Indian Independence And Workers' Freedom
By Alan Johnstone
10 March, 2014
Countercurrents.org
It can be seen in retrospect that independence for the vast majority of the people of India has simply meant the exchange of one set of exploiters for another. Independence has solved few of the peasant or working-class problems and in the case of the Indian urban working class the solution to their problems is the same as ours. It does not lie in the substitution of one kind of capitalism for another, just as it did not lie in the substitution of a native Indian master class in place of the British Raj. Their fellow countrymen have been among their most ruthless oppressors. When India achieved independence very little changed except the personnel of the State machine.
Indian capitalists want to have the profits of the developing Indian capitalism for themselves and the Indian nationalist movement represented the interests of Indian capitalists who sought to possess the profits of the developing Indian capitalism for themselves. They wish to be able to control the taxation and tariffs system and use them to further their own interests. They do not object to the exploitation of the Indian workers, but what they do object to is non-Indian investors getting the lion's share; and they objected to British traders, exporting British-made goods to India and enjoying preferential treatment. Nationalism was naturally supported by the Indian educated, who saw the promise of fat jobs in the new Indian Army or civil service, and in the legal profession.
But Indians should recognise that their poverty was the result not of foreign rule — which is only one of the many evil by-products of capitalism —but of the capitalist system itself. Independence for India did not solve many of the working class problems. It merely substituted "India for the Indian capitalists" in place of "India for the British capitalists. The only sound policy for the Indian workers in line with their interests is to organise themselves on the economic field for the defence of their interests against their employers, as well as organise on the political field for the ultimate achievement of socialism, in cooperation with the rest of the world's workers. Before India gained its independence British colonial capitalists and administrators had plundered this land but now the Indian workers and peasants are being exploited under home-born masters. Their craft skill and energy serving the modernisation and industrialisation of India in the fight for markets. Our watchword should never be "Britain for the British" nor "India for the Indians," but "The World for the Workers."
If you want to assess a country's progress you should pick up the poorest from among the people and see how far he has gone up the ladder said Mahatma Gandhi. Indian billionaires like the Mittels and the Ambanis compete well with their counterparts in America and mere millionaires in India are cheaper by the dozen. Yet the common man and woman has made little progress and it is still women who bear the brunt of poverty and the discrimination in this caste-ridden, neo-feudalistic, male-dominated society. Dowry demands, domestic and sexual violence are frequent. Village society in India is loaded against women. It refuses to educate them, marries them off too early and barters them for money. However, Indian society and culture is changing and will continue to change.
Gandhi was no socialist, preferring to believe that moral force could achieve a more equitable society where capitalists would become trustees over the labourer and he sought merely a levelling of incomes. But occasionally he did reveal some genuine socialist insights:
"According to me, the economic constitution of India and for that matter of that of the world , should be such that no-one under it should suffer from want of food and clothing. In other words everybody should be able to get sufficient work to enable him to make the two ends meet. And this ideal can be universally realised only if the means of production of the elementary necessaries of life remain in the control of the masses. These should be freely available to all as God's air and water are or ought to be; they should not be made a vehicle of traffic for the exploitation of others. Their monopolisation by any country, nation or group of persons would be unjust. The neglect of this simple principle is the cause of the destitution that we witness today not only in this unhappy land but in other parts of the world too."
Elsewhere, Gandhi says:
"The real implication of equal distribution is that each man shall have the wherewithal to supply all his natural wants and no more. For example, if a man has a weak digestion and requires only a quarter of a pound of flour for his bread and another needs a pound, both should be in a position to satisfy their wants. To bring this ideal into being the entire social order has got to be re-constructed."
And again he said:
"The elephant needs a thousand times more food than the ant, but that is no indication of inequality. So the real meaning of economic equality was: ‘To each according to his need’.”
That was the definition of Marx. It is true that Marx did not draw up recipes for the cookshops of the future, but he did describe the basis of the society he thought was going to replace capitalism; “an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common” (Chapter 1 of Capital); “a co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production” (Critique of the Gotha Programme); “abolition of private property”, “the Communistic abolition of buying and selling”, “the conversion of the functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production” (Communist Manifesto); “abolition of the wages system” (Value, Price and Profit). In short, a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society based on the common ownership of the means of production.
The key point to understand is that capitalism is a system based upon the exploitation and commodification of workers and the relentless rape of our planet. Working people are conditioned and are psychologically programmed to detest that which could potentially set them free. Workers are led to believe that economic servitude and wage slavery is freedom and it is all done for the benefit of capitalists at the expense of society. Workers have entrusted their hope in phony leaders and bogus institutions that keep us servile and docile. Irrational faith requires little thought from us and delusion has become the norm because too many of us are incapable of grappling with reality. * (See appendix)
There are always economic and social divisions within society to be exploited by those more rich and powerful, particularly when the existing order is threatened. This more or less confirms the socialist argument that religious perceptions in any class-divided society are not neutral, but a tool in the hands of the dominant class in its struggle to maintain its control. Religious and all manner of spurious ideological theories are contrived by the ruling class or its representatives in the intellectual nd religious community to keep the downtrodden perpetually entrapped in the vicious circle of exploitation.
Until class politics grow to prevail and caste allegiences are rejected, the capitalist class will continue to control through divide and rule. Capitalist driven urbanisation and industrialisation have helped to break down caste barriers to some extent as people moved out of traditional occupations. In the meantime, for the pro-capitalist political parties, caste is about calculated bargaining for greater electoral spoils.
The best advice to Indian workers in the economic field is:
1) Try to push wages and conditions as high as they are allowed to go by employers.
2) Organise democratically to achieve your aims, without reliance on leaders.
3) Recognise that any union struggle is necessarily a defensive one as there can be no real and lasting victory within the profit system.
Workers must purge their unions of all self-seeking individualism and bureaucratic autocracy. In their own unions must first be worked out that principle of full and free democracy which will make these institutions subject to the rank and file. Not until this is done is the ground cleared for progress of any kind or in any direction. “Workers of the world unite,” is a futile, empty slogan until this task is accomplished.Trade union and political activists should take particular note of this observation made by the World Socialist Party (India) in regards to conducting the economic struggle:
"In countries like India workers have the legal right to form trade unions.....Actually these trade unions are not genuine trade unions. Still workers' organised resistance against exploitation is a must; and for that matter, their resistance struggles must have to be freed from the infamy of remaining divided and subservient to various capitalist political parties. This they can achieve by organising themselves in fully integrated and independent trade unions of their own, by throwing away all kinds of blind faith and submissiveness regarding the wretched hierarchy of subscription-squeezer and flag-hoister "leaders". The working class movement is a movement of equals-organised by the workers and in the interest of the workers.....what they require is to meet in regular general assemblies, discuss and debate all that matters keeping ears and minds open and decide to take such steps as deemed useful. In case a strike is to be declared, they would need a strike committee to be formed of recallable delegates elected and mandated in the general assembly-thus retaining the ultimate control in their own hands.Where there are many rival trade union shops in a single factory or workplace operated by many capitalist political parties, a socialist worker can neither keep on supporting the one he is in, nor go on seeking membership of one after another or all at the same time, nor can he open his own "socialist" trade union instead. What he can, and should, do as an immediate perspective, is to try to form a "political group" with like-minded fellow workers and campaign for a class-wide democratic unity as stated above. Whenever an opportunity arrives the group must use the assemblies as a forum....- Manifesto of the World Socialist Party (India), March 1995- Manifesto of the World Socialist Party (India), March 1995 [ http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org/porichiti.pdf ]
Trade unions are essentially fighting over the crumbs (necessary though that fight is). But socialists long ago raised sights beyond the crumbs, beyond even the control of the bakery, and our demand now is for the flour-mills and wheat-fields, too. That way we will not be perpetually doomed to repeat the battles of the past. We can and must do better or we are doomed.
Now is the time for those in India who really desire socialism to strike a blow for it by building a genuine world socialist party for India. In the words of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay:
“Why must I cling to the customs and practices of a particular country forever, just because I happened to be born there? What does it matter if its distinctiveness is lost? Need we be so attached to it? What's the harm if everyone on earth shares the same thoughts and feelings, if they stand under a single banner of laws and regulations? What if we can't be recognized as Indians any more? Where's the harm in that? No one can object if we declare ourselves to be citizens of the world. Is that any less glorious?”
* Appendix
Akbar in ‘The Spiders of Orissa’ writes movingly:
"...To create a good slave you must first kill his pride, his self - respect, his notion of himself as an ordinary equal human being. The slave's body is needed - the man's for labour, the woman's for labour and abuse; but to control the body the inner spark which ignites anger must be crushed. There are many weapons in the spiders arsenal, both psychological and physical , but the chief one is dramatically simple: hunger. When a generation or two dies of the ultimate denial, delirious for a handful of rice, while a chorus of spiders fattens indifferently in the background, physical and mental slavery becomes an easy option to the dying. The young woman at your feet is not prostrate through love or devotion; she is there because over many lifetimes she has learnt that the degradation of the spirit is the only guarantee she has against the degradation of the body, that food and safety are not her right but a gift which a superior might grant if she behaves. The man, his taut, dark body glistening with youth which will fast wither , is allowed the hint of a sullen look, but no more. Oppress by destitution. Keep a people on the permanent knife-edge of hunger: normalcy should never mean more than one meal of rice and dal a day...
...The real trick is to destroy the confidence of a people: make them believe the caricatures you have created about them . Less than 500 years ago, these tribals of Orissa and Bastar and Andhra ruled over a brillant empire; today they have been turned into parodies of a cruel fiction. The tribal man is a mahua-swigging drunk. The woman is an easy lay. The strength of the hoax lies , of course, in the fact that it is constructed on a malicious distortion of reality to give it a facade of believability. The tribal does like a drink and has none of the hypocritical duplicity of the middle class towards liquor. That does not maker him a drunkard . The woman is beautiful; she does not wear a blouse and no-one in her village looks twice at her exposed breasts; leering is the prerogative of the starved visitor. To equate this with prostitution is the task of the pervert. What has made one tribal an emaciated drunkard and another a prostitute in Raipur or Calcutta is hunger; gnawing, tearing, shattering hunger. And the last stage of hunger: despair. There is no hope left of escaping from the web, so lie somnolescent at the centre, praying that destiny grants you a few extra days before the spider inevitably consumes you ..."
Alan Johnstone is a member of The Socialist Party Of Great Britain
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