Call of the Central Committee of Communist Ghadar Party of India, 30th August, 2012
Working class representatives from all over the country are gathering on 4th September, at a time when a titanic struggle is going on in our country. The struggle is between the majority of toiling and exploited people and a minority of exploiters. It is between the majority whose lab
Call of the Central Committee of Communist Ghadar Party of India, 30th August, 2012
Working class representatives from all over the country are gathering on 4th September, at a time when a titanic struggle is going on in our country. The struggle is between the majority of toiling and exploited people and a minority of exploiters. It is between the majority whose labour expands wealth and the minority who enjoy the fruits of wealth creation on the basis of their private property and positions of power.
Our Prime Minister has declared in his Independence Day speech that those who “stall” what he calls economic progress are a “threat to national security”. This is an open attack on the most organised sections of the working class, who are refusing to submit to inhuman conditions of super-exploitation. It is an attack on peasants, tribal and other communities who are protesting against the corporate land grab.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh equates economic progress with providing favourable conditions for the expansion of the biggest capitalist monopolies, Indian and foreign. Workers who uphold their rights and fight to defend them, including the right to form a trade union and the right to demand regularization of those employed indefinitely on temporary contracts, are being called a threat to national security!
Labour laws are being openly flouted in the so-called modern industrial areas, special economic zones and service export hubs. Official police forces as well as private armed security guards are deployed to terrorise workers. Hundreds of workers of Maruti Suzuki at Manesar have been thrown in jail. Long-time workers have been dismissed on a massive scale, without due process and without evidence of any crime. New workers are being hired literally under gunpoint, with more armed security men inside the factory premises than the number of workers.
Workers in a wide range of public services are faced with the complete negation of their right to strike, as one state government after another has enacted the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA). Those in power claim that strikes must not be allowed in “essential services” because of the suffering they cause to the people at large. In reality, the abysmal and super-exploitative conditions imposed on workers in public hospitals, public transport, banks and numerous other services show the scant concern of the authorities for the quality of services delivered to the public.
The aim of ESMA is nothing to do with ensuring essential services for the public. Its aim is to ensure that any struggle of workers in these service sectors can be declared illegal.
The complete lack of any concern on the part of those in power for the public interest has been exposed by the drive to privatise many of the most essential services, including electricity supply, transport, education, health care, water supply, sanitation and other urban services. Wherever capitalist monopolies see the possibility of acquiring assets cheaply and raking in windfall profits, the authorities start to disinvest, or to deliberately generate losses and then carrying out privatisation. The result of this privatisation program has been further deterioration in the quality of services to the people, alongside soaring prices of such services.
In spite of widespread mass opposition, the leaders of the country are calling for an acceleration of the same anti-social program of globalisation of Indian capital, through liberalisation and privatisation. Economic policy at both central and state level is being aligned to suit the greed of the biggest capitalist monopolies, Indian and foreign.
The working class is fighting back. All over the country, workers cutting across party and trade union affiliation are joining hands in actions to defend their common interests. The slogan “An attack on one is an attack on all!” is inspiring workers in more and more sectors, as they realize that it is one offensive of big capital against all workers.
In the conditions of growing resistance to the dangerous unpopular course, the ruling bourgeois class is once again deploying its favorite weapon of state-sponsored communal and sectarian violence, to smash the unity of the toiling and oppressed people. Secretly inciting communal massacres, spreading poison through rumours, creating chaos and then unleashing state terrorism in the name of restoring order – these are the tactics being used to divert and divide the ranks of those who are opposing the capitalist offensive.
The events in Assam, followed by the deliberate engineering of mass exodus of workers and students from the North East, and the targeting of the people of the Muslim faith, as well as Pakistan, are all part of smashing our unity. We must not allow the capitalist class and their political parties to once again succeed in their dirty aims.
Comrades!
The most important step we need to take at this time to advance our struggle to a new and higher phase is to build workers’ unity committees at the factory, industrial area, city, district, state and all-India levels. This is absolutely essential in order that we can mount an effective tit for tat struggle and prepare to launch our own offensive against the bourgeoisie.
Already, we have several positive examples in this direction. The coming together of trade unions from diverse against MESMA in Maharashtra is one example. Many similar initiatives are taking place in different parts of our country, to form committees for promoting and strengthening the unity of workers in action against the common class enemy. The importance of these committees is that they enable workers to rise above the existing divisions based on trade union affiliation and petty party rivalry.
The times are calling on all parties and mass organisations of the working class to unite on a political basis, around the task of building and strengthening workers’ unity committees on a conscious and planned basis. Such committees are essential for addressing the immediate need for solidarity and support for whichever section of workers is under attack. They can develop into forums for worker organisers to discuss questions of strategy and tactics of the class struggle. They can become enabling mechanisms for workers to unite as a class and take the reins of India in our hands.
There are numerous parties of the ruling class, but all of them are committed to the same program. This is the program of globalisation of Indian capital through privatisation and liberalisation, which is being implemented at this time by the Manmohan Singh Government. The deep political and economic crisis in which our society is enmeshed is a result of this course. No bourgeois party or coalition can extricate our society from this crisis.
Only the working class can lift Indian society out of its crisis. Only the working class can save India. The time has come to smash the chains that bind us to bourgeois politics and which divide us from each other. We must not allow our unions and other mass organisations to become manipulated in the interest of any petty party rivalry or vote bank politics.
The workers’ unity committees we build in different industrial areas and towns must educate and organise the workers to expose the present system of democracy and its political process, which ensure that the toiling majority of people are excluded from power. We must mobilise the working working class to fight for a superior system of democracy and political process in which the broad masses of people are the decision makers. Only by ushering in such a superior system can the working class lead all the toiling and oppressed masses on the road of socialism and communism.
Comrades!
The youthful Indian working class is looking for an alternative to the crisis-ridden capitalist system and the anti-social program of the bourgeoisie. The vast majority of our exploited and oppressed people are looking for an alternative. Let us build the organs of united struggle of our class – workers’ unity committees – as the immediate next step in the direction of the only scientific and credible political alternative, the Navnirman of India.
Super-exploitation of labour is not the condition for India to shine!
Build and strengthen workers’ unity committees!
Let us workers prepare to take charge and change the course of India!