April 22, 2020: Migrant workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh protest Indian government starvation policies
CHENNAI (India) June 29 — “My family will starve if we cannot work in the auto industry. We will be dead by either hunger, lack of jobs or COVID-19,” Nikhil told a neighbor, an auto worker and member of ICWP.
Similar stories can be heard in Bengaluru, the heart of India’s garment industry (third-largest in the world). With world demand low due to COVID-19, China is producing more garments. Economic competition is sharpening.
Military conflict is sharpening, too. Some 3000 km (1900 miles) away, the Chinese and Indian armies are clashing in the Himalayas. Twenty Indian soldiers from Bihar (a region bordering Nepal) were killed in skirmishes on June 15. The Chinese rulers (after containing COVID-19) have drawn a line.
The Indian rulers responded with naval exercises, with the US, Vietnam and Australia, in the South China Sea. That is where the bulk of goods flow to and from China and the rest of the world. After the June 15 clash, the US offered to mediate between India and China. This was not what the Indian army wanted to hear.
Bihar is a region of exceptionally low industrial growth. Every year, millions of workers travel across India, looking for jobs in large industrial cities. When the March lockdown came, these migrants tried to walk home. We do not know how many died. But in the northern slopes of India, whether they are killed by Chinese soldiers or (more often) by the Indian police, the effect is the same.
Communism: A Permanent Solution
We need more members of ICWP to build a world where no one will be killed by hunger, covid-19 or inter-imperialist war. To many, it sounds like a daunting task.
We asked the auto worker in Chennai to join the party. “What good will it do when there is no job?” he asked.
“We will have a member who will recruit others to the party to destroy capitalism. We will also ask them to fight for communism without money and wage slavery. That is a permanent solution.”
The unions or other political parties just want him to join to control him, not really freeing him from his misery. They will offer a solution that does not exist. It will intensify the misery while he thinks something is being done.
We did not convince Nikhil to join the party. It is new to him. But he is taking it more seriously.
We need to develop more to the party, just like we did others. That means we must distribute Red Flag to him and many others. The more advanced, who have been with the party longer, have joined our party after the George Floyd demonstrations. They saw that what is happening with George Floyd is the same as everywhere else. It is capitalism, and communism will be the only way to end the system.
SPAIN, July 1—Strikers shut down Alcoa plants in A Marina and San Cibao, protesting the US-based company’s plans to close them and throw thousands out of work
New ICWP Groups in Tamil Nadu and Pakistan
We distributed many papers to workers in and around Chennai, Bengaluru, and Delhi. We got several people to take ICWP very seriously in other parts of Tamil Nadu. Five are forming a new ICWP collective. They are translating Red Flag into Tamil and Telugu. The job of translating is not easy. It will involve many more people, and that is what they are doing with other coworkers and social media.
Our work has gone beyond the borders. A group of workers in Pakistan has also joined ICWP. They have translated Mobilize the Masses for Communism into the Urdu language. The next step is in the Sindhi language. They have offered to lend their ears to the dialectical materialism video we propose to produce.
While the new comrade in the Chennai is not joining the party now, many more new developments are taking place. This gives more confidence to the party everywhere to recruit more. Many more papers distributed consistently, many more conversations, will eventually result in recruitment.
Our task is to understand more clearly the process of recruiting Nikhil to the party. We will get to know him better. When we convince him and others like him, it will open the door to recruiting more around the world.
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