Communist Production Will Meet Human Needs
JUNE 17— “It is a war zone,” said a friend of the International Communist Workers’ Party in India. He was in the battle between ruthless police enforcing the laws of capitalist bosses and thousands of farmers who have lost all the means of livelihood. Scores of police vehicles were set ablaze. A thick smoke of tear gas is choking everyone. And the bodies of six dead farmers, shot by the police, are angering millions in India and around the world.
The fury of the masses spreads like a prairie fire. It exposes the lies of the fascist government that promised “better days for all.”
Almost half of India’s 1.2 billion people are small farmers who barely survive by producing grain and dairy products that feed the urban working class. The year 2016 was in every way the best that 500 million agrarian workers could have imagined. Timely monsoon rains brought enough water to irrigate farms. Falling global prices of oil reduced the cost of transportation. The cost of oil-derived fertilizers and pesticides also dropped. This was a recipe for unprecedented bumper crops.
Such a bountiful harvest should have been a cause for celebration. But as warehouses across India overflowed with food, food prices went into a free fall. Many small marginal farmers had borrowed money from banks. Now they were unable to repay the loans. The capitalist system turned the abundance of food into a catastrophe.
Desperate to survive, many farmers tried to sell their only remaining asset: cattle. But there were no buyers, as the fascist BJP government has banned the slaughter of cows in the name of the Hindu religion. With no hope of surviving next year and unable to make loan payments, thousands of farmers have committed suicide by consuming pesticides.
Millions are abandoning their land and flocking to the cities. This abandoned land is a free bonanza to huge corporate farms that absorb them. These corporations produce even cheaper commodities, forcing the remaining farmers off their land. It is estimated that over 300 million people will migrate to cities. The capitalist rulers will try to use them to drive down wages of urban workers.
The desperation of the masses reached a boiling point when tens of thousands fought pitched battle against the police. But desperation must be matched by inspiration. There is an urgent need to build a mass ICWP to inspire this struggle with the possibility of communism.
A communist society will organize masses into collectives that will decide what and how to produce for the needs of the working class. More food will mean less hunger, not more misery. We will close the banks for good. There will be no money and no debt, no corporations and no profits.
In communism, instead of producing commodities for sale, hundreds of millions of workers freed from exploitation will create new ways to fulfill the needs of the masses in ways we can barely imagine today. Masses of workers armed with communist ideology and the science of change will defend the communist seizure of power and advance it until the last vestiges of capitalism are smashed.
A mass ICWP in India today would be joining the battles against the cops, the corporations and the banks. It would organize the industrial working class and soldiers to strike the capitalist system under the red banners of communism. It would prepare masses for revolution and for building communist society worldwide.
This is not an easy task. The bosses will fight for their survival. We must fight for ours. Join and build the ICWP in India and everywhere to organize the international working class for our communist future.
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