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India: The Strikes of Women Tea Pickers and Garment Workers Point Beyond Reformism

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“We pick the tea leaves, we heave the sacks of the tea leaves, you heave the sacks of money leaves, there has to be an end to this.”

These were the words on a protest sign at a recent strike by 6000 women tea workers in Munnar, Kerala State in India. The nine-day strike won a higher bonus for tea workers. It inspired other strikes at nearby plantations.
Communist society will eliminate the sacks of money leaves altogether. Tea is largely an export crop. Tea leaf picking here is a “women only” job. These women – like all wage slaves - work to make a profit for the plantation owners and the banks that finance them. We’ll eliminate money, banks, and profits, and we’ll decide together what we need to grow and where to grow it. This will be decided by ICWP’s worldwide collectives because communist production will be solely to satisfy the needs of workers worldwide. Thus, the masses worldwide need to participate in making those decisions.
Communist production will also decide and change not only what we produce and where, but also who produces it and how. The vast majority of production processes can be mechanized to eliminate the tedious, boring, back breaking hours of labor that the capitalists’ profit-driven wage slavery imposes on us. Nobody will be picking tea leaves or chained to a sewing machine 8 hours or more a day for life. Communist production and social relations based on cooperation and collectivity will develop the communist education and practice to guarantee this.   .
Communist education will be tied to our communist production. Not only will we train the inventors, builders, mechanics and operators of the machinery necessary to make our work more enjoyable, but we will guarantee the same person combines these skills. Communist education will bind theory and practice – everyone will be a doer and a thinker. We will all, including leaders, take our turn doing tedious, boring, and disagreeable work that can’t be mechanized – while working in other fields like medicine, science, etc.
Eliminating wage slavery will strike a crucial blow against racism and sexism – deadly capitalist ideologies used to super-exploit some sectors of our class, while preventing us from uniting to destroy capitalism with a communist revolution. In a communist world there won’t be a “Third World” where the capitalists use racism to super exploit our class brothers and sisters. In a communist society there won’t be “women only” or “men only” work, including house work. This will be done collectively with many families – men, women, and children – participating.

Reformism Won’t Take Us Where We Need To Go
The strikers in Munnar rejected the unions, both those affiliated with the Congress Party and those with the Communist Party, because they collaborate with management. This is a good start. These workers, however, need to reject unions – no matter how militant and honest their leaders are--because of their reformist ideology. Trade unions don’t want to destroy capitalism, but to reform it, leaving its wage slavery, racism, sexism, and all its horrors intact.
Some strikers were members of a group called Sembilan Urumqi (Women’s Unity) and some reports have claimed the bonus they got is a victory for feminism, since men played no role in the strike. Feminism blames all men instead of class society for sexism. It is another divisive capitalist ideology that must be rejected, which communism will bury with all capitalist ideology.
An even larger wildcat strike led by women garment workers in Bengaluru (Bangalore) in April blocked roads, shut down the city and forced the Modi government to cancel a big cut in their benefits. Unions also played no role in that strike. Temporary “victories” like these, whether or not led by unions, tend to blind workers to the need to destroy capitalism, reinforcing deadly reformist ideology that capitalism can be made to serve our needs.
Both strikes, however, showed the anger and the power of the masses of garment and tea workers. The tea workers’ sign, “There has to be an end to this,” shows that the Indian masses, like the masses worldwide, are fed up with capitalism.
They are looking for radical alternatives. They are open to communism. We must win them to see that “the heaving of the sacks of money” stolen from our labor and the horrors capitalism imposes on us to get it can only end by mobilizing the masses for communism. Our task is to win these militant women workers to join ICWP and organize political strikes to mobilize for communism. It takes commitment and determined class struggle to end it. It can’t come too soon.

INDIA: Comrades Organize ICWP in a Police State

This is a brief report from our collective of ICWP members and readers living in a large industrial city in India. We are happy to report that we were able to read, discuss and distribute some literature of ICWP (Red Flag, Mobilize the Masses for Communism, Education pamphlet, End Racism and Nationalism) among our colleagues and coworkers before, during and after May Day. We were unsure how to do this work because we are living in a police state.
The government and its Hindu fascist groups are terrorizing the masses. We are also surrounded by pro-capitalist revisionist parties like the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party Marxist. And another ideological struggle is with various Maoist groups that are involved in class struggle. They are fighting the repressive state power. Their heroic fight against the state has given them some respect and mass base. However, they have an incorrect line of fighting for socialism. As ICWP has explained, socialism with its market system and wage slavery is state capitalism.
Amidst all these trends, all of which we are fighting, we feel overwhelmed. However, communism and revolution are built on scientific laws. We can’t go back in history. Socialism can’t be reformed. Fascists can’t be voted out. Revisionists can’t be wished away. We have to smash capitalism with communism. Intense ideological discussion that is going around the ideas of ICWP is helping us understand and advance our line of fighting for communism. We are very encouraged by the international line of the party. Also the work of the comrades in South Africa is very inspiring.

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