A Million Workers To March In Delhi
By Communist Ghadar Party of India
22 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
Comrade workers!
We have decided to get together in Delhi from all regions of our country on 23rd February, to demand our basic rights. Secure employment and social security cannot be the preserve of a few. They are basic rights of all workers, without exception. Food is not a luxury but an essential need. It is a basic right of every human being, without exception. It is the duty of the State to ensure that these rights are fulfilled.
We are demanding an immediate halt to privatisation in any form – the handing over of public assets to private profiteers, including forests, rivers and mineral resources that belong to the people. The opening up of more and more sectors of social production to private interests has only benefited super-rich capitalists, while it has led to increasing suffering for the toiling people.
The Manmohan Singh government has no interest or intention to fulfil any of our demands, even though it claims to be serving the aam aadmi. Facts have shown that this is a government committed to enrich the Tatas, Ambanis, Birlas and other monopoly houses. It is committed to the program of enabling the capitalists of our country to become global giants, through more intense exploitation of our labour and more intense robbery of our peasant brothers.
The ratio of gross profits to total wages, in all private capitalist corporations taken together, rose from 44% in 2001 to 176% in 2008. This shows the tremendous intensification of our exploitation in recent years. This has been achieved by attacking our basic rights as workers, including the right to form unions in new industries, right to limit the number of working hours, right to social security, etc.
Comrade workers!
Governments have changed numerous times over the past 20 years, but the course on which our country is headed has remained the same. Whether it is a government headed by the Congress Party, BJP or the Third Front, the program of privatisation and liberalisation has continued. This is because the capitalist class, headed by the monopoly houses, has firmly established its hold over the state, the entire political system. As revealed by the Radiia tapes, it is the Tatas, Ambanis and others who are running this country. They play a decisive role in every government formation, selection of ministers and formulation of policies. The existing democracy is in reality the dictatorship of the capitalist class, headed by the monopoly houses.
The system and political process of representative democracy in our country has its origin in the attempts of the British colonialists to prettify their oppressive dictatorship, after crushing the Great Ghadar of 1857. The representatives of the capitalist class decided to preserve and further develop this same system after 1947.
Our struggle is therefore not merely a struggle against one particular party or government. It is a struggle against the capitalist class in power. It is a struggle against an economic and political system that is thoroughly corrupt and parasitic.
As we step up our struggle for our entirely just demands, we must do so with the perspective that the workers and peasants who produce the wealth of this country must become her masters. We must fight with the aim of replacing the rule of the capitalist class by the rule of workers and peasants. Only then can we ensure that our claims are fulfilled and our rights are protected. Only then can we reorient the economy to provide for all our needs, rather than be oriented to enrich a parasitic class at the expense of the toiling majority.
We must fight for a new political system and electoral process, in which those elected will be answerable to the toiling majority, not to an exploiting minority as is the case today. We must fight to establish our right to select candidates for elections, and to recall those elected at any time, through sabhas and samitis in every constituency.
The capitalist propaganda presents ‘corruption’ as the number one problem. The truth is that corruption is endemic to capitalism at its present stage. All the monopoly houses indulge in bribing politicians and officials to get what they want. It is the way the entire system works, on a daily basis. The Congress Party and BJP are blaming one another, without touching the root of the problem, which is the capitalist system. They want to hide the fact that the only way to put an end to corruption is to put an end to the capitalist system itself.
Today, on the world scale, a revolutionary storm is building up. This can be seen in the mass uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. It can be seen in the worldwide protests against imperialist war, against growing exploitation and unbearable food prices, against the domination of the monopolies and giant banks. Our struggle is part of this revolutionary storm in the making. It is one struggle against the capitalist-imperialist system on the world scale.
Comrade workers!
It is essential to learn from our past experience to strengthen our fighting unity today. We have to overcome and defeat those political trends that divide us and divert us from our struggle against the capitalist class.
If we look back over the past 10 years, we can see that our struggle reached a peak in 2004. We united as a class to defend the right to strike, and against the “second generation reforms” being pushed by the BJP-led NDA government at that time. However, our struggle weakened after the Lok Sabha elections in 2004. This was because of the diversion created by those who claimed that the immediate task was to support the Congress Party in order to keep the BJP out. We have seen how the Congress-led UPA government, with its talk of “reforms with a human face”, “inclusive growth” and a “national common minimum program”, has implemented the same agenda of enriching the monopolies at the expense of the toiling masses. We cannot afford to fall for such diversions again.
We workers need to transform ourselves into a united and effective political force, which can set the agenda for the whole of society and lead the peasants, tribal peoples and others in struggle against capitalism and the monopolies.
Comrade workers!
We have already achieved an important advance in uniting firmly around a set of immediate demands. We must not let anyone divert our focus from this common program.
We have united around the demand for immediate measures to bring down the prices of essential commodities. We are demanding that the procurement and distribution of food and other essential items of mass consumption be brought under public control. This means to restrict and eliminate the role of private agencies in external and internal wholesale trade. Only then can it be ensured that essential articles — including wheat, rice, dal, sugar, cooking oil, vegetables, milk and meat — are available in adequate quantity and quality, at affordable prices to every family. Only then can secure livelihood be guaranteed to the peasants who produce our food.
We have united around the demand for immediate measures to protect workers from unemployment. We want constitutional guarantee for the right to work and to social security, with effective mechanisms to enforce compliance.
We are demanding strict punishment for any employer who violates labour rights, including our right to form unions, right to minimum wages, and to an eight hour working day. We are demanding the abolition of contract labour.
We are demanding a halt to privatisation, to the transfer of public assets to private hands, in any form and under any name. We are demanding reversal of the privatisation of public services like electricity, water, education, healthcare, municipal services and transport.
Let us build workers’ unity committees (mazdoor ekta parishad) in every industrial estate and special economic zone, to popularise our program and build unity around our demands. Such committees must cut across party and trade union divisions.
Let us wage the struggle for our immediate demands with the revolutionary perspective of establishing the rule of workers and peasants.
Mazdoor Ekta Zindabad!
Iquilab Zindabad!
Call of the Central Committee, Communist Ghadar Party of India, 23 Feb, 2011
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