Party School – 2023

Paper by Com P J James

On the Ideological-Political Line of CPI (ML) Red Star Based on the 12 th Congress

Introduction

1. The Organisational Line of CPI (ML) Red Star in the neo-fascist Indian context is explained in the Paper “On Party Building in Neo-fascist Situation”. For a Communist Party, organisational line or party building is a corollary of its ideological-political line or Party Line as laid down in the basic documents of the Party, namely, Program and Path of Revolution explaining Party’s strategic tasks and Political Resolution unfolding its immediate or short- term task. According to the basic documents of the Party from the 9 th Congress to the 12 th Congress, the Stage and Path of Revolution in India remains unchanged, and continue as that of People’s Democratic Revolution.

2. However, if we take the first two decades of the 21 st century, including more than a decade since the 9 th Congress of our Party in 2011, vast changes which are faster than any previous period in history have taken place at a global level and in our country. These changes, among other things, include the advent of a whole set of ‘frontier technologies’ such as Digitization coupled with Artificial Intelligence which are a 21 st century phenomenon, and utilising them corporate capital’s imposition of an intensified super- exploitation of working class through a renewed global division of labour, new forms of oppression and marginalisation through migration and refugee crisis, unprecedented ecological destruction arising from corporate plunder of nature, hitherto unknown levels of wealth concentration, inequality, poverty, unemployment, etc., and above all, the emergence global neo-fascism with its horrific manifestations and growing inter-imperialist rivalries and sharpening of all inherent contradictions of world imperialism. Linked with this international situation, in India, the most populous country in the world today, RSS, world’s biggest and longest-running fascist organisation with its most inhuman and reactionary ideology of Manuvadi-Hindutva has established a fascist regime with its multi-dimensional impact.

On Updating the Basic Documents

3. Properly evaluating these transformations, the 12 th Party Congress has appropriately updated the Basic Documents as adopted at the 9 th Congress and as amended in the 10 th Congress, especially the Program and Path of Revolution from the Marxist-Leninist perspective of ‘concrete analysis of the concrete situation’. Of course, CPI (ML) Red Star from the very beginning has evaluated the post-war period as that of imperialism’s neocolonial phase. Based on that, the Party has been of the firm position that after the 1947 power transfer to Indian ruling classes, the leading sections of whom today are ‘junior partners of imperialism’, India has been continuing as a neocolonially dependent country.

On the Question of ‘Political Independence’ and ‘Formal Independence’

4. However, though our approach to neocolonialism and characterisation of India as ‘neocolonially dependent’ remains as such, in the minor amendment to the Program adopted in the 10 th Party Congress in 2015 in Lucknow, an erroneous evaluation of 1947 power transfer as ‘political independence, though limited in character’ also was incorporated, as against the conceptualisation of ‘formal independence’ upheld by our basic documents since the Bhopal Special Conference onwards. Obviously, a ‘neocolonial dependence’ and ‘political independence’ are contradictory and inconsistent at the outset.

5. Hence, when the Program was updated in 2022 in accordance with the changes in the concrete situation, after prolonged inner-party debate, the term ‘political independence’ was replaced by ‘formal political independence’. No doubt, the conceptualisation of 1947 power transfer to Indian ruling classes by British colonial masters as ‘political independence’ was also connected with the revisionist perspective of ‘weakening of imperialism’ in the postwar period, as propagated by Khrushchevites. Together with this, another prognosis of India as a ‘new imperialist country’ also appeared in a Seminar paper presented by the MLPD representative during the 10 th Party Congress. Since a country simultaneously remaining ‘neocolonially dependent’ and ‘new imperialist’ being impossible, from the very beginning, our Party had totally rejected this hypothesis of ‘new imperialism’. At the same time, we cannot be oblivious to the ideological link between proponents of ‘political independence’ and ‘new imperialism’, since the possibility of a ‘politically independent’ country becoming ‘imperialist’ is perfectly in consonance with the laws of motion of capital today.

6. The formulations of ‘political independence’ and ‘new imperialism’ have other ideological-political dimensions, especially in relation to the principal contradiction as elucidated in the Program of CPI (ML) Red Star. For instance, of the five major contradictions adopted by our Party at the international level, the contradiction between imperialism on the one hand, and oppressed peoples and nations on the other, is the principal contradiction. In the same vein, the contradiction between the alliance of imperialist- corporate bureaucratic bourgeois-landlord classes on the one hand, and the broad masses of people on the other, is the principal contradiction with in India.

7. Thus, according to our Party Program, imperialism is the main enemy not only of world people, vast majority of whom are living in Afro-Asian-Latin American countries, but also for the Indian people as a whole. On the other hand, according to the hypothesis of ‘new imperialism’, vast majority of the people are living in imperialist countries, and not in neocolonially dependent countries. This is inconsistent with concrete reality and is an outright violation of the very core (stage and path of revolution) of our Party program. That is why, along with rejecting the new imperialist hypothesis, while updating the Program, we replaced ‘political independence’ with ‘formal political independence’.

On Concrete Analysis of Indian Society and Interrelation among Class Struggle, Caste Struggle and Gender Struggle

8. On understanding class India, since the 9 th Congress itself, CPI (ML) Red Star has taken a clear-cut position against the mechanical or copy-paste method pursued by many ‘communist’ parties. As such, in analysing class with respect to the specific, historically determined Indian social formation, the Party took the firm position that both class and caste are integral and inseparable. That is, class struggle in India is intertwined and interwoven with the struggle for abolition of the caste system which is a strategic task and not a tactical one. Hence the Path of Revolution adopted by the 9 th Congress opines: “Fighting caste oppression and campaigning for caste annihilation are not in the agenda of many organisations, or even when it is included, no concrete plan of action is put forward. It is the consequence of the reality that even after 150 years of experience of the Communist Movement, the mechanical imposition of the China Wall between revolution in the economic base and revolution in the superstructure is not removed. That is why the close relation between class struggle and struggle against caste system is not correctly understood and the mechanical approach that class struggle will solve all questions like the caste problem is still put forward repeatedly. This mechanical approach should be replaced by the dialectical relation between struggles at these two levels. Or a comprehensive understanding about class struggle itself has to be developed.”

9. Based on this Marxist approach of concretely analysing Indian society, we have already rejected the mechanical and reductionist approach to caste — that caste shall vanish once ‘class struggle’ becomes victorious or that climbing the economic ladder enables a person to overcome the social stigma associated with caste. On the other hand, caste being intertwined and interwoven with India’s mode of production or social formation, according to our Party’s position, rather than a super-structural issue, it cuts across both base and superstructure, and caste continues to play its major role in spite of the penetration of capital into the micro spheres of our society and not merely connected with feudalism as claimed by certain parties, or a “meagre role” as claimed by the erstwhile minority section within the party. Today, our Party position is that in spite of leading many heroic struggles of Dalits and other oppressed, the inability on the part of the erstwhile communist leadership to grasp the caste question in the proper perspective has led to the alienation of the oppressed castes from the communist movement. And we also have an understanding that the rift between the Communist Party and the movement of the Dalits and oppressed castes is to be urgently resolved by taking a positive approach towards Ambedkar and the Ambedkarite movement in general.

10. In the other Party Documents and writings pertaining to caste too, we have consistently pointed out that over the decades even after Power Transfer, caste system has been gaining more and more strength without any let up as is manifested in the mounting discrimination, oppression, atrocities, untouchability and all round alienation and deprivation of the Dalits with region-wise specificity in multi-national, multi cultural, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-religious India. And it is from this perspective that in the context of the 9 th Congress, CPI (ML) Red Star had taken initiative to form the Caste Annihilation Movement (CAM) to carry forward the ideological-political struggle against Brahmanical Manuvadi caste system in all its manifestations and to strive for the ultimate goal of annihilating caste system fully grasping the dialectical link between class struggle and the struggle for the abolition of caste. Along with CAM, over the years the Party has been earnestly engaged in acquiring more ideological and historical clarity on caste question including developing the required practical struggles in this regard.

11. However, when the task of updating the Party Program was taken up, RSS whose ideological basis is Manusmriti, using its political tool BJP, has already transformed India into a neofascist regime. According to Manusmriti, or Manuvadi-Hindutva, vast majority of the workers and toilers who belong to the ‘untouchable’ and oppressed castes and women are subhuman. And RSS is engaged in converting the Indian Constitution in tune with Manusmriti. In this context, when the Central Committee resolved to situate RSS neofascism in the historical roots of ‘Manuism’ in the updated documents, a few members comprising a minority section, despite their anti-caste rhetoric, vehemently opposed Party’s clear-cut position on caste and eventually went out of the Party. For instance, on the eve of the updated Program drafting, the entire pages of 2021 March Issue of ‘Marxist-Leninist’, theoretical journal of CPI (ML) Red Star were set apart for debate on caste in which this minority’s mechanical approach to caste totally disregarding how caste cuts across various modes of production was also published in detail.

12. Today, many self-proclaimed Marxist scholars claim that caste will wither away through the onward march of modernity and penetration of capitalist relations in to India. This they do based on the experience from Europe where the advance of capitalism could strike at the foundations of feudal, pre-capitalist and patriarchal relations. By hoping to repeat the same in India, these scholars are exposing their inability to comprehend how caste could comfortably sit even on the seat of modern science and technology in India. And corporate capital that penetrated in to the countryside has no qualm to integrate itself with the archaic and inhuman practices such as Khap Panchayat like most despicable caste institutions. As manifested in the renowned ongoing case in a California court against untouchability, Brahmanical techies who migrated to US have succeeded to export caste even to the Silicon Valley-the embodiment of the so called most advanced frontier technology today. The City council of Seattle has recently passed a resolution banning the practice of untouchability which was vehemently opposed by expatriate Manuvadis. Thus an economic interpretation of social change alone is incapable to unravel the underlying forces working at the macro level. To reiterate, today caste remains at the very centre of Indian counterrevolution and Communists have to take up the task of overcoming it as integral part of class struggle against imperialism and its lackeys.

13. In this context, especially in the critical situation of RSS neo-fascism, our basic documents have emphasised all-out offensive against Manuvadi-Hindutva, the ideological basis of RSS together with our uncompromising struggle against neoliberal corporatisation. In this regard, the first four paragraphs of Chapter 3 of our Party Program explains how the caste system evolved through the ancient, medieval and modern periods integrating with the changing modes of production and emerging classes, cutting across base and superstructure, assuming new dimensions of oppression and discrimination and adapting itself to political-economic changes.

14. And, it is in continuation of this historical perspective on caste and in view of the “inherent contradictions and tensions in caste-ridden Indian society” that in Chapter 5 relating to Program of People’s Democracy, the Party opines: “ 5.12 The People’s Democratic State shall take concrete steps for the abolition of the inhuman caste system, eradicate all forms of untouchability, caste-oppression and caste-discrimination from all spheres of life. All caste-practices and reactionary institutions should be suppressed and the perpetrators of such crimes shall be punished. Ensuring caste-based reservation till the wiping out of all caste-discriminations along with required affirmative actions for uplifting the Dalits and oppressed castes and priority to them in land-distribution based on the principle ‘land to the tiller’, along with appropriate administrative and cultural interventions.” Further, in conformity with this position, the 12 th Party Congress unanimously adopted two resolutions in relation to caste: one, on the need of a code of conduct for Party Comrades’ approach to caste and, two, on giving up caste surnames by Central Committee comrades.

15. In the same vein, along with the caste system, the updated Party Program as adopted by the 12 th Congress upheld the question of gender or gender struggle also as inseparable aspect of class struggle. Just as class struggle is directed against the exploiter class, and the struggle for annihilation of caste system is manifested in the form of struggle against the oppressor caste, gender struggle aims at elimination of all forms of gender inequality which is inevitable for democratisation of Indian society where patriarchy based on Manusmriti treats women as subhuman. Party Program says: “5.13 Stop all forms of gender discrimination. Abolish patriarchy in all its manifestations and stop religion and caste-based oppression on women. Stop all forms of discrimination and attacks on women at work places. Stop female infanticide. Ensure women’s equality in all fields, property right to women and equal pay for equal work. All women shall have opportunities to engage in socially productive labor with women-specific and genderfriendly working conditions. In the place of the patriarchal, religious-caste-based family system, the People’s State shall ensure conjugal life of partners irrespective of gender, based on mutual love, respect and consent. “5.14 In view of the exploitation, oppression and marginalization suffered by people of different genders and sexualities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, etc. (LGBTQIA+), the People’s Democratic State shall take appropriate measures for the protection of the entire spectrum of people that come under the broad category of LGBTQIA+.” These tasks are incorporated in to the Program of People’s Democracy in conformity with our ideological political line that both caste struggle and gender struggle are integral part of class struggle in India.

On RSS Neo-fascism and the Anti-Fascist Struggle

16 . While the strategic task of our Party is to establish a people’s democratic state overcoming imperialism and its junior Indian partners, today the immediate task before us is to defeat RSS neo-fascism, which has been comprehensively elucidated in the Political Resolution adopted by the 12 th Party Congress. We have elaborated this task further including understanding of RSS neo-fascism and on the anti-fascist front in the articles published especially in our organ Red Star. What requires is the building up of the broadest possible anti-fascist united front against the RSS/BJP regime joining with all like-minded forces including non-fascist parties and organisations. However, as communists, in doing so, we should not surrender our strategic task of struggling for the class interests of the working class and all oppressed. This is possible only if we are capable to uphold our independent ideological line while being part of the broadest anti-fascist front. To accomplish this, we have to work at three levels.

a. First is to build up the Party based on the Program and Path of Revolution. In this regard, the Political Resolution explains: “5.8. In building up the Party with country-wide influence and for leading democratic and revolutionary struggles in the concrete Indian context, while assimilating lessons from erstwhile people’s democratic and socialist experiences, the integral link among class, caste and gender struggles and struggle for ecological protection should be taken up. That is, the party building process needs to assimilate the comprehensive inter-relationship among class struggle, struggle for caste annihilation, for gender equality and for ecological protection. Thus a party equipped with revolutionary theory and having practical experience from leading different struggles of workers, peasants, and all oppressed including women and the entire spectrum of genders, adivasis and dalits and that of environmental protection is the urgent need today.”

b. Second is to build up a Left core of all fraternal and revolutionary parties based on a common minimum program against neoliberal corporatisation in all its manifestations. This all India Left core comprises state-level coordinations composed of like-minded revolutionary-left organisations upholding the interests of the vast majority of the working and oppressed peoples.

c. This Left Coordination shall form the starting point for the tactical alliance against fascism or broadest possible anti-fascist united front in which non-fascist ruling class parties and social democrats are also a part. This alliance with an anti-fascist common agenda against RSS neo-fascism also encompasses appropriate ideological struggle against Manuvadi- Hindutva, ideological base of Indian fascism too. While differentiating from the strategic alliance of workigng class and oppressed peoples against the ruling system and neoliberalism, this tactical alliance can also effectively utilise the contradictions within ruling classes in the fight against fascism.

17. If we properly pursue this approach, it will facilitate the strengthening of the anti-fascist movement and creation of the atmosphere for a broad electoral front capable to defeat RSS/BJP in the 2024 election on the one hand, and the presence of a people’s movement capable to resist the threat of a fascist come back thereafter, on the other.

On Ecological Question and Class Struggle

18. CPI (ML) Red Star’s firm position is that ecological issues are inseparable from corporate accumulation and plunder of nature by capital. Hence the struggle for an environmentally sustainable, pro-people development paradigm is inseparably linked with class struggle. Taking the gravity of the ecological question in the proper perspective that it is one of the basis questions to be resolved as part of class struggle, in the 9th Congress itself the Party had incorporated the contradiction between capital and nature as the fifth major contradiction both at the international and national level.

19. Reiterating this position, the Party Program adopted by the 12th Congress states: “3.23. In conformity with the conspicuous international trend towards intensified plunder of nature by corporate-speculative capital under neoliberalism, India also has been witnessing unprecedented ecological devastation during this neoliberal phase. At the instance of global corporates and their Indian junior partners, all laws and regulations in India pertaining to environmental protection are being taken way one by one. The latest EIA amendment, that legalizes the corporate violation of hitherto restrictions on ecologically sensitive and fragile areas and massive displacement of people from their habitat, is the most notorious among them. An essential component of the so called “ease of doing business” and “investorfriendly” measures taken to attract foreign capital is the import of ecologically harmful and toxic industries and dumping of obsolete nuclear plants in the country. At this critical juncture, when the whole issue of ecology and environment is inseparably linked up with the operation of corporate capital, the initiative for a development paradigm in harmony with nature has become the indispensable component of people’s democracy and socialism.” Now the task before the Party is to carry forward this ideological-political line through appropriate organisational initiatives.

Conclusion

20. The core issues of our Party’s ideological-political line highlighted above are that linked with the inner-party struggle leading to the 12 th Party Congress. On many important issues such as federal question, our Party has its distinct line. For instance, instead of the superimposed unitary character of the State, the People’s Democratic State envisaged in the Party Program is fully in consonance with the multi-national, multi-lingual, multi cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious character of India. Hence the Program of People’s Democracy envisaged by the Party is distinguished by a Constitution based on Federal Principles upholding the linguistic, ethnic, economic and cultural rights of nationalities that constitute India. Including this, to get an overall view of our Party Line, all members have to thoroughly read and comprehend the basic documents in their mother tongue. Hence all State Committees have to take up the task of translating them at the earliest and party study-classes based on them are to be arranged in a time-bound manner.

The post On the Ideological-Political Line of CPI (ML) Red Star Based on the 12 th Congress – P J James appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

Paper Presented for Party School in 2023

Party School – 2023

Paper by Com. KNR

On Party Building in Present Neo-Fascist Situation Introduction

Introduction

1. The CC of CPI(ML) Red Star has repeatedly pointed out that, in the present situation when the working class and the peasantry in general, and the whole people, especially, the women, Dalits, Adivasis and other oppressed sections including the minorities, especially Muslims, are facing unprecedented, targeted fascist onslaughts from the Manuvadi-Hindutva forces, in order to organize resistance and to overthrow it the Party building should be given top priority. At the international level too, in spite of the objective situation when all the contradictions are unprecedentedly sharpening, leading to possibilities for mighty spontaneous people’s upsurges breaking out in many countries, there is not a single Communist Party capable of leading them to revolutions to overthrow the imperialists and their junior partners in power and to capture power, leading to advance towards people’s democracy and socialism.

2. It is a Marxist-Leninist Understanding that based on the concrete analysis of the concrete conditions, once the ideological-political line, and based on it, the Program and Path of Revolution are developed, then the most important task is the Party building. There can be no revolution without a revolutionary party capable of analyzing every change in the situation, developing the Party line appropriately, and leading the whole organization for mobilization of the masses to seize the political power.

3. When the neo-fascist Modi government is consolidating its domination in every field very fast, launching various attacks on the working class and oppressed people as a whole, especially on the Muslim minority, dalits, Adivasis, women and other oppressed classes and sections, the expectation was that, if not all, at least major section of the CR organizations shall come forward to unite in to a stronger party or at least join the Revolutionary Left Coordination with a common program to challenge the fascist forces with the approach. But, many are in old rigid frames even after vast socio-economic, political changes in all fields linked with the emergence of fascism have taken place.

4. So, in order to take up the party building by winning over the communist forces and attracting the new generation, intensive ideological political struggle has to be launched. How the new forces can be attracted to the communist party is a big challenge. The new generation is not familiar with Marxist literature. Mainstream media that project the parliamentary left as communists have degenerated to ruling class positions and implementing neoliberal policies wherever in power.

5. In the context of the severe setbacks suffered by the communist movement all over the world with all former socialist countries abandoning the socialist path, in the atmosphere of powerful anti-communist onslaughts by the imperialists and their lackeys, the new generation will give credibility to the communist vision, and be attracted to it, only if we take up the struggle for gender equality, caste annihilation, ecological issues, and for an alternative development path against the mainstream capitalist development paradigm. These issues are to be taken up as integral part of class struggle. This should be the Marxist approach to party building.

6. The party building also calls for a vigorous campaign against the majoritarian Manuvadi- Hindutva, the theoretical base of RSS neo-fascism. Along with developing struggles against increasing anti-people policies of Modi government, and developing united movements, a powerful campaign to expose and defeat Manuvadi Hindutva is needed. Today, except a small section of revolutionary intellectuals and Communist Revolutionary(CR) forces, others are not attacking the Hindutva-Manuvad of RSS/BJP. Even when the 2024 general election is near, the opposition parties including social democrats are not yet prepared to unitedly move against RSS/BJP.

7. It is in this context, the significance of the call given by the CC to launch a powerful campaign against Manuvadi-Hindutva immediately after the 12 th Party Congress and in conformity with the immediate task as laid down in the adopted Political Resolution. Accordingly, we are engaged in building up the broadest possible anti-fascist front uniting with all those who oppose RSS neo-fascism, while, at the same time, upholding our independent political position of fighting for the class interests of the working class and all oppressed. Regarding the latter, which is linked with our strategic and long-term tasks, the Party has to work among toiling masses, women, youth, students, in the cultural and caste annihilation fronts and develop organisations and movements through launching campaigns and struggles.

8. Today, Party building is intertwined with waging ideological struggle at two levels: firstly, we shall carry forward the theoretical/ideological attack on the Manuvadi-Hindutva which is the base of RSS neo-fascism with the help of revolutionary intellectuals, and trying to mobilize Dalit, Adivasi, women organizations and other progressive forces, writers, cultural activists etc., trying to mobilize the youth and student organizations also. Secondly, we shall wage ideological struggle against all alien trends in the communist movement, putting forward our ideological political line. These campaigns as well as our involvement in the struggle against the anti- people, neo-fascist policies shall provide a favourable atmosphere for recruiting new comrades from all fields and to strengthen the task of party building.

12th Party Congress on Party Building.

9. The Political Resolution adopted by the 12th Party Congress says: “5.8. In building up the Party with country-wide influence and for leading democratic and revolutionary struggles in the concrete Indian context, while assimilating lessons from erstwhile people’s democratic and socialist experiences, the integral link among class, caste and gender struggles and struggle for ecological protection should be taken up. That is, the party building process needs to assimilate the comprehensive inter-relationship among class struggle, struggle for caste annihilation, for gender equality and for ecological protection. Thus a party equipped with revolutionary theory and having practical experience from leading different struggles of workers, peasants, and all oppressed including women and the entire spectrum of genders, adivasis and dalits and that of environmental protection is the urgent need today.

“5.9. Such a unity of the workers and all oppressed achieved through struggles against neoliberal-corporatisation in all its manifestations is also indispensable to bring about a revolutionary left core of all fraternal and communist revolutionary forces with a common minimum program. This foundation that upholds the interests of the vast majority of the working and oppressed peoples shall be the starting point for a broadest possible anti-fascist front capable of challenging and defeating RSS-led neofascism.”

Thus, only under the leadership of an ideologically, politically and organizationally equipped communist party, surrounded by class/mass organizations/movements, the task of development of class struggle and people’s movements can, be effectively carried forward, and the united front activities according to the demand of the present situation can be initiated and developed. It is evident that unless the task of party building is taken up as primary, all other tasks shall remain unfulfilled.

10. The Political Organizational Report (POR) adopted by the !2th Congress explained the various aspects of party building thus: “6.1. In the present international and national situation, when the objective situation is becoming increasingly favorable for a new wave of revolutionary upsurges, right and left deviations and eclectic, opportunist positions among communist forces, only create frustration among the people who are faced with unprecedented deprivation under neoliberal imperialism, and impending danger of ecological catastrophe. Our approach to …Party building in this complex situation is to launch a healthy ideological-political struggle and win over all genuine communist forces for building a Party capable of giving leadership to revolutionary upheaval in the present neoliberal, corporate phase of imperialism…”

Unification of Communist Revolutionaries

11. Regarding the criteria of Communist unity, the POR continues: “6.2… Firstly, a positive approach to proletarian internationalism, and for uniting the ML forces at international level for joint campaigns and struggles wherever possible. Secondly, recognizing that in the concrete conditions of our country, the class struggle, caste struggle and gender struggle are integrally related to each other and should be taken up accordingly, waging the caste annihilation movement and gender equality struggle along with the class struggle. Thirdly, recognizing the significance of protecting ecology with a now or never approach, when the imperialist system has pushed humanity to the verge of ecological catastrophe. Fourthly, continuing struggles to complete remaining tasks of agrarian revolution including land to the tiller, and completing anti-imperialist tasks to create conditions for advancing to the stage of socialist revolution. Based on these, the process of uniting the CR forces should be speeded up with the aim of building a powerful communist party at all India level.”

12. This question of winning over the communist forces to the party should be taken up at three levels: Firstly, though their number may vary considerably from state to state, there are many former members of organizations belonging to the ‘communist spectrum’ who can be won over and enrolled after convincing them about our party line; Secondly, there are many groups of comrades, especially in states where the left movement had good influence, who have left their previous organizations due to ideological or political or organizational differences. For winning over them also initiative should be taken; Thirdly, active efforts should be made to find out organizations who are nearer to our party line and to win over them through protracted discussions and, if necessary working together with them for some time forming coordination committees.

Increasing Party Membership

13. Over the past few years, there has only been nominal increase in the membership of our Party. Even among these existing members, many are not fulfilling the responsibilities of party members as explained in the Party Constitution. Below central committee level, levy system is yet to be implemented properly. This is to be rectified at the earliest. Considering the enormous tasks the Party has to take up, the existing membership is absolutely insufficient. Urgent steps should be taken to increase the membership. The following steps are proposed to accomplish this task:

a. We have formed Party Sub-Committees in all class/mass organizations and people’s movements at central level. They are constituted at state level also at least in few states or in few fields. Make these committees active and through them take steps to politicize the members of these class/mass organizations and for their enrolment as party members from all fields, especially from among the trade union members, agricultural workers and peasantry.

b. Though 65 percent of India’s population is below the age of 35, our membership among youth and students is very limited. This is because of our weakness in building the student and youth organizations in spite of repeated decisions. Hence more emphasis is to be given for recruiting large number of candidate members from students and youth.

c. Women constitute half of our population. Without giving emphasis to women’s liberation, party cannot advance the revolutionary movement. But proportion of women among our party members and their presence in party committees are much less. Attention should be given for recruiting large number of women as party members, politicize and activate them, and create healthy conditions in the party committees for their active involvement.

d. An active campaign should be organized to hold continuous discussions to win over politically advanced elements from other communist organisations/groups including those who are disgusted with the political-ideological line of these parties or are inactive because of many reasons.

e. The most important source of recruitment to Party is peoples movements and struggles. Basti Suraksha Manch in Odisha, land struggles in other parts of the country, etc. are examples. If we can politicise such cadres who are active in such struggles, large number of cadres may be recruited from landless /homeless poor and oppressed sections.

Strengthening State Committees

14. In a multi-national/multi-lingual/multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country like India, the state committees have to play a very important role if we have to build up party and lead the revolutionary movement. But many of our state committees are very weak. Many of them have no proper office or office functioning. Many of them do not bring out the state party organ or issue statements on important developments. We have to wage consistent struggle against the influence of liberalism on the one hand and sectarianism on the other to strengthen the state committee functioning, taking following practical steps:

a. Give maximum emphasis to get a regular office, however small it is and start its functioning with one whole-timer comrade in charge for it.

b. Give importance to bring out state party organ; make effective use of social media and online publications for party and class/mass organizations.

c. Start regular practice of issuing press statements on all important state issues, along with issuing CC statements on important issues; organize a library and organize political education to party members on a regular basis.

d. Central, state, district fund collections should be systematically organized at appropriate time according to local conditions;

e. Give emphasis to regularize levy system at all levels, maintain levy and account registers;

f. In line with the Central Committee, the SC/SOC should send Party Circulars regularly to District Committees and state reports to CC regularly.

Strengthen the District Committee functioning:

15. The district committees link the state committee with the grass root party committees, and in the party structure of the communist party it has to play an important role. It should have an office and regular office functioning, including the practice of issuing press statements on important developments. It should coordinate the working of area committees and the grass root functioning below them. It should collect the levy regularly and ensure the propagation of party organs and literature. It should maintain levy register and account register. It should send circulars to lower level committees on the one hand, and send regular written reports to state committee.

Importance of Party Education:

16. In spite of repeated decisions, necessary emphasis is not given to party education at state and district levels and below. Though Central Party Schools are regularly conducted from 2010, Party Schools are not organized at lower levels including translation of all Central Party School papers in most of the states. All the state committees should ensure that immediate steps are taken to overcome this weakness. In the present fascist situation, the importance of party education by organizing regular party classes has further increased. It also calls for making necessary basic Marxist classics available to the comrades. The state committees should give increasing attention to these points. Party education should be taken up at following three levels:

a. Central Party Schools organized by the CC every year based on papers prepared and distributed earlier on important currently relevant subjects. It is regularly taking place.

b. Party classes organized by the state committees at district and areal levels to impart education on Party documents, basics of Marxism and classes on various issues which are connected with developing class struggle.

c. Self study by Party members: It is very important. The practice of reading party documents, statements, basic Marxist books, daily newspapers, weeklies and documents and statements of other organizations should be developed. The central, state, district, area committee leaders attending the party committees should give emphasis to this subject.

d. In order to help the members and sympathisers to develop ideological, political understanding, the Party should make available basic Marxist books, Party documents, relevant books on current developments, Party organ, etc in their mother tongue. For this publication centres are needed.

Building Grass-root level Party Committees linking with 3- tier Panchayat System and Capture of Political Power at Local Level

17. CC has been repeatedly emphasizing the importance of organizing and strengthening party committees at the grass root level, that is, party committees at Branch, Local and Area levels and Party Sympathizers’ Groups. Decline in the strength of our mobilization and our poor performance in the elections even in the districts where we have waged many struggles are due to the weakness of our party at grass root level. Since the time of the introduction of 3-tier Panchayat system, all ruling class parties have started giving lot of importance to actively participate in the activities of the Gram, Block and District Panchayats, deploying even their senior cadres for it. Since enormous funds are available for local bodies, to control them and to create mass base for Assembly and LS elections, these main-stream parties use corruption and create caste and communal vote banks at grass root level. So, without fighting them we cannot maintain our mass support achieved through the people’s struggles.

18. However, our state committees are not giving importance to grass root level party building, Due to negligence or inactivity of district and area level work, we are losing party members and large number of class/mass organizations members in many areas. Besides, as our state committees are not giving necessary attention to grass root level party committees and to provide party education and political guidance to them, even many of our own comrades elected to these panchayat system became corrupt and left the party.

19. The issue is also linked to developing Party’s understanding on the link between parliamentary struggle and class struggle, along with fighting all influences of parliamentary cretinism. Unlike the revisionist approach, this question of putting forward an alternative approach to development and democracy at grass root level and fighting for it cannot be postponed to be settled after revolution. We should give political and organizational importance to strengthening grass root level party committees. In districts and taluks/blocks where our district and area committees are functioning, select gram and block panchayats where our party presence is there; strengthen the branch committees at village/town/municipal ward level and Local Committees at Gram/Town panchayat levels; chalk out people’s programs based on our approach to development and democratization and form people’s committees to capture panchayats. By striving to make these panchayats to function according to our political and organizational line, consistently strengthening the direct participation of the people in its activities through strengthening the functioning of the neighborhood committees we can take class struggle to the grass root levels.

20. While giving emphasis to party building, along with the emphasis to grass root level party building at Area, Local and Branch committees, their activities should be linked to our active participation in the numerous struggles of the people, and with the functioning of the 3-tier panchayat system. In the Central Party School in 2013, though a paper on OUR APPROACH TO PARTICIPATION IN LOCAL BODY ELECTIONS was presented and discussed, still we could not make any advances in this field. Not only that, almost all our comrades elected to local bodies so far, by and large either got influenced by corrupt practices or left our party.

21. According to our experience, if the gains from people’s struggles are not used for consolidating our mass base and effectively utilised at the local body elections very soon the gains would be lost. Further, many decades of parliamentary experience of traditional communist parties also teaches that if the parliamentary institutions including the 3-tier panchayat system are not used in a revolutionary manner as part of the class struggle, they can lead to negative results.

22. Presently, under neo-liberal corporatisation, both imperialism and its junior partners, the ruling classes, are effectively utilizing local self governments for their far-right agenda. In this context, it is imperative on the part of the struggling left forces to put forward a class approach to local body elections, and the continuation of it even if our comrades get elected to only one seat. In this way the so called top-down decentralization imposed under the labels like “participatory democracy”, “participatory development”, and “empowerment”, etc. as advocated by the imperialist agencies can be exposed. Such decentralization is not intended for genuine people’s political power at the local level. On the contrary, it leads to making local bodies as appendages of global corporate capital.

23. At the behest of neo-colonial agencies such as the World Bank and IMF, as part of rolling back the state, almost all of the erstwhile social welfare and developmental tasks of the central and state governments are put on the shoulders of fund-starved local bodies, who are made direct dependencies of WB, ADB and other funding agencies. In spite of the economic burden imposed on them, the right to collect land revenue, which is now with the State government, is not set apart for local bodies. The bureaucratic set up of the local bodies has also changed little in the midst of many talks on decentralization. Even today, the elected representatives of the Panchayat system are not vested with any real powers. All the financial and executive powers are vested with the executive officer or secretary of the Panchayat system at village, bloc and district levels. More precisely, the elected local bodies still lack autonomy regarding local planning, resource mobilization and executive powers of implementation.

24. Focusing on these aspects, according to concrete conditions, a people’s alternative of bottom-up decentralization inseparably linked with the development of class struggle aimed at basically altering the existing property relations and power structure can be put forward. In continuation to the active functioning of the grass root level party committees, and the people’s struggles taken up by them, the Party should actively participate in the local body elections and utilize the panchayat raj for the political program of transforming the local bodies as primary centers of people’s political power. The participation in local bodies elections should be linked with the struggle for redistribution of land on the basis of land to the tiller, confiscation of land held by land mafia, distribution of such lands and surplus land among landless, agitation against displacement, against all super-imposed neocolonial-neoliberal projects, etc. The Party should reject the neo-liberal decentralization experiments pursued In different states. To develop this orientation, lessons from the positive experience of socialist construction in former socialist countries should be assimilated according to our situation. All State Committees should prepare a model manifesto specifying Party’s program including specific demands for land, shelter, food, drinking water, healthcare, education, employment, etc. as part of the people-oriented and ‘sustainable development’ perspective. Based on it, the party committees or people’s committees responsible for the gram/block/district panchayats can draft their program according to concrete demands of the people. In this way, the parliamentary struggle for panchayat boards can be made part of the revolutionary alternative we put forward at state and national levels.

25. Taking up this challenge of party building at the grass root level where we have party’s presence and some mass contacts through local struggles means coming in to contradiction with the already well—entrenched mainstream parties as well as vested interests. It will politically educate the party as a whole not only to develop grass root level mass base, but to get invaluable lessons for developing the class struggle for people’s political power at the grass root level also. The theoretical/ideological questions connected with the transformation of communist parties to bureaucratic parties in erstwhile socialist countries are also associated with the abandoning of people’s power centres established during the initial satages of revolution. So, our work in the 3-tier Panchayat System should be seriously taken up recognizing the fact that not only for immediate purpose of developing our mass base, but also for long term revolutionary socialist transformation of the society and for establishing people’s political power at the grass root level also.

26. From a communist perspective, the question of ‘communes’ which is linked up with people’s political power, in the present context, needs to be discussed in relation to our participation in local bodies. The People’s Communes in China which was the basic unit of holding political-economic power was based on the slogan ‘power to the people’. All party committees have to seriously understand the ideological-political- organisational ramifications of communes as the centres of people’s political power based on the experiences of ‘Paris Commune’, the ‘Soviets’ in the Soviet Union, and the ‘People’s Communes’ in China. Therefore, instead of waiting for revolution, from the pre-revolutionary period onward, we have to seriously take up the task of developing communes where ever we have mass base and local political power taking into account the concrete social formation in our country.

Party Finance

27. The Party has to depend on the people entirely for its finance. It is against any form of extortion or forcible collection, any form of ‘money actions’, collection of contributions from mafia, anti-people and corrupt forces. The money collected by every committee and the expenses should be fully accounted for. Every functioning committee from the CC to the Branch Committee, there should be an Account Book, in which all receipts and expenses are recorded. Except in the case of bucket collections in the streets, receipts should be given for collections, and an accounting system, including the auditing of the accounts should be developed. Based on the experience of the communist movement from its inception and our own experience, the Party has developed a fund raising method and levy collection from Party members as follows:

a. Central Fund collection: For helping the functioning of the CC, a Central Fund collection should be organized and coordinated CC and by all SCs and SOCs every year at a stipulated time as by CC. There should be publicity through party publications, posters, handbills and through social media.

b. State Fund Collection: Every State Committees should decide the best period for the state fund collection. Giving good publicity through social media, posters, hand bills etc, the state fund collection should be organized for two weeks with all the party members participating in it compulsorily. A quota may be decided for the District Committees and total quota for the state. Out of the amount collected, the SCs may give 10% for the CC. The SCs should see that completion of fund collection should be followed by proper auditing and closing of accounts.

c. District Fund Collection: As decided by the SC, all the DCs should plan fund collection for one or two weeks with the participation of all party members and sympathisers. The DCs can decide the quota. From this collection, 75% is for the DCs and grass root level committees, and 25% for the SC or as decided.

d. Party membership fee for an year is Rs 20, which should be paid at the time of renewal of membership or recruitment. This entire amount should be sent to Party Centre along with the district-wise membership list.

e. Party Levy Collection: According to Party Constitution, every Party member/candidate member should pay levy every month which ranges from 2 to 8 % of his/her income. For whole timers, unless otherwise decided, it shall be Rs 20 per month. Every party committee should decide the levy for its members and collect it regularly. Out of the total levy ccollected in a state, 50% goes to DCs and below, 40% to the SC and 10% to the CC. Every functioning committee should have a levy register and collection should be recorded in it. The SCs should organize fixing and collection of levy’s through party committees and report it which should be followed by DCs. A party member who without valid reason fails to give levy continuously for three months, may be issued a notice by the concerned committee, and if the explanation is not satisfactory may be removed from Party roll and should be reported to the next higher committee.

f. Apart from these regular fund collection, contributions can be collected from party sympathisers and friends by the party committees. For struggles, campaigns, etc., also funds are needed and should be collected. The basic principle to be followed is except in the case of bucket collections, all other collections should be made giving receipts in which the contact no and address of the concerned committees are given.

g. Reflecting the vast unevenness in our SCs and SOCs, there are vast differences in the collections also. In spite of all difficulties proper procedures are to be followed in all cases of fund collections.

Conclusion

28. Comrades, Our aim is to build a Bolshevik style Communist Party surrounded by class/mass organizations and various people’s movements which is capable of facing any changes in the political situation in the country. Under RSS Neo-Fascism today where even dissent and difference are treated as treason, the ‘democratic space’ for work is shrinking fast. All party committees should be aware of this and be prepared to face any eventuality. At the same time, we shall strive to utilize the the existing situation for open work to link the party with the masses as long as possible. Our party committee system and organizational functioning should be properly streamlined so that it is capable of confronting all eventualities by making the party committees capable of utilizing all open and secret, parliamentary and non-parliamentary means to make the party safe, while developing class struggle continuously. Let us strengthen our party building with all our might, overcoming all past mistakes and present weaknesses.

(Updated and Edited Version of the Papers Presented in 2013, 2019 and 2020)

The post On Party Building in Present Neo-Fascist Situation Introduction – K N Ramachandran appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

On The Political Approach to the Current State of the Indian Economy

P J James

Today Indian economy is confronting the worst contraction on record. Officially also, it is acknowledged as historic down-turn in 70 years. It is a fact that COVID-19 came when imperialism has been still reeling under the impact and repercussions of the 2008 global crisis. Now the pandemic has driven the world economy to a state of crumbling, the dimensions of which are surpassing that of the Great Depression of 1929-33.For instance, based on October 2020 database, IMF estimates a 4.4% contraction in world output in 2020. Except China which is expected to mark a growth rate of 1.9%, all leading countries will contract or represent minus growth- US(-4.3%), Japan(-5.3%), Euro Area(-8.3%) and UK(-9.8%). On the other hand, while the average growth rate of the so called “developing countries” is predicted to contract by -3%, that of India will be a staggering -10.3%.

According to Swiss bank UBS, by the dawn of 2020 itself, half of world’s net wealth belonged to the top 1% of the superrich; and top 10% of the population held 85% of total global wealth. Conversely, 90% of the people have only 15% of world’s wealth (and top 30% holding 97% of the total wealth). During the pandemic, world’s billionaires whose number rose from 2158 in 2017 to 2189 by mid-2020 increased their wealth by 27.5% during April-July 2020, to a record high of $10.2 trillion.

Its global consequences as manifested in surging poverty and unemployment are horrific. While IMF predicts a fall of an additional 90 million people in to extreme deprivation in 2020, ILO calculates an unemployment/underemployment of up to 2 billion people (58% of the world’s total labour force of 3.46 billion in 2019) in 2020 itself. According to the World Food Program, on an average, around 9 million people are dying annually from famine and hunger-related causes. Now, on account of the pandemic, this figure may skyrocket as there will now be 1.5 to 2.0 billion famine-vulnerable people, many of whom may die.

Indian Economy Facing The Worst-Ever Contraction

However, the present collapse of the Indian economy, as noted in the beginning, is quite unparalleled and the worst on record. Both International agencies and official Indian sources have acknowledged this. In continuation of a 24% contraction or negative growth for the first quarter of 2020, the IMF, in its latest World Economic Outlook, predicts a 10.3% contraction for the entire financial year ending March 2021, revising its earlier prediction of a 4.5% decline. This additional 5.8 percentage-point downgrade of Indian GDP is the worst in the world. Strikingly, IMF’s outlook for India is worse than RBI’s prediction of a 9.5% decline in GDP in the current fiscal year. A comparison of the sector-wise official statistics pertaining to the first quarter of the previous year (2019-20) with that of the current year, gives a more concrete picture. For instance, except agriculture, forestry and fishing (that shows a growth of 3.4% in the first quarter of 2020-21 compared to 3.0% growth in 2019-20), all other sectors are steadily contracting. Thus, 2020-21 quarter one contraction for mining and quarrying was -23.3% (4.7% in 2019-20), for manufacturing, it was -39.3% (3% in 2019-20), electricity, gas, water supply and other utility services -7% (8.8% in 2019-20), -50.3% (5.2% in 2019-20), trade, hotels, transport, communication, broadcasting services -47% (3.5% in 2019-20), financial, real estate and professional services -5.3% (6.0% in 2019-20), and public administration, defence and other services -10.3% (7.7% in 2019-20).

As such, according to independent analysts, the crisis is more deep-rooted and worse outcomes are in store. For instance, India’s former Chief Economic Advisor and World Bank Chief Economist Kaushik Basu have predicted the economy to shrink by around 12% in the current year. According to Arun Kumar, another well-known economist, India’s GDP decline in the current year will be around 50% and not 24% as officially claimed. This is because of the devastation of India’s unorganised/informal sector that provides 94% of total employment and yields 45% of total output produced in the country. Contradicting CMIE data, Arun Kumar also puts the actual unemployment figure at 20 crore. According to him, unless appropriately managed through policy interventions, the official optimistic projections for 2021 will remain as wishful thinking.

The massive decline of around 24% in India’s GDP, as officially estimated, in 2020 April-June quarter makes the size of GDP almost the same in size as that in the same quarter in 2015. Hence it can be said that the GDP level has leaped back by 5-6 years, more or less equal to the same level when Modi came to power. As a result, the past half-a-decade under Modinomics may be characterised as lost years for India. A comparison between Bangladesh, India’s neighbour would be more illuminating in this regard. According to IMF data, on an average, India’s per capita GDP has been 24 percent higher than that of Bangladesh during the last 5 years. But by mid-2020, India’s per capita GDP in nominal US dollar terms was $1876.53 (Rs. 1.25 lakh approximately) compared to $1887.97 for Bangladesh.

Consequently, in the 2020 Global Hunger Index prepared jointly by World Hunger Aid and Concern Worldwide, India’s rank slipped to 94 (among 107 countries) from 55 (among 76) in 2014. Most of the South Asian countries — Sri Lanka (64), Nepal (73), Bangladesh (75), Myanmar (78) and Pakistan (88) — are better off than India in this regard. As its manifestation, with 17.5% of world population, India is home to 22% of world’s most poor and hungry people. As a direct outcome of this destitution, with 37.4% of the underweight children, India has the distinction of having number one position in the world in this regard too. In the same vein, in the case of other indices such as Inequality Index (where India’s position is 129 among 157 countries), Happiness Index (144 among 156), Environment Performance Index (167 among 180), and so on, India’s deterioration continues unabated. With 18 million slaves (out of 46 million worldwide) almost entirely from the lowest rung of the caste system, India under Modi regime occupies number one position in Global Slavery Index too.

At the same time, amidst a 24% GDP contraction during the first quarter of 2020-21, as estimated by Forbes, within one year Ambani has his wealth increased by 73% from$3730 crore to $8870 crore, that of Adani by 61% reaching $2520 crore, and in that order for many billionaires such that the total wealth of the first 10 Indian billionaires rose to $51750 crore (approximately Rs. 38 lakh crore) during the same period. In general, as Oxfam has estimated, today around three-fourth of the additional income or wealth generated in India is gobbled up by the upper 1% of the super-rich (close to 60 percent of the country’s total wealth is in the hands of upper 10 percent of the population). If we exclude the 75% of the income appropriated by the upper 1%, then the per capita income of the 99% will be a paltry portion of the officially estimated Rs. 1.25 lakh. And if we exclude the organised sector and take the unorganised and informal sectors where 95% of the Indian workforce are depending for their sustenance (for which no detailed official data is there), then the situation will be too gruesome. It may be more horrific than what Arjun Sengupta, the then Planning Commission member had estimated a decade back—that 83% of Indians subsist on just Rs. 20 a day!

Analysis Of The Situation

The cause for this situation is now generally attributed to India’s lockdown which is acknowledged as the most coercive, the most stringent and most prolonged in the world, on account of its deadly restrictions on social and economic life. For instance, a study on the government responses to COVID-19 by the Oxford University, after comparing the pandemic-induced lockdowns that put the economy in a frozen state on account of disruptions in both movement of the people and supply chains in various countries, has attributed the highest “Stringency Index” of 100 to Modi government followed by Italy (with a Stringency Index of 95.2), Spain (90.5), Germany (81), US (66.76) and Japan (45). Revealingly, while all other countries resorted to lockdowns when the number of infections reached around 100000, the strictest lockdown in India was superimposed when the total infections were just around 5000 in the third week of March 2020. While putting the entire economy in a frozen state leading to a devastation especially of the informal sectors that provide sustenance for vast majority of the toiling masses, in the absence of any worthwhile intervention for containing the pandemic, the lockdown that lasted for almost 2 months utterly failed to get the pandemic under control, with the number of corona-virus cases crossing 7.6 million (by the beginning of the 3rd week of October, while these lines are written), second only to the US.

COVID-19, The Immediate Cause Only

The government and corporate media in India now firmly claim that the economic collapse with all its manifestations is caused by the corona virus pandemic. This is also endorsed by IMF when its chief economist Gita Gopinath referred to the “great lockdown” of India. But this forms only a partial explanation and not in accord with concrete facts. On the other hand, a closer analysis reveals that the elements of the present crisis and the consequent irreversible economic downturn got a new turn since the advent of Modi in 2014. In fact, COVID-19 is only the spark and not the root cause triggering the present crisis.

That is, while the post-meltdown crisis has been a continuing process at the global level, India’s economic collapse under Modi regime, though connected with many external factors, is to be understood as different in many respects. For, as highlighted by several international and Indian studies including that done by the Economic Research Department of SBI , the Indian economy was ‘relatively immune’ from the global meltdown of 2008 and the country’s GDP had been growing at 7-8 % on an average up to 2014-15. This also prompted neoliberal centres to characterise India as “the best-performing economy” in the world during the years immediately following 2008 meltdown.

Thus, in retrospect, it can be seen that the ongoing economic collapse of India has been inseparably linked up with the complete transformation of the Indian state as a “facilitator” of corporatisation and the consequent far-right shift in economic policies under Modi regime. For instance, without any qualm, immediately after coming to power, the first step that Modi did was the abolition of the more than six-and-a-half decade-old Planning Commission, the last remnant of state-led development, and its replacement by a corporate-bureaucratic think-tank called NITI Aayog and entrusting the task of policymaking with it without even consulting the parliament. To transform the State as corporate-investor-friendly, and to rapidly improve India’s indices pertaining to “ease of doing business” and “global competitiveness” as laid down by Bretton Woods twin (and, of course, fully in tandem with the far-right economic philosophy of RSS that guides the Modi regime), what followed was a pan-Indian extension of the ultra-rightist Gujarat model that uninterruptedly flourished under Modi’s chief ministership. Mimicking China’s export-led growth, the flagship “Make in India” initiative was announced in September 2014 with the declared aim of transforming India into world’s manufacturing hub, creation of an additional 100 million jobs in the manufacturing sector and raising the proportion of manufacturing from 16 percent to 25 percent of GDP by 2022. However, what happened is the opposite and today this proportion has further fallen down to around 13 percent. The foreign capital that rushed in taking advantage of liberal tax, labour and environmental regulations under the cover of “Make in India” mainly went into money-spinning speculative activities, as capital that flowed in was least interested in employment-oriented production. Consequently, “Make in India” transformed India into a dustbin corporate-speculative capital on the one hand, and a dumping ground for capital and consumer goods from imperialist sources ranging from US to China.

Modi’s 2016 Demonetisation superimposed on the people in the guise of a surgical strike against black money was an ingenious move to whiten the black money with the most corrupt corporate black money holders on the one hand, and suck out whatever left in the arteries of common people by denying them cash which is the life-blood of the informal sectors and essential for people’s daily transactions, leading to a further concentration of wealth with the corporate-financial elite closely connected with the ruling regime. In the process, the whole economy remained in a paralysed state. This was followed by GST that deprived the states of their Federal right of resource mobilisation and shifted the tax burden on the shoulders of common people and on the unorganised sectors.

Though Modi came to power in 2014 claiming to generate an additional 2 crore jobs every year, according to independent estimates, by the beginning of 2020, i.e., on the eve of the pandemic, the country had lost around 14 crore jobs since 2014. And India today experiences the worst unemployment in recorded history. Almost 50 percent of the people is still clinging to agriculture for their sustenance though the contribution of agriculture to GDP is only around 15 percent as of now. Modi’s input-output pricing policies pertaining to agriculture and its forcible integration with world market coupled corporatisation policies have pauperised the peasantry. Over the years, corporatisation of agriculture had displaced large sections from agriculture altogether.

Though concentration of income and wealth under Modi is of unprecedented proportions, only 1.5 crore Indians are effective direct tax payers (including corporate and personal income taxes) and in spite of extreme concentration of wealth and inequality, Indian corporate tax rate at 15 percent is the lowest in the world. The direct tax-GDP ratio in India is stagnating at around 5.5 percent which also is the lowest in the world. If the upper 10 percent of the wealthy sections are brought under the tax net, together with 30 percent corporate tax prevailing when Modi came to power (during the 1970s, the highest rate was up to 90 percent), the direct tax-GDP ratio could have easily been raised to 20 percent.

To compensate for this biggest loss in direct tax revenue arising from tax rate reduction, along with the increase in indirect tax burden on the people through GST, Modi has been resorting to the biggest-ever loot of the broad masses by sky-rocketing prices of petroleum products (mainly through raising taxes and cesses on petrol, diesel, cooking gas, etc.), and by this alone during 2014-20 the regime has amassed an additional amount worth Rs. 17.5 lakh crore compared to the UPA regime. Ironically, the average world crude oil price (India imports around 80 percent of its crude oil requirements) during the entire Modi regime has been around one-third of what it was during the previous UPA rule, and following declining global demand in the context of COVID-19, global price is now hovering around one-fourth of what it had been a decade ago. Meanwhile, declining government revenue from direct and indirect taxes(the latter mainly on account of loss in people’s purchasing power) coupled with corruption (though Modi came to power on an anti-corruption plank and with the promise of bringing back Indian black money from foreign tax havens and putting Rs. 15 lakh in to the account of each Indian citizen, under him India became a “flourishing example of crony capitalism” and the most corrupt country in Asia) and loss to exchequer in manifold ways, etc., are resulting in an unprecedented growth in India’s debt-GDP ratio to around 85 percent during the Modi period. To cap it all, an unprecedented loot of public wealth through disinvestment of PSUs and plunder of public sector banks through the creation of NPAs by corporates are flourishing without any let up.

The anti-people nature of this government is self-evident in its reluctance to distribute at least a portion of the huge stock of food grains among the starving millions including the migrant workers who were condemned to bear the brunt of the coercive lockdown. In spite of Modi regime’s anti-farmer policies including the latest pro-corporate central agricultural legislations, India is ranked second in food and agricultural production. As such, the total food grains stock (rice plus wheat) with FCI has topped 100 million tons by mid-2020. On account of grave storage challenges, millions of tons of this grain stock are prone to decay, and the government could have effectively and quickly liquidate the heavy burden of storage by immediately distributing this among the needy, vulnerable and destitute sections through a free-grain scheme. But true to its fascist character, except certain window-dressing (eg, the announcement to distribute 5 kg wheat/rice for 3 months among the poor as part of Aatmanirbhar), the government least interested to distribute the food grains among the tens of millions of poor including the migrant workers.

To be precise, prior to COVID-19, the neoliberal-corporatisation policies pursued by Modi government have been driving the country to an economic contraction of unprecedented proportions. Now the pandemic is again used as an opportunity by the corporate-saffron fascist regime for stimulating the corporates by its far-right agenda more aggressively. For instance, the recently announced so called “Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan” is another cover for an unprecedented “stimulus package” for those whom Modi regime characterises as “wealth creators” (a synonym for most corrupt corporate looters). Aatmanirbhar Bharat is a vulgar imitation of the earlier prognosis of “Make in India” (of late, “Make in India” is replaced by the new catchword “Assemble in India for the World” in accordance with the “Global Value Chains” hypothesis recently put forward by World Bank)and what envisaged now is the outright sell-out of remaining key and strategic sectors including mining, transport, defence, banks and insurance, space exploration, power distribution, health research, and entire frontier technologies to foreign and Indian corporates. No doubt, such “supply-side” interventions belong to the same genre of pro-corporate stimulus packages pursued elsewhere by neoliberal centres. Revealingly, out of the Rs. 21 lakh crore Aatmanirbhar package, what addressed to the vast majority of toiling and oppressed masses is only around Rs.2 lakh core or just one percent of the country’s GDP, the remaining straightway going to corporate coffers.

On Understanding the Present Economic Collapse

Obviously, for fascists, crises are new opportunities, and the corporate-saffron fascist Modi regime is no exception to this rule. Using COVID-19 as a cover, Modi.2 is now engaged in an aggressive wealth transfer to corporate looters on the one hand, and imposition of heavy burdens on the backs of common people on the other. Of course, as can be seen, there has been a constant economic downturn under Modi-1 and Modi-2, and the GDP contraction cannot be only due to the pandemic or the severest lockdown. Ironically, as we pointed out earlier, corporate wealth accumulation is flourishing without any let up even as the economy and all its components are going down—private consumption expenditure contracted-26.7%, exports-20%, construction-50%, investment and services (including trade, hotels, communication, transport and broadcast)-47% respectively and so on in the context of the pandemic. In the ultimate analysis, all these variables could be seen directly and indirectly linked up with gross value addition, production, employment and earnings ofthe people. Therefore, it is important to understand this irreversible declining trend under Modi regime with respect to the logic of corporatisation (“wealth creation” as the govt. officially puts it) vigorously pursued by it.

From its very inception, Modi government’s concentrated effort has been to create an ‘investor-friendly” atmosphere for the corporate speculators. In the guise of unleashing the “animal spirit” of the most corrupt corporate giants, unprecedented tax give-aways and exemptions along with steep reduction in corporate tax rates have become regular feature of all budgets and extra-budgetary measures since 2014. Now at 15 percent, Indian corporate tax rate is the lowest in the world. Corporate companies are exempted from paying Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT), audit exemption for adapting to cashless transactions up to Rs. 5 crore, amendment in Indian Company’s Act for abolishing penal steps against those violating it including non-adherence to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and so on. Even profit-making PSUs are disinvested at throwaway prices to be gobbled up big corporate companies. Leading corporates were allowed to build-up huge non-performing assets (NPAs) with public sector banks that pushed the banking system to crisis. Elimination of all restrictions to the free entry and exit of foreign corporate capital and similar other steps were also initiated in a systematic manner.

But this unparalleled wealth transfer to corporates in the guise of boosting production and employment has, instead of positively contributing anything to employment-oriented production, rather led to horrific proportion of wealth accumulation by both foreign and domestic corporate giants who diverted a major component of this wealth to terribly destructive speculation and money-spinning activities. Even banks, financial institutions and mutual funds have become reluctant to deploy the immense funds at their disposal for productive investment. Still under the so called ‘expert’ advice from neoliberal centres, red carpet has been continuously laid down for attracting foreign capital. And the economic situation which was bad in the pre-Covid situation has become worse, or as is conceived by many, the economy which was already in the ICU is now put on the ventilator. Thus, Modi government’s wholehearted embrace of the logic of corporate capital-i.e., if left free capital today invariably goes to the most profitable avenues- has pushed Indian economy in to a vicious corporatisation-stagnation trap. Its ultimate outcome is the explosive growth of the most corrupt and parasitic corporate class sucking out wealth from the real economy through manifold ways while remaining at the sphere of speculation.

Lenin in his theory of imperialism had already explained much on the character of fictitious or speculative capital –an aspect briefly noted by Marx too in Capital. Today under neoliberal imperialism, speculative capital that develops exclusively in the financial sphere by sucking out value from the real economy without any real link with material production has become the dominant form of capital. And this is the essence of economic contraction and crisis today. India today is in the firm grip of a vicious circle—i.e., lack of investment in employment-oriented productive investment leads to lack of jobs resulting in lack of income and purchasing power for the masses, which in turn leads to lack of demand for goods and services and market contraction that lead to lower or lack of profit from the productive sphere which again pulls back investment in spite of repeated corporate “stimulus packages” by the government. As this vicious circle of contraction/stagnation strengthens, Modi government which rolls itself back from all investments, in tune with neoliberal diktats, is coercively superimposing heavier and heavier burdens on the shoulders of the people. All avenues at the disposal of corporate-saffron fascism are deployed not only against workers and all oppressed including dalits, adivasis, minorities, women and even children, but also on political opponents and dissenters. Obviously, there is no shortcut, and the only option is a political alternative capable of resisting and defeating this horrific situation.

On Immediate Options and Political Alternative

Obviously, from the perspective of Marxist political economy, the alternative to this corporate-fascist offensive is to break the logic of neo-liberalism itself, which calls for an appropriate broad-based, nationwide people’s movement led by revolutionary forces capable of imparting death blows to corporate capital. The immediate requirements or slogans for initiating such a process are there in the Draft of the Common Minimum program for building the Anti-Fascist Front already proposed by CPI (ML) Red Star (see, “ Appeal to All Revolutionary Left Organisations”, Red Star, August 2020). The specific economic demands (items 3-8) mentioned in it, for instance, if urgently implemented, will ensure more purchasing power in people’s hands and will provide a boost to productive economic activities. Though reactionary sections of corporate capital may still keep aloof from investment, it will definitely prompt sustainable agriculture, encourage medium and small industries to actively come forward to boost production and employment, which can break the vicious circle of economic stagnation.

Together with this “demand push” (as against “supply side”) initiatives, demands for reintroducing progressive corporate taxation, wealth and inheritance tax, abolition of regressive indirect taxation including the neoliberal GST that puts disproportionate burden on the people, introduction of redistributive wage and universal social and security and gender-specific policies, ensuring quality public services including water, health and education, total elimination of burden of unpaid work especially by women, guaranteeing elder care as well as child care, ensuring minimum wage sufficient enough for adequate standard of living, regulating ratios between lowest and highest wages and earnings, price support programs for peasants, reasonable restrictions on financial dealings and ban on speculation, capital flight, illicit financial flows, etc., anti-monopoly and anti-corruption policies, strengthening public sector and reversal of disinvestment and denationalisation policies and so on can appropriately be incorporated in to the minimum program. This shall form the stepping stone towards a sustainable political-economic alternative capable of resisting and overcoming the hegemony of corporate capital.

(Party School Paper for 2020)

The post On The Political Approach to the Current State of the Indian Economy – P J James appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

Marxism and the Women’s Question;

Sharmistha Choudhury.

Part-1

Marx and Engels located the origin of women’s oppression in the rise of class society. Engels wrote The Origin of Family, Private Property and State in 1884 – a year after Marx’s death. He used Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks as well as his own notes as the basis of the text. The notebooks contained Marx’s notes on Ancient Society by Lewis Henry Morgan. The Origin is a short book which dwells on Morgan’s findings and puts forward an argument about the nature of “primitive” society, the rise of commodity production and, with it, the emergence of classes and the state. Engels contended that, for the vast majority of human existence, some 200,000 years (or 2 million years if we include other human-like species), people lived in small communities that were relatively egalitarian, did not contain systematic oppression by one group or another, and to whom concepts such as property and wealth would have had no meaning.

Humans had not yet learned how to cultivate plants or rear animals. These hunter-gatherer societies could sustain only a relatively small population which had to move on when resources became scarce. Sharing and communal living were the best way to ensure the survival of the group. There would have been a division of labour between men and women, but this did not mean the domination of one group by the other – each person would make the decisions about the activities they were involved in.

Rather than living in family units of two parents and their children, or an extended patriarchal family centering round the male elder, people lived in communal systems of kinship – children would be the responsibility of everyone.

The old kinship systems were centred on mothers because it was only possible to identify the line of descent through the mother. In such a setup only mothers would know with certainty who their children were and thus build up a network of blood relationships around that knowledge, giving every member of the group a line of descent and a role. The “household” was communal, and the fruits of women’s and men’s labour were shared among families. There was no separation between what we would now know as ‘housework’ and all other work – there was no public/private divide.

The new male-dominated family broke up this intricate, communal system by placing the family as the key economic unit of society, the means through which wealth would be owned and passed on. Rather than the woman being an equally important economic actor in society, she and her children became dependent upon the individual man in the family.

This change took place with development of production relations and growing people’s ability to produce more than they immediately needed to consume. The development of agriculture and the domestication of animals meant goods could be produced for trade – commodities could be exchanged for other things or, eventually, money. More specialised tools became crucial to production and thus very valuable property. Men tended to be the ones responsible for animal rearing and increasingly for agriculture – so they owned the tools and made the economic decisions, gradually increasing their importance in relation to women.

For the first time women’s ability to give birth became a burden. This was partly because settled communities with greater productive capacity could sustain larger populations – in fact needed more labourers to work in the fields – and so women would tend to spend more time pregnant or with young children. But the main source of women’s oppression was the separation of the family from the communal clan. Women’s labour in the home became a private service under conditions of subjugation. This was the “world historic defeat of the female sex” that Engels wrote about:

“The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became a slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. This degraded position of women…has gradually been palliated and glossed over, and sometimes clothed in milder form, in no sense has it been abolished.”

As Marx noted, “The modern family contains in germ not only slavery but also serfdom, since from the beginning it is related to agricultural services. It contains in miniature all the contradictions which later extend throughout society and its state.”

This defeat of mother right was a profound change in human relations caused, not by some latent desire in men to dominate women, but by the needs of commodity production and the way it developed. The monogamous family was “the first form of the family to be based…on economic conditions – on the victory of private property over…communal property”. Along with domestic slavery came slave labour and the beginning of systematic exploitation. Once communal property was undermined this was inevitable – private property for some always means no property for others. Engels writes that this process “opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others.”

Engels built upon Morgan’s theory in The Origin to develop, as the title implies, a theory of how the rise of class society led to both the rise of the state, which represents the interests of the ruling class in the day-to-day class struggle, and the rise of the family, as the means by which the first ruling classes possessed and passed on private wealth. He developed a historical analysis which located the source of women’s oppression. In so doing, he provided a strategy for ending that oppression. It is no exaggeration to say that Engels’ work has defined the terms of debate around ‘the origin’ of women’s oppression for the last 100 years. Most writers on the subject of women’s oppression have set out either to support or reject Marxist theory as laid out by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Until the women’s movement of the late 1960s began to challenge male chauvinism, sexist assumptions provided the basis for broad generalizations. Claude Levi-Strauss, a leading anthropologist within the structuralist school, went so far as to argue that “human society…is primarily a masculine society.” He argued that the “exchange of women” is a “practically universal” feature of human society, in which men obtain women from other men – from fathers, brothers and other male relatives. Moreover, he asserted that “the deep polygamous tendency, which exists among all men, always makes the number of available women seem insufficient.” Therefore, “the most desirable women must form a minority.” Because of this, “the demand for women is an actual fact, or to all intents and purposes, always in a state of disequilibrium and tension.” According to Levi-Strauss, then, women have been the passive victims of men’s sexual aggression since the beginning of human society.

On the other hand, in its purest form, much of feminist theory rests upon more imaginations than facts. There is wideranging supposition like men dominate women because they hold women in contempt for their ability to bear children–or because they are jealous of women’s ability to bear children. Men oppress women because long ago women formed a powerful matriarchy which was overthrown–or because men have always been a tyrannical patriarchy. Gerda Lerner argues in her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, “Feminists, beginning with Simone de Beauvoir… [have explained women’s oppression] as caused by either male biology or male psychology.” She goes on to describe a sampling of feminist theories, all of which border on the outlandish: Thus, Susan Brownmiller sees man’s ability to rape women leading to their propensity to rape women and shows how this has led to male dominance over women and to male supremacy. Elizabeth Fisher ingeniously argued that the domestication of animals…led men to the idea of raping women. She claimed that the brutalization and violence connected with animal domestication led to men’s sexual dominance and institutionalized aggression. More recently, Mary O’Brien built an elaborate explanation of the ‘origin’ of male dominance on men’s psychological need to compensate for their inability to bear children through the construction of institutions of dominance and, like Fisher, dated this “discovery” in the period of the discovery of animal domestication.

In his introduction to the first edition of The Origin, Engels explains materialism as follows: “According to the materialist conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life. This, again, is of a twofold character: on the one side, the production of the means of existence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species.”

Before class society, the idea of a strictly monogamous pairing of males and females with their offspring – the modern, ‘monogamous‘ family – was unknown to human society. Inequality was also unknown. For more than 2 million years, humans lived in groups made up of people who were mostly related by blood, in conditions of relative equality. This understanding is an important part of Marxist theory.

Human evolution has taken place over a very long time–a period of millions of years. The earliest human ancestors (Homo habilus) probably appeared some 2 million or more years ago, while anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) did not appear until 200,000 to 100,000 years ago. The earliest forms of agriculture did not begin until 10,000 years ago, and it is only over the last thousand years that human society has experienced much more rapid technological development.²⁵

For most of human history, it would have been impossible to accumulate wealth – nor was there much motivation to do so. For one thing, there would have been no place to store it. People lived first in nomadic bands – hunter-gatherer societies – sustaining themselves by some combination of gathering berries, roots and other vegetable growth, and hunting or fishing. In most such societies, there would have been no point in working more than the several hours per day it takes to produce what is necessary for subsistence. But even among the first societies to advance to horticulture, it wasn’t really possible to produce much more than what was to be immediately consumed by members of the band.

With the onset of more advanced agricultural production–through the use of the plow and/or advanced methods of irrigation –and the beginnings of settled communities, in some societies human beings were able to extract more than the means of subsistence from the environment. This led to the first accumulation of surplus, or wealth. As Engels stated in The Origin: “Above all, we now meet the first iron plowshare drawn by cattle, which made large-scale agriculture, the cultivation of fields, possible and thus created a practically unrestricted food supply in comparison with previous conditions.” This was a turning point for human society, for it meant that, over time, production for use could be replaced by production for exchange and eventually for profit, leading to the rise of the first class societies some 6,000 years ago.

The crux of Engels’ theory of women’s oppression rests on the relationship between the sexual division of labor and the mode of production, which underwent a fundamental transformation with the onset of class society. In hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies, there was a sexual division of labor–rigidly defined sets of responsibilities for women and men. But both sexes were allowed a high degree of autonomy in performing those tasks. Moreover–and this is an element which has been learned since Engels’ time–women not only provided much of the food for the band in hunter-gatherer societies, but also, in many cases, they provided most of the food. So women in pre-class societies were able to combine motherhood and productive labor–in fact, there was no strict demarcation between the reproductive and productive spheres. Women, in many cases, could carry small children with them while they gathered or planted, or leave the children behind with other adults for a few hours at a time. Likewise, many goods could be produced in the household. Because women were central to production in these pre-class societies, systematic inequality between the sexes was nonexistent, and elder women in particular enjoyed relatively high status.

All of that changed with the development of private property. According to the sexual division of labor, men tended to take charge of heavier agricultural jobs, like plowing, since it was more difficult for pregnant or nursing women and might endanger small children to be carried along. Moreover, since men traditionally took care of big-game hunting (though not exclusively), again, it made sense for them to oversee the domestication of cattle. Engels argued that the domestication of cattle preceded the use of the plow in agriculture, although it is now accepted that these two processes developed at the same time. But this does not diminish the validity of his explanation as to why control over cattle fell to men.

As production shifted away from the household, the role of reproduction changed substantially. The shift toward agricultural production sharply increased the productivity of labor. This, in turn, increased the demand for labor–the greater the number of field workers, the higher the surplus. Thus, unlike hunter-gatherer societies, which sought to limit the number of offspring, agricultural societies sought to maximize women’s reproductive potential, so the family would have more children to help out in the fields. Therefore, at the same time that men were playing an increasingly exclusive role in production, women were required to play a much more central role in reproduction.

The rigid sexual division of labor remained the same, but production shifted away from the household. The family no longer served anything but a reproductive function – as such, it became an economic unit of consumption. In the family, men as owners of the means of production and controlling the major share of production, came to be owners of the produce too, and the woman and children of the family became dependent on the man for their share of the produce. This also enabled the men to hold the woman in relative subjugation. Women became trapped within their individual families, as the reproducers of society–cut off from production. These changes took place first among the property-owning families, the first ruling class. But eventually, the monogamous family became an economic unit of society as a whole.

It is important to understand that these changes did not take place overnight, but over a period of thousands of years. Moreover, greed was not responsible, in the first instance, for the unequal distribution of wealth. Nor was male chauvinism the reason why power fell into the hands of (some) men, while the status of women fell dramatically. There is no evidence (nor any reason to assume) that women were coerced into this role by men. For property-owning families, a larger surplus would have been in the interest of all household members. Engels said of the first male “property owners” of domesticated cattle, “What is certain is that we must not think of him as a property owner in the modern sense of the word.” He owned his cattle in the same sense that he owned the other tools required to obtain food and other necessities. But “the family did not multiply so rapidly as the cattle.” Agricultural output also increased sharply–some of which needed to be stored to feed the community in case of a poor harvest, and some of which could be traded for other goods.

Obviously, every society across the globe did not experience an identical succession of changes in the mode of production. Chris Harman writes, “[T]he exact route from hunter-gathering through horticulture and agriculture to civilization did vary considerably from one society to another.” But, “[t]he divergent forms under which class society emerged must not make us forget the enormous similarities from society to society.” Everywhere there was, in the beginning, primitive communism. Everywhere, once settled agricultural societies were formed, some lineages, lineage elders or “big men” could begin to gain prestige through their role in undertaking the redistribution of the little surplus that existed in the interests of the group as a whole. Everywhere, as the surplus grew, this small section of society came to control a greater share of the social wealth, putting it in a position where it could begin to crystallize out into a social class.

What is indisputable is that the onset of class society brought with it a universal shift toward patrilineage–and, more importantly, the role of men as “heads” of their households. Engels was undoubtedly correct–with more supporting evidence today than when he was writing–that the rise of the modern family brought with it a degradation of women which was unknown in pre-class societies. Engels argued, “The overthrow of mother right was the world historic defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children. . . . In order to make certain of the wife’s fidelity and therefore the paternity of his children, she is delivered over unconditionally into the power of the husband; if he kills her, he is only exercising his rights.”

That the rise of the family was a consequence–and not a cause, as some argue–of the rise of classes is central to Engels’ argument.

Engels argued that the rise of class society brought with it rising inequality – between the rulers and the ruled, and between men and women. At first the surplus was shared with the entire clan – so wealth was not accumulated by any one individual or groups of individuals. But gradually, as settled communities grew in size and became more complex social organizations, and, most importantly, as the surplus grew, the distribution of wealth became unequal – and a small number of men rose above the rest of the population in wealth and power.

Engels didn’t claim that there was a straightforward, one-way relationship between the development of the productive forces and the social relations – there is always a battle. But everything doesn’t influence everything equally: “It is not that the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else [political, philosophical, religious, etc, development] is only passive effect. There is rather interaction on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself.”

Engels’ analysis is straightforward–it may need further development, but its essence is there, plain to see. The sexual division of labor which existed in pre-class societies, when production for use was the dominant mode of production, carried no implication of gender inequality. Women were able to combine their reproductive and productive roles, so both sexes were able to perform productive labor. But with the rise of class society, when production for exchange began to dominate, the sexual division of labor helped to erode equality between the sexes. Production and trade increasingly occurred away from the household, so that the household became a sphere primarily for reproduction. As Coontz and Henderson argue,

The increasing need for redistribution (both within local groups and between them) and the political tasks this creates have consequences for sex roles in that these political roles are often filled by males, even in matrilineal/matrilocal societies. Presumably this flows from the division of labor that associates males with long-distance activities, external affairs, and products requiring group-wide distribution, while females are more occupied with daily productive tasks from which they cannot be absented.

Hence, the beginnings of a “public” versus a “private” sphere, with women increasingly trapped in the household in property-owning families. The rise of the family itself explains women’s subordinate role within it. For the first time in human history, women’s ability to give birth kept them from playing a significant part in production.

For Engels, there was a “historic defeat” because something fundamental changed in the economic base of society. We developed ways to produce a surplus, not by nature’s bounty but by our own labour. If, as Engels argues, oppression arose alongside class society then is he saying that, once we get rid of class society, oppression will automatically disappear?

A fair reading of The Origin with an open mind makes it clear that the treatise contains no such assumption. No oppression can ever automatically disappear. On the contrary, an uncompromising fight against all forms of gender oppression serves to erode the base on which such oppression stands and paves the way for the uprooting of the base. For instance, the struggles against various aspects of women’s oppression like domestic violence and sexual violence sharpen and intensify the struggle against class.  “The first condition for the liberation of women”, argued Engels, “is to bring the whole of the female sex back into public industry”. We have seen over the past few decades how structural changes in capitalism have led to a significant increase in the participation of women in the workforce in many countries worldwide. While this has undoubtedly had a positive effect on the ideas and aspirations of women themselves, as well as influencing social attitudes more broadly, women’s economic, social and personal autonomy are limited by the needs of capitalism. Engels went on to explain that “this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family’s attribute of being the economic unit of society”. The family as an institution and women’s role within it, have clearly undergone significant changes since Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Nevertheless, it retains an economic and ideological relevance for 21st century capitalism which is suffering from a systemic crisis and is riven with contradictions: a system which exploits women as low-cost labour in the workplace while defining their existence by their role in the monogamous family.

Capitalist ideology concerning women’s role and status in society has also evolved since the late 19th century, but the ideas and values of a system based on commodity production for profit and inequalities of wealth and power rest on, combine with, and perpetuate the residue of outmoded ideas of male authority and supremacy which have their roots in earlier class societies. As a consequence, women continue to experience violence, sexual abuse and restrictions on their sexuality and reproductive rights, while facing sexism, discrimination, gender stereotyping and double standards.

For Engels the basis for resolving the problems which women face in society entails “the transfer of the means of production into common ownership”. In this way, “the monogamous family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into social industry. The care and education of children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike…” In a socialist society, personal relations will be freed from the economic and social constraints which continue to limit them even today. The basis for true liberation will be laid. Close to 150 years after they were first written, Engels’s words regarding the ending of women’s oppression maintain all their force.

Part – 2

In the present day the women’s organization needs to be broad-based, encompassing the aspirations of all struggling women and gender rights movements, and attempting to bring together all resistances to patriarchy under one umbrella. However, since patriarchy today is nurtured and sustained by imperialism, and in every challenge to patriarchy the world order of imperialism is also challenged to some extent or the other, the general nature of the women’s organization will be anti-imperialist.

In our country, with the fascistic onslaught intensifying, there is need for the women’s organization to be particularly strong in order to combat state-sponsored patriarchal challenges. For that the women’s organization needs to break out of the stereotypical mould of being an appendage to a Party and develop independent organizing and agitating abilities. In our country it is the custom of political parties, ranging from right, centre to left, to have women’s wings as women’s organizations. The CPIM has one, the Congress has another and so does the BJP. Even struggling left organizations like the Liberation and others have their women’s wings which go by the name of women’s organizations. However, just as it is uncommon for these ‘women’s organisations’ to ever go against any position adopted by the Party they are associated with, so also it is rare for them to take up independent positions and struggles.

The primary objective of a women’s organization is women’s liberation, and this can be neither achieved nor struggled for by women who aren’t independent themselves. But it is most often seen that far from being an independent organization with distinctive positions on all questions pertaining to the unceasing attacks on women, the tendency is to tail the Party. Thus the independent assertion of women through their own organization remains a far cry.

The relationship between the Communist Party and women’s organization should necessarily be dialectical, independent of each other and yet each hammering away at class-divided society with a view to replace it with a new order. As struggling trade unions set their own agendas of struggle, but the Party remains a bulwark of support all throughout and helps the trade union to view the long-term goals without positing itself as a Grand Patriarch in relationship to the union, so also the women’s organization should at all times set its own agenda of propaganda and struggle, aided by the Party but never dictated by it or constrained by it.

The Communist Party has a great role to play in the educating and organizing of women. The exclusion of women from all important spaces has become a habit that must be consciously fought. Very often it is convenient not to have a woman or two in a meeting or gathering of a couple of dozen men, especially because including women would necessitate making separate logistical arrangements for them. But we are so used to viewing all space as ‘male space’ that the very idea of organizing a space for women appears downright troublesome. Very often women’s voices are ignored simply because the total unfamiliarity with the female voice makes it difficult for the Party to understand what is being tried to be conveyed. This is also obvious from the total invisibilisation of women not just in formal academia but also the history of the communist movement, both in India as well as abroad. History text books in Indian schools teach a wide range of modern, international historical events ranging from the French Revolution to the Paris Commune and the American War of Independence, the Emancipation of Slaves in the US, Emancipation of Serfs in Russia to the Boer War, and of course the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution and the two World Wars and chunks of the post World War scenario, the United Nations, Israel-Palestine, Cold War, et al. However, one chapter of history that is summarily and deliberately glossed over in all history books – left, right and centre – without exception, is the history of the International Women’s Suffrage Movement and its somewhat less-than-triumphant victory. Although this movement, dealing as it did with the question of citizenship rights for half the population of the globe, had a prolonged, fierce and chequered history, pitting citizens against citizens even as women and men united against governments on a fairest possible demand, and had an international character, it is one movement about which most of us know very little. Neither academic textbooks, nor progressive history books which tell us about the uninterrupted fight of the people of the world for democracy and rights, usually have chapters dedicated to the International Women’s Suffrage Movement, and while Abraham Lincoln remains a greatly famous name not merely for his leadership role in the Civil War but more so as the champion of the emancipation of the African Americans from slavery, the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement are forgotten names relegated to the pages of something that goes by the dubious distinction of ‘feminist literature’. Now take a look at the history of the International Communist Movement. Except for Rosa Luxembourg and Clara Zetkin and a handful others, the women leaders are inexplicably missing. Not that they weren’t there. Not that the ICM was largely a male-only movement. But tomes on the ICM will give you a different idea.

This invisibilisation of women has acquired such a degree of normalcy that it isn’t generally considered a part of what is broadly termed as oppression of women. This picture of violent inequality – where women are intruding ‘others’ in a world of men, for men and by men – however, remains a constant, be it in history or the living present. So the visibilisation of women’s struggles and their role in history remains an important duty of the Communist Party.

The most important challenges before the women’s movement today are the tendency to shy away from forming broad-based women’s organizations and the inclination to limit the organization by the position of the Party. AIRWO is an exception to this general rule. It is not an appendage of CPI(ML) Red Star, or any other Party for that matter. It calls itself revolutionary because it believes in the revolutionary reorganization of society for the achievement of the complete emancipation of women. But that is not to say that it is an organization for only women revolutionaries. It is an organization which aims at bringing together the ranks of women, all struggles of, by and for women, and all the liberatory aspirations of women into one united, yet diverse, platform committed to the uprooting of patriarchy.

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Papers Presented for Central Party School in 2019.

Approach towards Fascism in the Global and Indian Context

P J James

Fascism as a topic is conceptualized and debated today with respect to different ideological persuasions ranging from liberal bourgeois and reformist to Marxist positions. A striking characteristic ofthe fascist parties, movements and regimes today is their adaptation to contemporary conditions and unlike that of the inter-war European fascism, many of them are coexistingin varying degrees with outward manifestations of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, though in essence all of them stand for an outright negation of it. A de-facto fascist dictatorship can exist even with the façade of elections if it is possible to hold entire mechanisms of state power under its control so that no other party or coalition of parties except the fascist party comes to power. Common manifestations of fascism (also called ‘neo-fascism’ today to differentiate it from‘classical fascism’ that emerged in Europe of the inter-war period) such as terrorism, ethnic and racial cleansing, extermination and oppression of minorities, immigrants, refugees, women and other oppressed, climate catastrophe, super-exploitation and oppression of workers, elimination of hard-earned democratic rights, militarisation and above all unleashing the power of corporate capital on all aspects of socio-economic life are visible at a global level ranging from the Americas and Europe to Asia. However, irrespective of the manifestations of fascism, Marxism invariably situates it in the whole trajectory of transformation of imperialism and finance capital. At the same time, from a Marxist perspective, no social phenomenon can be a text-book copy from an erstwhile period, nor can beanalysed from a static perspective. Therefore, fascist regimes’organic link with the logic of capital accumulationtoday may assume different characteristics according to varying historical, national, political, economic and cultural context.

Origin and Development of Fascism

From the very beginning of the outbreak of fascism in Europe, when liberal-bourgeois and reformist circles interpreted the phenomenon as ‘authoritarian capitalism’,it was Marxism that based on a comprehensive analysis of monopoly capitalism approached fascism as rooted in the very foundations of finance capital with its economic, political, and cultural manifestations. Accordingly, fascism has beenthe outcome of the extreme intensification of the internal contradictions of finance capital or imperialism. Fascism outbreaks when these contradictions sharpen and lead to a severe internal crisis which cannot be resolved through normal methods of surplus value extraction from both internal and external sources. For instance, unlike the other European powers who had their colonial empires andthe US which could enforce its imperialist diktats over the entire Americas and the Pacific even “withoutcolonies”, both Germany and Italy had restrictions to pursue an imperialist policy abroad. On the other hand, these two countries though rivals in World War I, and having lost their colonies and henceweakened during the war, went through unprecedented domestic economic crises resulting in militant working class struggles leading to social disruption, especially in the context of the ideological-political challenges raised against the capitalist-imperialist system by Socialism in Soviet Union. However, in the absence of a communist leadershipin these countries, as that led by Lenin in Russia capable of overcoming the crisis through a revolution, the situation was favourable for an interpenetration between monopoly finance capital and bourgeois political leadership giving rise to fascism.

Thus the social anarchy arising from all round economic crises and political turmoil provides a fertile breeding ground for fascism. Such a situation is an opportune moment for fascists to have their firm foothold by attractingthe depoliticised petty-bourgeois sections through rhetorical and demagogic proposals, though they are mutually contradictoryand ill-digested, and blaming the racial, religious, regional and national minorities and other marginalised for all the misfortunes of the society. Once fascism firmlyestablishes, as happened in Italy and Germany, along with the petty bourgeoisie, other sections of the population such as unorganized workers, unemployed youth, criminal and lumpen elements are also attracted to fascists. Gradually fascism makes further headway through elections by appeals to the disgruntled larger sections of the dissatisfied people. Both Mussolini and Hitler in their programs even included better wages and social security for workers, protection to petty traders, increased state-sector investment, more taxes on the rich and similar other demands pampering to the sentiments of common people. Together with this, blatantly false and malicious propaganda were systematically used to build up hatred among the common people against targeted sections of the society. For instance, in the fascist definition of ‘NewGermany’, Jews, communists and trade unions were identified as enemies of the nation. After assuming power, while constitutional and parliamentary institutions and democratic values were demolished from above, armedfascist goons and storm troopers (black shirts, brown shirts, etc.) integrated with state’s repressive apparatusand effectively propped up and funded by monopolies are let loose on the people from below.

From the very beginning Marxists tried to have an in-depth understanding on the fascist transformation of the bourgeois state. In fact, Lenin had mentioned on Mussolini fascism though he had no direct knowledge of the working of the fascist party at that time. And, he had interpreted the Russian ‘Black Hundreds’ as a proto-type of fascism which in the hands of police chiefs under Tsardom was used as a para-military weapon against the re­volutionary movement.However, it was only after the coming to power of Mussolini and Hitlerthat Comintern (Communist International)came to have a clear-cut understanding of fascism. Thus, it was based on an objective evaluation of the transformation of the bourgeois state into a dictatorial, terrorist and annexationist regime during the twenties and thirties that the Report drafted by Dimitrov and adopted by the 7th Congress of Comintern (1935) and endorsed by its 13th Extended Executive Meeting defined fascism thus: “Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialist elements of the finance capital… Fascism is the government of finance capital itself. It is an organized massacre of the working class and the revolutionary slice of peasantry and intelligentsia. Fascism in its foreign policy is the most brutal kind of chauvinism, which cultivates zoological hatred against otherpeoples.” Obviously, this definition of fascism is the most comprehensive one that unfolds the close integration of both the economic foundation and political superstructure of fascism with the domestic and overseas interests of finance capital. In those countries where the fascists took over power, the communists and trade unions were physically eliminated while bourgeois opposition was in total disarray. And, as elucidated in the above definition which provided a concrete understanding of fascism at that historical context when domestic resistance against fascism became virtually impossible, it was Comintern that under its initiative forged an anti-fascist front including a broad alliance with other bourgeois regimes to resist and defeat the fascist challenge.

Postwar Situation

The defeat of fascist powers Germany and Italy in World War II followed by the surging national liberation movements and advancement of socialism increased the prestige of communist movement and inspired world people in general. These were threatening factors for the perpetuation of the colonial system of imperialism. This prompted world imperialism led by USA, the supreme arbiter in the postwar order to bring about necessary changes regarding the form of finance capital’s continued expansion at a global level. Thus to hoodwink world people, the camouflage of decolonisation together with welfare state based on Keynesian state intervention was initiated even while laying down the foundations for a neocolonisation process for more intensified penetration of finance capital into erstwhile colonies. However, asgenerally acknowledged, the International Communist Movement(ICM) on account of ideological-political factors, failed to properly grasp the content and gravity of this epoch-making transition from colonialism to neocolonialism. The Khrushchevite revisionism that emerged in the mid-fifties even interpreted neocolonialism as a weakening of both imperialism and hegemony of finance capital. This was at a time when the US ascendancy as the postwar imperialist leader had been filled with loot, plunder, horror, genocide and even ‘holocausts’on defenceless people the world over.

Neocolonialism does not at all imply that it is less militaristic than old colonialism. As an inalienable component of Cold War initiated against Soviet Union and socialist bloc, the US also went on installing ‘fascist regimes’backed by military coups in many countries from Latin America, its backyard to Asia. As part of the Cold War offensive, several anti-communist, fascistic, terrorist and counterrevolutionary organisations were also planted within seemingly independent bourgeois regimes in many parts of the globe. Such terrorist outfits and right-wing forces often acted as effective tools in the hands of US imperialism to direct against the emerging national liberation and revolutionary movements in neocolonially dependent countries. In a number of countries from Latin America to Asia including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Iran, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines and so on, US succeeded in installing fascistic regimes through mi­litary coups. McCarthyism characterised by heightened anti-communism and political repression in the US that flourished in the 1940s and 1950s provided the required ideological basis for all these fascistic-counterrevolutionary US overseas moves often keeping US-trained fascist cadres at “civilian deep cover” in neocolonies and dependent countries ensuring the neocolonial rules of the game of as per the diktats of finance capital.

By the turn of the 1970s, the post-warimperialist ‘boom’ came to a close and on account of the irresolvable contradictions inherent in capitalist-imperialist system, persistent stagflation emerged as a relatively new, more prolonged and more complex phenomenon compared to the imperialist crisis of the 1920s and 1930s that gave rise to fascism. However, unlike the situation then, by the seventies the ideological-political setbacks of the ICM became so glaring that yielded the political condition for imperialism to abandon ‘welfare state’ altogether and resort to a change in the accumulation process through neoliberalism. In essence, it implies a reversal of the downturn in profit rate from stagnating productive sphere by developing new avenues of plunder from the ballooning financial sphere utilizing latest advancement in information and communication technologies. Obviously, the parasitism, decay and degeneration associated with this neoliberal accumulation has been complex, multi-dimensional and several-fold more pronounced than that exposed by Lenin a century back and the political reaction emanating from it shall therefore is bound to be horrific. On the eve of the altogether collapse of Soviet blocand emergence of post-Cold War neoliberal situation, US imperialism so cunningly and assiduously brought up the so called “Islamic terror” as its new enemy and a critical counterweight in its militarisation strategyleading to a more favourable condition for a bouncing back of fascism with intensified vigour. However, instead of openmilitary coups, required groundwork has already been underway byneoliberal centres and deep-seated reactionary forces that made it possible for fascist parties with their far-right socio-economic and political agenda to ascend to power through ballots even maintaining formal constitutional edifice or apparent features of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. As such, today’s fascism or neo-fascism cannot or need not be mere text copies or stereotyped versions of erstwhile classical fascism of the 1930s.

Fascism under Neoliberalism

From the Marxist-Leninist perspective, the neoliberal wave of fascism or contemporary fascism can be analysed only with respect to what is called globalisation or internationalisation of capital, i.e., limitless and uncontrollable cross-border movement of finance capital. On the one hand, by restructuring the erstwhile centralised and nation-centred basis of production and by super-imposing a new international division labour, internationalisation of capital has enabled imperialism tobring about an alteration in the process of surplus value extractionand unleash a world-wide super-exploitation of working class thereby temporarily overcoming the crisis associated with capital accumulation. On the other hand, while capital has increasingly become global and transnational, by utilising the heterogeneity among proletariat of different countries and through the effective use of postmodern identity politics, international finance capital also succeeded in creating division among anti-globalisation forces by disorganising and fragmenting resistance to capital. Together with this, being freed from all erstwhile controls, finance capital moved into the sphere of speculation at a maddening pace and for the first time in the history of capitalism the global speculative bubble started thriving on the stagnating productive economy. Consequently, the decadent and reactionary essence of finance capital pinpointed by Lenin almost century ago has become terribly destructive under neoliberalism. To be precise, unlike the period of ‘classical fascism’ which was specific to capitalist-imperialist countries, fascism under neoliberalism has become transnational on account of internationalisation of capital.

The ideological-political weakness of the International Left and on the part of organisations and movements leading the working class and the oppressed prevented them from taking up the required organisational tasks. For instance, when imperialismstarted unleashing the tyranny of finance capital on workers and oppressed beginning with Thatcherism and Reaganomics by resorting to a dismantling of the welfare state and replaced public sector and social democratic ideas of distribution with privatisation/corporatisation together with propping upof voluntary and NGO spending as an alternative to public spending,the Left failed to build up effective resistance against them due to lack of a coherent and clear grasping of neoliberalism. The emergence of postmodernism and post-Marxism as neoliberal ideologies espoused by ultra-reactionary imperialist think-tanks since the eighties and manifested in such prognoses as ‘identity politics’, ‘multiculturalism’ (that emphasises difference rather than commonality), etc. that negated both the importance of working class resistance against capital and united political struggles by the oppressed has led to an effective depoliticizing mission preparing the groundwork for the emergence of several neo-fascist trends. In the guise of fighting the ‘evils of capitalism’, postmodernism went on glorifying and romanticizing the orient, the past and all obscurantist and pre-modern identities and ‘subaltern cultures’. This brought forwardvarious religious fundamentalist, revivalist, chauvinistic, xenophobic, and autarkic reactionary ideologiesto the centre-stage of history to divert world people’s attention away from the global operations of corporate finance capital. Quite revealingly, the Left failed to put forward what is called a “counter narrative” or an alternative to this neoliberal offensive from a progressive-democratic perspective.

This all round depoliticising provided a fertile ground for the rapid emergence of many neo-fascist forces all over the world. Neo-fascists everywhere are quick to take advantage of the mass psychology of social and economic insecurity due to the loss of livelihood, employment, habitat and environment arising from corporate plunder as well as people’s loss of faith in mainstream traditional parties includingsocial democrats who have no alternative to neoliberal policies. Everywhere, fascists use more or less the same campaigns with populist, romantic, idealist and moral nuances often filled with hatred towards the ‘other’ based on hypotheses such as ‘clash of civilisations’ though with variations according to concrete local, national, historical and cultural contexts. Often, according to the specificities of each country, fascists could be seen conspicuously pursuingan exclusivist line allying with the ‘homogeneous’ part (often representing the majoritarian culture) of the population effectively pitting against the ‘heterogeneous’ sections generally composed of religious, ethnic/racial and linguistic minorities, migrants, refugees, dalits, tribals and other marginalized and oppressed sections. And a striking feature of all the far-right neo-fascist parties and forces is their apparently anti-establishmentarian and anti-globalisation (often right-wing populist) stance often sprinkled with seeminglyanti-ruling classrhetoric directed against the privileges of the superrich and the elite.Trends like ‘new history writing’ being sponsored by European neo-fascists today is also of particular relevance here. An example is the McCarthy-styleargumentation thatthe anti-fascist alliance of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt was the wrong one; rather what required was Stalin’s defeat led by the Hitler-Chamberlain-Hoover coalition. In the latter case, Europe would not have to bear the burden of the ‘welfare state’ that led to the stagflation of the 1970s, it is argued. From this perspective, the neo-fascists in European parliament recently have even moved a Resolution equating communism with “fascism” with the aim of whitewashing the latter. In India, for instance, a ‘new history-writing’ is in the offing camouflaging all the misdeeds and ‘anti-national’ history associated with RSS. No doubt, whatever be their populist pretensions, once in power, the neo-fascists show no qualm for betraying those masses who enabled them to rise to power thereby wholeheartedly serving the interests of international finance capital and ruling classes — a common feature of fascists of all hues, both old and new.

Fascist Transformation in India

The advent of fascism in India needs to be analysed in the broader global context briefly analysed above. BJP that rules India today is just a political outfit of RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) that came in to being in mid-1920s more or less at the same time when fascism appeared in Europe, and as per records, fanatical adulation or admiration of both Hitler and Mussolini was endemic to RSS leadership from the very beginning.For instance, Moonje, the mentor and political guru of Hedgewar, the founder of RSS, hadvisited the Italian fascist dictator Mussolini in 1931 and inspired by the Fascist Academy of Physical Education that trained paramilitary lumpen goons like Black Shirts, started the Bhonsala Military School in Nasik in 1937 for imparting paramilitary training to RSS cadres and Hindutva goons under the management of Central Hindu Military Education Society. In fact, Bhonsala School’s links with terroristic actions by Hindutva extremist groups including 2008 Malegaon blasts had beenknown to Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad led by Hemant Karkare. Now after the ascendance of Modi.2, the RSS initiative to start Army Schools on the model of Indian Military Schools to train children to become officers in Indian armed forces with effect from April, 2020 directed towards open saffronisation of the entire Indian military apparatus should be seen aspart of the qualitatively new trends linked with RSS directly taking India’s reins in its own hands.

Meanwhile, as a fascist organisation espousing Hitler’s Aryan racial puritanism and white supremacy together with genocidal hatred towards Muslims in a predominantly brown-skinned India and with extreme servility to British imperialism, from the very beginning, the RSS totally distanced itself from the independence movement, and hence remained outside the Indian political mainstream for a long period. As a brahmanical saffron supremacistorganisation upholding Hindutva (which is basically different from Hindu) as codified by Savarkar and later clarified by Golwalkar, the RSS vehemently opposed the adoption of Indian Constitution and suggested ‘Manu Smriti’ (the sacred book of chaturvarnya or varna system) in its place on the ground that a Republican Constitution would give equality to all castes. Being banned three times as a terrorist organisation, it was its ‘laudable action’ during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency that enabled its entry into the mainstream politics. Since then, leading the ‘Sangh Parivar’ composed of hundreds of secret and open, militant terrorist outfits and widening and deepening itselfacross space and time and with its far or ultra-right economic philosophy and unwavering allegiance to US imperialism that leads the imperialist camp, today RSS has grown into the biggest fascist organisation in the world with innumerable overseas saffron extensions and affiliates backed by immense corporate funding.

Revealingly, RSS’ sudden shoot-up from relative obscurity to the political lime-light in mid-1970s is coterminous with imperialism’s transition to neoliberalism in the context of its first biggest postwar crisis. And, as a manifestation of the mounting neo-colonial plunder and consequent increasing integration of India with imperialist capital, by 1970s, India was also in the grip of an unprecedented political-economic instability aggravating all the contradictions in the country and Indira Gandhi’s proclamation of Emergency in 1975 was comprador Indian state’s response to this crisis. In view of Indira Gandhi’s alliance with Soviet Union at that time, it was also convenient for the pro-American RSS to carry on its anti-Emergency campaign with US backing. Obviously, lifting of Emergency and Indira Gandhi’s return to power in 1980 was immediately followed by India’s abject surrender to US diktats through a huge Extended Fund Facility loan from IMF with stringent conditionalities. It was during this extremely crisis-ridden period of India that RSS designed its well-thought-out strategy ofeventually transforming Indiaas a Hindutva fasciststateby floating BJP as its political party. In the ensuing period, it was effectively taking advantage of the facilitating role of the soft-Hindutva Congress that RSS transformed BJP, its electoral machine into India’s biggest ruling class party within a relatively short span of time.

And, withthe entire trajectory of this long drawn-out process marked by such milestones as the beginning of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, Vajpayee-led government in the late 1990s, Gujarat Pogrom in 2002, the ascendancy Modi regime in 2014 followed by its reiteration as Modi.2 in 2019, the fascistisationhas reached a qualitatively new stage in India.With Modi.2, in continuation of the saffronisation of all the constitutional, administrative and institutional structures required for a fascist transformation already underway, RSS is now moving towards its ultimate goal of establishing Hindu Rashtra, which is an intolerant theocratic state unequivocally defined by M S Golwalkar in 1939 in his magnum opus, ‘We, Our Nationhood Defined’. For instance, under its corporate-saffron raj of Modi.2 is blatantly unveiling itself as a typical fascist state acquiring all the requisite features of a majoritarian Hindu Rashtra firmly adhering to the process of forcible integration of Kashmir into Indian Union, superimposition of Hindu code under the euphemism of ‘uniform civil code’, construction of Ram Temple at the site of Babri Masjid and even making Muslims as second class citizens by amending the Citizenship Act itself.All other specificities of corporate saffron fascism such as anti-Muslimness, pan-Indian homogenizing drive subjugating the oppressed caste organisations aimed at integrating them intoHindutva, rejection of all values of modernity such as rational-scientific thinking, fostering the cult of tradition and obscurantism, treating dissent and disagreement as treason, worship of heroism and elitism, anti-communism and an uncompromising integration with corporate finance capital are to be analysed in the proper perspective.

And, in thiswhole course of transformation that propelled RSS to wielding Indian state power, a neoliberal process spanning almost a quarter century, the soft-Hindutva Congress had been faithfully playing second fiddle to the former without any let up. After her return to power in 1980,Indira Gandhi totally reversed her earlier approach towards Sangh Parivar. After her assassination, her son Rajiv Gandhi who ascended to power provided facilities to Hindutva forces for performing shilanyas at the disputed site where Babri Masjid was located. In the series of highly venomous and violent saffron offensives and communal riots that ensued since 1984 such as the ‘Liberation of Ayodhya’ campaign by Dharam Sansad, formation of Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini as aggressive Hindutva militant organisations respectively for young men and women, etc., the Congress while remaining a mute spectator, also tried to cash in Hindu sentiments for electoral gains. It extended all facilities to VHP to collect Ram Shilas for the foundation of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya and even allowed it to lay foundation stone of Ram Mandir in 1989. The Congress government pursued the same soft Hindutva approach when the VHP organised a number of international conferences since mid-1980s for rallying Hindutva expatriates around the idea of saffron consolidation. In the background of the Mandal agitations, though Advani’s Rathyatra was stopped in Bihar, with the connivance of the Congress regime, including communal riots in many parts of India, immense damage had already been done as was manifested in BJP winning Assembly elections in Gujarat, Rajasthan, MP, Bihar and UP. Quite logically, the Rao-Manmohan government that demolished the Nehruvian model and embraced full-fledged neoliberalism in 1991 also extended security cover for the demolition of Babri Masjid by Hindutva goons in the next year. By that time RSS had succeeded in converting Ram into a political symbol for capturing state power. And the ten-year UPA regime in its relentless pursuit of soft-Hindutva did nothing to bring the perpetrators of Gujarat Pogrom before law even as US denied visa to Modi for ten years due to this. To be precise, while the soft Hindutva pursued by the Congress totally devastated it, the RSS-led BJP with its hard Hindutva became the ultimate victor.

This understanding on Indian fascism is also fully in accord with the specific historical factors and concrete political conditions of the country. It is a fundamental Marxist approach that any social phenomenon when develops further and transforms in a different social formation will inevitably adapt itself to the particularities and specificities of that context. Of course, fascism’s inseparable integration with the hegemony of corporate finance capital is its universal character. However, ascribing a universal pattern or form to the emergence of fascism for all situations is erroneous, and it will impede the building up of anti-fascist struggles too. For instance, in his concluding speech at the 7^th Comintern Congress that defined fascism with its firm foundations in finance capital, its General Secretary Dimitrov had also underlined different course of development of fascism in colonial and semi-colonial countries,and in these countries, according to him, “there can be no question of the kind of fascism that we are accustomed to see in Germany, Italy and other capitalist countries”, and for such countries he suggested an analysis of their specific economic, political and historical conditions based on which fascism may assume different forms. As such, communists can formulate the methods of resisting and defeating fascism in India only through an evaluation of the country-specific or national peculiarities that provide the fertile basis for the development of Hindutva fascism integrating itself with corporatefinance capital today.

Viewed in this perspective, the specific feature of Indian fascism as embodied in the ideology of RSS is aggressive ‘Hindu nationalism’ or Hindutva aimed at the establishment of a Hindu theocratic state or Hindu Rashtra. But as is obvious, the content of this nationalism is at variance with classical fascism that waged aggressive wars for the protection of bourgeois national capitalist interests. In Afro-Asian-Latin American countries which have a long period of colonial and neo-colonial oppression, nationalism or patriotism must invariably be linked up with anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles and anti-imperialism is, therefore, an indispensable component of nationalism in these countries. On the other hand, neither in the colonial period nor in the postwar neo-colonial period, RSS has ever resorted to any genuine initiative for an independent national capitalist development. Rather, its entire history from the very inception has been that of betrayal of genuine nationalism. Even today its far-right economic orientation or affinity to neoliberal-corporatization is integrally linked up with its allegiance to US imperialism, leader of the neo-colonial global order. That is, its ‘cultural nationalism’ is only a camouflage for serving international finance capital. In this context, it would be in order, if we make a distinction between jingoistic and pseudo nationalism of RSS from that of the progressive and democratic national sentiment of the people which is directed against imperialism. While the former is chauvinistic, jingoistic, exclusivist, divisive and reactionary that inevitably leads to fascism, in the present historical context, the latter is anti-imperialist and hence progressive, secular, democraticand inclusive consisting of the struggling unity of workers, peasants, women, dalits, adivasis, minorities and all oppressed.

A striking feature of Indian fascism that makes it all the more venomous is its shamelessideological orientation towards Brahmanical Hindutva supremacy. According to this ideology, vast majority of Indian people composed of the lower and oppressed castes are subhuman who deserve no civic or democratic rights. As a result, under Modi.2, on the one hand, most heinous atrocities on dalits and other oppressed castes are strengthening without any let up. Such atrocities manifested in the form of lynching, mass rape and ‘honour killings’ have even permeated to institutions of higher learning and research in the form ‘institutional murders’.On the other, RSS is most opportunistically and cunningly utilising identity politics to carve out caste-based vote banks along with unleashing a process of forcible integration of the oppressed castes in to the Hindutva fold.That is, pursuing an aggressive policy of saffronisation and divide and rule, the manuvadi RSS has also succeeded in deconstructing the various caste-based parties so as to submerge them in to the majoritarian saffron agenda. Therefore, in the Indian context, along with sustained struggles against the foundations of corporate capital, building up effective resistance against the Brahmanical caste system through appropriate ideological and practical interventions such as caste annihilation movementis a major task of the anti-fascist movement that invariably encompasses economic, social and cultural dimensions.

In the 1930s when two imperialist regimes, Italy and Germany had embraced fascism, the Comintern and Soviet Union had been there giving ideological-political leadership to the anti-fascist struggle. On the other hand, today in Europe alone ten neo-fascist parties are in power, and backed by financial oligarchs they have also initiated steps for a pan-European fascist alliance against workers, migrants and refugees. Meanwhile, unlike the relatively nation-centred capital of the pre-war period when European fascism emerged, today finance capital has become internationalised. Consequently, in accordance with the complex dimensions of capital accumulation and the concomitant decay, parasitism and reaction associated with internationalisation of finance capital, 21^st century fascism shall inevitably be several-fold oppressive and militaristic.On the other hand, on account of its ideological-political weakness, the communist movement todayis not capable enough to take up the task of objectively evaluating and effectively challenging this fascist threat. The situation in India is also the same, though the specificities of Indian corporate-saffron fascism are different. Of particular importance here is the need ofclarity on the constituents of an anti-fascist front or platform.

In this context, Dimitrov’s observations in his address to the 7^th Congress of the Comintern is very relevant even today. For instance, he had been very sceptical of the involvement of the imperialist bourgeoisie as fascism was inherently connected with the bourgeois attempt to shore up plunder by changing the state-form of class domination. Another weakness pinpointed by him was the class collaborationist attitude of the social democrats. Later, Stalinhimself endorsed this position of Dimitrov by pinpointing the weakness arising from the alliance with bourgeois regimes in the anti-fascist front of the 1930s. According to Stalin, at that time itself, the unique nature of accumulation under the hegemony of finance capital had made it difficult for the imperialists to adhere to a regime of bourgeois democracy. He also characterised the reactionary character ofsocial democracy as ‘moderate wing of fascism’ having affinity to the policies of financial oligarchs. In fact, Stalin’s criticism was vindicated later when, in spite of the horrors of Hitler fascism, US imperialism under the camouflage of decolonisation and welfare state went on installing terrorist-fascistmilitaryregimes across many countries in accordance with the needs of neo-colonial expansion of finance capital in the immediate postwar period, an aspect already referred.

Today, the fascist offensive is taking place in the neoliberal context whencorporate capital as represented by both imperialist and comprador bourgeoisiealong with social democrats who are apologists of neoliberal policies has degenerated furthertogether with the concomitant ideological-cultural challenges at the superstructure. In this context, the communists have to pay much attention in differentiating the sustainable friends of the anti-fascist front from its foes and win over the former (including progressive sections of social democrats) to the side of the struggle against neoliberal fascism. The Indiansituation is such that along with the Congress which is in total disarray,other ruling class parties together with the social democratic leadership has already gone over to the side of neoliberal-corporatisation that forms the foundations of fascism today, even as the people are coming out against ruling regime in diverse forms. In this context, an anti-fascist offensive is to be initiated based on studying lessons from past experiences and concrete evaluation of the present with particular attention to the objective realities of India. For instance, though religion in itself is not fascistic, under neoliberalism majoritarian religion everywhere is amenable to be used by finance capital as an ideological basis of fascism (e.g. Evangelism in the Americas, Political Islam in West Asia, Hindutva in India, Buddhism in South-east Asia).As such, majoritarian fascist oppression on religious minorities is to be identified as an objective fact today. Hence, while isolating extremist groups and fundamentalist elements of all religions, it is the task of the anti-fascist democratic forces to declare solidarity with the oppressed religious minorities, especially the Muslims who are particularly targeted in the concrete Indian context.

Thus, in continuation of the Political Resolution as adopted in the 11^th Congress of our Party and taking into account the qualitative changes associated with Modi.2, the Central Committee (CC) has stressed the central role of the revolutionary unity of struggling left forces in the fight against corporate-saffron fascism. The essential basis of such an initiative is the building up of mass movements and class struggle capable of imparting effective resistance against fascism in all its manifestations. To initiate this process, the CC has called for an open dialogue among the struggling left forces to explore the possibilities of developing mass political platformsbased on common minimum program at the national and state levels encompassing both parliamentary and non-parliamentary struggles according to concrete conditions. This initiative on the part of the Left with a people’s alternative shall form the core and the prelude for abroad anti-fascist united platform at the all India level. Such an effort uniting with all progressive-democratic forces on the one hand, shall effectively explore the possibility of tactical issue-based alliances with other sections based on people’s genuine needs and requirements according to the concrete conditions on the other. This approach, while ensuring our independent fighting space, is indispensable for winning over more and more forces with an anti-fascist orientation andfor utilising contradictions within the ruling classes and for isolating the most reactionary elements of who are allying with corporate-saffron fascism.This shallenable us to pursue for ourlong-term goal of achieving genuine democracy for all the people.

Select References:-

1. Georgi Dimitrov, Selected Works (www. Marxists.org)

2. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder

3. James VGregor, Interpretations of Fascism, Transactions Publishers, New Jersey, 1997

4. John Bellamy Foster, Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Century (www. monthlyreview.org)

5. Thomas Klikauer & Kathleen Webb Tunney “Rise of Saffron Power: Reflections on Indian Politics , Counter Currents, May 4, 2019    

6. Red Dawn (MLKP), Issue 18-Winter 2018/19

7. P J James, Imperialism in the Neocolonial Phase, Second Edition, 2015

8. “ “ , “imperialism Today”, Red Star, November, 2018, p 8-15

The post Approach towards Fascism in the Global and Indian Context – P J James appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

Caste System, Ambedkarite Movement and the Task of the Communists

Sankar

The caste system in India is a unique system which was developed almost three thousand years back as per the Rig Vedic evidences. However, the system became rigid and institutional at the time of Manu who composed Manusmriti. Ascribing an exact date of composing the Manusmriti is difficult but according to different sources and modern researches it may be safe to assume that the period of Manusmriti is between 200 BCE to 200 CE. The socio-economic fabric of our country reveals that how much powerful an ancient system, like caste division can be in even present times that the practical politics of a revolutionary party cannot ignore its dynamics. However, a systematic study of this system from Marxist point of view was never done with due importance. Therefore, it has become a herculean task today to enter into a comprehensive study of the system. This paper, therefore, did not try to do that. Instead, the paper concentrated on the key issues related to the subject in order to understand the very nature of our social struggles which may facilitate to develop the correct strategy and tactics of our revolution. In this paper it may be fruitless to search answers. On the contrary, the paper has strove to formulate the questions. A collective effort based on the combination of theory and practice may find the answers of those.

Origination of Varna and Caste Division

Manusmriti is the most ill famous source of the ugly form of caste division against which all the democratic forces vow to fight. Manu divided the society into four varnas, i.e., Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra <Chaturvarna system> where Brahmin is in the top of social hierarchical ladder and followed by other three varnas respectively. Shudra is the lowest varna and deprived from all the rights and whose duty is only to serve other three varnas. Some of the dicta of Manu are as follow:

1. In whom among the three <higher> castes the most and the best of <those> five may be he is here worthy of respect; a Shudra <is not worthy of respect on the ground of his wealth or knowledge no matter how high they are>……
2. A Kshatriya who reviles a Brahmin ought to be fined one hundred <Panas>; a Vaishya one hundred and fifty or two hundred, but a Shudra ought to receive corporal punishment.
3. A Brahmin may take possession of the goods of a Shudra with perfect peace of mind, for, since nothing at all belongs to this Shudra as his own, he is one whose property may be taken away by his master.
4. Indeed, an accumulation of wealth should not be made by a Shudra even if he is able to do so, for the sight of mere possession of wealth by a Shudra injures the Brahmin.
5. If a man <of the Shudra caste> makes love to a girl of the highest caste he deserves corporal punishment.
6. A woman alone <is> a wife for a Shudra; both she and a woman of his own caste <are> legally <wives> of a Vaishya; they two and also a woman of his own caste <are wives> of a Kshatriya, both they and a woman of his own caste <are wives> of a Brahmin.

We need to discuss Manu’s system more elaborately, however, before that we must understand the actual difference between the varna system and caste system. According to the varna system the Indo-Aryan people were divided into four groups. However, according to the caste system which arose from the varna system in later period divided the people in numerous subdivisions and all the divisions were placed hierarchically. These sub-divisions are rigid and are determined by birth. In the beginning the varna division was not very much rigid because it was said that the division did not take place by birth, but by the action <karma>. Therefore, at the time of great epics or even after that we can see many Shudra kings ruled different parts of the country. However, after the fall of Mauryan Empire no major Shudra empire came into being.

But it does not mean that the varna system was mere a theoretical one while the caste system is practical and very much a matter of day-to-day life. Many anti-caste scholars propagate this idea which we consider not only as wrong but an attempt to give concession to the ‘sacred’ scriptures. Therefore, they put overemphasis on the difference between varna system and caste system. It is true that in the beginning the varna system was not rigid and social mobility was there unlike the caste system and this is an important difference between these two systems. However, as time passed by, the system became rigid, oppressive and a matter of day-to-day life and as the division of work spread all over the society and more and more new professions came into existence the caste system originated as a finer and all-embraced form of varna system in later period. However, It should be noted that whole of the Manu’s system is based on varna division, not on the caste division. If the varna system was mere a theoretical one then all the hatred of the dalits against Manusmriti become unexplainable.

But what was the inspiration behind the origination of a system like varna system? Let us hear Manu:

Shaktena api hi shudrena na karyah

Dhanasanchayah shudrah hi dhanamasadya Brahmanan eba Badhate!

i.e., even if able, the Shudras should not accumulate wealth. Accumulation of wealth by the Shudras make the Brahmins suffer. Many passages can be quoted form Manusmriti and other Smrities <scriptures of codified laws> to show that the main inspiration behind the varna division was highly economic in nature, that is, to extract the surplus production and to deprive a large section of the people from social production other than the means of subsistence only. JANASHAKTI, the central organ of presently non-existent CPIML—JANASHAKTI once took an attempt to study the caste question from Marxist point of view. The paper was published by a social organization later as a booklet. According to their understanding: “Thus the varna system which first started social making based on a primitive social division of labour and political subordination of one group by another, took the concrete shape of social division based on social division of labour to extract surplus from the toiling people and division of labourers too originated.” <Class Caste Relations: Marxist Approach>. Comrade Santosh Rana also had similar understanding. He wrote, “In short, the position of an individual in social division of labour, his role in controlling the means of production, his social prestige in relation of the law, his portion of social surplus and the means of achieving this surplus, etc., are determined by his varna. The task of the Shudras was to produce surplus and the three upper varnas used to extract that. It only means, the class division in India at first expressed itself through the varna system.” <Samaj Shreni Rajniti, A collection of Essays by Santosh Rana in Bengali/ Translation is mine>.

Once upon a time the West Bengal state committee of CPIM undertook the task to study the social history of our country under the leadership of Anil Biswas around the year of 2OOO and a brief outline of the study was published as a booklet in the year of 2OO3. They also reached in the same conclusion and admitted that the class struggle in ancient and mediaeval India took the form of caste struggle, however, they considered it as a barrier for the development of a classical class struggle.

Among the early communists of our country Comrade S. A. Dange first engaged in a systematic study of the history of ancient India form a Marxist point of view. Although he was influenced by a mechanical Marxist approach and tried to impose the western pattern of social development on the history of India <especially in the case of slave system>, still he has left behind some important observations for us. He also admitted that although the varna system emerged in the primitive communist society of the Aryans, however, with the advent of private property the varna division took the shape of class division. He wrote, “Once that stage has been reached, private property and classes are born. The Varnas metamorphoses into contradictory classes and take the path of civil war, class war. The primitive commune dies, never to return.” <INDIA: FROM PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM TO SLAVERY/ PPH/ Page:1O1>.

Professor Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya had an elaborated study on the Vedic society in ancient India. He also convincingly proved that in early Vedic period the Aryan society was a primitive form of communistic society without the class division, although, a simple form of division of work was present there. However, for the first time the Indo-Aryan society became divided into four varnas when the ill-famous Purusha Shukata was composed. It was nothing but the reflection of the emerging class division within the Indo-Aryan society.

The Rig Veda is an important source to understand the transition from classless society to the class society in India. The experts have an opinion that the Rig Veda was composed through a long time, nearly seven hundred to eight hundred years. Within this time frame the Vedic society passed through this transition. That is why we see a concept of equality of all human being <obviously within the clan> and gods too were considered as the friends of all human being <Jananam Jamih>. However, in the later portion of the Rig Veda we see a work division came into being where the Brahmins had the prerogatives to maintain the connection with the gods, that is, in the ritualistic matters. The Purusha Shukta proposed a division among the Indo-Aryan people, however, it did not set up the hierarchy. It gave some indications only. The Brahmins were formed from the mouth of the Purusha. The Rajanyas were born from his arms. The Vaishyas came from his thighs and the Shudras from his feet. Many different interpretations are possible of this symbolic presentation of the division. The question arises that how far it is correct to assume that the Rig Veda determined the hierarchical places of four varnas and their duties or role in the society! Manu had his particular interpretation. He was convinced that the Purusha Shukta place the Brahmin at the top of the social hierarchical ladder, by saying that they were born from the mouth of the Purusha. For him it was quite sufficient indication that the Brahmins should own all the knowledge and wisdom in order to appear as the sole representatives of the divinity in this material world. Similarly the Rajanyas had the duty to protect the people since they were born from the arms. The Vaishyas and the Shudras were duty-bound to produce the wealth and the Shudras had a role only to serve the upper three varnas. Since they were born from the feet of the Purusha they had no right.

This interpretation of Manu was not acceptable to many admirers and followers of the Rig Veda and so called Vedic religion. According to them, by the system of Chaturvarna the Vedas only proposed a job division only, nothing more than that. Therefore, a person can be a Brahmin, or Kshatriya, or Shudra not by his or her birth but by work or karma. Ambedkar called these people as the most dangerous enemy of the dalit movement.

However, we must understand why Manu interpreted the Purusha Shukta in such a manner from the historical materialist point of view. Manu composed a literature which was called Smriti, that means, the law. But the laws are creations of the human being. The strong presence of the memory of old days of communistic society never allowed the people to accept any discrimination when it was created by the human itself. This is an important peculiarity of Indian society. Therefore, it must have been supported by the divinity. The Smrities must have been supported by the Shruti <the Vedas>. Why? Because ‘the Vedas are not created by the human being, it was composed by the God’. The fatal Shruti–Smriti combine now became eligible to dictate the discrimination. Had there been no Purusha Shukta in the Rig Veda it would be difficult for Manu to justify the class division within the Indo-Aryan society which in return would make the class struggle much sharper. Therefore, today at least it can be said that the Purusha Shukta gives an important service to the ruling classes from the ancient time till today. <The whole hymn of Purusha Shukta made of sixteen verses along with annotation and notes by Wendy Doniger are given in Appendix for the advanced readers>.

Now let us enter the political consequences of this development as laid down by Manu. From above discussion one thing is very clear. The varna division and subsequent caste division in Indian society is nothing but the class division in a different form. Therefore, when Ambedkar gave a call for annihilation of castes and the Communist Party gave a call to fight for a classless society, there was no essential difference between these two calls.

The Political Struggle of the Shudras

However, the early communists of our movement failed to see the matter from this angel. This is not true, as some of the critics of the communist movement always try to propagate, that the Communist Party did not take care of the Caste Annihilation movement led by Ambedkar at all. However, all the efforts of the Party were based on some half hearted understanding of the social struggles in our country. In the preface of “Who were the Shudras?” written in nineteen forty six Ambedkar said, “It is well-known that there is a non-Brahmin movement in this country which is political movement of the Shudras. It is also well-known that I have been connected with it.” Thus under the leadership of Ambedkar the political movement of the Shudras was born. When the Shudras of our country who were actually the Indian version of proletariat having nothing to lose except their chains waged a political struggle against their oppressors, it should have been a welcome development for the communists. However, the matter did not develop in this line. Instead, a bitter relation was developed between the Communists and the Ambedkarites and an unwanted rift was emerged between these two camps which helped Congress to manipulate the complicated situation prevailed at that time of nineteen thirties and nineteen forties successfully to capture the leadership of anti-British struggle in India in order to give birth a neo-colonial India after nineteen forty seven. We need to understand the failure of both the camps, the Communists and the Ambedkarites, in this regard in order to determine today’s task in the concrete social condition of Indian revolution. At first we will discuss the mental make-up of B.R. Ambedkar. The above-mentioned preface of “Who were the Shudras” written by him can be an eye opener in this case.

In that preface Ambedkar divided the ‘Hindus’ in five distinct categories. He said, “There is a class of Hindus, who are known as Orthodox and who will not admit that there is anything wrong with the Hindu social system. To talk of reforming it is to them rank blasphemy.” Regarding the second category he said, “There is a class of Hindus who are known as Arya Samajists. They believe in the Vedas and only in Vedas. They differ from the Orthodox inasmuch as they discard anything which is not in the Vedas. Their gospel is that of return to the Vedas.” On the third category Ambedkar said, “There is a class of Hindus who will admit that the Hindu social system is all wrong, but who hold that there is no necessity to attack it. Their argument is that since law does not recognize it, it is dying, if not a dead system.” He remarked on the fourth category, “There is a class of Hindus, who are politically minded. They are indifferent to such questions. To them Swaraj is more important than social reform.” Ambedkar found his ally in the fifth category, so he said, “The fifth class of Hindus are those who are rationalists, and who regard reforms as of primary importance, even more important than Swaraj.”

Ambedkar admitted that there was a fierce battle was going on between him and the first two categories of the ‘Hindus’. On the probable impact of his book, ‘Who Were the Shudras’ on the Arya Samajists he said, “The book treads heavily on the toes of the Arya Samajists…….Both these conclusions are bound to act like atomic bombs on the dogmas of the Arya Samajists.” He said further, “I am not sorry for this clash with Arya Samajist. The Arya Samajists have done great mischief in making the Hindu society a stationary society………I am convinced that the Hindu society will not accept the necessity of reforming itself unless and until this Arya Samajists’s ideology is completely destroyed. This book does render this service, if no other.”

On the Orthodox ‘Hindus’ he remarked, “What the Orthodox Hindus will say about this book I can well imagine for I have battling with him all these years. The only thing I did not know was how the meek and non-violent looking Hindu can be violent when anybody attacks his Sacred Books. I became aware of it as never before when last year I received a shower of letters from angry Hindus, who became quite unbalanced by my speech on the subject delivered in Madras. The letters were full of filthy abuses, unmentionable and unprintable, and full of dire threats to my life……I don’t know what they will do this time……..For I know very well that they are a base crew who, professing to defend their religion, have made religion a matter of trade. They are more selfish than any other set of beings in the world, and are prostituting their intelligence to support the vested interests of their class……….What I would like to tell these amiable gentlemen is that they will not be able to stop me by their imprecations.”

On the other hand Ambedkar admitted that he had no expectation to be able to change the minds of third and fourth categories of the ‘Hindus’. While he furnished some arguments against the third category he just simply ignored the fourth category of the “Hindus” whom he called “politically minded”. On them he only employed two or three remarks, “As to the politically-minded Hindu, he need not be taken seriously. His line of approach is generally governed by a short-term view more than by long-range considerations. He is willing to follow the line of least resistance and postpone a matter, however urgent, if it is likely to make him unpopular. It is therefore quite natural if the politically-minded Hindu regards this book as nuisance.” On the ‘Hindus’ of fifth category Ambedkar said, “The only class of Hindus, who are likely to welcome the book are those who believe in the necessity and urgency of social reform. The fact that it is a problem which will certainly take a long time to solve and will call the efforts of many generations to come, is in their opinion, no justification for postponing the study of the problem. Even an ardent Hindu politician, if he is honest, will admit that the problems arising out of the malignant form of communalism which is inherent in the Hindu social organization and which the politically minded Hindus desire to ignore or postpone, invariably return to plague, those very politicians at every turn. These problems are not the difficulties of the moment. They are our permanent difficulties, that is to say, difficulties of every moment. I am glad to know that such a class of Hindus exists. Small though they be, they are my mainstay and it is to them that I have addressed my arguments.”

From above quotations we can have a sketch of mental make-up of B.R. Ambedkar and his general political understanding. For him the Independence of the country was not that much important if the rule of the newly independent country would go in the hands of the caste-Hindu leadership. A Hindu India was no way better for him than the colonial India. Therefore, he wanted to launch a decisive battle against caste discrimination and for the annihilation of the caste system at that point of time when the struggle for independence of our country from the British rule reached at its peak. This became the point of difference between the Ambedkarite movement and the Communist movement. It is also very clear from the discussion put forward by Ambedkar in that preface that he meant the leadership of the Communist Party and the non-Orthodox leaders of Congress as “politically-minded Hindus”. Here, one can easily notice the weakness in Ambedkar’s politics which lost credibility to represent the nation as a whole and remained merely as dalit politics. The Communist Party warned Ambedkar continuously about this lacuna and urged him to be united with the mainstream of the struggle for Independence. However, the Communist Party was always apprehensive about the actual political aim of Ambedkar and thought that his politics would create disunity among the ranks of the working class and the toiling masses which in return might create harm to the communist movement in particular and the struggle for Independence in general. Therefore, while the party was sympathetic with the condition of the dalits and agreed upon the justification of dalit movement and criticized heavily the Congress leadership for not paying attention to their cause, the Communist Party did not believe the leaders of the dalit movement including Ambedkar. <See the documents of B.T. Randive on dalit movement, nineteen forty six> Thus, a space of political dialogue between the Communists and the Ambedkarites could not come into being and the warning from the CP to Ambedkar went in vain as the later saw no friendly advice in it. Therefore, the Communist Party failed to perform its historical duty.

Today a large number of the Communists will accept this fact, however, it is not enough. We must analyze why the Communist Party failed to build unity with the dalit movement. We must identify the shortcomings in the theoretical understanding of the communist practice in this question in order to understand today’s task. Otherwise again the movement will be directed by the pragmatic political understanding and we will repeat the same mistake, may be from an opposite direction.

It is a well accepted fact that the original Shudras of the Rig Veda were gradually marginalized more and more by the three upper Varnas and at one point of time started to be mixed up with the so called fifth Varna or the Avarnas who were actually the vanquished non-Aryans and formed a large section of the Indian people who are generally called as the dalits. According to a recent survey conducted by NSS nearly three fourth of the Indian population are entitled to some kind of reservation as they belong to SC, ST or OBC categories. The overwhelming majority of the dalit people in our country are landless, property-less, marginalized, socially and economically oppressed. The largest section of nearly fifty crore strong unorganized workers in India is made of by these people. However, it must be taken into account that we are not living in English or West European condition. In Indian context this huge section of the working class is not only economically exploited but at the same time socially deprived since in our country the class division was introduced in the form of caste or varna division in order to take religious sanctity. The positive side of Ambedkar’s politics lies in the fact that he understood that without snatching the political power from the caste-Hindus, dalits could never achieve a country or society of its own. The annihilation of the caste division cannot be achieved by changing the minds of the caste-Hindus or through some patch work to reform Hindu social structure. So he declared his movement as the political movement of the Shudras. From a Marxist point of view the political struggle of the Shudras is nothing but the political struggle of the working class. Therefore, the political formation which led this struggle must have been a party of the working class. However, Ambedkar was not a Marxist. It is not necessary for a working class party to be a Marxist party all the time. The Marxist party does not necessarily lead through its majority or organizational strength but through its clear and profound theoretical-political understanding. The Communist Manifesto says: “In what relation does the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.” <The Communist Manifesto/ Edited by Frederic L. Bender/ Norton Critical Edition/ pp 67> Therefore, the Communist Party cannot oppose other working-class parties because they don’t have any separate sectarian principles. Keeping a cooperative and friendly relation with those parties the CP must lead them to move forward by pointing out the general and long-term political interest of the working class. Now the question is did the early Communists of our country apply this teaching of the Communist Manifesto or were they were led by sectarian principles?

Instead of becoming glad to see the political upsurge of the dalits under the leadership of Ambedkar, the Communist Party became apprehensive and scared. Comrade BTR repeatedly pressurized SCF <Scheduled Caste Federation> to dismantle the dalit mass organizations under its umbrella and to work within same mass organizations led by the Communist Party.<See the above mentioned documents of BTR and also the Introduction by Anand Teltumbde of ‘India and Communism’ written by Ambedkar/ Left Word/2O17> Sometimes the organs of the party openly advocated the necessity to bring out the dalit masses from the dalit organizations in order to organize them under the fold of the Communist Party. All this activities of the party and the mentality behind those helped to develop mistrust, fear and distance among the ranks of the dalit movement. Undoubtedly it was nothing but the sectarian policy of the Communist Party. Instead of performing the labourious task to find out the general and long-term political interests of the working class and by pointing out those to the leaders of the dalit movement the party took a shortcut road of putting the organizational interest in command and did the same mistake which The Communist Manifesto warned against, i.e., to develop sectarian principles against other working class parties.

What was the general interest of the working class in India at the decisive moment of the struggle for Independence? Undoubtedly it was Swaraj—– the Independence from the British rule which Ambedkar failed to see. It was quite expected from a man like Ambedkar as he was not a Marxist and from a political formation like SCF as it was a non-Marxist working class party. The Communist Manifesto clearly said that it was the distinguishing feature of the Communists to see and uphold the general interest of the working class. However, while the Communist Party correctly pointed out the general interest of the working class to the dalit leaders but at the same time showing left-anarchist political mentality they accused and opposed and very often described Ambedkar and other dalit leaders as the stooge of imperialism. But what was the reason behind this kind of behavior of the Communist leaders towards the dalit leadership?

The answer probably lies in the fact that the leaders of the Communist Party never recognized the dalit movement as the integral part of the Indian working class movement. They never recognized the dalit leaders as the representatives of a large section of the Indian working masses. Therefore, they never recognized SCF as another working class party. So they never tried to find out the way to develop a proper relation with them. It does not mean that the Communist leaders did not know the actual condition of the dalits in our country or they had no sympathy towards the dalit movement. BTR admitted in those documents that in the Indian Railways thousands of the dalit workers received only nine rupees as DA while the workers in the garment factories of Mumbai were paid one hundred rupees for the same. The party admitted that since the time immemorial the dalits were deprived from all the rights which were absolutely essential to lead a decent life and if these people were not given equal status then an Independent India was not possible. Practically there was actually no demand of Ambedkar left which was not accepted by the Communist Party. However, when the dalits formed their own political organization in order to launch a political struggle, the Communist Party became scared and apprehensive. Actually half-hearted understanding on the Indian history and reality led the Party to commit this political blunder.

We will see how this blunder took more complicated and irreversible turn when the question of the long-term interests of the working class was confronted by the Communist Party. What was the long-term interest of the working class in the freedom struggle? Undoubtedly it was to build up a New Democratic India as a result of anti-colonial struggle. Now, the question is, was it possible under the leadership of Congress? The answer is No. Then why the Communist Party accepted the leadership of Congress in the freedom movement and never tried snatching the leadership? Ambedkar and other leaders of SCF were not against the freedom movement or freedom from the British as such. However, Ambedkars was in total disagreement of the leadership of Congress as he knew that since the Congress party used to represent the interest of the bourgeois and zaminder class of our country who were at the same time from so called higher castes then it was quite imperative that the ‘free’ India would be a prison for the dalits. Ambedkar called those freedom fighters as ‘politically minded Hindus’ and advised his fellow comrades ‘not to take them seriously’ who did not bother that outcome of the freedom movement. Unfortunately, the Communist Party placed itself in this position. Had the party been directed by the long-term interest of the working class then it became absolutely natural for it to develop a rock-solid alliance with the Ambedkarite movement in order to emerge as a potential claimant of the leadership of the freedom struggle. In that case the course of the history might change into a new direction.

Some comrades do not accept the fact that the Communist Party accepted the leadership of Congress in the freedom movement. Many documents can be cited to negate this thought. If this is done the size of the present article might be longer than it was intended. However, one can remember that as early as in nineteen thirty two there were four communist parties of the Third Communist International to write an open letter to the Indian Communists warning about the danger of accepting the leadership of Congress in the freedom struggle which they thought that the Communist in India did not care. In nineteen forty four, Comrade P.C. Joshi wrote a few letters to M.K. Gandhi and MK replied those, too. The correspondence between PC and MK is one of the important documents of the Communist Party. Replying one letter from Gandhi Comrade Joshi wrote to him, “If my own father wrote such a letter I would not respond and never would see his face. However, I am replying you because you are the father of our nation. As a patriot it goes against my duty to be angry with you even when you insult and harass us.” <English translation is mine from Bengali document>

Some comrades think that Ambedkar and other dalit leaders were against the freedom struggle as a whole, therefore an alliance with them was not possible in the movement for Independence. Again, many articles wrote by Ambedkar can be cited to negate this thought but for the time being we can be restricted in the above mentioned documents of comrade BTR in this regard. He wrote: “However, it is true that SCF never commit a crime to go against the demand of freedom. As a matter of fact Rao Bahadur Shibraj, the President of their Kanpur session clearly stated, ‘We are not against the freedom of India but we want assurance that what we demanded in Nagpur that will be accepted’.”<English translation is mine form Bengali document>

In spite of knowing all these things the Communist Party never paid deeper attention to the fact that if it was true that the SCF leadership were not actually against the freedom movement then why apparently they used to take such political position which might be depicted as against anti-colonial struggle! The party never tried to realize with enough seriousness that why the severe bitterness emerged in the relation between the dalit movement and the Congress party! The party never learned from the history of our country to understand the serious nature of the contradiction between the dalits and the caste Hindus. On the contrary Comrade BTR tried repeatedly to convince Ambedkar and his fellow comrades about the importance and necessity of the leadership of Congress in general over the freedom movement and the leadership of MK Gandhi in particular whom the party already recognized as the father of the nation! It is true that the Communist party criticized the Congress for not accepting the demands of SCF, but it is also true that in the contradiction between SCF and the Congress the party associated itself with the later which meant that in the contradiction between the dalits and the caste Hindus the party associated itself with the later. This strategic blunder of the party negated the merit of its criticism against Congress for not accepting the demands of the dalits. It is true that the Communist Party honestly and earnestly wanted the unity among Congress, Communist, Muslim League and SCF including all the nationalist forces against the British but they failed to realize that it could not be possible if the Congress would remain as the leader of the freedom movement. The party needed Congress as they used it as a cover and continued to work inside it. This tactical blunder negated the merit of its honest aspiration to unite all the nationalist forces against the British rule.

Today’s Task

After seventy two years of so called Independence a serious evaluation is required regarding the relation between the dalit movement and the communist movement. By this span of time many changes took place in the Indian political scenario. Congress ruled the country for more than 6O years within these seventy two years of ‘Independence’. No significant improvement in the general condition of the dalit masses can be seen by this time. In spite of the capitalist development in India the ugly form of caste discrimination, caste oppression, and the domination of Brahmanical ideology and practices continue with same vigour. Ambedkar’s apprehensions have come true. The “free” India is actually a neo-colonial India which has become the prison of the dalits. Receiving an insignificant share of the state power by a handful of the dalit leaders does not indicate any kind of change in the condition of the dalit masses. The dalit movement has undergone many changes. Repeated division and re-division within dalit movement has weakened the movement which only helped the Brahmanical Manuvadi ruling class to use one section of the movement against another in order to retain its domination over the country. The communist movement also has passed through many changes and within this movement, too, repeated division and re-division have taken place. Initial lacuna in theoretical understanding has aggravated, however, from the same pragmatist outlook many left and revolutionary left organizations now are raising Joy Bhim Lal Salam slogan landing in the opposite pole in the case of relation with the dalit movement and started to preach red-blue unity. However, how far this change of position is coming from the improvement of theoretical understanding on Indian reality or comes as a result of practical-political need at the time of severe crisis throughout international communist movement, is a difficult question to answer. However, it is interesting to see that while the party like CPIM is raising Joy Bhim Lal Salam slogan in different parts of the country, at the same time they support the cunning step of the BJP government of introducing economic condition based reservation. This self contradiction only raises serious doubts that they have not learned anything from the past experiences. For them the talk of red-blue unity is nothing but a short-term tactical game. Their tacit support to BJP in the political battle against TMC in Bengal again shows how easily these ‘communists’ can ally with the Brahminvadi, Manuvadi forces. In this scenario we, the revolutionary lefts, must accomplish the long-pending task to bridge the ‘unholy rift between the dalit movement and the communist movement’ <as coined by Anand Teltumbde> in our country. We need to recognize the dalit parties as different kind of working class parties. It is true that today many dalit organizations under the leadership of Mayavati like leaders actually left the revolutionary slogan of Ambedkar, the annihilation of the castes. Instead of that they are busy to find privileges for a handful of dalit aristocrats within this caste-divided society. However, it does not mean that the whole dalit movement has lost its relevance or deteriorated in a reformist opportunist movement. We cannot forget that the same scenario is also evolved in the communist movement itself. However, it does not mean that the communist movement has lost its relevance as the revolutionary movement in the society. We can say it emphatically that if we can build the real red-blue unity based on proper understanding of the Indian condition and history, the struggle against the ruling classes of our country will have a better chance to win.

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Imperialism Today

P J James

Introduction

Like all phenomena, imperialism as a social system is subject to the law of change. As all previous systems, imperialism cannot be static and is constantly evolving taking on newer and newer forms. The classical theory of imperialism including its essential characteristics that Lenin put forward in the early twentieth century in its colonial phase was a guide to political action in that particular historical context. Those essential characteristics of capitalism’s imperialist stage, which were evident at the turn of the twentieth century as identified by Lenin such as the concentration of wealth and the advent of international monopolies, the emergence and domination of finance capital in all aspects of life, imperialist oppression and plunder of dependent and weak nations, widespread militarism, etc. have continued as ever strengthening processes. Obviously, while unraveling the fundamental aspects of capitalism’s qualitatively new stage in his study Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin would not have intended it as the final epitaph of imperialism. Quite revealingly, recent researchers have indicated that the original title of Lenin’s pamphlet was Imperialism, the Newest Stage of Capitalism. At present, the universal view that twenty-first century imperialism has assumed several novel forms which require further analysis is not at all surprising from a historical materialist perspective. No doubt, the basic parameters delineated in Lenin’s pioneering work remains the central indispensable key to the understanding of finance capital. It should also be noted that the study by Lenin was in the background of the capitulation of the so called socialist parties under the “revisionist” influence of the Second International at a time when the objective situation, as proved by him in the context of Russia, was ripe for revolution and the transition to a progressive mode of production. Viewed in this perspective, today the challenge before us is to unravel the concrete reality of the twenty-first century imperialism in relation to the historical context of the internationalization capital based on a grasping of the true essence of Lenin’s pioneering analysis.

Today the situation is very complex as, for instance, propositions of a shake of the imperialist structure or what is called a “restructuring” of the imperialist hierarchy inherited from the twentieth century have become topics of discussion among left circles. For, in accordance with the complex dimensions of both accumulation and circulation of capital in this epoch of internationalization of finance capital, ‘export of capital’ identified by Lenin as one of the essential characteristics of imperialism could be seen taking place even from ‘dependent’ and oppressed countries too. This has also prompted some sections of the left camp to interpret this trend as the transformation of several “neo-colonially dependent” countries into “new-imperialist countries.” The qualitatively new developments in relation to the unquantifiable and unmanageable growth in the financial superstructure called “financialization” coupled with what is called “digitization” acting as catalyst for this “restructuring” also marks a clear departure of the present globalized imperialism from twentieth-century imperialism. At another level, the neoliberal restructuring of international production and the pursuit of a new international division of labour since the late 1960s have led to a massive global “disorganization” and “informalization” of the working class. Though spontaneous struggles of the workers and oppressed masses who are deprived of hard-earned democratic rights and who face an abysmal drop in real wages and decline in purchasing powers are sprouting up everywhere, the ideological-political weaknesses of the Left to unravel the current laws of motion of capital and its consequent disarray have provided the ruling classes ample room for manoeuvre to manage the crisis by strengthening the positions of financial markets and deepening the attacks against the people. Backed by far rightwing, neo-fascistic, free-market, postmodern, and reactionary ideologies that have got new respectability under neoliberalism, the level of super-exploitation, financial speculation, ecological destruction and cultural degradation unleashed by corporate capital today is threatening the very sustenance of world people. Thus Lenin’s characterization of imperialism, as “oppressive”, “parasitic”, “decadent” and “militaristic”, integrally linking up it with the subordination of every realm of social life to the diktats of finance capital, is all the more relevant today. To carry forward this perspective according to the concrete conditions of today and for successfully resisting the counterrevolution inflicted by finance capital against workers and oppressed peoples of the world, more clarity on the laws of motion of twenty-first century imperialism is indispensable.

Situating Contemporary Imperialism

Imperialism’s twenty-first century neoliberal trends are not overnight developments; on the contrary, they are to be situated in the entire trajectory of postwar neocolonial phase of imperialism. It was the international context set by socialist advancement and surging national liberation movements of the 1940s that compelled imperialism to resort to what is often called ‘decolonization’–interpreted as the passage from colonialism towards neocolonialism—as a camouflage for ensuring continuity in the global expansion of capital through the process of transferring power to the comprador classes in erstwhile colonies. Thus colonial form of domination and plunder becoming unviable, led by USA, which then had become the leader and supreme arbiter of the imperialist camp, a whole set of mutually interpenetrating political, economic, military, legal and even cultural institutions and instruments were devised for transforming and reconfiguring colonialism into neocolonialism. As is generally conceived, it imparted a qualitative dimension to the unabated global expansion of finance capital. The first coherent Marxist-Leninist formulation on neocolonialism came out from Communist Party China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong as part of its fierce ideological struggle initiated against Krushchevian revisionism soon after the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU when the latter formally theorized on the “disappearance of colonialism.” Pinpointing neocolonialism as an “extremely sharp issue of contemporary world politics” the CPC went on characterizing it as “a more pernicious and sinister form of colonialism.” Though the CPC in its polemics against CPSU correctly interpreted neocolonialism, as we know, due to the subsequent advent of left adventurism that theorized on a “weakened imperialism”, the CPC failed to make any concrete analysis of neocolonialism further. However, an objective evaluation of the post war developments makes it amply clear that the CPC’s original evaluation on neocolonialism was essentially in conformity with reality.

In the meanwhile, as a response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, Keynesianism had emerged with a redefinition of the bourgeois state for its active intervention in economic affairs. For almost a quarter century, Keynesianism coupled with Cold War had been imperialism’s ideological weapon against the “communist threat” in view of the immense prestige that the ICM got due to the inter-war economic progress of Soviet Union on the one hand, and successful resistance against fascism on the other. Till the 1970s, state intervention and state programming avoided violent interruptions of financial speculation that yielded what is often called a crisis-free “golden age” for capitalism. Imperialism’s close nexus with the comprador ruling classes in erstwhile colonies or neocolonial countries as its faithful allies also led to the latter’s accelerated integration with globally expanding finance capital. Meanwhile, Keynesian policies, public sector and other forms of state monopoly capitalism promoted by imperialism to tide over its crisis, however, were misinterpreted by right opportunists and revisionist sections who upheld Krushchevite “peaceful transition to socialism” as automatic move towards planned socialist development. But their ideological bankruptcy was totally exposed when bureaucratic capitalists and erstwhile CEOs of state-owned and public sector undertakings in alliance with illegal financial speculators became proponents of denationalization and deregulation since the crisis of the 1970s.

Obviously, the apparent capitalist “boom” of the1950s and 1960s was primarily rooted in the political, economic and military hegemony of US imperialism and the flourishing role of dollar in the relative absence of rivalry from other war-torn imperialist powers. During this period, even while pursuing a new balance of power through “cold war” and global expansion and multi-dimensional penetration of finance capital, the postures of UN sponsored Development Decades, welfare state, import substitution, inward looking policies, etc. were effectively used to hoodwink world people. Imperialist ideologues also advanced the prognosis of “crisis-free capitalism” with state regulation. Meanwhile, from the late 1960s onward, recovery of war-ravaged economies of Europe and Japan began effectively challenging the US even as state-led inflationary financing, high levels of military expenditures and superpower commitments by US reached an unsustainable level. As a result of unhindered financial expansion associated with international Keynesianism, the US followed by Britain and others, started facing rampant inflation, collapse of industrial production and employment. State financing that encouraged an increase in production during the initial years of postwar boom, gradually led to an uncontrollable financial growth that overtook output growth leading to a situation that came to be characterized as stagflation—coincidence of economic stagnation and financial boom or inflation. To be precise, the speculative trends and deep seated depressive forces associated with finance capital that Lenin emphasized and that became clear in the financial crash of 1929 and Great Depression of 1930s, but regimented and camouflaged through state’s regulatory framework in the initial postwar decades, gathered further strength was got unleashed through stagflation of the 1970s. By this time, immense finance was accumulated in world monetary circulation channels by MNCs and global financial giants, especially emanating from USA including the huge volume of petrodollars amassed by Oil Sheikhs that was deposited in American and European transnational banks. However, this could not be deployed in the most profitable manner as the productive sphere was stagnating on account of the declining purchasing power of the people. To overcome the consequent downturn in profit, the option was to develop new avenues of financial speculation or a change in the accumulation process.

However, unlike the situation in the 1930s, the ideological and political position of the ICM was weak this time as manifested in its inability to develop Marxist-Leninist theory and practice according to the concrete transformation that was taking place in the neocolonial accumulation process. As already noted, it was the presence of socialism and prestige of the ICM that compelled US led imperialism to devise ‘state-led development’ along with decolonization as an ideological-political weapon against the Left following the economic crisis of the 1930s. But taking advantage of the new situation in the 1970s, US led imperialism could successfully resort to a change in the neocolonial accumulation process through a shift in economic policy from Keynesianism to neoliberalism or monetarism. Originating in imperialist countries in the form of Thatcherism and Reaganomics , neoliberal policies gradually spread to neocolonial countries gathering further momentum through globalization in the post Cold War period since the 1990s. The result was a downsizing and rollback of the ‘welfare state’ and abolition of erstwhile restraints on the free mobility of capital. Consequently, the decay and parasitism which are characteristics of finance capital as identified by Lenin have started assuming horrific proportions. Moreover, unlike the earlier phase of imperialism when the speculative bubble was feeding on a productive economy, the financial speculation began to thrive on a stagnant and moribund economy under neoliberalism. The collapse of East Europe and Soviet Union and capitalist restoration in China followed by their eventual integration with imperialist market that created the historical context for the altogether disappearance of the “socialist camp” opened up new avenues for finance capital by way of a further expansion of the world market and internationalization of capital.

The hallmark of this neoliberal phase of neocolonialism has been unfettered international mobility of speculative finance capital that could effectively make use of the breakthroughs in information and communication technologies (ICT) and digitization since the turn of the 21^st century. The resulting financial speculation (financialization) together with stagnation and deindustrialization leading to unprecedented joblessness has resulted in hitherto unknown levels of wealth concentration with a tiny financial elite, unprecedented inequality, poverty and deprivation, corruption, cultural degradation, and gruesome ecological catastrophe. As a reflection of the depth of the crisis, in tune with continuing US and EU aggressions and plunder of workers and oppressed peoples of the world particularly in West Asia and North Africa, the international “refugee crisis” has become unmanageable even as imperialism is propping up anti-immigrant, chauvinist, neo-fascist, racist and religious fundamentalist forces to divert people’s simmering discontent against the ruling system. Obscurantist terrorist outfits such as IS are nothing but the byproducts of this terribly destructive system. As an inalienable component of this imperialist offensive, to depoliticize the people a whole set of postmodern, post-Marxist and “identity” theories including prognoses such as “end of history”, “end of ideology”, etc., are manufactured and spread by imperialist think-tanks and neoliberal funding and research institutions.

On the Striking Trends of Imperialism Today

From the general background situated above, certain well-defined characteristics of imperialism that make it qualitatively different from its colonial phase are noticeable.

Internationalization of production

The structural foundations of imperialism in the neocolonial phase have fundamentally transformed by a dislocation and restructuring of the erstwhile centralized and nation-centered basis of production. The emergence of new technologies pertaining to production and processing, transportation, information and communication since the 1960s have immensely facilitated this transformation. For instance, the development and refinement of new production and processing technologies capable of decomposing production into multi-stages made it possible for international monopolies or MNCs to transplant different stages of production to remote global destinations using unskilled laboures who could easily be trained to perform even complex operations. This enabled finance capital to decentralize production and ‘outsourcing’ of work on an international scale thereby rendering industrial location, control and organization of production increasingly less dependent on geographic distances. As against the pre-war so called “Fordist” methods of centralized factory arrangements, the decentralization and fragmentation of workforce prompted monopoly capitalists to devise what is called “post-Fordism”. This “post-Fordist” regulation of workforce also called ‘flexible specialization’ by bourgeois pundits enabled business enterprises to weaken and fragment the collective bargaining power of workers at a global level through a ‘new international division of labour’. Outsourcing, division and categorization of workers’ unions also went hand in hand with the availability of wide variety of consumer products, market diversification, autonomous profit centres and network systems—a process that came to be characterized as internationalization of production.

Along with the unleashing of an unprecedented deindustrialization and neoliberal regimentation and regulation of labour in imperialist countries, internationalization of production enabled imperialism to tap the cheapest source of labour in neocolonial countries which is forced to sell off itself at the lowest wages. Globalized production facilitated through a whole set of super-imposed, pro-corporate laws pertaining to labour, investment, profit-repatriation, tax, trade and environment in neocolonial regimes altered the conditions of capital accumulation that enabled imperialism to temporarily overcome the crisis of the 1970s. One of the significant changes that has brought about as a result of internationalization and the consequent “de-centered production” has been change of the spatial structure of the world economy in the past half-a-century with regard to capital exports and commodity trade. The most visible trend in this context is the relative deterioration of US and the rise of China as an important location for FDI inflows and as the leading trading country in the world. This has also given rise to a divergence of economic and military hegemony within imperialism.

Super-exploitation of working class

The internationalization of production leading to large-scale transplantation of “global assembly lines” of production to cheap-labour ‘dependent’ “export platforms” or “export oriented” locations through outsourcing and flexible specialization created an unprecedented growth in unemployment and underemployment in imperialist countries. Together with this, 21^st century corporatization-enforced deindustrialization and depeasantization leading to large scale displacement and migration and cross border flow of refugees have resulted in an unprecedented growth in the ranks of unorganized or informal working class as the most “wretched” social class on earth today whose number has already crossed 1000 million the world over- characterized as “informalization” of the workforce. Wiping out vast job opportunities in imperialist countries on the one hand, and subjecting the remaining workers to “hire and fire” and part-time jobs, (euphemistically called “casualization” of workforce) on the other, have become the general trend in US and other imperialist countries. To cover up the class essence of this imperialist restructuring, postmodern theorists have characterized this phenomenon as “post-industrialism.”

But the defining transformation associated with internationalization or “multi-nationalization” of production as manifested in global shift of production to cheap-labour destinations has been super-exploitation of labour (the prevalence of lower than global average wages) and the widening international divergence in wages between imperialist and neocolonial countries, and the consequent large-scale shift of wealth from the latter to the former. In this regard, erstwhile classical Marxist formulation based on nineteenth and early twentieth-century production that the extraction of value from ‘dependent’ countries was of “peripheral” importance needs to be reexamined for further development of the Marxist-Leninist theory of contemporary imperialism. The ever-growing profits of MNCs and wealth of world’s billionaires and relative decline in wages and living standards of workers and masses in ‘dependent’ countries are ample proof of the concrete reality of super-exploitation of neocolonial countries. Today MNCs aim to drive down the share of wages globally and increase their profits by installing a system of global competition among workers as part of the ‘divide and rule’ policy of today’s imperialism. Clarity on this issue is essential to comprehend Lenin’s characterization of the “essence of imperialism” as “the division of nations into oppressor and oppressed” according to the concrete conditions of today.

Internationalization of production is not leading to a global “equalization of wages” eliminating “local obstacles”; on the contrary, so many extra-economic factors are in full swing under the comprador regimes to keep wages much below the ‘value of labor power’ such that pushing down wages in the dependent countries has become the principal form of accumulation and surplus extraction today. In imperialist countries, racism and xenophobia are not meant to completely stop the migration of workers and refugees from poor countries; rather the neo-fascist, anti-immigrant laws are effectively used to ensure migrants’ and refugees’ vulnerable, second-class status for pushing down wages further. More often, a major attraction of outsourcing is the length of the working day in backward countries and through outsourcing MNCs use this as an alternative to investment in new technology. And the predominant form of national oppression in the neocolonial phase of imperialism is the forcing down of the ‘value of labor power’ in low wage countries. This relation of production (capital-labour relation) while plundering the workers of imperialist countries on the one hand, is pushing down the broad masses of working people including youth and women in neocolonial countries into destitution on the other. Most analysts of imperialism dwell on the inter-imperialist rivalry associated with distribution of global wealth while attention is diverted away from the badly needed development of Marxist value theory scientifically analyzing the growing monopoly profits arising from super-exploitation of workers in the globalized production process. That is, the ultimate source of profit lies in globalized production and not in its distribution as is manifested in inter-imperialist contradictions.

The riddle of “export of capital”

The internationalization of production has given rise to a new trend by which both private and state-owned companies from neocolonial countries have started entering into the globalized production stream through cross-border alliances and joint ventures with MNCs. This has prompted some scholars of the Left, as already noted, to interpret such neocolonial countries as “capital exporters” and their transformation as imperialist countries. Here at the outset, it is to be stated that this ‘riddle’ connected with “export of capital” remains only at the level of ‘form’ while the essence is production relations that determine the process of value extraction. Today MNCs can capture surplus value and exploit workers in low-wage countries even without resorting to export of capital, as the sources of funds mobilized by MNCs are from the countries themselves where investments are made. The lack of correlation between FDI inflows and wealth extraction (or profit repatriation) from the oppressed nations as revealed by latest international country-wise data is ample proof of this. At the same time, while MNCs from US, EU, Japan etc. engage in super-exploitation of Latin American, African and Asian workers, there are no reports of Brazilian, South African or Indian bourgeoisie participating in similar expropriation and exploitation of the proletariat in imperialist countries. Of course, the comprador ruling classes of the dependent countries are not the victims of neocolonial oppression and together with the imperialist bourgeoisie they accumulate profit mainly through exploiting the workers and toiling masses of their own countries. However, this is not sufficient for establishing world level domination by the comprador bourgeoisie. Though internationalization of production is a qualitative trend, capital still is continuing to operate within the historical structures of the imperialist order that establishes a line of demarcation between oppressors and oppressed.

It is in this context that the effort to characterize certain “neocolonially dependent countries” as “new imperialist countries” based on the emergence of so called “super monopolies” and growing “capital export” from them needs more explanation. At the outset, it should be stated that this is not a strictly new trend. That is, the accumulation of vast wealth by the big bourgeoisie and consequent development of monopoly in certain Asian, African and Latin American countries are not at all new phenomena, as the same trend had been there during the colonial era itself. For instance, the fabulous financial accumulation and heights of wealth reached by Tata, Birla, etc., the leading Indian monopoly houses during the inter-war period were definitely at par with the international monopolies emanating from imperialist Britain. But unlike the development of capitalism in today’s imperialist powers, the big bourgeoisie from erstwhile colonial and semi-colonial countries have been incapable of leading their respective countries to normal capitalist development. It is widely recognized that while the growth of monopolies in imperialist countries was due to the concentration and centralization of capital and production in a particular industry leading to unprecedented increase in the “organic composition of capital,” in today’s neocolonial countries the centralization of capital with the big bourgeoisie has been oriented not to the sphere of production but to circulation. Here, the position taken on the class character of the bourgeoisie in colonial and semi-colonial countries by the 1928 Sixth Congress of the Comintern in its Theses on “The Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-colonies” still continues to be a valid proposition. Based on the concrete evaluation of the betrayal of democratic revolution and anti-imperialist movements particularly in China and India, the Comintern at that time had reached the conclusion that being “comprador” in character the big bourgeoisie in colonial and semi-colonial countries was incapable of leading the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal struggles to victory. Even much before this Comintern evaluation, in 1926, Mao Tsetung had characterized the comprador bourgeoisie as a class that directly served imperialism in many ways and explained how top sections of the comprador bourgeoisie could develop a peculiar form of “monopoly capital” integrally linking with state power. Far from being an independent capitalist class with a national character, these comprador bourgeoisie being born and brought up under the umbrella of imperialist finance capital in its decadent stage and satisfied with its position as a “sub-exploiter” has been faithfully serving imperialism. In the postwar neocolonial phase of imperialism, in direct proportion to the horrific levels of wealth appropriation by this ruling class, its compradorisation, often in the garb of nationalistic pretensions with the concomitant political ramifications, has been an ever-strengthening process.

Despite this inherent structural weakness of the comprador bourgeoisie, internationalization of production has yielded new opportunities for them to break through the confines of national economy and enter into licensing agreements, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions with MNCs to operate at a global level. Globalized production and trend towards integration of market have also provided new avenues for greater interlinking between MNCs and dominant fractions of the comprador bourgeoisie from neocolonial countries. Moreover, as exploitation, inequality and poverty are intensifying in imperialist countries too, this interlinking is likely to spread further. But this has not yet yielded any sufficient condition for the transformation of neocolonial countries into imperialist ones. On the other hand, the new liaison between comprador bourgeoisie and MNCs continues to be an obstacle to self-expanding internal accumulation and national development; it encourages added flight of wealth to imperialist havens leading to domestic distortions and unfeasibility of “inward-looking policies.” This aspect is very relevant in the case of the imperialist-trained technocratic elite and higher bureaucracy in comprador regimes who are more loyal to IMF, World Bank, WTO and similar other neocolonial-neoliberal institutions than towards the national states they represent. Further, imperialist servitude of the ruling regimes in neocolonial countries makes even international or regional groupings and associations of poor countries irrelevant. Thus, the so called association among the ruling classes in both imperialist and neocolonial countries and the consequent intensified loot of the workers and oppressed peoples, rather than leveling out the differences, actually strengthens the historical gap between the two. No doubt, UN and its Security Council, Fund-Bank combine, WTO, various military arrangements and so on which are still controlled by a handful of leading imperialist powers still ensure imperialism’s hegemony over the planet.

Neoliberal role of the state

Internationalization of capital along with the catchwords of privatization and liberalization has also led to the emergence of such prognoses as “non-state capitalism”, “trans-national capitalism”, etc. Of course, the situation today is qualitatively different compared with time when Lenin conceptualized on “state capitalism” defined as the merger of finance capital and state, a process that got strengthened in the imperialist world under international Keynesianism through planning and programming of the economy, growth of public sector, emergence of “military-industrial complexes”, etc. that continued till the “stagflation” of 1970s. However, the neoconservative-neoliberal redefinition of the state reversing the erstwhile trend towards “state-led development” and granting of unfettered freedom to MNCs and financial giants since then has subjected every sphere of social and economic life to the discipline of international capital flows. Global mergers and acquisitions among big firms have enabled them to become ever bigger entities even as privatization and the consequent “downsizing and rollback” of the state have prompted pundits to postulate on “state-less capitalism” that is not in accord with facts. No doubt, privatization has been an effective ideological weapon in the hands of ruling classes to evade responsibility for the people’s suffering caused by the system by blaming everything on impersonal market forces. On the contrary, after withdrawing itself from social spending and dismantling all erstwhile laws pertaining to labour, tax, environment, etc., and removing its welfare mask altogether, it is the very same neoliberal state that takes a pro-active role in unleashing the tyranny of finance capital on workers and peoples everywhere. To frame repressive labour laws and install pro-corporate tax and environmental regimes, finance capital is relying on the state as much as ever, and therefore it needs to be reiterated that “non-state capitalism” is a misnomer both internationally and intra-nationally.

The argument that imperialism today has become “transnational” is still more problematic as ‘national character’ is inherent in capital since its birth itself. The conceptualization on a “trans-national capitalist class” is purely hypothetical. For, even after several decades of internationalization of production, the world’s leading manufacturing companies still branches out from the so called “home country.” That is, majority of the shares of MNCs are still owned within their home country. The great majority of US, German, British, French, Japanese and Chinese firms remain overwhelmingly nationally owned and has the majority of their assets concentrated in a single country. According to latest data, 96 percent of the world’s 200 largest MNCs have their headquarters in only eight countries; they are legally registered as incorporated companies of eight countries and their boards of directors also sit in these eight imperialist countries. Only less than 2 percent of their board members are non-nationals. That is, despite their “global reach”, the wealth and ownership of MNCs still have a clear ‘national base’.

These MNCs firmly rely on their home state for the establishment of appropriate multilateral investment, trading and monetary institutions and arrangements for orderly regulation of trade and commercial relations, for coercing dependent countries to have an “investor-friendly” atmosphere and for ensuring “ease of doing business”, for avoiding fluctuations in international currency and capital markets, for the protection of a captive domestic market, for bailing them out during crises, and above all for using military might against an adversary or “competitor” or recalcitrant element as the last resort. Thus crisis-ridden imperialism cannot exist without state and greater the threat of crisis, the greater the need for the state. Historically, “speculative capital” has been less tightly rooted in the state than industrial capital. However, the financial crash of 1987 and the onset of recession in the last decade of the 20^th century brought home very strongly its need also for the imperialist state. The provision of trillions of dollars worth “stimulus packages” and “rescue operations” extended to corporate capitalists the world over following the 2007-08 “global meltdown” has been the latest example. Immediate response of finance capitalists to a crisis is to rush back to the relative security of their imperialist states. Suffice it to say that true internationalism and the move towards a “stateless society” are implanted to socialism and not to capitalism.

However, the generally accepted Marxist model of inter-imperialist rivalry of the colonial era which still acts as a factor in capital accumulation is qualitatively different in today’s postwar neocolonial context of internationalization of capital. No doubt, as exemplified through Brexit, Trumpism, etc., “economic nationalism” and protectionism have been well-entrenched trends in imperialism. However, though protectionist tendencies are strong, the compulsions arising from globalization of commodity and financial markets have made it keen on the part of imperialism through such institutions as IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc., to keep dimensions of such rivalries under check so as to avoid a repetition of the trade wars, currency and military confrontation, etc. which were reminiscent of the interwar period. In the post Cold War neoliberal period, in spite of aggressions in Iraq, West Asia and other regional interventions, this situation has been more or less the same. Free cross-border capital movements, stability of investment, liberal trade policies, etc. which are essential pre-requisites for internationalization of capital prompts imperialism to strive to postpone an open military confrontation among imperialist powers. However, imperialism can camouflage its aggressive and war-mongering character only temporarily. The collusion or contradiction among imperialists in any given situation is integrally linked up with the development of international class struggle. No doubt, ignorance of this basic Leninist proposition and talk of “peaceful imperialism” will invariably lead into erroneous theses like “trans-nationalism”, “ultra-imperialism”, “trans-state capitalism”, etc. Meanwhile, both “free trade” and “protection” as two systemic tendencies exert their influence as two sides of the same coin of imperialist policy.

Globalization of financial speculation or “financialization”

However, since the stagflation of the 1970s and collapse of Keynesianism and removal of controls on speculative capital, internationalization of finance or financialization has proceeded much faster than the internationalization of production. In fact, as a corollary of stagnation and lack of ‘profitable’ investment opportunities in imperialist countries, finance capital had started fast moving into the sphere of speculation even when Keynesian policies were in vogue. Immense money capital accumulated by MNCs and global financial giants, especially those emanating from the US and EU including the huge volume of euro dollars and petrodollars deposited in American transnational banks and European banks had to be deployed in the most profitable manner. Since the productive sphere was stagnating and confronting a downturn in the rate of profit, the other option was to develop new avenues of financial speculation. Large scale FDI flows into the cheap-labour “export enclaves” of neocolonial countries were only part of the solution. In 1974 itself, the US abolished all restrictions on international capital movements, while EU removed controls on capital, following the fall of Berlin Wall and collapse of Soviet Union. Along with these, a multidimensional network of financial institutions and services and bewildering variety of financial assets and devises called “derivatives” and transaction methods were built up. Under Keynesian policy of apparent restrictions on speculation, financial expansion was allowed more or less in tandem with production and employment or rather speculation was feeding on a productive economy. But under neoliberal globalization there emerged a clear dichotomy between “the financial” and “the real” and financial growth started gearing itself for self-expansion through unhindered speculation. Unlike the past history of imperialism, today the global speculative bubble is thriving on a stagnant economy. To be precise, internationalization of finance or financialization that drives today’s imperialism is undermining the very basis of capitalist commodity production itself.

During the early twentieth century, though finance capital was in its early stage, Lenin was farsighted enough to note its destructive nature. In today’s imperialism, this reactionary essence of finance capital pinpointed by Lenin has assumed a qualitative leap through financialization and has become terribly destructive. Lion’s share of international financial transactions today does not serve any productive function, but serve purely financial speculation such that production can be compared to “a bubble on a whirlpool of speculation.” Taking the US as an example, the dollar value of financial transactions there that was more than two times of the GDP in 1970, rose to more than five times in 1980 and to more than fifty times in 2000. By the turn of the twenty-first century, when the floodgates of financial speculation started opening up, the total value of annual financial transactions in US had reached the $ 500 trillion mark whereas its GDP was $ 10 trillion. In 2006, just an year before the first “global meltdown” (the so called “sub-prime crisis” in US followed by the “sovereign debt crisis “ in EU and recession in China) of the twenty-first century, the value of international “derivative trading” alone reached $1200 trillion when the GDP of US amounted to $ 12.456 trillion, around one-hundredth of the former. The same trend was repeated in other countries too. Accommodation of the interests of speculative finance capital, the primary form of which has been cross-border “hot money flows” became the major concern of comprador regimes at the behest of IMF, Multilateral Investment Guaranty Agency, TRIMs provisions of WTO and so on. Thus internationalization of finance has not only reduced the maneuverability of comprador regimes but also exposed the countries to the turbulences and instabilities arising from “hot money flows” crossing ‘national’ borders within split seconds.

In such a scenario, where the driving force of profit accumulation has been financial speculation rather than production, world is witnessing the paradoxical situation of growing wealth concentration with corporate billionaires even as world economy is reeling under slump. According to Marxist analysis, accumulation of wealth by financial oligarchs is invariably rooted in the extraction of surplus value from living labour. That is, though the appropriation of surplus value by finance capital apparently takes place in financial markets and speculative spheres, it is ultimately related to the extraction of surplus value from the sphere of production which is lagging behind. In a situation where employment and mass consumption are going down, development of cracks in the extraction of surplus value is inevitable. During the initial decades of neocolonial plunder, finance capital accumulated profit mainly through the provision of loans to industry, engaging in commercial banking operation and supplying loans to housing. In that sense, there was a fairly direct relationship between the extraction of surplus value from the workers by capital and the appropriation of a significant portion of that surplus value by finance capital. However, due to the inherent contradiction of capitalism, this so called “coalescence’ of finance and industry and accumulation of wealth have become unviable since the advent of “stagflation” in the 1970s. Confronted with this new crisis and downturn in profit, as already noted, through a shift in neocolonial policy towards neoliberalism, imperialism resorted to a reorganization and restructuring of both the spheres of production and circulation such that accumulation of wealth was increasingly separated from the creation of value. The outcome has been financialisation on the one hand, and deindustrialization, outsourcing, casualization, “jobless growth” (large-scale unemployment and under-employment as a permanent phenomenon), etc., on the other, leading to a galloping of profits and deterioration in the real earnings of workers as two aspects of the same process.

Of course, the root of the ongoing crisis is to be traced to production relations rather than confining to the realm of finance. More precisely, in spite of world’s leading capitalists today holding greater proportion of world wealth than ever in history, the fraction of it being invested productively has never been lower. It is leading to an aggravation in inequality and loss of purchasing power for the masses leading to an intensification of capital’s “realization crisis” further.” Even as the most unproductive, conspicuous consumption by the parasitic financial oligarchy and ruling classes grows leaps and bounds, the purchasing power and consumption levels of the broad masses of people are going down everywhere. At a global level, all these have enforced a redistribution of wealth and income from the neocolonial countries to the imperialist powers and from the workers and the oppressed people to the corporate oppressors in general.

A noticeable trend in this context has been the huge accumulation of financial wealth by the comprador bourgeoisie from dependent countries acting as junior partners of imperialist monopolies. Internationalization of capital has also enabled these sections specialized in money-spinning financial, stock and real estate speculation to enter world financial and monetary circulation channels with their financial accumulation and integrate themselves with imperialist financial and investment centres. Today imperialism has succeeded to extend this financial integration even to the micro or local level under the camouflage of “financial inclusion” through micro-finance social networks linking the “global” with the “local”. This has further contributed to the undermining of the economic and political structures of neocolonial countries, as is exemplified by the efforts of ruling regimes even in countries like Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea, etc., to accommodate the speculative interests of global finance capital, at the behest of IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc.

Digitization

Even in the turn of the twenty-first century, digital flows that connect the world more than ever were practically nonexistent. But their impact on economic growth today is at par with the centuries-old trade in goods. Today broadband connections have become more important than shipping lanes. And during the past one decade, the amount of cross-border bandwidth that is used has grown around 50 times from less than 4000 gigabits per second in 2006 to more than 220000 gigabits per second in the beginning of 2016 , and is projected to increase by an additional eight times by 2020. While internet penetration in US is estimated at three-fourth of the population, the same is two-third in EU and one-third in Asia whereas the “digital divide” (people having no access to internet), as a manifestation of global inequality, is most revealing in sub-Saharan Africa. Flows of information, searches, communication, multimedia, images, video transactions, ecommerce, intra-company traffic, data, text, articles, etc., continue to surge. In addition to transmitting valuable streams of information and ideas in their own right, data flows enable the movement of goods, services, finance, and people. Virtually every type of cross-border transaction now has a digital component. According to bourgeois experts, over a decade, all types of digital flows acting together have raised world economic growth by 10.1 percent (equal to $7.8 trillion in 2014) over what would have resulted in a world without any cross-border flows!

Of course, nobody can gloss over the significant role played by “digitization” and “informatization” in differentiating contemporary imperialism from its twentieth century counterpart. As already noted, the emergence and transformation of ICT has been a catalyst in the internationalization of monopoly finance capital (at the sphere of both production and circulation) since the late 1960s. But with the advent of digital flows or digitization, it has become possible to instantly transform physical activities including even manufacturing into fluid digital data that can be stored, retrieved and distributed globally. And the line of demarcation between hardware and software is vanishing. Unlike in the past, one of the major reasons why protectionist and economic nationalist policies are becoming less effective in the twenty-first century has been due to the internet. Obviously, digital flows which are crucial and most concentrated in the sphere of monetary and financial transactions have imparted a qualitative dimension to the global operations of financial speculation in the 21^st century. Digitization also prompts various analysts to characterize the transformation of the “industry-based” world to “information-based” and “knowledge-based” one. Some have even characterized 21^st century capitalism as “informational capitalism” compared to “laissez-faire capitalism” of 19^th century and “corporate capitalism” of 20^th century. However, one-sided emphasis on today’s imperialism as “informational imperialism” would be an exaggeration since such a formulation would negate the centrality of production process, capital circulation, commodity trade and military aggressions. While playing an important role in today’s imperialism, digital flows are still subsumed under finance capital (class relations among and within nations), and the “digital divide” by deskilling those having no internet access is widening inequalities at all levels. Large “digital gaps” between a handful of imperialist countries and the rest of the world are conspicuous.

“Digital imperialism”, while reinforces finance capital’s global reach at minimum cost through “leaner” and more efficient ways facilitated by digital platforms and tools, the regime of flexible specialization and accumulation unleashed by digitization has created new challenges before the working class as traditional approaches of organizing labour are becoming less effective in the “digital era.” “Digital relations of production” that are shaped by informal or unorganized, unpaid, underpaid, super-exploited, “slave” labour today yield finance capital inexhaustible and complex network of interconnected, global avenues of exploitation, and plunder. Emergence of transnational cyberspace as a tool of corporatization, communication and coordination can restructure not only the economic sphere but also can manipulate political and cultural systems by creating “intangible” or “virtual” “cultural products” such as knowledge, information, ideas, symbols, codes, texts, linguistic figures, images, pornography, and even conspiracy theories. Suffice it to say that an objective analysis of the new frontier of digitization that opens up cyber avenues of expropriation to finance capital from the Marxist perspective is indispensable for the proletariat.

Corporatization of agriculture and depeasantization

A discussion on today’s imperialism would be incomplete without mentioning the fundamental transformations taking place in the sphere of agriculture. Of course, in consonance with the laws of motion of finance capital over a century, world capitalist agriculture has been transforming from ‘industrial’ to ‘corporate’. In conformity with this, corporatization of agriculture and depeasantization and proletarianization of vast majority of the peasantry are the two major inseparable trends visible in global agriculture today. Intensification of corporate land grab and unprecedented expropriation of the peasantry from land and massive displacement of rural population from their habitats resulting in horrific levels of migration in search of livelihood and sustenance leading to worldwide refugee crises and swelling urban slums are all integral part of the crisis confronting agriculture now. Coupled with these, neoliberal pricing and market policies pertaining to agricultural inputs as well as outputs that serve the interests of corporate farms, agribusiness MNCs and commodity speculators also contribute to the forced withdrawal of peasants from agriculture. As a corollary of corporatization of agriculture as manifested in large scale dependence on imports of food, fertilizers and animal feeds for the breeding of animals in mechanized or “factory farms”, cultivation of bio-fuels and ever-intensifying use of genetically modified seeds, mono-crop agriculture , all resulting in loss of biodiversity, etc., have acted as major factors behind the ecological catastrophe and environmental crisis along with food insecurity for the vast majority of the common people. Three quarters of the global genetic diversity of crops (along with animal breeds) have been lost by the turn of the 21^st century.

The international penetration of finance capital in to agriculture as a corollary of its postwar expansion started with the super-imposition of Green Revolution on neocolonial countries since the 1950s at the combined instigation of US Agricultural Department, Ford-Rockefeller philanthropies, USAID and World Bank, and further carried over by FAO, UNDP, International Fund for Agricultural Development(IFAD) and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research(ICAR) with the involvement of agribusiness MNCs. Interpreted as a classic case of neocolonization with its firm grip over both the market and technology pertaining to agriculture, Green Revolution also paved the for the emergence of an agricultural bourgeoisie class in Afro-Asian Latin American countries as a social base for neocolonial plunder replacing erstwhile decadent feudal forces who were performing this role under colonialism. However, the ongoing corporatization of agriculture under the so called Second Green Revolution has imparted a new dimension to this phenomenon. The inclusion of agriculture in to the Market Access and Plant Breeding provisions including intellectual property rights pertaining to plants, animals, and micro-organisms of WTO at the behest of US and EU has compelled marginal peasants to abandon agriculture altogether and join the ranks of urban slum dwellers or ‘informal working class’. In several Afro-Asian Latin American countries “contract farming” has become the dominant trend where farmers are fast transforming as appendages (just as bonded labourers) to agribusiness companies and commodity speculators (so called futures traders) at terms dictated by the latter. Coupled with this, unprecedented land concentration with big corporate farms has rendered the tillers of the soil landless leading to a rapid growth in the number of agricultural workers relative to that of the ‘peasantry’ almost everywhere. To be precise, the economic, social and ecological problems created by corporatization of agriculture are part of the central political question in today’s imperialism.

Ecological catastrophe

Plunder of nature and ecological destruction which were inseparable from the capitalist accumulation process have reached the level of a global environmental catastrophe in today’s imperialism. In his book ‘Dialectics of Nature’ Engels had pointed out how the ‘primitive accumulation’ of capital under the colonization process led to irreparable damages to global environment in the process of installing factories, plantations, mines without any concern for vulnerable or sensitive environment and ecological balance. However, in the post World War II period, utilizing the technical advances finance capital’s intensified exploitation of people and nature has led to unprecedented pressure on the ecology of the earth. The global market expansion and change in the life styles and growth in the conspicuous consumption by a tiny elite have directly contributed to the “global warming”, which by changing existing climatic patterns will result in food scarcity on a global level, massive displacement of people, drinking water scarcity and so on leading to the worsening of already existing inequalities. It was in this context that the CPI (ML) Red Star in its Party Program has incorporated the “contradiction between capital and nature” as a major contradiction of the imperialist system. Today, as ecology has come to the centre-stage of policy decisions and as world people’s ecological consciousness is ever-growing, there has been a spurt in the activities of several agencies including international NGOs specializing in environmental questions. But most of them are conspicuously silent on finance capital’s neocolonial interests behind the issue. Thus the whole issue of ecology and environment which is inseparably linked up with imperialist globalization today is being depoliticized in the interests of ruling classes.

At this juncture, as an inseparable component of the struggle for building up an egalitarian social order, the ICM has yet to concretely put forward an alternative development paradigm that stands for a harmonious co-evolution of nature and human society. During its initial years, the Soviet Union led by Lenin upheld a level of ecological consciousness and ecological conservation which was well in advance of anything that existed in the capitalist countries at that time. However, from the 1930s onward, the whole development orientation began to shift towards a one-sided emphasis on “productive forces” and such ideas as “catching up with the West”, “GDP as yardstick of economic growth”, etc. gradually got official recognition leading to the emergence of bureaucratic and technocratic decision-making in the ‘development’ process. Though Mao Tsetung has attempted to rectify this mistake by his well-known conceptualization of “On the Ten Major Relationships” while discussing “on the problems concerning socialist construction and socialist transformation”, that was completely abandoned following the process of capitalist restoration and China’s eventual integration with imperialism.

Parallel to the rise and fall of the socialist initiative on development, in the context of the transition from colonialism to neocolonialism, imperialism took concerted efforts to use development itself as an ideological weapon against socialism and progressive people’s movements. By the time of decolonization itself, a whole set of “modernization theorists”, Keynesian policy experts and imperialist think tanks who were integrally associated with American social science institutions, US State Department and Bretton Woods organizations had propounded a ‘universal theory of development’ or ‘development paradigm’ applicable to the whole world irrespective of the historical trajectories of countries. In essence, under this mainstream development model, development itself has been institutionalized as a corollary of the unabated global expansion of finance capital and countries were required to open up their economies to the unfettered flows of foreign capital. With the collapse of this “development optimism” in the context of the advent of stagflation since the 1970s, coupled with financial speculation plunder of nature has become the major source of neoliberal accumulation today. When internationalization of finance capital has reached its farthest limits resulting in an unprecedented ecological catastrophe, what requires is a grasp of the dynamics of class relations behind the plunder of people and nature by capital, and traversing the prolonged road to a people-oriented development in harmony with nature, democracy and socialism. To reiterate, at a time when ecology has become one of the central political questions today, the inability of ICM to evolve an alternative proletarian approach to the whole question of mainstream development paradigm has become a challenging task.

De-politicization and fascistization

Integral to the global expansion and internationalization of finance capital under neoliberalism has been imperialism’s all out ideological-political offensive against socialist and democratic forces. The main task of postmodernism and post-Marxism as ideologies of neoliberalism has been diversion of people’s attention from the global operations of finance capital on the one hand, and negation of the primacy of working class political struggles in social transformation on the other. Taking advantage of the ideological and political setbacks suffered by ICM, the ultimate objective of the wide range of cultural and ideological streams relayed by postmodernism has been depoliticizing the working class and oppressed peoples. Backed by such ideologies, international funding agencies, a whole set of NGOs and so called civil society organizations are working overtime to camouflage the laws of dynamics underlying the material foundations of international finance capital and any mention of even the term imperialism itself is conspicuously absent in the diverse postmodern and post-Marxist alternatives or “discourses’ proposed by them. Negating the class essence of imperialist oppression and reorienting everything to the “cultural logic” of modern capitalism, these ideologies aim at, as already noted, depoliticizing and diverting of the working class and oppressed peoples away from anti-imperialist struggles. The entire categories associated with modernity such as enlightenment, ideals of secularism, and democracy are characterized as a “baggage”, while religion, ethnicity, race, caste and other pre-modern and pre-capitalist “identities” are suggested as the “preferred cohesion of the oppressed” against the injustices of the modern world. Postmodern romanticizing of the “orient”, glorification of past identities as “subaltern cultures”, along with the bouncing back of several religious fundamentalist, obscurantist, chauvinistic, xenophobic and autarkic reactionary trends, all in the guise of fighting the “evils of capitalism” are working in full swing to turn back the clock of history.

The tilt towards neo-fascism in its diverse manifestations at a global level today is inseparably linked up with this depoliticizing of the masses. Fascism has been the outcome of the intensification of the internal contradictions of imperialism. As Comintern rightly said, fascism outbreaks when the inherent contradictions of imperialism sharpen, the severity of which is such that it cannot be resolved through normal methods of surplus value extraction by finance capital. The concrete manifestations of fascism-“terrorist dictatorship of finance capital” as defined by Comintern- resulting from interpenetration or merger between monopoly capital and bourgeois political leadership that first appeared during the inter-war period in Germany and Italy in the form of Nazism and Fascism are a much discussed topic. The situation today where under the veil of bourgeois democracy corporate billionaires have the reins of of state power under their control, ever-mounting imperialist crisis is manifested in incessant corporate assaults on working class and oppressed peoples everywhere. Consequently, working class struggles and people’s discontent are surging in every part of the globe in one form or another. In the absence of a revolutionary leadership having a political alternative capable of leading these struggles to transform the system, the economic, social and political disruptions resulting from the crises are used by corporate neo-fascists and their political representatives to impose authoritarian and dictatorial methods on the people. The developments in Britain leading to Brexit, the advent of Trump in the US, the victory of AFD in German local elections, the rise of Marine Le Pen’s Party in France, the Brazilian coup, the ultra-right wing Hindu supremacist Modi regime in India, and so on are concrete instances of rightward, protectionist, chauvinistic, and xenophobic shift in political-economic relations at a global level. Quite reminiscent of the fascist ascendancy of the1930s, reactionaries of all hues are profusely using rhetorical, demagogic, populist, ill-digested and mutually contradictory proposals to manipulate public opinion and confuse the masses in the depoliticized context as already noted. Immigrants, refugees, low-castes, racial and religious minorities, are blamed for all the “misfortunes”. With the help of corporate media, apparatuses of the state, vigilante groups and storm troopers, hatred, suspicion and even direct attacks are systematically spread and enforced to divide and dismember people’s fighting unity against corporate capital.

Conclusion

While analyzing the major trends in contemporary imperialism, it is to be unequivocally stated that unlike in the past crises where temporary recoveries were possible, the developments under neoliberalism have imparted an irreversible dimension to imperialist crisis. The present world crisis of imperialism that intensifies day by day has been the outcome of the reproduction and piling up of all its inherent contradictions on an unprecedented scale. Further, the internationalization of finance capital through a quarter century of globalization has transformed every crisis appearing in any part of the world into a global one. The euphoria on global expansion of market created by the collapse of East Europe and Soviet Union and capitalist restoration in China followed by their eventual integration with imperialist market is no more. The initial attraction to neoliberal ideologies backed by globalization has lost its steam. The economic, social, cultural and ecological crisis arising from globalized imperialism today is threatening the very sustenance of humankind. The crisis is systemic and irresolvable within the imperialist system and space for maneuvers is also fast depleting. However, as Lenin pointed out, there is no final crisis for capitalism. Until being thrown away, imperialism will carry on devising existential strategies putting heavier and heavier burdens on the backs of people. A revolutionary intervention led by the international working class with a political alternative is the only solution. To provide a fresh basis for this crucial task, the Marxist theory of imperialism has to be enriched further based on a concrete understanding of the laws of motion of finance capital today.

Reading:-

Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 25

Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. V

‘Fourth Comment of the CPSU’ entitled “Apologists of Neocolonialism” (Great Debate)

John Bellamy Foster and Henryk Szlajfer, “Introduction,” in Foster and Szlajfer, eds., The Faltering Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984)

Samir Amin, The Law of Worldwide Value (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010)

Atilio A. Boron, Empire and Imperialism (London: Zed Press, 2005)

Geoffrey Pilling, The Crisis of Keynesian Economics: A Marxist View (Croom Helm, 1986)

P J James, Imperialism in the Neocolonial Phase (Massline Publication, Kerala, 2015)

P J James, Dimensions of World Agricultural Crisis and the Task of Overcoming It (Paper presented at the World Agricultural Conference held at Kathmandu, 2016)

P J James, On MLPD’s Thesis on “New-Imperialist Countries” (Red Star, August 2016)

P J James, Debate Over the Issue of “New-Imperialist Countries” (Red Star, April, 2017)

www.redpath.net

www.wsws.org

www.mr.org

www.marxists.org

www.marx2mao

www.mckinsey.org

The post Imperialism Today – P J James appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

Caste and Class: Achilles’ Heel of the Indian Revolution.

Anand Teltumbde

“…turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster.”

– B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“To be radical is to grasp things by the root.” 

– Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

No two words in modern history might have had as menacing a consequence to the future of a country as caste and class. They have not only divided the working class movements into two camps, viz., movements believing in class struggle and movements believing in anti-caste struggle, but each backed by the ideological obsession of their protagonists and their historical trajectories pushed them onto the path of divergence and in course weakened both of them to the extent that today they find themselves struggling for relevance. Castes have been the life-world of people in the Indian subcontinent for more than two millennia and largely acknowledged to be the unique feature of its majority of people called Hindus although they never remained confined to them and infected the other religious communities that came into being since medieval times. It did face threats from counter-ideological streams such as shramans (later best represented by Buddhism) and political threats by the outsider invaders coming in from north but managed to outlast all of them. Contrary to a commonplace notion, Buddhism despite its ideological hegemony over the subcontinent for about a millennium could not disturb this life-world. Most of the outside invaders either left or settled mixing up with the local population leaving this life-world undisturbed in its essence. The medieval period saw emergence of Islamic society in India presenting an alternate civilizational prospect to the lower castes and it posed a significant threat to this life-world to the extent a large section of them escaped the thralldom of Brahmanism and embraced Islam. However, even this threat remained short-lived and soon even this new society got infected with caste virus. The new religion of Sikhism ostensibly professing equality of all humans by assimilating noble precepts of both Hinduism and Islam, also could not guard off the caste virus from infecting its society. Later, when Christianity came in, similarly attracting the lower castes in huge numbers as Islam did, the minority of upper castes who embraced it, castized it. Castes thus remained a pervasive reality of the India since antiquity to this day.

The life-world implied all its inhabitants internalized its principles and ethos. The people behaved as they were expected to by the caste code. It was only during the colonial rule that anti-caste consciousness germinated in the lower castes. The opportunities for economic progress, the new institutional mode of governance and the advent of capitalism under its shelter, catalysed it. Barring stray pockets in the world that reflected caste-like characteristics and African continent which had dominance of tribalism, classes characterized rest of the world. They came into prominence, however, with the spread of capitalism, which in its idealized form, divided the society into two interdependent but antagonistic classes, viz., proletariat and bourgeoisie. They particularly assumed prominence with the theories of Marxism that saw struggles between these two classes reaching their zenith where they would usher into a revolutionary change to socialism and thence, communism.

In this note I intend discussing the meaning of caste and class to elucidate the mistake committed by both the movements, dalit as well as communist, in dealing with them. While presenting my analysis of the situation of these movements, I try to sketch out a strategy for them to converge over a reasonable timeframe.

Definitional Aspects: Varna and Jati

Simply put, caste is a defining feature of the Indian society. Etymologically, the English word “caste” derives from the Spanish and Portuguese casta, with its roots in Latin castus. It meant “race, lineage, or breed”. When the Portuguese arrived in India in 1498 and encountered thousands of in-marrying hereditary Indian social groups they called them “castas”, which became “castes” in English in 1613.  The Indian name for castes is Jati or Jat. While the Europeans did not know anything like jati, their conception of caste subsumed racial connotations and tended to confuse with the varna division of the society, which still prevails significantly among the western scholars.

There is much confusion even in the scholarly literature between jati, and varna [They are used interchangeably by most scholars. For instance, Stuart Corbridge, John Harriss, Craig Jeffrey, India Today: Economy, Politics and Society, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013; Also see Bharat Jhunjhunwala, Varna Vyavastha: Governance through Caste System, Rawat Publications, New Delhi, p. 183; Binod, C.Agrawal, Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Complex Societies, Ethnographic & Folk Culture Society, Lucknow, 1982, p.44; N. K., Dutt, Origin and Growth of Castes in India, Vol. I, The Book Co. Ltd., Calcutta, 1931, p. 4.], which together constitute basis for the caste system. It is largely agreed that varnas were brought into India by the conquering tribes of Aryas during the dark period of history. If the lineage of Aryans is traced to the Iranian society, Avesta mentions only three classes of people based on economic functions in society [See, Mukhtar Ahmed, Ancient Pakistan: An Archaeological History, Vol. V, Foursome Group, Reidsville, 2014, p.149.] sans hierarchy, evolved into four (Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra) varna System (Chaturvarna) by the end of Rigvedic period with a notion of hierarchy and then led to designate the excluded ones as the avarnas (non-varna) or pancham (fifth) varna,.Thus, varnas were finite and with definitive hierarchy. Castes (jatis), in contrast, are countless and (because of it) with fluid notion of hierarchy. [The rough estimate of castes runs into thousands but no one for sure can vouch for those numbers. Louis Dumont deals with this question but leaves it unanswered because of its infeasibility. See Louis Dumont, Homo Hierrachicus, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970, p. 33]. Varna is the vedic classification of the four ranked occupational order, whereas caste refers to ranked hereditary, endogamous and occupational groups separated from each other by the ideas of purity and pollution. Classically, varnas defined the borders of Hinduism, whereas jatis were local within the borders of ethnolinguistic regions. The varnas may be taken as theoretical, a framework, whereas castes (jatis) are real and concrete. Besides, Brahman and the shudra within the original chaturvarna and avarna dalits in its extended form, which bracket overall Hindu social order, all other varnas are rarely found everywhere, but castes are found all over. As a result, the mapping of castes with intermediate varnas remains hazy and not accepted by many castes. Many castes reject legitimacy of the varna hierarchy and/or the places assigned to them by others. In the Brahmanical strongholds of south India itself the intermediate varnas hardly exist. Where they exist, they do so with local variations. Even historically, the village roost was not necessarily ruled by any Brahman caste; when it was, one could find wealth and power rather than its ritual status being instrumental in its placement. Many Brahmans did not enjoy any such reputation. Second, even their explanation for the advent of varnashram dharma also is unconvincing as it does not explain why it only survived in India and not elsewhere.

Historicity of Castes

The discourse on caste customarily starts curiously with the origin of caste, as though castes were the same as they originated. Many scholars have proffered theories of the origin of castes which in sum are no better than a blind man’s description of an elephant. Whether they are plausible or not, from the perspective of their annihilation, they do not serve any purpose. One of the motivations behind knowing the origin of caste is to possibly strike at its root in order to eradicate it. Probably Dr Ambedkar adopts it when in Annihilation of Caste; he attributes its origin to the Dharmashastras of Hinduism and therefore infers that unless they were dynamited, the caste system would not be annihilated.

The theories of the origin of castes may be broadly classified into as many as ten classes based on their thrust: (i) traditional or Indological theory, (ii) racial theory, (iii) political theory, (iv) religious theory, (v) occupational theory, (vi) racial/functional theory, (vii) guild theory, (viii) mana theory, and (ix) evolution or multi-factor theory. According to the traditional or Indological theory, the caste system is of divine origin. It is based on the allegorical explanation in Purushsukta in Rig Veda for the origin of four varnas being parts of the cosmic being purusha or the supreme creator (God)., Castes were born later as a result of different types of marriages between varnas in ancient India. Although of little intellectual value, it underlies the popular belief in castes. The Racial Theory propounded by Sir Herbert Risely held that caste system was due to racial differences between migrant Aryas and Anaryas (native people). G. S. Ghurye (1932) appear to support this theory. The political theory held that caste system was the result of political conspiracy of the Brahmans to secure control over the functions of the society. This theory was originally propounded by a French scholar Abbe Dubais and found tacit support in many scholars like Denzil Ibbetson and also S.G. Ghurye. The religious theory was advocated by Hocart and Senart. Hocart postulated that castes were a hierarchy of ritual offices centered on a king (or a local lord) having as their purpose the performance of the royal ritual for the benefit of the entire community. The king, as the representative of the god and religion, allotted positions to different functional groups. Senart tried to explain the caste system on the basis of prohibitions regarding sacramental food. Occupational/Functional theory, originally propounded by Nesfield, held that occupation were the main base of the caste system. The notion of hierarchy of castes stemmed basically from the superiority or inferiority of occupations. The Racial/ Functional theory put forth by Slater combines both the racial and functional origins, postulating that the caste system was created to safeguard the professional and occupational secrets of different races. The Aryan invasions intensified and developed the existing structure making occupations hereditary and marriages only within the same occupation groups, sanctified later by ritual practices and religious ceremonies. The Guild theory put forth by Denzil Ibbeston, holds that castes are the modified forms of guilds and the caste system was the product of three forces, (i) tribes, (ii) guilds, and (iii) religion. The guilds evolved into castes imitating the endogamy of the prestigious class of priests. The mana theory based on the views of J.H. Hutton accords the caste system pre-Aryan origin and suggests that the primitive belief in ‘mana’ among tribes accounted for the origin of the caste system. Mana was associated with magical and harmful powers and hence the ancient tribes evolved elaborate taboos or restrictions to protect themselves from other tribes’ mana. Lastly, the Evolutionary or Multifactor theory propounded by sociologists held that a complex phenomenon of the caste system could not be explained by a single factor and rather was a result of many factors such as beliefs in racial superiority, geographical isolation. metaphysical concepts, belief in mana, desire to maintain racial purity of blood and manipulation by Brahmans.

As could be seen, none of these theories, save for the last one, which does not claim a specific factor and hence is flexible enough to accommodate any of the above or entirely new one within its fold, are explaining the origin of the caste system. They rather explain the varna system and take for granted that caste system is born out of the varna system.

Ambedkar on Caste

In relation to castes, Babasaheb Ambedkar assumes extraordinary importance because of his life-long struggle, both in the realm of theory as well as practice. His seminal paper, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, which Ambedkar presented as a student, at an Anthropology Seminar taught by Dr. A. A. Goldenweizer in Columbia University on 9 May 1916, dealt with some of these views and also those of Dr. Ketkar and dismissed them as Petitio Principii of formal logic.. It was here that he observed, “A caste is an enclosed class”.

He disagreed with Senart that the “idea of pollution” was a peculiarity of caste as it was “a particular case of the general belief in purity”. As per him, the idea of pollution could be ignored without affecting the working of castes. It was attached to the institution of caste only because of the priestly caste which enjoyed the highest rank. To Nesfield’s theory highlighting absence of messing with outside the caste, Ambedkar would say that it was mistaking the effect for the cause. Caste being a self-enclosed unit, it naturally limits social intercourse, including messing. He did not find Risley’s views deserving even a comment. He rather included Ketkar who had defined caste in its relation to a system of castes, and had focused his attention only on those characteristics which were absolutely necessary for the existence of a caste within a system. Ambedkar however, critiqued Ketkar for taking “prohibition of intermarriage and membership by autogeny” as the two characteristics of caste and argued that they were but two aspects of one and the same thing. If intermarriage is prohibited, the membership of those born within the group also shall be automatically limited.

Ambedkar argues that the Hindu society like other societies was essentially a class system, in which individuals, when qualified, could change their class. However, at some time in history, the priestly class socially detached itself from the rest of the people and through a closed-door policy became a caste by itself. The other varnas, which were subject to the law of social division of labour, developed sub-division with social mobility of the class system. However, as he argued, they too lost the open-door character of the class system and have become self-enclosed units called castes. He explained their becoming castes saying “Some closed the door: Others found it closed against them.” He proffered a psychological explanation for the former saying that since the Brahmans or priestly class, occupied the highest position in the social hierarchy of the Hindu society, the other classes simply imitated them by adopting endogamy. Over the years, endogamy became a fashion since it originated from the priestly class, who were venerated and idolized in the scriptures. Endogamy was thus practiced by all the classes, which ultimately resulted into the rigid formation of castes. The custom of endogamy superimposed on exogamy, which prevailed in all ancient tribes, became the creation of castes. He points out that without the practice of endogamy, the caste system cannot survive. Along with endogamy, Brahmans followed the custom of sati and enforced widowhood which later spread to other castes. The mainstream sociology never acknowledged this analysis of Ambedkar, although it predated the thesis by G. S. Ghurye, celebrated as the first sociological treatise on caste by a decade and anticipated many of the ideas of the later scholars.

Ambedkar developed his theory of untouchability on the basis of ‘broken men’ (broken from their tribes during the tribal wars), who, since they were Buddhists, and did not respect Brahmans were made untouchables. He wrote, “…the Broken Men were Buddhists. As such they did not revere the Brahmins, did not employ them as their priests and regarded them as impure. The Brahmin on the other hand disliked the Broken Men because they were Buddhists and preached against them contempt and hatred with the result that the Broken Men came to be regarded as Untouchables”. They were made untouchables because they continued eating beef when the Gupta Kings made cow killing a criminal offence and beef eating a sin in the 4th century AD. This theorization that attributed untouchability to the struggle for supremacy between Buddhism and Brahmanism helped him to endow the dalits with Buddhist past.

Ambedkar’s theorization of untouchability is as problematic as his analysis of castes was insightful. It is pivoted on ‘broken men’ being Buddhist, which, as candidly admitted by Ambedkar does not have any evidential support. He just concludes it saying “No evidence is … necessary when the majority of Hindus were Buddhists. We may take it that they were.”

Materialistic Perspective

While the ideological contrivance surely plays a role in sustaining a social order, it cannot create it. The fact that varna-like systems of stratification existed in most ancient societies and they were not ordained by any religious ideology, purely ideological explanation for the origin of the caste system becomes problematic. Social systems come into being because the material conditions demand them. The ideological superstructure develops later to preserve them. A section of society that benefits from the system develops vested interests and wants to preserve it through an ideological apparatus. The pervasiveness of the caste system over the vast subcontinental space and its becoming a ‘life-world’ of people is surely attributable to the spread of ideology but the origin of the caste system needs to be searched elsewhere.

The material factors that gave rise to the caste system can perhaps be located in the uniquely rich natural endowment of the Indian subcontinent for the biotic mode of production extant in ancient times. In terms of plentiful flat, fertile land; rivers and water bodies; abundant and all time sunshine, and congenial climate, Indian subcontinent may scarcely have parallel on the planet in its richness for agriculture. These factors might be seen to be the key to unfathom the mystery of the unique system of stratification in the form of the caste system. When nomadic tribes began settling for agriculture, they necessarily underwent change in their social structure everywhere confirming to their material conditions. For instance, the places where lands were hostile and not so fertile; water sources were scanty and seasons were erratic; and sunshine had a narrow window of a few months, as for instance in England, it gave rise to a system of serfdom. In order to cultivate vast tracts of lands within a small time-window necessitated huge army of serfs to work and a lord to control them. In contrast, Indian tribes did not have to undergo such a structural transformation and had settled down with their tribal identities intact. These tribal identities were rather castes, albeit sans hierarchy or any stigma.

The notion of hierarchy and stigma (purity and pollution) were rather superimposed by the post-Rigvedic varna system. Thus, contrary to the proposition of the traditional ideological theory, it is not the varnas that came first and they evolved into castes, but quite the opposite. The castes in the form of tribal identities with some amount of magico-religious development, natural to agricultural communities, already existed in India, which were later overlain by the varna system brought in by the vanquishing Aryan tribes. With the growth of surplus production, it needed an intricate ideological contrivance, appealable to agricultural society as it purported to solve their myriad knowledge problems about natural events on which agriculture depended. The priestly class of Brahmans assumed the role of a mediator between people and gods, and slowly became ‘gods on earth’ themselves to establish their hegemony. They propounded a theory of karma to justify the present order and fortify their own supremacist position. While it made people to accept their caste statuses as their destinies according to their past karma, it also motivated them to adhere to the caste dharma in order to be born into better caste in the next birth. Besides this self propellant, there was a cobweb of rules as in Manusmriti that prescribed their behavior and punishments for any deviation from the prescribed code. This entire superstructure would stabilize making castes as the life-world of people.

It may be noted that the Manusmriti-like rules with harsh punishments provided for violation of caste code must have occasioned clearly to thwart the tendencies towards violation of the caste code. One may attribute it to the ideological influence of Buddhism when it began spreading among masses. In order to fortify the brahmanic structure of the society, such regidfied code might have been occasioned. But during the period of Buddhist hegemony, there appears no evidence that Buddhism actively engaged to fight the caste division in the society. It may be that while people followed Buddhism, the life-world of caste also survived. Buddhism, after it got royal support, lost its missionary zeal and became vihar centric engaged in production of intricate philosophies. People did adore Buddhism and its monks but the practice of castes also continued as a cultural drag. If the Buddhist tenets had crystallized into the cultural practice of people, it would be difficult to imagine complete erasure of it all over the subcontinent.

There were many upheavals in Indian history but this life-world adjusted itself to any disturbance. After the resurgence of Brahmanism under the leadership of Shankara in eighth century, it got strengthened further. It received numerous jolts during the medieval times through the stabilization of Muslim rule, emergence of Bhakti movement, emergence of Sikhism, etc., all of them ideologically oriented against castes, but it managed to adjust itself to the emerging circumstances.

Catalytic Role of the Colonial Rule

However, it received its severest jolt during the colonial period. The advent of western liberal institutions of governance, English education and capitalist enterprises proved hugely beneficial to the lower classes. Many of them ran after the opportunities created in new urban centers and made significant economic progress. Even before these changes began to befall, the advent of Britishers opened up opportunities for the lower castes to get into their employ and later into army. The latter proved especially significant because it not only gave them an opportunity to wield weapons, which were forbidden to them, but also win wars. It proved great moral booster in decimating the self image of inferiority solidified through centuries’ Brahmanic culture and realizing their martial prowess. The compulsory education in military service further reinforced it. All these changes created a class of relatively educated and economically well off Dalits, who became the harbinger of the Dalit movement. The work of Christian missionaries among them pushed the upper castes into taking up reforms in the Hindu society. The colonial rule variously impacted various sections of the Indian society including their life-world of castes.

From the dawn of the twentieth century, in process of responding to the various mass agitations (militant youth uprising in Bengal in response of partition and other parts), the British strategized to devolve power to Indian elites, albeit along the communal lines, so as to keep it in their control. The communal basis of sharing political power between two major divisions, Hindus and Muslims represented by the Congress and the Muslim League respectively, inevitably brought the question of where dalits and tribals belonged. On the eve of the Morley-Minto reforms in 1909 the Muslim League objected to the Congress’ taking them for granted as Hindus. It seeded the political space for the dalits in future to claim their separate identity and use it to bargain for their rights. The descent of Ambedkar, endowed with high academic accomplishments, as the dalit leader greatly accelerated this process. His main contributions have been in catapulting the caste question into the political arena, winning the dalits certain special rights such as reservations, theorizations of their struggles, and providing vision of emancipation.

The most significant measure that is entirely attributable to him is the scheme of reservations. Ambedkar won the dalits reservations with separate electorates in the Round Table Confernces during 1931-32 in contention with Gandhi. He was, however, blackmailed into giving up separate electorates by Gandhi with his fast unto death. The Poona Pact that symbolized the new agreement contained the principles of preferential recruitment of dalits in public services and other necessary things from the viewpoint of their uptliftment. In course, reservations in political representation, educational institutions and in public services (in 1943 when Ambedkar was a member in the Viceroy’s Executive Council) were established. The main justification of this ‘affirmative action’ was the exclusion suffered by the dalits in the Hindu society. They were accepted by the colonial rulers as an exceptional policy in favour of the exceptional people and were also largely reconciled by the populace. The significant development that happened for instituting these policies was the creation of a schedule that included all the untouchable people, imparting them a new administrative/political identity as scheduled castes. There was no back reference to the Hindu religious texts or customs necessary in future, thereby rendering the castes as such redundant.

Post-Colonial Cunning

When the reins of power came into the hands of the native upper caste-class elites, then represented by the Congress Party, they resorted to their Brahmanic cunning lain over the learning from colonial masters. The constituent assembly set up in accordance with the cabinet mission plan with the representatives elected by the provisional assemblies formed through the elections in July-August 1946 had to deal with the aspirations of masses, built up by the Congress during the freedom struggle. Way back in in 1928, under the Nehru committee, the Congress had resolved to undo untouchability. Later, in 1936, the Congress had decided to have a socialist system inspired by the constitution of Soviet Russia. Behind this mass façade, the Congress at its core remained the representative of the interests of the incipient bourgeoisie like Kuomintang in China during the same period. After gaining power, while it tried to keep up this façade, in reality it began surreptitiously but systematically pushing for the development in the interests of the capitalists as could be seen from its clandestine adoption of Bombay Plan (An investment plan prepared by the eight big capitalists during January 1944 for a period of 15 years in the post-colonial India, with the objective of doubling the GDP and trebling the per capita income) while rejecting it in public. In the context of castes, the constituent assembly took a decision to outlaw untouchability with much fanfare and amidst the slogan ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai’. It was indeed a victory to strategist Gandhi as he best represented all the upper caste reformers who wanted to abolish untouchability but variously defended castes. Untouchability, however, was a mere aspect of caste; it could not go away if the castes existed. There was a clear opportunity for the new ruling classes to outlaw caste itself. With castes gone, untouchability would automatically vanish. As could be experienced, nothing happened with the untouchability law as survey after surveys, right from the 1950s to just the present day (NCAER report) reveal.

Castes were not abolished ostensibly for giving reservations to the dalits. While theoretically, it may be conceded that the constituent assembly could do away reservations for the dalits that came through colonial times, none little versed with politics would dare say so. The constituent assembly expectedly adopted the 1936 schedule and continued with the reservations to the dalits but not without a mischief. It created another schedule for the tribals and extended the ditto provisions to them as were given to the scheduled castes. In doing this, it skillfully projected reservations as the only measure of social justice. Notwithstanding the fact that the tribals also were excluded like dalits, albeit not stigmatized socially, and therefore deserved reservations like dalits, the natural solution could have been to expand the existing schedule to include the tribals. By so doing the stigma associated with the schedule for the Dalits could have been diluted as the tribals did not have castes. It would have greatly aided the objective of eradicating untouchability if it honestly meant it. But it was not to be. There were many other problems too in creating this schedule. Foremost, there was no indisputable criterion like untouchability to identify tribals. Many a well-off caste managed to get them included into the schedule and deprived the real tribals of its intended benefits. It is an empirical fact that the entire benefit of the ‘scheduled tribes’ is bagged by these fake ‘tribes’ keeping the real tribals high and dry to take up guns. The ruling classes haven’t even stopped at that. They would create a vague provision that the state would identify the ‘backward classes’ (read castes) so as to extend similar provisions in future. They were to seed the reservations for the so called Backward classes but in reality was meant to construct a can of caste-worms the lid of which could be opened at an opportune time in future. As we see, the Prime Minister, V.P. Singh opened the lid in 1990 and unleashed the caste worms all over, castizing the country as never before.

The entire schema about castes being kept alive comes out clear when we see similar scheming around religion, the other weapon to divide people. The constitution scrupulously avoided the term secular that could create a separating wall between religion and politics with an alibi to have space for the state to carry out religion-related reforms. The only reform, seen with hindsight, that one could imagine was in the form of passing the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 in the wake of the burning of Roop Kanwar on her husband’s pyre. It is important to understand these matters to uncover the real strategies of the rulers in devising multiple layers of fortifications over castes.

Castes Today

Notwithstanding huge scholarly interest in caste in recent years, there is huge intellectual inertia in understanding them. Castes today are not the classical castes representing graded inequality. Actually, castes today are reduced to their primordial kink in continuum: dalit versus non-dalits. With the advent of capitalism the ritual aspects of castes have been fast weakening in direct proportion to the degree of interface the castes had with the capitalist system. The traditional ritual differences would come in the way of building supply chain relationships, thereby tending to increase transaction costs. Moreover, the rational base of capitalism also acted against the ritualistic systems. Therefore, the castes in urban areas that entered the sphere of capitalist relations began gradually dropping the ritualistic aspects of castes. It happened with the dwija castes. There is no necessity in caste context that all people belonging to a caste or caste group have such an interface. It may typically happen to a few families but the entire caste would emulate them as the leading elements of caste. When during the first decades of independence, the ruling classes carried out Land Reforms and brought in the capitalist strategy of Green Revolutions, in the name of giving land to the tillers and boosting agricultural productivity, respectively, but in reality to create a class of rich farmers in rural India that would stay as an ally of the center, the phenomenon extended to the shudra castes.

With the capitalist relations entering the country side, the bandwagon of the shudra castes also got hitched to the dwija castes. As for the dalits, these developments proved utterly detrimental. The traditional jajmani relations of interdependence collapsed under the onslaught of capitalist relations, reducing the dalits to be the rural proletariat, utterly dependent on the farm wages by the rich farmers. The latter wielding the baton of Brahmanism from the erstwhile upper caste landlords, who fled to the greener pastures in the urban areas, proved far more atrocious than the ones before because of the backing of overwhelming numbers of their castemen and their lack of cultural sophistication. The conflict over farm wages between the dalit labourers and the shudra farmers began to manifest through the familiar faultlines of castes creating a new genre of caste atrocities. Kilvenmeni, a village in old Tanjavur district classically inaugurated this new phenomenon. On 25 December 1968, the landlords along with their army attacked the agitating dalits and burnt 44 of them (mainly their women and children) alive. The saga of these atrocities continues unabated and unacknowledged by our bankrupt scholarship as characterizing changes in castes!

On the one hand, the majority of dalits in rural area (they are predominantly a rural people) suffered dual prospect of marginalization and repression by the new ‘Barhmans’ and on the other, they were seen as the undeserving beneficiaries of the state largesse. Their cultural awakening due largely to the Ambedkarite movement reinforced this perception. There is a widespread grudge against dalits in rural population. The politicians keep on announcing a plethora of schemes and keeping the fire alive. These schemes, if at all, benefit a typical minority of better off dalits but are propagandized in the name of entire people. As a matter of fact, reservations, as they have been formulated, benefitted only the relatively better-off dalits and thereafter kept on benefitting only them, increasingly excluding the needy ones. They have rather acted against the interests of majority of dalits. If one took an objective stock of this policy, the people it benefitted in terms of economic uplift may be less than 10 percent. However, the brunt of reservations is borne by the rest 90 percent of dalits in rural areas who can never dream of availing them. As I explained the mechanism of caste atrocities in my books , Khairlanji and Persistence of Castes, the pervasive grudge against dalits acts as fuel, which with the presence of systemic impunity (oxygen) can easily precipitate into a gory caste atrocity with a minor spark (source of ignition) explained with an analogy if fire triangle.

Dalits today are the sole prop of castes which cannot be afforded by the ruling classes to die. They may allow a section of them to be capitalist (as they indeed are promoting so called Dalit Capitalism) so as to neutralize potential resistance of dalits to their social Darwinist neoliberal policies but will not permit the same logic of capitalist relations to permeate the dalit masses. This feat is achieved through the instrument of reservations that preserves their dalithood. Interestingly, the bunch that flaunts their ‘coming of age’ as job givers and not job seekers also are sustained by reservations. The state that never listened to even the agonizing cries of dalit masses has picked up whispers of this bunch and promptly reserved a 4 percent of the SME quota for them. Tomorrow, the cost of this development also shall be borne by ordinary dalit masses.

Reservations as the Bane

Reservations have been used dexterously by the ruling classes in decimating dalit, which was a quasi class category Ambedkar conceived. Reservations as stated before benefitted a relatively tiny section of better-off dalits, who invariably belong to the most populous dalit castes anywhere. There is a material reason for it. The most populous dalit castes, because of their ‘excess’ population could not be absorbed within a village system with any specific caste vocation. As a result, they have reflected most enterprising tendency in grabbing opportunities in history. As they did not have any stake in the village system, they were the first ones to go out. It follows that they were the ones who came to constitute the dalit movement. By the same logic, they grabbed better share of reservation when they came in. Over the years, this was gradually grudged by the other castes among dalits which could not stand in competition with them. The politicians rushed to cash in on this grudge. They could easily incite the next populous dalit castes to demand their due share of reservation as per their population. As a matter of fact (as I showed in many of my analyses) even among the most populous dalit castes, all people have not benefitted equally. When caste is taken as a unit, the most populous caste appears to have grabbed most of the reservation. In terms of family, (which I had proposed to be a viable unit as it is family—an immediate family—that really benefits if a member gets reservation benefits) my hunch is that the situation across the castes may be the same. But reservation has never been subject to amy such objective analysis. Today, this categorization demand, which had started in Andhra Pradesh in 1995 by the Madigas there (through their Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti) has spread all other states, making Ambedkar’s dalits as the most casteist community.

Reservations have distorted the entire politics in the country. They have been taken for granted as benefit by dalits, who never counted costs paid for it. Indeed, dalits have paid huge costs – psychological costs of killing one’s self esteem right in the childhood, living with social stigma for the entire life; depoliticization of the advanced elements of dalits (as they land up in the public services where politics is banned), questionably benefiting a few but definitely costing the majority, incurring the grudge of the entire society, and distortion and marginalization of the fundamental obligation of the state in terms of providing basic inputs like health care, education, jobs, land, etc. to the population, to recount the broad ones. Reservation-like policy could only be valid if the state has fulfilled its minimal obligations towards all. There have been numerous such deficiencies with reservation policy as it is designed and operated. I have been writing about them over many years (you may refer “On Reservations” in Mainstream, easily accessible on the net) but without much reception.

The concept of reservation was a product of representation strategy of Ambedkar. He thought that if dalit representatives reach legislative bodies, they would take care of political interests of dalit masses. Likewise, he expected dalits, endowed with higher education, to occupy important positions in bureaucracy to create a protective cover over the dalit masses from the bureaucratic bias and possibly help them. He experienced the folly of this strategy in his own life time insofar as he could never win an election in independence India. He painfully realized that the political reservations had turned out to be more beneficial to the ruling classes than to the dalits. It only produced the ‘stooges’ to use Kanshiram’s language. It is a proof enough that the political reservations which were meant only for initial ten years get automatically renewed before their expiry, without anybody especially asking for them. Ambedkar had similar experience even with reservations in public employment. He found that the beneficiaries of them were engrossed with their own promotion and betterment of their families. It was this realization that he vented off in a public meeting in Agra in 1953 saying that the educated people had cheated him.

While reservations are grudged by the non-dalit masses, this grudge is accentuated by treating them as holy cow by politicians. As far as they could be attributed to Ambedkar, with his iconization and glorification, as it has been happening in recent years, they killed many birds with a single stone. They wooed dalits by titillating their identitarian pride and correspondingly intensifed the grudge in non-dalit population. This may be roughly correlated with the increasing atrocity numbers. Politicians of all hues, including the parliamentary left (they essentially follow the same grammar as any ruling class party for winning the electoral race in the first-past-the-post type of elections) and even the revolutionary left. The latter is certainly surprising and one would wish to imagine that it is just because of the understanding deficit on their part. But unfortunately one cannot ignore the aspect of wooing dalits even among them. More unfortunate in their case is the ideological laziness that accepts any reservation as progressive and pro-poor. As reservations have become a ‘holy cow’ for politicians, for dalits, they are an irrational emotional issue. For instance, I have been telling them that the public employment had reached its peak in 1997 and since then it has been consistently declining declining. Over the first decade (i.e. up to 2007), there was a decline of over 1.7 million jobs over a base of 19.7 million. It clearly indicates that reservations in net terms had come to an end right in 1997 itself. Paradoxically, only after this decline set in, the clamour for reservations virtually by all castes, has reached its zenith. Dalits, anyway, would not like to listen to it as many of them engaged in pseudo-activism would find themselves jobless.

It is therefore that once I said that the day dalits come out and declare that they do not want reservation, that day will be the beginning of the Indian revolution.

Class Analysis and Castes

The ‘class-caste’ duality came into being with the communists coming on to the scene. They typically belonged to upper caste educated middle class youth dreaming of a revolution in India inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. They were fed on the secondary sources of literature which was smuggled into the country. As such there was neither an adequate understanding of the philosophical framework of Marxism, much less the nuanced understanding of its formulations. What guided their actions was the youthful romanticism about revolution. They jumped on to organize the workers in the urban industrial centers with stereotypical understanding that they were the proletariat who had nothing to lose but their chains. The environmental problem of castes that excluded almost half the population did not bother them. They convinced themselves that it was a superstructural matter drawing support from a metaphorical dictum of Marx, blissfully ignorant about the follow up on it that made both Marx and Engels to regret it. The dictum informed them that once the material (read economic) structure is revolutionized, the superstructure would ‘automatically’ confirm to it. Truly speaking it reflected a Brahmanic attitude of taking the word as sacred, a ved vakya syndrome. The words that reached them, they followed literally. The Brahmanic inertia in realizing the misery of the lower castes also played a role. And Brahmanic arrogance about their own ‘knowledge and wisdom’ added fuel to fire. The birth of idiocy was thus nevitable.

While castes are not a class they were not entirely different either. Ambedkar’s understanding that they were the enclosed classes was far superior compared to theirs. The simple thing to understand was that if castes were the life-word of people, how they could be excluded in the possible class analysis. It was gravest error to think that they were mere religious-cultural matter that belonged to superstructure. Unfortunately, even Ambedkar in his enthusiasm to prove them wrong came to support them when he argued in his celebrated text of Annihilation of Caste that religious revolutions always preceded political revolutions. Even when they (communists) confronted castes in practice, they shied away from correcting themselves and preferred to keep away from the monster. The case in point is the Girni Kamgar Union under their leadership (SA Dange, one of the stalwarts of communist movement was the secretary of the union) which did not take any note of exclusion of the dalit workers from the better paying jobs in weaving section of the mill and the blatant practice of untouchability in keeping separate pitchers for drinking water for dalits. Even when Ambedkar challenged them over the issue, it was not corrected. The communists, informed by their understanding that the caste issue was a superstructural matter, not only kept themselves away but also ridiculed Ambedkar for belabouring a non-issue. The other factor beneath their behavior was the fear of displeasing the non-dalit workers who were in larger number, reflecting the embryonic attitude that would that would dominate their politics when they entered parliamentary system..

What could have been done?

Class is a pivotal category in Marxism but Marx or Engels did not give its precise definition as for many such terms in their writings. The basic theme was that there could not be possible definition of such categories or constructs lest they should be inapplicable to some other social systems that they were not familiar with. It is not to say that they left any ambiguity about what they meant. In various historical contexts they discussed classes which make it clear that classes were to be conceived in concrete social conditions obtaining in a space and time. Marxist-Leninists hold that a person’s social class is determined not by the amount of his wealth, but by the source of his income as determined by his relation to labour and to the means of production. Lenin, who had to translate Marxism into practice to bring about revolution in Russia necessarily had to define class as follows:

“Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated by law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and their mode of acquiring it”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘A Great Beginning: Heroism of the Workers in the Rear: ‘Communist Subbotniks’ in: Collected Works, Volume 29; Moscow; 1965; p. 421).

To Marxist-Leninists, therefore, the class to which a person belongs is determined by objective reality, not by someone’s opinion. What was the objective reality of India then? If one goes by the above definition, one would necessarily come closer to consider castes themselves as classes. Are dalits, for instance, not differing from non-dalits ‘by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated by law—law of Manu (?)) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and their mode of acquiring it’? This perhaps is the sense in which Ambedkar said that the castes were the enclosed classes. But there is obvious difficulty in considering dalits as class because the law which made them different from non-dalits also could apply to the castes within them. While class potentially brings people together, caste tends to divide them by seeking hierarchy. Therefore they do not become a class. Moreover, the classes are to be conceived in relation to the dominant mode of production wherein the caste would lose their salience. Therefore, class analysis in the caste society should necessarily subsume castes. For example, proletariat would include most of the shudras and dalits but they would not be automatically a class until the caste contradiction between them is not eradicated. Therefore, the process of class consolidation should embed the anti-caste struggles. If this had been done in the 1920s, the need for the separate dalit movement itself could have been eliminated. It would have given real fillip to the anti-caste struggle accomplishing the annihilation of caste. It may sound exaggeration today, but this approach would have made Indian revolution a reality much before China.

What Can Be Done Now?

As discussed, both movements—dalit as well as communist—have their share of wrongs committed during the last centuries. The wrongs by the communists, however, certainly outweigh those of the dalits. Dalit movement confronted a unique issue and was juggling with theorizing and strategizing its struggle. It was thus an original exercise in which errors were natural. But the communists had a grand theory of Marxism to guide and the task was just to apply it in the concrete condition of Indian society. The errors therefore were expected to be minimal. But looking back, they were not even errors; they were blunders. The blunder related to ignoring the almost one-fifth of the population that could be the organic proletariat. The dictum of the dalit movement (given by Ambedkar) was not incorrect when he said that whatever path one traversed in India, one necessarily crossed the path of castes. The communists of all hues today have reluctantly come to terms that castes are a part of structure as well as superstructure, and hence deserved attention of the revolutionists; they just reflect a tailist tendency. Why can’t they discard the useless metaphor of structure-superstructure that has done more harm than good to the communist movement right since its birth?

Dalit movement, today equally dilapidated, failed to provide any solution to dalits. Contrary to the slogan of ‘annihilation of caste’ the dalits are out to strengthen castes and have already descended to the sub-caste levels. Ambedkar’s vision of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is in shatters today. The political democracy that he imagined was established by the constitution itself is in question. It is only a notion of ‘one man, one vote, one value’ that is not even valid in rituals of elections. The economic and social democracies have been the chimera. He had famously warned that if they were not achieved soonest, the victims would blast off the structure of political democracy. Even this warning of him failed to materialize. Indian democracy neither flourished nor perished and has only limped along with its burden of contradictions. Ambedkar’s other solution such as conversion to Buddhism also yielded questionable result. The greatest contra-evidence is that castes are kicking as never before, untouchability is intact, and the condition of dalits, measured in terms of relative distance between them and others, is perhaps worse than when they kicked off the dalit movement. Then they had a hope, today they do not have any.

In such a hopeless situation, how does one look at castes? There should be no doubt that without annihilation of castes, there is no radical future for India. It should also be clear that annihilation of castes is impossible to accomplish only by dalits hampering upon castes. Unless masses of broad people realize the fact that their radical emancipation is not possible without eradication of castes, it would stay as distant goal. Annihilation of castes in this sense is an integral part of the Indian revolution. Those who tend to consider and contrast caste against class must understand that caste is a poisonous category unlike any other. Its fundamental property is seeking hierarchy. Therefore, it knows only to split; split ad infinitum like amoeba. It is incapable of uniting. It should therefore be clear that no radical movement can be articulated on the basis of castes. Even for annihilation of castes, class is inevitable. The caste question is an integral part of the class question and they cannot and should not be spoken in dual terms.

Necessarily, it demands coming together of the communist and dalit movements. In the current situation it may sound like a wishful thinking. But unfortunately there is no option than working for it. Since, the communists had blundered more; they must take an initiative in this regard. Apart from their failure to understand and analyse Indian society, the Brahmanical arrogance and superiority complex of the early communists had played a big role in alienating the dalit movement. The divide between them has gone deep enough and there developed vested interests in deepening it further (many educated Dalits vehemently treating communists as enemy number one), there are even opportunities emerging out of the intensifying crisis of living. The prerequisite in availing of these opportunities however is reestablishing dialogue with the dalit movement. This may only be done if the communists honestly admit their mistakes demonstrate their new understanding of the caste situation. While this may be necessary for moving closer to the dalits, it is in no way sufficient to get them into struggle.

The communists need to discard their dogma and rethink their theories and practice in light of the fast changing world. While the core of their theory still holds good, many a derivatives need critical examination. All this need to lead to a viable strategy in face of fascized and militarized states. Unless they convince dalits or for that matter any people that they can win them a better world, their project may be a non-starter.

The post Caste and Class: Achilles’ Heel of the Indian Revolution – Anand Teltumbde appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

Mythologizing the Past: A Strategy to Make the People Uncritical.

Rajan Gurukkal

Ever since the publication of James Mill’s History of British India (1817) the communal periodisation into the ancient Hindu period, the medieval Muslim period and modern British period, has been prevailing so entrenched in the country’s historiography in spite of the secular historians questioning it. RSS historians blindly depended on Mill’s communal historiography but by dismissing his rational approach towards myths, which was central to the colonial consciousness of the past. Having neither the craft nor methodology for reconstructing the history based on facts, they had no alternative to glorifying the past as golden on the basis of mythical accounts and factoids. RSS historians have been systematically trying to make people believe Veda-s, Ramayana, Mahabharata and Purana-s as historical accounts by accusing the academic version of history, allegedly based on the prejudiced notions of European historiography, Euro-centrism, British colonialism, English education, and Marxism. They strongly believe that the culture, religiosity, spiritual achievements and the rich intellectual heritage of traditional India were destroyed by the Mohammedan invaders and subsequently misconceived, misrepresented, disfigured and debunked by the Westerners and the Western educated Indians. The paper seeks to briefly examine the ways and purposes of mythologizing the country’s past.

The Context

Mythologized history combined with the anti-Muslim attitude and upper caste prejudices constitute the ideology of the characteristically aggrandising Hindu nationalism. The Brahmin and other landed upper castes believe that their status and power had suffered under the Muslim rulers who plundered temples, killed the Hindu kings, led their queens to the pyre and destroyed the glorious Hindu civilisation of great sages. This ideology, nurtured by them as the basis of Hindu nationalism, had come up steadily as ‘backdoor nationalism’ from the days of the Freedom Struggle to the present (Bipan Chandra, 2008). Since majority of the educated upper caste Hindus of postcolonial India were influenced by the Nehruvian, socialist, secular, rationalist, inclusive nationalism of modernity, there were lesser opportunities for the orthodox and casteist communal Hindu groups to carry forward their ideological agenda beyond a point.

Nevertheless, these groups, relatively insignificant, sustained themselves through distorted history, religious intolerance and communal riots. They acquired greater following and state power under the aegis of the political economy of the onset of capitalist globalisation in the late 1980s when the IMF, World Bank and WTO had begun to impose neo-liberalism heavily. Subsequently the entailing widespread corruption and the nasty tradeoff in the regional party-politics, which grew rampant under the Congress gave the Hindu communalists a chance again to wield state power towards the end of 1990s. Now the Hindutva groups are again in power ending the grossly corrupt crony capitalist reign of the Congress, and many of the new generation upper caste youth with communal and caste sentiments kindled under grievances against the national policy of educational and employment reservations for the subaltern castes and women, are dallying with temptations around the power. Whenever, the Hindu communal groups wielded the state power, communalisation of history by the RSS had become a national programme of top priority.

Hindu communalists who include several scientists, technologists, Sanskrit scholars, archaeologists, historians and others even today sincerely believe in the glorious past of India distinct for the rare systems of knowledge generated and spiritually endowed by great sages of supernatural or extra sensory powers. The rare legacy of this glorious Hindu civilisation is firmly believed to have been singled down to destruction by the Mohammedan invasion earlier and to vitiation of its cultural heritage by the British conquest and Christianisation later. In recent times several non-resident Indian academics moved by factoids have taken on mythologizing the country’s past as part of their de-colonisation enterprise. Many rich immigrants with lot of finance capital are running huge research projects for retrieving Hindu Civilization out of the Mohammedan ruination and the colonial vitiation.

Neo-Hindutva Arguments

There are two types, the old and new, among the Hindutva enthusiasts. Arguments of the old Hindu communalists are widely known for their straightforward antagonism towards the Mohammedans. Different from the orthodox scholars of bizarre notions about the country’s past Hindu culture, the neo-Hindutva type are modern and hence pseudo-scientific in their explanations of the bizarre. They argue that the non-Western cultures, particularly the south Asian, which differ from the characterisation prevalent in the West whose cultural identity is founded on the Christian religion, necessitate an analysis of the ‘how’ of the construction of religions and cultural differences in India. They feel the need for a thorough re-doing of the intellectual and social history of South Asia, in order to demonstrate as to how it was shaped without having a hegemonic explanatory account of the Cosmos decisive, becomes obligatory. This is indeed a good idea, but why are they not doing it? Ultimately both the types serve the same purpose of communalisation of the people by mythologizing and mystifying their past.

The Neo-Hindutva scholars do not have the linguistic competency to do their project, for most of them are academics not initiated in Sanskrit or historiography. Many are technologists and industrialists. They debunk history and historians’ craft as what the colonised uncritically accepted from the West and passed on to their progenies who could only perpetuate Eurocentrism. According to the neo-Hindutva enthusiasts what Indians need is their cultural past that Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata and Purāṇa-s contain, i.e., the past ‘as existed or exists in reality for the natives of India’ (S.N. Balagangadhara, 2005 & 2012). The institutions like the varṇa, jāti, sati, and stridhana are allegedly constructs by historians of Western consciousness, who distort the Hindu past as the way Western people experienced Indian culture, which they argue, speaks ‘more about the Western civilisation than the native Indian civilisation.’ The neo-Hindutva enthusiasts say that the true history of India is what the epics and Purana-s contain, access to which is being denied to the people due to the European and Marxist misrepresentations of the country’s sacred texts like Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata besides the traditional chronicles like the Purāṇa-s. Alas ! It appears that jāti, sati and all kinds of other institutions of Hinduism, exposed by historians and social scientists atrocious, are in his presumption integral to intrinsic human values of Indian culture (R.Gurukkal, 2014). Compared to the ways and means of the orthodox scholars who had believed in what they preached, the strategies of neo-Hindutva scholars are pretentiously academic and sophisticated in their mythologizing of the Indian past. They hardly believe in what they seek to academically argue out. Not trained in historiography and least acquainted with the traditional texts unlike the orthodox scholars, ultimately they go by mythological accounts and factoids, but very cleverly.

Academic Challenge

Unable to take up the real academic challenge behind their grand project, the neo-Hindutva scholars end up with argumentation without any substance. They should have acquired scholarship to comprehend the contextual relationship between the past texts and the nature of their historical, cultural consciousness. A detailed treatment of the embedded tradition represented by the fragmentary narratives from the Vedas, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana is necessary, for which they have no technical competence. It requires analysis of the emerging past consciousness as exemplified by genealogies in the making of a historical tradition in the Purana-s. Then one has to ascertain the historical sense in the texts, alternative histories as exemplified by the Buddhist tradition and the externalization of the historical tradition as exemplified by biographies like the Harshacarita and the Rāmacarita. Uninitiated in historical methodology and unable to access the original texts, they escape from substantiating the thesis through a demonstration of how ancient Indian intellectual formation and cultural context are distinct.

Romila Thapar is the only scholar who has done a deeper analysis of all this, but the neo-Hindutva academics have not cared for reading her study of the historical consciousness and its expressions reflected in the texts of early northern India (R.Thapar, 2013). Instead they seem to recommend the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata and Purāṇa-s as true history, despite their being composed over a long period of time by multiple authors. They do not know that there are multiple versions of Rāmāyaṇa belonging to disparate periods. There is the Buddhist version called Daśaratha Jātaka and the Jain version called Paumachariyam. These versions contradict the Valmiki version of Rāmāyaṇa. Which version is to be treated as genuine history? Similarly Mahābhārata took several centuries to evolve itself into its present state. Its earliest form was Jaya consisting of some twelve thousand couplets. The next form namely, Vijaya was an expanded version. Then it became Bhārata and finally Mahābhārata. Which form is to be considered the true version of history – a part or the whole?

How do we determine the date of events in the multiple forms ? Purāṇa-s are many and of widely separated periods between second century and eighteenth century. There are a few Purāṇa-s belonging even to recent times. How do we decide the date and sequence of events in these multiple Purāṇa-s? Which of the Purāṇa-s is to be treated as history? These are not problems for the Hindutva enthusiasts, for they do not know such details of these texts that they equate to history. If a knowledgeable historian points out such problems and speak about the plurality of textual versions and their widely separated periods the Hindutva scholars would accuse the person of being Western or Marxist. That the Buddhist Daśaratha Jātaka and the Jain Paumachariyam contradict the Valmiki Rāmāyaṇa or that certain parts of the Mahābhārata seen in Jātaka-s contradict with the Brahmanical version, is not just a Western misinterpretation or Marxist erasing of continuity and originality of India’s past (R.Thapar, 2013). So do the contradictions appearing in the inscriptional texts. Similarly the fact that we cannot pinpoint any one of the Purāṇa-s as authentic is not the fallout of the Leftist conspiracy. Accessing of history beyond such texts through inter-textual analysis is a universally accepted procedure in the case of literary sources. It is evident from the efforts even by Sanskrit scholars and text based historians to support mythologizing history that they are ignorant of the scientific techniques of analysing texts. Least bothered about the text in terms of its variants, they do not require methods to confirm the historicity, and imply that both historicity and history are irrelevant to them. Hardly do they seem to feel the need to think about the audience, the purpose and the patronage of the text in the past at the different stages of its composition.

Instead of methodologically updating themselves, the neo-Hindutva scholars re-assert the need for retrieving the Indians from their colonial consciousness by decolonising them with postcolonial theoretical insights. Their concern is more about rejuvenating postcolonial ways of representing the West rather than how one could evolve an alternative understanding of the East. How a comparative science of cultures can be conceived of has been their main question because for them a culture is the way a particular social group generates a process of learning to learn (meta- learning). They maintain that meta-learning dominates and crystallize to structure its way of going about understanding the world (R.Gurukkal, 2014). By way of self-justification for being evasive about the task all by themselves, they say that their allocated job (providential ?) is only preparing the ground for building up a huge mansion of alternative social sciences, which is not a job, that a few books or one generation of scholars can accomplish. Their project of mobilising a big team across continents and organizing a big consortium of European and Indian Universities for re-thinking Asian culture is part of this groundwork. Nonetheless, shouldn’t their disciples be shown a sample output of the so called radical mode of re-thinking that they have been preaching?

There is nothing strikingly fresh about the decolonising perspective with which the neoHindutva academics are obsessed. Like colonisation, decolonisation also came from the West. Michel Foucault tried to do its archaeology and genealogy of the knowledge production and its organisation and classification, which was the major source for Edward Said’s discursive processes of how the West went to terms with the East by constituting the latter its opposite. Dismissing such studies replete with jargons, the neo-Hindutva academics express the central problems of modern India studies and potential direction for the socialscientific study of the Indian culture, their central concern. Debunking history and social sciences as mere theological reflection, what is this social scientific study that they propose? They are entrapped in Hussurlian double bind with an antithesis of the West formulated in European positivist ideography, just as post-structuralists sought the language of structuralism to capsize it. On the one side stressing the need for an alternative understanding of the Western culture and blaming it a reflection of Protestant theology, yearning for a social scientific study on the other, is a trap. It is a pity that the radical decolonising agents have not only to try and construct knowledge against the West in the western positivist empirical methodology and articulate it in the knowledge-language of the West but also as construed by the West. This would mean that colonial consciousness is the political unconscious of their writings. Why blame other Indians allegedly promoting the same old colonial ideas and lacking original framework, when the neo-Hindutva scholars themselves have no framework of comprehension other than the colonial. They say exactly as the coloniser accused long ago that the ‘native Indian’ knows no Indian view of India. What is this so called Indian view of India ? That is what the neo-Hindutva scholars see articulated in the epics and Purāṇa-s. They think that these texts help us formulate alternative definitions of culture, colonialism, secularism, and orientalism.

Self-contradictory Position

There is a striking self-contradiction in the arguments of neo-Hindutva scholars. They argue that their mythologizing of India’s past is scientific. In fact, according to them it is science itself. Interestingly, the main defect of the Western way of understanding the world, according to the neo-Hindutva philosopher is that it is unscientific! (S.N. Balagangadhara, 2012). Is not Newton’s Principia scientific? Though it was called Natural Philosophy during his times, we know that in 19th century when the term science began to be applied exclusively to the type of knowledge that Principia embodied.

The neo-Hindutva philosopher would call it unscientific because of a reflection of the Christian theology in it. Least reflexive about the historical constitution of science, the philosopher goes self-contradictory in his celebration and promotion of pseudo-science as science. The neo-Hindutva philosopher is a victim of internalising the Western cognitive mode, logical structure, constitutional texture and communicative strategy of knowledge in science final. Not only the West and the colonised, but all including himself (now in the state of ‘enlightenment’) are subsumed by it.1 How this Hindutva mission to make the ‘alternative science of culture’ scientific goes well with the equation of Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata to history or celebrating of jāti (not caste), sati and all kinds of other institutions of Hinduism as integral to intrinsic human values of Indian culture, is the problem. This is a self-contradictory position of equating science with epics. Is this way the colonised getting out of the historically given influence of colonial consciousness? Several historians and social scientists, allegedly of ‘colonial consciousness,’ are at least aware of the epistemic injustice involved in the imposition of science as the only universally valid truth. This would mean that it was the so called ‘colonial consciousness’ that empowered them to discover the imperialist substratum of science.

The neo-Hindutva philosopher should try and understand how historians of India have sought to wrench themselves away from the shackles of colonial historiography. They know that the current definition of what constitutes history is based on European understanding of its own past, which has been considerably enlarged in recent times, with the enlightenment emphasizing the notion of progress, and Marx and Weber seeking fundamental laws governing historical forms. Although not altogether free of Western presumptions, Indian historiography had a course of development through Nationalist reactions against the imperial views. Indian historians of modern times have shown a sense of history in conformity with how history is defined in modern times. In the sense that the history of every age has been representation of contemporary consciousness, they had asked much before this neoHindutva philosopher’s articulation of the thesis of ‘colonial consciousness,’ as to how come that the colonial European sense of history, which was contemporary consciousness too, could set the universal normative (R.Gurukkal, 2014). Are we justified in judging the historicity of early writing in the light of the criteria of what we define as history, which are impermanent too ? Just because the various texts of the past do not match the contemporary genre called history, can we, succumbing to the Western prejudice, continue to deny the existence of past consciousness, with the implicit presumption that there is no historical sense other than the contemporary sense of history ? Since historical consciousness has been taking different forms from time to time how could any particular form be superior? Could we insist that the status of history in a past text to be what one would construe today? 1 [On 7 July 2014, he declared himself ‘enlightened,’ a clear indication of the creation of a charismatic aura for constituting his following with the status of a cult.]

The neo-Hindutva philosophers should study forms, features, structure, constitution and dynamic of traditional Indian knowledge in the perspective of historical epistemology. It, then would really enlighten them about the fact that ‘every society sees its past in a particular way, which it may refer to as history or not, but which is relevant to understanding that society’(R.Thapar, 2013). There is no epistemological discontinuity between the Indian and the Western in several fields of knowledge like astronomy, mathematics and linguistics. Epistemological principles such as rationality, objectivity, verifiability, proof and notion of truth in the enterprise of knowledge production made no difference between the East and West. Epistemological properties like premises, inferential logic, nature of evidence, and concept of truth about traditional Indian knowledge, with a view to understanding the historical trajectory of the advancement of knowledge, the historical development of knowledge in traditional India, in terms of epistemic concepts like objectivity, rationality, methodology, and fundamental concepts that organize knowledge systems of different historical periods. It was hard work, sustained engagement, genuine curiosity and critical inquiry as in the case of the intellectual anywhere in the world, which enabled early Indian scholars to generate deeper knowledge. Why mystify them as sages of supernatural powers and extrasensory perception when some of them at least make their methodology explicit?

Ignorant Criticisms

Several Hindutva archaeologists and historians tacitly over-defensive of the BJP rule criticise the rational historians and social scientists engaged in resisting the move towards mythologizing and mystifying the country’s unpleasant social truth about the past as well as the present. They are branded as Leftists and Marxists hypocritically claiming scientific outlook and moral high ground to cry-wolf the issue of spreading false consciousness among people through distorted history. The Hindutva lobby accuse them of dominating historical bodies like the Indian Council of Historical Research, the Indian History Congress etc., turning them into arenas of political and financial manipulation, imposing the blinkered view of history on the discipline, deliberately sidelining, discriminating, ostracizing and depriving the critics of professional opportunities since the 1970s (R.Gurukkal, 2016). One would immediately feel like asking what prevented them from rectifying all this when they were in power during 1998-2004. Anyway, such trifling remarks in frustration deserve no reply, but those with academic criticisms, ostensible though, have to be answered, for they try and debunk critical scholarship in historiography.

One thing that the assailants make clear through accusations is their hostility to the Leftists in general and Marxists in particular. But they seem to be failing to identify their enemies, for they think any historian critical of the BJP Government could be either a Marxist or a Leftist. It appears from the allegations that any historian of rational approach distinguishing history from myths and factoids is their enemy too. Their main irritant to them in rational historiography is its critical explanatory method free of narrow sentiments and pride. A widely accepted fact that distinguishes rational history from the sentimental is its intellectual depth and theoretical preoccupation. A fact of wide acceptance about history is its inseparability from theory that enables a historian to make the invisible, visible and the inaudible, audible. Theory is indispensable for a historian to sensibly piece together, manage the bewilderingly complex old time data and draw critical insights into them. It is widely known that historical materialism is the only comprehensive theory available for interpreting the past social processes, relations and structures. How can historians afford to be abstaining from theory and remaining ignorant of historical materialism? Nevertheless, for both communalists and liberalists who are largely idealists of low level analytical sensibility, Marxism is a blinkered view, biased and reductionist. Accusing the other of bias is largely due to the ignorance about the biased self. Reductionism is not the theory’s problem but that of the approach, for in serious Marxist historiography one sees interpretations, strikingly differing from one another. Where is the question of blinkered view in a framework of comprehension that allows hypothetico-deductive investigation? What the Hindutva historians’ prejudice denotes is distaste for theory, the secret of sustained obsolescence from which their ignorant criticisms emanate.

Their academic criticisms against the ‘Left’ historians are in the form of allegations such as the reductionist approach to history, erasure of India’s knowledge systems, denial of the continuity and originality of India’s Hindu-Buddhist-Jain-Sikh culture, refusal to acknowledge the well-documented the brutality of many Muslim rulers, neglect of tribal histories, biased use of sources, neglect of scientific data from palaeo-environmental to genetic studies, absence of professional ethics, pernicious imposition of legislated history, and promotion of contempt for cultural heritage. The allegation that the Marxist historiography is tainted by ‘a reductionist approach viewing the evolution of Indian society almost entirely through the prism of the caste system, emphasizing its mechanisms of exclusion while neglecting those of integration without which Indian society would have disintegrated long ago,’ exposes ignorance about Marx’s theory of social change, in which ‘class’ has precedence over ‘caste.’ Marxist historiography stresses on the function of caste as part of the fetters of productive relations, and systematically unveils the secret of integration. It does not neglect at all the role that caste played in enduring the contradictory structure of the Indian society by containing class struggle. It is surprising that they take pride about caste without which the Indian society ‘would have disintegrated long ago’ (R.Gurukkal, 2016)

Who has erased India’s knowledge systems – those Leftists/Marxists who tried to show that serious knowledge systems of traditional India had adhered to epistemic principles such as rationality, objectivity, verifiability, and notion of truth in their production or those philologists who tried to mystify the origins of knowledge system by assigning them to extrasensory abilities and super-natural powers of sages ? It is in the writings of the former, not exhaustively though, that we see critical inquiries unravelling the logical procedures behind the knowledge systems of early India (D. Chattopadhyaya, 1977, 1986, 1991, 1996). What the accusers consider as erasure is the academic exercise in humanising the past knowledge systems by looking for the epistemic universals behind their production and on the basis of which characterising some of them axiomatic and some others scientific due to insistence of proof.

The allegation of the Leftist ‘denial of the continuityThe allegation of the Leftist ‘denial of the continuity and originality of India’s Hindu-Buddhist-Jain-Sikh culture, ignoring the work of generations of Indian and Western Indologists’ is based on methodological ignorance. What they mean by ‘continuity and originality’ has to be examined against the source texts concerned and the methodological devices for using them for historical understanding. It is in total ignorance of all this they accuse the Leftists of the denial of the continuity and originality of India’s Hindu-BuddhistJain-Sikh culture, and ignoring the work of generations of Indian and Western Indologists.’ Allegations about the biased use of sources and promotion of contempt for cultural heritage actually stem from this basic methodological obsolescence. In fact, who stops them from historicising the Hindu identity, rationality, progressiveness and legitimacy scientifically? Instead of making an idealistic call from the pulpit for ‘an unbiased and rigorous new historiography of India,’ why are they not going ahead with their long-cherished project of re-writing India’s past. Why cry about the Leftists’ neglect of advanced Indological researches in the last few decades, rather than taking on them all by themselves? If the socalled archaeologists have developed alternative perspectives after considerable research, the scholarly world would have accepted them. Why blame the Leftists to have sidelined them rather than looking into what failed them in securing scholarly recognition?

The Marxist and Leftist historians are alleged to have refused to accept the welldocumented brutality of many Muslim rulers, empirical studies exposing their wartime plunders and religious attacks. Indeed such predatory campaigns were brutal and the historians, who sought to expose the hollowness of communal interpretations, had to be in a historiographical struggle for the cause of secularism. This was not to hush up the events of brutality but to unveil the actual historical context for checking the historiographically contingent communalism that unleashes acts of vengeance upon the present day population that has nothing to do with the past events. The neo-Hindutva historians accuse the Marxist historians to have neglected the tribal history. We owe the relative neglect of tribal histories to various factors including the lack of data and promotion of methodological sophistication for writing the history of the people without history (B. Misztal, 2003; E.Wolf, 2010). I do not think that the Leftists can be singled down as responsible for it in any way, for the major part of the work already done goes not to the credit of Hindutva scholars (K.S. Singh, 1985; B.B. Chaudhurri & A. Bandopadhyay, 2004; and Sanal Mohan, 2015). Anyhow, has anyone among the accusers studied ‘India’s tribal communities and their rich belief systems and heritage? Who has studied the tribal cultures to enable the sweeping generalization that they have many things in common with the Hindu religion? Let us not talk about the neglect of scientific data, since the serious readership know how regional archaeo-metallurgical studies are labeled as Indian with nothing Indian about. It is explicit why the casteist and communal historians are interested in genetic studies today.

All that is discussed so far, which underscores methodological preoccupation, exposes the Hindutva historians’ total lack of professional ethics. It is largely due to their ignorance in social scientific methodology that they tend to denigrate those who use it for writing early Indian history, because it questions the Hindu communal distortion. They seem to be unaware of the process of the existing knowledge undergoing improvement or even replacement by new knowledge that is increasingly analytical, self-reflexive and critical. In fact, a high degree of reflexivity is inevitable for those indulging in the study of early Indian history. It is essential for them to be preoccupied in methodology, without which their knowledge base goes obsolete and criticisms become exhibits of ignorance.

Purpose of Mythologising

The primary goal of mythologizing the past is the cultural preparation the people into an uncritical public. People exposed to rational knowledge are normally inspired by the deeper dimension of it that has a radical critical stance based on the fire of social justice. Ethical postulates are integral to deeper knowledge that is inherently subversive and critical, for it unveils the hidden unjust practices in human affairs and social processes (B. Latour and C. Poter, 2004; P. Freire, 2005). In the process of acquisition of rational knowledge one experiences this subversive dynamic and develops critical consciousness. Critical consciousness, the most vital attribute of quality learning, may vary between the liberal pragmatic and the radical critical theoretical type (M. Horton, 2003, S.D. Brookfield, 2005). Of all critical stances, critical theory based criticism ranks foremost, for it is raised right against the dominant socio-economic and politico-cultural power that the state embodies. People with this radical level of critical consciousness are emboldened to speak truth to power.

Our education is divested of its critical quality by historically contingent social structural devices which thinkers have theorised differently. What the dominant economy (Technocapitalism popularly called knowledge economy) needs is a well disciplined, workaholic and apolitical youth trained in various skills. Whatever education that produces this robotic youth is quality education or innovative education to it. As a result, critical consciousness is almost alien to our pedagogy at all levels. One is supposed to be acquiring critical consciousness in the process of higher education; but it hardly happens today. Even the critical attitude of a liberal pragmatic kind, which spontaneously comes up in any educated citizen of democratic values, passions and ethical postulates, is uncommon today.

In the capitalist world the critical dimension of knowledge is not easily available to all because of its being incessantly diffused and strategically distracted. Knowledge production is an alienated and highly encumbered activity, inevitably under the systemic control of capitalism. There is a strong, built-in system for depoliticizing the students through the process of acquisition of knowledge. Spread of the myth that knowledge is invariably neutral is the basic strategy. Delinking of knowledge with social reality is another strategy. Yet another strategy is the conversion of knowledge itself as part of the rhetoric and ideology of capitalism. They draw blank about the social use or consequences of it. They become neutral, self-centred, apolitical and least perturbed by social consequences if any. Subsequently they constitute the larger public of conformity, totally bereft of critical thinking.

Karl Marx called the process as ideological control of the emerging critical impulses. Michel Foucault named the phenomenon as discursive control and Pierre Bourdieu identified it as habitus. In neo-Marxist social theory this process is known as autopoiesis (N. Luhmann, 1990; I. Livingston, 2006). It operates in myriads of ways through the entire people, relations, institutions, practices, ideas and spaces. Knowledge is a very crucial object of autopoietic control and hence its production as well as transmission would not escape the influence of autopoiesis. Naturally education, one of the most powerful social institutions, is inevitably a major channel of operation for autopoietic power. Its main function is containment of antithetical elements in the capitalist socio-economic system involving dehumanising processes and relations, which could otherwise cause upsurges. Autopoietic strategies of containment would act as a safety valve averting systemic overturns.

Nevertheless, it is a significant need of capitalism to transform the general public without any exposure to higher education into an apolitical and uncritical mass. It is mainly for this purpose that the corporate houses make an alliance with the Hindu communalists aspiring to be de facto actors in the aggrandising national state power. The Hindutva middleclass lobby is desirous of a fascist state for aggressively accomplishing a Hindu nation of communal exclusiveness and casteist orthodoxy. Techno-capitalist corporate houses want a crony capitalist state for juridico-political protection and financial patronage through diversion of public revenue as well as natural resources for expanding their enterprises. This alliance between the state and its middleclass actors is a natural development in advanced capitalism.

A state sponsored mythologizing and communalising of the country’s history by debunking rational, secular historiography has to be viewed against the background of the alliance between the Hindutva aspirants of de facto state power and corporate capitalists. Both the groups at the outset need to turn the general public into an uncritical mass. Substitution of rational history with mythological accounts can prevent the rise of critical consciousness in the people. Mythical accounts of the past can trigger antiquarian interests and develop blind sentiments and devotion to the idea of Hindu nationalism. Mythology is enough for them for it keeps people emotionally encumbered. Explanatory historical accounts providing insights into the problems of the present empowering the poor people are not only the unwanted but also the impermissible for them. While the mythologised past full of semidivine heroes excites people’s pride, the rational historical accounts educate them about the past misery due to relations of exploitation, institutions of oppression and structures of domination. One engenders a politically disengaging uncritical mass of people, while the other promotes the formation of a political people craving for emancipation.

Both the Hindu as well as Muslim communalists are ideologically in the same track of ungrounded history, for distorted history is the only ideological means of self justification for them (Bipan Chandra, 2008). Their mutual exclusionism is based on the single question, who should rule India. Communalists of all types distort and glorify an imagined past and disregard the people’s everyday life of the present. It is the veneration of the nation as an abstract semi-divine notion rather than the realisation of a concrete territorial nation inclusiveness assured of the citizens’ peaceful co-existence and collective welfare, which matters to the Hindutva ideologues. It turns the people susceptible to deadly sentiments of caste and religion, and degenerates nationalism into false consciousness. An immediate manifestation of it is social intolerance of the de facto type, the clearest symptom of advanced fascist cultural preparation. This is how the inevitable ontological convergence of communal essentialism and revivalism on the politics of fascism happens (P. Bourdieu, 1991).

Impairment of democracy, the inevitable consequence of capitalist development, has been progressing in the country for the last two decades, and slowly turning the democratic state into functional autocracy as a system of the corporates driven bureaucracy–political heads combine. The process is accelerated under Techno-capitalism run by corporate houses, heavily dependent on the transaction of new knowledge in science and technology, for enhanced accumulation through trading in intellectual property rights and patents (A. Feenberg, 1991; M. Perelmal, 2004). It has given rise to ‘corporatocracy,’ a new type of governance that enmeshes and destroys democracy (L. Suarez-Villa, 2012). In India corporates have succeeded in intensifying their state control under the dominance of the BJP that mobilises people’s acceptance of functional autocracy through the rhetoric of national development and communal cultural preparations by penetrating into all bodies of educational policy-making in general and historical research in particular.

Attempts at a slow process of legislating fascism have been set in during the previous government under the mask of neo-liberal structural adjustments. Bringing the whole higher education under a single regulator by replacing democratic bodies was tried througthe NHE&R Bill (2011) first and now through NHA Bill 2015. The high level environment committee headed by TSR Subrahmanian, a retired bureaucrat gave its Report (2014) recommending the scrapping of all Pollution Control Acts, Wildlife and Forest Conservation Acts for making diversion of land and natural resources for corporate industrial establishments. Fortunately both the houses of the Parliament disallowed the Bill. Now the same Bill is back again as ESA Amendments Notification (2015). TSR Subrahmanian is heading the drafting committee of the New Education Policy 2016 with three other retired bureaucrats and one name-sake academic. These Bills designed by bureaucrats under the direction of corporates, repeatedly pushed forward to the houses of the Parliament indicate sustained moves towards legislating functional autocracy. They are symptomatic of the measured death of democracy.

The Hindutva academicians’ specific interest in the policy making institutions of educational and cultural affairs is making the agenda explicit. Pick the children for ideological social preparation aiming the making of the youth into an assortment of uncritical and apathetic individuals is the strategy. This explains why the Hindutva lobby is eager to quell the dissent of even the liberal pragmatic kind through repressive measures like branding the dissidents as terrorists and traitors. There are attempts at erasing the cultural signatures of other religions through certain apparently legitimate substitutes as exemplified by the case of the governmental imposition of the observance of ‘the good governance day’ on the Christmas Day. Asking through Government Orders the Navodaya Vidyalayas, Schools under the Central Board of Secondary Education, the Central Universities, Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management to the celebration the birth anniversaries of Atal Behari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malaviya is an example of disguised communalisation. Bringing in changes in the schemes and contents of education for nurturing communal divisiveness and hatred among the people of one religion against the other has been in progress. Mythologising the public consciousness will go on in various ways and means under unstinted state support, because it is a crucial need of the political economy to silence the oppressed and exploited.

References

1. Balagangadhara, S.N. The Heathen in His Blindness: Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion (Revised edition, New Delhi, Manohar, 2005

2. Balagangadhara, S.N. Reconceptualising India Studies, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.

3. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991, pp. 3-4

4. Chandra, Bipan. Communalism in Modern India, Har Anand Publishers, Delhi, 2008.

5. Chattopadhyaya, D. History of Science and Technology in Ancient India, Vol.1: The Beginnings (1986) Calcutta: Firma KLM; Vol.2. Formation of the Theoretical Fundamentals of Natural Science 1991, Vol.3. Astronomy, Science and Society, 1996

6. Chattopadhyaya, D. Science and Society in Ancient India, K.P. Bagchi and Company, Calcutta, 1977.

7. Chaudhuri, B.B. & A. Bandopadhyay, (eds.) Tribes, Forest and Social formation in Indian History. Manohar, New Delhi, 2004.

8. Feenberg, A., Critical Theory of Technology, Oxford University Press, New York, 1991

9. Graff, R.G., Reiskin E.D., White, A.L., Bidwell, K., Snapshots of Environmental Cost Accounting: A Report. US EPA Environmental Accounting Project, New York, 1998

10. Gurukkal, R. “A Blindness about India,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLIX No.49, December 6, 2014, pp.12-15

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GLOBAL ECOLOGICAL CRISES: SUSTAINABILTY & EQUITY ISSUES

Soumya Dutta

Human beings, or rather, their dominant economic-industrial systems have started to change the earth in major ways, leading many observers and thinkers to accept that we are into the new age of “Anthropocene” – a new chapter in the ongoing “Holocene”, or a time when human society is the most dominant influence on what happens on the earth’s surface and even in the water of the Oceans. Over the last four and half decades, the world community of nations were forced to repeatedly take stock of the deteriorating state of the Earth’s natural systems, often called the eco-system(s). Starting from the 1972 Stockholm conference, this ‘environmental’ concern has taken on some importance even as a global political action agenda, from being a “mere environmental issue”. Twenty years later, one of the biggest gatherings of world leaders on issues related to progress of the human race without endangering its future survival (and that of the rest the so called first Earth Summit, was held in 1992, and the increasingly critical nature of the multiple degradations were recognized. This recognition gave rise to a slew of “global compacts”, mainly the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

The Earth Summit was also soon after the global capitalist euphoria of the successful dismantling of the Soviet Union, or as claimed – realization of ‘the end of history’. After another decade, the world again gathered at Johannesburg in 2002, to take stock of how far we have travelled on that road, but the assessment was rather disappointing. The Johannesburg summit came at a time when even the ‘practitioners of the alternative’ succumbed to the ‘shock & awe’ of the western capitalist juggernaut. From now on, no more social-cultural experiments or alternatives need be attempted by humanity ! From now on, the western model of privatized, corporatized ‘liberal democracy’ will deliver all the results, for everyone ! Another decade was about to pass, but the 1992 Earth Summit’s reasonably worked out Agenda 21, even the half-hearted Millennium Development Goals – all seemed to be getting lost in the din of unbridled market capitalism and the panacea offered by liberalization-privatization-globalization.

The human-planet has changed considerably since that first Earth Summit in 1992, and in not so hidden corners of the world – distress and anger at the killing exploitations and mind boggling disparities have grown to become a perceived threat the established world order. It was not only the “environment” that was gasping for breath. The economically and socially poorer sections of humanity also were getting the hard end of the stick in ever increasing manner. The gains of improved labour conditions in industries were being neutralized – often reversed – by increasingly exploitative “out-sourcing” accompanied by informalization of labour, and by the law-bending increase of “special Economic Zones” in many developing countries. The world has changed somewhat again, and in not so hidden corners of the world – distress and anger at the killing-exploitations and mind boggling disparities have grown to become a perceived threat to the established world order. After the 2007-08 economic meltdown, millions of people even in the developed world are now questioning many of these magic mantras. The unquestioning acceptance of the private corporations, and their intentions and abilities to deliver capitalistic growth oriented ‘development’, is no longer wide-spread. No one could possibly have foreseen the spread of the Occupy movement in the heartland of capitalism, though the real picture & driving force of the so-called ‘Arab spring’ is not yet clear. The shining attraction of the Euro-zone has faded considerably. And the accelerated exploitation and marginalization of large sections of humanity – the indigenous, the disadvantaged women & children, the poor of the world, has given birth to innumerable resistance movements across the world, to some extent obliterating the North-South divide for the short-charged people. Unlike at any point of time in the past, the survival of deprived people is seen by the global society, as intricately connected to the survival of the earth’s eco-systems. This has also brought into focus the age-old understanding in indigenous societies – that of Rights & Needs of Mother Earth, into global recognition.

As the world accepts today, the capacities of the vital systems of the earth are now critically endangered by human production-consumption-waste generation activities in this endless-growth oriented consumerist world. The water cycle in many parts of the world are stressed to provide sufficient fresh water as we are consuming and polluting at a rate much higher than the natural regeneration rate, the carbon cycle is unable to absorb even 40% of all anthropogenic (human origin) carbon dioxide emissions to keep the climate stable, the rate of extinction of biological species has gone up nearly 100 times the natural background species extinction rate – threatening global biodiversity which is vital for our survival. The phosphorus and Nitrogen cycles are near breaking points. That most vital life-nurturer – the Oceans are getting dangerously acidic and polluted….. The Nine Planetary boundaries (figure below) are at different stages of disintegration, all because the high consumption human societies won’t limit either their resource consumption or the resulting pollution of air, water and soil. Only in the case of Stratospheric Ozone Depletion, we seem to have taken strong enough action (through the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, by phasing out Ozone Depleting Substances) to stop the degradation and start the slow process of recovery of the life-shielding ‘ozone layer’.

F1 :Planetary boundaries being pushed to the limits – Stockholm Resilience Centre.

The composite index of Ecological Footprint (originating from the work of William Rees and his research student Mathis Wackernagel, in 1990-1994) – meaning how much area on the earth, land wilderness and ocean – we as human society need to provide for all our current ‘resource’ consumption and to recycle all our wastes, has been calculated to be over 1.7 times the entire area of the Earth, including Oceans (calculated by The Global Footprint Network)! That means, we are consuming not only more than what the entire earth generates every year, but also eating up those ecological support systems which functions as these regenerators, roughly like spending from the bank fixed deposits rather than from the interest (only in this case, the ‘bank’ is mother earth, and many of us will die if her life-support erodes significantly). There was a study done last year (2015) which showed that by August 2014, we humans had consumed the entire primary provisions and regeneration done by the entire earth for the full year of 2014, and for the rest of the four months – the Earth was being literally eaten away by us. This scale of consumption and waste generation by only one species, us the Homo sapiens, is clearly not sustainable by any means. And there are numerous other life forms (over 1.9 million other known species, and possibly another 6-8 million still unknown) that also depend and have a right to these resources generated by mother Earth, and are now greatly stressed as a result of our overconsumption and waste-borne pollution.

Water :Even amongst the human species, there are hugely discriminatory deprivations and stresses. We all agree that fresh water is one of the most essential life support need, and yet – well over 300 crore people (out of the 720 crore global population) are water stressed for a fair part of the year. Recent research shows that over 50 crore people live in areas where the annual renewable water availability is less than half the water they consume. The figure below (from greenfieldgeography.wikispaces.com)clearly shows that a large part of the world’s people live in either water stressed or water scarce areas, and most of these are in the poorer ‘southern’ countries. And even where there water is available, many poorer people are/ will be facing water stress because of commodification and privatization of water and their inability to pay the ‘price’ that the market demands (economic scarcity).

F2 : Well over three-fourths of world population will be water stressed by 2025.

Clean Air : None of us can live without enough oxygen-rich clean air, yet the global industrial production system is dumping so much toxic pollutants in our common atmosphere that an estimated 55 lakh people died of air pollution in 2013 (Global Burden of Diseases study), and about 10 times that number suffering health problems due to polluted air.

F 3 : Air pollution impacts a huge no of people

Food is the most vital energy source for all life, and yet, nearly 100 crore people in the world sleep hungry every night, slowly wasting away their capacities to work, to create a better world. These include many small farmers who produce the food in the first place ! Right levels of nutrition during childhood is a key for human development, and yet nearly 45% of Indian children under the age of six are malnourished, a percentage figure higher than desperately poor sub-Saharan Africa !The map below (from risk analysis firm Maplecroft) shows again that it is mostly people in the poorer countries who face the highest food security risks.

F 4 : People of poorer countries faces by far the highest food security risks.

Unsustainable and Unequal Ecological Footprint : In trying to analyse the root causes of these massive problems creating an unsustainable world, many western scholars and institutions, even many in the developing world – have pointed to the rising population as a primary driver. While there is a relation between more people and more demands of resources and more waste generation, it is not a linear relation, and population (no of people) is not the primary contributor to this unsustainable consumption and pollution, it is the Lifestyle consumption of the rich which is to blame. Take Ecological Footprint (EFP) as the all encompassing index – the 31 crore Americans (310 million US residents) have a collective EFP of about 254 crore Global Hectares (GHa – the standard measure of EFP), while the 127 crore Indians together had an EFP of about 125 crore global hectares, or half of a country with one-fourth the people ! In other words, an average American consumes vital resources, pollutes and destroys nature roughly at the rate of eight (8) times an average Indian. While an average American had 8 GHa of EFP, the equitable global availability was about 1.8 GHa per person. Clearly it is not the ‘blame-it-for-everything’ population, but consumptive lifestyle of the rich that is at fault. Even in a ‘clean country’ like Canada, the average resident has an EFP seven times of an average Indian.

Land :Talking about land, land based agriculture is still the mainstay of a majority of rural people in poorer countries, with the world rural population still at 46%, and south-Asia having 67% of its people living in villages. For about 65% of south-Asian people, farming is the primary livelihood source, but the availability of arable land (in hectares per person) has gone down sharply over the last 55 years, and is projected to decrease even further (graph below from FAO 2009)– showing their increasing marginalization compared to better off urban people. This become more acute when we consider that in the richer OECD countries, less than 20% of the population lives in villages, with less than half that depending on agriculture for livelihoods. This decline is not only for a population increase, but also because of large scale farm land grab in the name of mining, industrialisation, dams, urbanization etc. Even in India, agricultural income has sharply declined from over 25% of national GDP in early 1990s to about 14% now, while the number of people dependent on agricultural livelihoods is about 56%.

F 5 : Agricultural land availability sharply declines in per person term.

If we think of water, while an average American consumes over 1620 cubic meters of this life giving ‘resource’, countries like Syria, Sudan, Somalia and several others in Africa faces huge conflicts largely due to lack of water, at less than 600-800 Cubic meters per person per year (the UN defines water scarcity at below 1000 CuM/yr per capita). Again it is not the population figure, but the lifestyle consumption which is driving the water unsustainability. Since 1950, the world population doubled, but the water use more than tripled, largely due to lifestyle consumption.

Energy : If we look at the primary driver of world economy and the largest source of world pollution, energy – and look at the past century (1901-2000), the population increased by a little less than four (4) times, while the energy consumption increased by over 22 times (with its attendant pollution) ! Energy extraction, conversion, transmission and use have a dual impact – it is both an essential enabler for basic human development – putting the deprived at a disadvantage, while having large adverse impacts on both ecology and society. As the figure below shows, the hugely skewed energy consumption figures in favour of the rich countries is putting the poorer communities to face both sharp ends of this sword – deprivation and pollution.

F6 :Per person energy consumption/availability between countries vary over 50 times !

Life-style :If we consider life-style food consumption patterns, the large meat consumption of US and Latin American (also African) people (in per capita per year basis), at 70-90 Kgs, cause a huge strain on water resources on countries rearing those meat-providing animals, as one-Kilogram of chicken needs over 3500 Kgs of water in comparison to about 1000 Kgs for one Kg of wheat, and roughly 500-700 Kg water for one Kg of vegetable. For Beef, the requirement is anywhere between 11000 to 13000 Kgs per Kg of meat ! And with increasing wealth, meat consumption is increasing in countries like India too. Lifestyles again to blame.and if we are at all serious about sustaining the earth’s life support systems for our future generations, we must drastically reduce the global consumption and waste generation, with a measure of equitable access to earth’s resources ensured.

Livelihoods :This high-consumption, earth-destroying lifestyles are also causing another huge unsustainability, that of destroying low-impact, sustainable livelihoods that a majority of developing country people practiced for decades and centuries. About 56% of India’s 127 crore people are still dependent on farming livelihoods, with about 60% of these based on rain-fed agriculture. More frequent climate change induced stresses (increasing because of consumption led greenhouse gas emissions) and global-warming driven hydro-meteorological disasters (like increasingly frequent droughts and floods) are causing huge losses to many of these farmers, often leading to large scale farmer suicides. There are about 1.1 crore coastal fisher people in India, with a reasonably well off and least-polluting economic activity, which also provides a large source of protein to many. The ever-increasing demand/ consumption for/of electricity is leading to large no of coastal coal power plants being established in India, and their massive toxic discharges have turned many fish-rich coastal belts into low-life watery deserts, rendering once thriving livelihoods of these fisher people into highly uncertain income generating option. Another classic example of how high consumption lifestyles are destroying thriving, sustainable livelihoods.

Climate Change &Disasters : This is an overarching issue, with its impacts felt in many areas of human enterprise. There are two kinds of major direct impacts of the global-warming driven climate change –a) extreme events like tropical cyclones, extreme rainfall events, massive droughts, polar ice-shelf breakups, heavy flooding etc, and b) slow onset events like loss of crop production due to higher prevailing temperature, reduction of water resources as less precipitation becomes common, forests becoming less productive due to temperature-humidity regime, increase of pests etc. The first category has received some media and public attention due to the immediately visible sufferings of large number of people, but the second category of impacts might be more damaging in the long run.

There is third category on adverse impacts, indirect ones – that of the damages caused by the false solutions to tackle climate change floated by global businesses and often supported by governments. The massive displacements and loss of farm lands, forests, homes etc. due to dams have recently been justified by claiming that hydro-electricity is a “low-carbon clean energy”, which is not true. Nuclear power is being pushed again with the same logic of “low-carbon energy”. Indigenous and traditional forest dwellers rights are being encroached upon /curtailed in the name of protecting and enhancing forests as carbon sinks. Millions of hectares of forests – where many communities were living for generations, have been cleared for commercial plantations to produce ethanol and bio-diesel, as “green-fuels”.

Climate Change is such a large and interconnected area, that it will need a separate paper just to introduce all the essential elements, so that will have to wait for another occasion (interested readers can also refer to several books written or majorly contributed to by this author, including the – “Climate Change and India : Political Economy and Impacts”, published by Daanish Books with Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung). Here let me conclude by just giving an idea of how severe the problem of climate induced disasters are becoming. In the early seventies, roughly 1400 people in every 100,000 used to get affected by climate extreme events each year, By the year 2011, that figure has risen to around 3600, or an increase to over 250%. Not all “natural” disasters are climate change driven (like earthquakes are not), but a look at the graph from UN International Strategy for Disaster reduction (F7 below) clearly shows that the largest numbers and the fastest rising types of disasters are those that are called Hydro-Meteorological, and these are climate driven, like big floods and strong storms, with extreme temperature events (severe heat waves – like large parts of India is facing now in April 2016)) also showing significant rising trend.

F7 : Number of Climate Change driven hydro-meteorological disasters rising fast.

A study by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) released in Oct.2012, has reached this conclusion – “Over the past two years, 700 natural disasters were registered worldwide affecting more than 450 million (45 crore) people. Damages have risen from an estimated $20 billion (Rs.124000 crore) on average per year in the 1990s to about $100 billion (Rs.660000 crore – this is an amount roughly equalling 70% of the entire revenue collection by the Govt of India in 2013) per year during 2000–10. This upward trend is expected to continue as a result of the rising concentration of people living in areas more exposed to natural disasters, and climate change.”

Sustainable Developmentdebates : a very brief introduction : It is now crystal clear that if we are at all serious about sustaining the earth’s life support systems for our future generations, we must drastically reduce the global consumption and waste generation, with a measure of equitable access to earth’s resources ensured – not only amongst this single dominant species and in this generation, but ensuring inter-generational and inter-species equity. Facing and recognizing these massive degradations of the earth’s ecosystems and in the lives of its less advantaged people, the world community of governments were forced to look into the questions of sustainability and equity, and took some steps.

The global debate about sustainable development is many decades old but got into the political centre-stage only with the 1972 Stockholm conference on Environment and Development. The landmark report – “the Limits to Growth”, released in 1972 by the global think-tank ‘The Club of Rome’, raised important issues about the blind pursuit of economic growth and its effects on the sustainability of the earth’s life-support system itself. The debate progressed and became better defined through the establishment by the UN of the World Commission on Environment & Development in 1983, the publication in 1987 of the ‘Brundtland Report’ (‘Report of the World Commission on Environment andDevelopment: Our Common Future’) and then the paradigm-defining 1992 Earth Summit in Rio-de-janeiro, where the ‘Agenda 21’ was adopted, focussing on preserving the environment while pursuing development. The Brundtland Report simply defines sustainable development as the capacity to fulfil today’s needs without damaging the capacity of the earth to serve the needs of future generations. This is just a macro expansion, without examining the intricacies and complexities of the earth’s ecosystems, but points to a desirable direction of “development”.

In the year 2000, the UN adopted the eight Millennium Development Goals, of which only Goal-7 (‘Ensure Environmental Sustainability’) talks explicitly about ecological sustainabilityvis-à-vis ‘development’, that too in somewhat vague terms. One important contribution of some of these global exercises is the firm inclusion of the concept that without a universally inclusive access-to-resources approach, recognizing the hugely increasing inequities and trying to address these, there can be no sustainable development.Another realization – that highly degraded natural ecosystems – with specially climate change are leading to increasing damages due to rapidly rising disasters, compounded by the rise of vulnerable places and vulnerable populations – forced the adoption of a disaster reduction framework, called the Hyogo Frameworkfor Action (HFA) in the year 2005.It is very sad that the shoddy implementation of all of these failed to either reduce the vulnerabilities or the damages, leading to both the environment getting more stressed and the lower half of global poor getting worse off.

Two decades after the first Earth Summit, in the Rio+20 second Earth Summit in 2012, facing increasing impacts of global ecological destruction and increasingly damaging climate change, the UN members realized that there can be no development without ensuring all round health of the earth’s eco-systems, and finalized the globally accepted (by the member governments of the UN) report titled “The Future We Want”. Here it was explicitly recognized that the prevailing (primarily economic) development goals should and could be tailored to an environmentally and socially sustainable development pathway. This is reflected in the key statement in the ‘The Future We Want’ document – “We recognize that the development of goals could also be useful for pursuing focused and coherent action on sustainable development”.Finally on the 25^thof September 2015 – 43 years after the Stockholm conference that started the global debate – the United Nations General Assembly adopted the seventeen (17) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its final document titled – “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. Unfortunately (but perhaps as expected) for the world’s poor and the marginalized, the designs of these are centred on the same capitalistic, extractive, exploitative production oriented economic growth.

The adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN was preceded by the adoption, in March 2015, of another important element of sustainable development – a new global disaster reduction frame work, called the Sendai Framework, with the knowledge that without a strong Disaster Risk and Loss Reduction mechanism, many of the economic development gains are being destroyed by increasing disasters. The third major component for moving towards a sustainable development paradigm, a global treaty on limiting damaging global warming and climate change, was reached in December 2015, though with very serious questions about its adequacy or actionable elements, and is already being rejected by progressive sections of humanity. So, the challenge remains almost undiminished, and an informed, shared & connected global people’s action seems to be the only solution.

———– Soumya Dutta :soumyadutta.delhi@gmail.com

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