Chennai, India: Auto parts workers on strike.
BENGALURU (India), October 2— “Thousands of garment workers like me walk to the factories for more than two hours,” a comrade said. “The waterlogging and incessant rains have wreaked havoc. We live in slums knee-deep in rotting garbage emitting putrid smells. Ten km from here, India’s elite scientists are monitoring a mission to the Moon to find out if there is water there.”
Another worker was more direct. “We live like this and die in poverty. But as the Delhi comrades said, it is a war on poor people. Only we have the power to fight this capitalist system that has declared war on us. We must find ways to reach out to the masses with our communist solutions. I always leave copies of RF hidden at the garment factory. Today, when I read about G20 in Red Flag, it created a nonstop conversation about how to organize for communism.”
Comrades in Bengaluru, Delhi, and Chennai had a virtual meeting. The solution to our everyday struggle with congested freeways, torrential rains, and unbearable hot weather is organizing to destroy capitalism.
The comrades who were at the G20 meeting reported making over three hundred excellent contacts. But we live far from these areas. To organize ICWP, we must be there day in and day out. To resolve this contradiction, two comrades volunteered to relocate there. That’s not very easy, but a comrade in Chennai has relatives who can help resolve the housing problem.
This shows the value and strength of our communist base building. A comrade from Chennai is helping a comrade 2000 km away in Delhi to find housing to organize for ICWP.
It also shows that the capitalists are creating unlimited opportunities for us. But they also try to limit our organizing with traffic problems, inclement weather, and fascist police who use racism and sexism. All these problems can be solved by more ICWP members committed to organizing for revolution.
A Delhi comrade said self-critically, “We recognized it is a war on the working class, but our response should have been sharper in recruiting. G20 is not just an attack on the working class. It is also the world capitalist/imperialists preparing the workers to take sides against each other for their profit wars. In India, the ruling BJP has created massive hysteria against Muslim workers to win the workers to fight against Pakistan and China.”
He said that when he was organizing in the slums at G20, a worker angrily said that fascist Modi wants to make Delhi like the beautiful city of Paris while half of Delhi lives in slums threatened by bulldozers. The comrade quickly found past issues of the Red Flag and showed the worker that there were rebellions in France just like in Delhi. Everyone has seen the Eiffel Tower, but Paris has millions of workers. Many come from North Africa and face racism. They live in slums like those in Delhi.
This conversation lasted three hours. The worker took Red Flag and introduced us to many of his neighbours. We asked him to join ICWP along with his friends. For the last month, we have been in daily contact with him as he has become more serious about joining our party.
An auto worker in Chennai said that the bosses tell us that Chennai is the Detroit of India (the hub of the enormous auto industry). He said that the auto workers in Detroit are striving for survival as the market share of the US auto industry is shrinking. The US produced fourteen million cars at its 1999 peak while India produced 400,000 and China 600,000. Today, the US sells ten million cars while China produces twenty-seven million and India five million annually.
This dramatic decline of the US auto industry and corresponding rises in China and India come at the expense of the workers. They cause bulldozer drives in India, abandoned clinics, shopping malls, and schools in Detroit, and ghost apartment buildings in China.
Our resolve to build the party is stronger and clearer today. Recruiting the masses is the only way to end the devastation that capitalism’s wage slavery has caused. The Communist revolution will end it all.
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