May Day Commemoration in the Neofascist Situation
International proletariat together with all oppressed peoples and progressive-democratic forces the world over are observing 1 May 2024 as 139th May Day. In solidarity with the historic movement for 8-hour working day initiated by Chicago workers on 1 May 1886, and in commemoration of the martyrdom of workers in Haymarket, it was the International Federation of Socialist Groups and Trade Unions that designated May 1 as International Workers’ Day. October Revolution and establishment of Soviet Union followed by formation Comintern gave an impetus to May Day celebration throughout the world with the clarion call “Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite” against capitalist-imperialist system.
Following October Revolution, there had been a world-wide surge in working class and anti-colonial movements for almost half a century. And, especially since the defeat of fascist regimes and along with the transformation of UK-led colonialism to US-led neocolonialism, bourgeois regimes in imperialist countries as well as dependent regimes in Afro-Aisian Latin American countries were forced to concede many democratic rights to the workers and toiling people under the label of so called ‘welfare state’s that lingered on till the onset of the imperialist crisis called “stagflation” in the 1970s. And, 8-hour working day had been the accepted norm and essential component of the state-led welfare policies at a global level. However, the imperialist crisis since the 1970s and abandoning of welfare state by imperialism facilitated by the ideological-political setbacks suffered by the International Left, paved the way for the advent of neoliberalism that imparted unfettered freedom to corporate capital for plundering labour and nature.
Consequently, all hard-earned democratic rights of working class through yesteryear’s heoric struggle are being snatched away. At a time when rapid technological advancements have brought about several-fold increase in productivity of labour, rather than contributing to an increase in workers’ real wages and reduction in the working time, it actually led to skyrocketing of profit rates and wealth accumulation by corporate capital. While corporate wealth accumulation reached hitherto unknown levels, workers have been subjected to horrific levels of super-exploitation and surplus-value extraction. With the backing of new production and processing technologies, reactionary corporate capital unleashed a new international division of labour called “flexible specialisation” and a “global informalisation” of the workforce, driving many millions of workers to unemployment, underemployment and contractualisation, and in the process transformed the whole world into a “wasteland of unemployment”. The 21st century “new technological revolution” marked by the emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence and its no holds barred application in the tertiary/service sector of the economy where majority of the workforce are engaged today, if not resisted and appropriately reversed, will push world working class and entire humanity into an untoward disaster.
However, under the surging tide of far-right neofascism now being unleashed across both imperialist and neocolonially oppressed countries, the condition of the working class and all oppressed is becoming still more vulnerable. While unprecedented growth in both the number of global billionaires and accumulation of wealth with them driving the working class and oppressed peoples to joblessness, poverty, hunger and deprivation are the trends on the one hand, backed by anti-Communist, Islamophobic and extreme xenophobic ideologies, neofascist regimes across the world are superimposing draconian laws and biggest-ever inhuman burdens over migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, on the other. And as a manifestation of the intensifying crisis of imperialism, inter-imperialist contradictions and geopolitical tensions are sharpening even as imperialist sponsored wars are continuing in many “hot-spots” without any let up. The burdens of these imperialist-fascist offensives are also put on the shoulders of working and oppressed people.
The prolonged Ukraine war that began with imperialist Russia’s attack on Ukraine is now continuing as an inter-imperialist war between US-led NATO and Russia where Ukraine has become a proxy and a pawn in the hands of NATO. The root cause of the Ukraine war has been the US imperialist manoeuvres to reinvigorate the NATO by compelling the neo-Nazi Ukraine regime to join NATO. The Ukraine war while facilitated to fill more wealth into the coffers of US-EU MNCs, has added further burdens onto the shoulders of world’s working and oppressed people through rise in the prices of fuel, food and other essential items of sustenance. More disastrous are the US-EU backed Zionist horrors on the Palestine people. Here too, the Military Industrial Comp!exes and tech-giants of US imperialism are the biggest gainers, even as US is working as a co-belligerent of Zionist war crimes and genocide in Gaza where death toll, majority of them being women and children, has reached almost 35000. It is heartwarming that many Communist parties, workering class unions, democratic and human rights movements, and students organisations the world over have come forward resolutely condemning the Zionists. At the same time, instead of standing in solidarity with Palestinian resistance against Imperialist-Zionist axis, it is a pity that some other so called Eurocentric Communist parties infected with Islamophobia have no qualms to come up with their apologetic thesis of balancing Palestinian resistance with Zionism.
Coming to India, the most populous country, and hence comprising one of the largest contingents of international proletariat, RSS, world’s biggest and longest-running fascist organisation is holding the reins of the reactionary fascist regime here today. Being far-right and pro-corporate in essence, both RSS and its political tool BJP, claimed as world’s biggest political party, that serves the most corrupt elements of corporate capital, the Indian regime led by Modi is the biggest enemy of Indian working class, vast majority of whom are informal or unorganised, condemned to sell their labour power at the cheapest wages. The neofascist move by Modi government converting the prevailing 44 Labour Laws into four Labour Codes – Code on Wages, code on Industrial Relations, Code on Social Security and Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working conditions – in conformity with the “ease of doing business” diktat promulgated by Fund-Bank-WTO trio and imperialist think-tanks at the behest of global corporate capital and its junior Indian partners are intended to transform the Indian workers into 21st century bonded/slave labourers who are bound to work on casual and contract basis devoid of basic democratic/human rights. Long-cherished goals of the working class such as 8-hour working day, permanent employment, pension system, equal pay for equal work, gender-friendly working conditions and so on have become a myth under fascist Modi regime. Even the allocation to the much trumpeted Employment Guarantee Scheme is drastically reduced over the years, at a time when India is undergoing the biggest unemployment in recorded history. And as part of neoliberal-corporatisation, the Modi government, after transforming itself as a corporate-facilitator has already withdrawn from all infrastructure, industrial and service sectors and everything is entrusted with the most corrupt corporate billionaires for plundering labour and nature as they like.
Under Modi, who came to power on an anti-corruption plank, India has become one among world’s most corrupt countries and a flourishing example of crony capitalism defined as the unholy nexus between corrupt corporates and ruling regime. Policy decisions are made in corporate board rooms while parliament remains as a mere spectator. The notorious Electoral Bond Scheme that allowed corrupt companies to make unlimited, non-transparent contributions to BJP was just one of the manifestions of the flourishing corruption under Modi regime. Due to unprecedented wealth contration among crony capitalists, the widening of the gap between the poor and the rich reached hitherto unknown levels. As a result, the top one percent of super-rich Indians holds more income than that under British colonialism, while that of bottom 50 percent today is less than what it was in 1951. Corporate crony capitalists in whom India’s wealth is concentrated and who are totally depending on imperialist centres for technology and expertise are least interested in employment-generating real production and are engaged in money-spinning speculative businesses. As a result, unemployment has become unprecedented, while working class and oppressed people with steeply going down real income and declining purchasing power are unable even to subsist amidst sky-rocketing prices of food, fuel, medicine and other items. With world’s majority of of “absolute poor” inhabiting India, it is called a “citadel of global poverty” today.
And, in its madding pace towards the ultimate goal of a majoritarian theocratic Hindurashtra, the RSS-BJP fascists are very adept in using the reactionary ideologies of anti-Islam or Islamophobia, anti-Communism and Manuvadi casteism. Effectively utilising the imperialist-sponsored global Islamophobia including the “de-Islamisation” moves in Europe today, RSS, in accordance with its founding approach towards Muslims as enemy number one, is now engaged in denying citizenship to Muslims or making them second class citizens through Constitutional and administrative routes. And along with incorporating economic reservation and thereby undermining caste-based reservation, RSS-BJP is in the process of altering the character of Indian Constitution based on the tenets of Manusmriti according to which Dalits and women are subhuman. To be precise, regarding the liberation of Dalits, the untouchables and women who are the most oppressed, nothing is envisaged by the proponents of Hindutva or political Hinduism.
To cap it all, with its expansionist designs as a regional power in South Asia, and as a junior parner of US imperialism, fascist Modi regime’s arrogant approach is visible in its relation with all neighbouring countries. While Modi government’s basic inability to handle the border question with imperialist China is known to all, it was it’s big-brotherly approach to neighbours that made the SAARC totally defunct. Being a big market for global arms dealers, tech-giants and MNCs, while Indian regime can bargain with imperialist powers as is reflected in its deal between US imperialism and Russian imperialism regarding Ukraine, the Modi regime faithfully remains as a strategic junior partner of US imperialism in latter’s Indo-Pacific machinations targeted against China. Modi government has already abandoned all its non-alignment traditions and is taking a conspicuously antagonistic position towards oppressed nations and peoples. In continuation of the RSS’ Islamophobic campaign in collaboration with Zionists through its innumerable affiliates especially based in US, the Modi government, in violation of India’s fraternal approach to Palestinian people, has taken a position more or less in tune with the US -Zionist axis. In the same vein, the Indian regime today pursues a cordial relation with many neo-fascist groups and movements in Europe too.
At this critical juncture, while declaring solidarity with the world-wide struggles of the working class and all oppressed against neofascism, imperialism and all ruling classes and against their policies leading to wars, super-exploitation, environmental destruction and repressions, the Indian working class, all toiling and oppressed people of India have the immediate task of overthrowing the most oppressive and most reactionary fascist regime of RSS-BJP. While extending warmest May Day greetings to international proletariat and all oppressed peoples of the world, and while building up revolutionary and fraternal comradeship with them and all like-minded forces in the struggle for people’s democracy and socialism, the revolutionary Communists and all democratic forces in India today have a two-pronged but interrelated tasks in front of them. First is the strategic task of resisting and defeating the biggest-ever far-right, corporate-fascist offensive against the class interests of workers and oppressed people. However, under fascism that denies even the basic democratic rights, this long-term task can be taken up only by creating minimum conditions necessary for raising such issues. This leads to the immediate and urgent task of overcoming the most reactionary RSS fascism at t he earliest. That is, while resolutely fighting neoliberal-corporatisation in all its manifestations, including the biggest-ever corporate onslaught on labour and nature, a struggle indispensable for survival not only of workers but of humanity and the entire planet earth, the working class of India along with all oppressed and democratic forces are bound to take up the immediate task of overthrowing the Manuvadi-fascist regime by taking initiative for building up the broadest possible anti-fascist people’s front uniting with all like-minded forces.
Therefore, when we commemorate May Day at this critical juncture when RSS with Islamophobia and most inhuman Brahmanical caste-system as its ideological base is super-imposing its fascist stranglehold over the Indian people, it is the indispensable task of the working class to rise up against this horrific situation utilising all options at its disposal. That is, while upholding solidarity with their international counterparts, it is the solemn task India’s workers and oppressed to commemorate this May Day calling for a no-holds-barred offensive against RSS fascism. This is indispensable for creating the conditions for taking up the strategic march towards the establishment of people’s democracy and socialism in solidarity with all workers and oppressed peoples of the world today.
Long Live May day !
Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite !
Down with Imperialism and Fascism !
March Towards People’s Democracy and Socialism !
P J James
General Secretary
CPI (ML) Red Star
New Delhi
30th April 2023
