all the patriotic and democratic people against imperialism, particularly US imperialism, and the comprador Indian ruling classes that have mortgaged the country’s interests to US imperialism and have become one more bulwark of reaction against the interests of the world people. Let us awaken the working class and oppressed masses for a new upsurge, which draws lessons from the defeats of the Soviet and Chinese experience, to fire a confidence in its ability to build a new, just, socialist order.

Long Live May Day!
Down with Imperialism and all their Lackeys!
Beat Back the Aggressive Designs of US imperialism—No. 1 enemy of mankind!
Intensify struggle, expose revisionists, NGOs and all collaborators!
Unite all progressive forces to fight and destroy all Reaction!
March Towards the Socialist Alternative! Long Live the NDR!

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