Unite to establish the rule of workers and peasants!
May Day 2007 Call of the Communist Ghadar Party of India
Comrade workers!
Unite to establish the rule of workers and peasants!
May Day 2007 Call of the Communist Ghadar Party of India
Comrade workers!
This May Day, lakhs of us are participating militantly in rallies and marches in hundreds of towns, at tens of thousands of factory gates, as well as in village sabhas, in different regions of our country. The red flag, the flag of struggle and sacrifice of the working class, proudly flutters in the hands of workers everywhere.
We come to this May Day having waged fierce struggles on different fronts. We are fighting against legalisation of contract labour and outsourcing. We are opposing efforts to illegalise trade unions and deprive us of the right to strike. We are fighting the capitalists moves to make labour laws more suitable to themselves, and the attempts to remove entire sectors of economy from the purview of labour laws, like the IT sector, as well as sweat shops set up in the Special Economic Zones. We are waging major struggles against the liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation program, including the destruction of our livelihood and homes being carried out in the name of urban “development”. We have been fighting for our rights as women and workers, and to ensure that agricultural workers as well as workers in the unorganised sector are guaranteed rights as workers. We are demanding the revocation of the SEZ Act, as well as calling for implementing measures to protect the livelihood of the toiling peasantry. We have waged a stern struggle against state terrorism unleashed by the capitalists and their governments against workers and peasants. We have raised our voice in defence of the rights of Palestinian, Iraqi, Iranian and other peoples, in defence of the workers and oppressed of the whole world, and against fascism, imperialism and imperialist war. We have sternly opposed the strategic alliance between the Indian big bourgeoisie and the US imperialists, the nuclear deal with the US, as well as the machinations of US imperialism against the peoples of South Asia. We have firmly defended the Nepalese peoples struggle to overthrow the Monarchy and become masters of their own destiny, free from all foreign interference. We have opposed the chauvinism and the drive of the Indian bourgeoisie to become one of the big imperial powers. In sum, we have challenged the bourgeoisie at every step, and established the necessity to fight for an alternative to bourgeois rule, that is the rule of workers and peasants.
Comrade workers, our class brethren in other countries are no less active. The winds of resistance to US imperialism and its institutions from the people of Cuba and other Latin American countries are posing a challenge to the neo-liberal agenda of the imperialists. It is challenging the myth that there is no alternative to capitalism and capitalist reforms while giving a fillip to resistance struggles throughout the world. Workers in their lakhs have been participating in the anti war and anti globalisation protests throughout Europe and North America. In the United States of America alone, an unprecedented mobilisation is leading to millions of workers from all sectors of the economy participating in marches, rallies, protests, and work shutdown this May Day. The workers are expressing their opposition to the anti immigrant and anti labour policies of the US government, and the attempts to divide workers on the basis of race. In North America and Europe, in South America, and all over Asia and Africa, workers have hoisted the banner of struggle against the neo-liberal program of the bourgeoisie, against racism, fascism, imperialism and war. Membership in trade unions is on the rise in many countries indicating the strengthening of workers organisations.
The working class throughout the world is coming to the conclusion once again that capitalism and imperialism as a system must be dismantled if there is to be peace and prosperity for all. A grave needs to be dug for this greedy and moribund system, and a new system, socialism, must be established in its place. The working class is coming to the conclusion that there is no third course, no middle path, between capitalism and socialism.
Comrades,
Two decades ago, the imperialist bourgeoisie went on the offensive of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation. They launched massive attacks on the livelihood and rights of workers and tried to fool the middle strata with alluring promises of a better life. They were rendered yeoman service in this mission by the likes of Gorbachev with his call for glasnost and perestroika. The results have come in. It is confirmed world wide that this policy is only in the service of the naked greed of the imperialist bourgeoisie, of a few big imperialist powers, and to the detriment of the nations and peoples of the world.
The experience of our people confirm that the liberalisation and privatisation program has been nothing but the day light robbery of public assets at throw away prices by the biggest Indian and foreign multinationals. The factories, mines and other public enterprises, the mineral wealth, the water resources and forest resources, energy sector, transport and communication, education and health care and sanitation, banking and insurance — literally every sector which finance capital sets its greedy eyes on has been opened for plunder to Indian and foreign monopolies. The liberalisation program has revealed itself as a program in which the state defends the interests of the biggest monopolies. The Indian state, no matter which party is in power, has proven itself to be completely under the domination of the financial oligarchy and carrying out its dictate.
The opposition of workers and peasants to the liberalisation and privatisation program was manipulated by the Congress Party on behalf of the bourgeoisie. It came to power with the slogan of reforms with a "human face"! The plunder of the resources of our country has escalated, with over 400 SEZs either already approved or waiting for government approval. The central government is enabling the big bourgeoisie to acquire thousands of hectares of land through forced seizure using state terror. State governments are in competition with each other to sell out the land and mineral resources belonging to the people to the first bidder — Indian or foreign — with least regard for the livelihood and rights of the people. Each government is competing with the other to make life easier for capitalists and more difficult for workers. Their voracious greed is leading to ruination of small and medium capitalist enterprises as well. Widespread unemployment, peasant indebtedness and ruination, widening gap between rich and poor — this is the reality of the "reforms with a human face". If workers and peasants demand their rights, then the ruling parties in all the states are ever ready to brutally mow down the fighting people using the repressive state machinery. This state terrorism is routinely justified by declaring those opposing as terrorists or Naxalites.
The events of these two decades reveal that no matter whether it is Congress or BJP heading the government at the center, no matter which party or coalition rules in the states, what is defended strictly without letup is the interests of the big bourgeoisie and its imperialist ambitions. The Indian bourgeoisie – both when it ruled with a “human face” and without the “human face” has grown enormously richer while the workers and peasants of India have become even more impoverished All talk of inclusive growth is a lie, whereas the truth is there for all to see that under capitalism the rich grow richer and the poor poorer. Does not matter whether these governments talk about “India shining” or “Bharat Nirman”, growth and prosperity accrues strictly in the hands of the biggest monopoly houses.
We workers must be clear that the motor that is driving the present oppressive, anti-people social system in India is capitalism. The bourgeoisie is imperialist in nature and is anti national to the core. It props up all that is backward in Indian society, including the remnants of feudalism. It wields the colonial Indian state to incite communal divisions, and exacerbate caste divisions, as well as deprive the nations and peoples of their national rights. At all times, it tries to divide the working class and peasantry and petty bourgeoisie and maintain its rule. There is nothing “progressive” in this bourgeoisie, in this capitalist system. The congress party and BJP are two faces of the same bourgeois monster.
We workers must be clear that to end our exploitation and misery, to be sure we can live in peace and harmony with each other and with our neighbours, we need to destroy capitalism and imperialism. We have to prepare to seize power from the present day rulers. The workers and peasants must replace capitalism with a new social system which ensures prosperity and security for all. Preparing to establish the rule of the workers and peasants is the most important task facing us the working class today.
Comrades,
Karl Marx defined the historic role of the working class as the grave digger of capitalist society. He called upon the working class to overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Since then, communists have striven to organise the workers for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a new socialist society free from exploitation of persons by persons.
Karl Marx taught and VI Lenin reaffirmed that parliamentary democracy is a form of rule that is best suited for the bourgeoisie to exercise its dictatorship over the workers. They taught that the working class cannot take hold of the readymade state apparatus of the bourgeoisie and wield it in its interests. It has to smash the state of the bourgeoisie and erect in its place the state of the working class anew. It is adherence to this teaching that enabled the Russian working class to give birth to the first socialist state, the Soviet Union. Study of the experience of the international working class over the whole of the twentieth century has only reconfirmed this teaching. One of the key lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union is that a communist party must not only make sure that working class seizes political power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat it must also ensure that it is the workers and all toiling people who rule themselves directly. It has also taught us that without innovating a form of direct democracy where the workers set the agenda for all of society including the setting of wages, where they directly govern themselves without any kind of power brokers, we cannot achieve our mission of establishing a society free of all exploitation. It has taught us that the failure to do this will lead to destruction of socialism.
Comrades,
In the view of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, the biggest roadblock for the communist and workers movement is this pernicious theory that there is no alternative to capitalism and imperialism, no alternative to capitalist democracy. We are told it is futile for the working class to try to forge a front with the peasantry and other exploited sections for the destruction of capitalism and imperialism. Instead of the working class fighting to raise itself into a ruling class, it is being made to tail this or that section of the bourgeoisie and bring this or that party to power in the name of “choosing the lesser evil”. We workers are told that we should cooperate in managing the bourgeois state and not make preparations to smash the bourgeois state. We are told not to oppose privatisation, liberalisation and capitalist globalisation tooth and nail, but to wrest some concessions from the bourgeoisie through the good offices of some parliamentary representatives and be contented with it. In sum, we workers are strictly ordered never to take up the task of establishing our own rule, as allegedly the time is not ripe for this!
Comrade workers,
A hundred and fifty years ago, our patriots were ready with the alternative to colonial rule – they wanted the rule of the people. Today, we are ready with the alternative to capitalist plunder – that is the rule of workers and peasants. We reject the lie that we need capitalists to rule us and that we workers and peasants are unfit to rule! We tell the bourgeoisie – stop your nonsense, we the billion strong Indian working class and peasantry have full confidence, that we will create a society which will guarantee sukh and surakasha for all. We will build a new India, wherein political power will be in our hands. And we will do so by firmly uniting to destroy capitalism and imperialism from the face of India.
On May Day, let us resolve to unite around the banner of uncompromising struggle for the destruction of capitalism and imperialism and work for the establishment of the rule of workers and peasants!
Long Live May Day!
Inquilab Zindabad!