PUNJAB (India), March 28 — Comrades have gathered in Punjab, 100 km from Delhi. They had participated in the farmers’ rebellion for over four months. Now they are intensely discussing their next step. “We had over four million strong and determined farmers, farmworkers, and students. We had more than 250,000 tractors. Even people in the army came to support us.”
So, what happened to the masses? While claiming that the struggle for reforms continues, the union leaders are letting the struggle die down without officially conceding defeat. Also, many farmers and farmworkers have returned home for the harvest season.
How do we move the masses forward to communism? This is the question confronting two dozen comrades of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) and their many friends.
One party member explained, “The leaders of these mass movements wanted the government to withdraw those three laws. If the government withdrew these laws, it would still push millions of farmers to the brink of periodic disasters. Farmers’ suicides, exorbitant loans, rising prices of fertilizers and pesticides would continue. Above all, everything that we produce would be controlled by Mandi [a village market for agricultural products]. We would just be at the mercy of the capitalist-controlled Mandi system.”
“The union leaders wanted to keep capitalism with the Mandi system,” another new comrade added. “The government wants to keep capitalism without the Mandi system by replacing it with giant industrialists like Ambani and Adani.”
A third comrade wanted to know: “We only have a choice between the Mandi system and the corporate-controlled markets?” Another comrade answered: “What we need is communism, where nothing will be bought and sold. There will not be the Mandi system or corporates controlling us. Millions of us will participate in the production of what the working class needs, not what is produced for profit.”
These comrades met the ICWP during this struggle and have enthusiastically joined us.
We can never rely on the union leaders who want to push history backward. We had the power to take our fight for communism to millions of people, including some in the army. But we must win these masses to communism. That is why we are spreading small issues of Red Flag in Punjabi. When millions of us have a communist outlook, we will be able to overthrow capitalism.
Learning from the Naxalbari Struggle in the 1960s
A comrade related his experiences: “In 1968 a small group of communists took over an area called Naxalbari with armed rebellion. There were millions of small farmers in distress, living in extreme poverty. The fight in Naxalbari inspired the masses overnight. In the next two years there were several liberated areas. People were looking at China with the hope of changing the system. In Punjab, comrades organized and fought the large farm owners.”
We all wanted to know how the Naxalbari movement attracted the masses and challenged the capitalist system before it was brutally smashed by the army. The veteran comrade said, “Communism, the Naxalite movement never wanted to fight directly for communism. They wanted to build capitalism (bourgeois democracy) first, to create the industrial working class. That is why I have joined ICWP. I am immensely proud to be openly calling for a communist revolution. Unlike the Naxalbari, we are here to create a mass base for communism around the world, not just in India.”
The discussion now shifted to a new level. New and old comrades wanted to know more about communism. How and what to do when people join ICWP. How communist organizing will lead to a communist revolution. How can we smash borders? What will a communist society look like without the money, banks, bosses, their legal system, courts, jail? How communism will eliminate racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
We decided to form several study groups with many new readers to answer these questions, especially among those who we worked with every day during this mass struggle. We urgently need to translate our pamphlets Mobilize the Masses for Communism and Communist Philosophy into Punjabi. Our comrades are using the Red Flag to recruit new members to our study groups. We have created a short guide about communism for new people. We hope to have several May Day celebrations. It would be a big achievement if we can have the participation of our comrades from other parts of India.
We believe that as the capitalist system is in deep crisis, the only solution is a communist revolution. This what the bosses fear the most. We have confidence that we can win. Let us create, distribute, and use the Red Flag massively.
Front page of this issue
