মাঝে মাঝে মন নিয়ন্ত্রনহীন হতে চায়; কিন্তু...............

Rise up against increasing brute attack of capitalists-imperialists on toiling people The historic May Day is once again at the doors! It is this date, the first of the month of May, that the working class of the world observes in commemoration of the martyrs in the police firing at the Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois in United States of America. It is the day, that the workers observe as the International Workers’ Day, expressing solidarity of the struggling workers all over the world. It is the day, when workers, armed and steeled with the invincible weapon of Marxism- Leninism, refresh their pledge to fight for ending exploitation of man by man. The historic May Day itself has a history; it is never a sudden outburst of workers’ wrath against the owners. It originated in the 19th century United States of America. Really the Day owes its origin to the historic struggle waged by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the two great Proletarian leaders, who wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848 laying down there, the ideological foundation for and guide to action towards accomplishing the glorious goal of Communism. At the same time, under the banner of the International Working Men’s Association they organized working class movement in different countries to force the capitalists- owners reduce the daily working hours from 12 or 16 to 8 hours a day. In 1886, Marx was no more there, but the message and guideline, he and Engels had held before the workers were resounding throughout the world. The capitalist system of the USA was consolidating itself, at the same time thrusting the brunt of the crisis, it had been generating, upon the people. It was thus bringing down severer exploitation and oppression of common toiling people, the working class, with every passing day. The relentless oppression was also giving birth to workers’ agitations and movements, which taking inspiration from the instances set by Marx and Engels, gradually took a more and more organized shape. The year 1886 saw nearly 1,600 strikes, involving about 600,000 workers. Among all other demands raised by the workers, including the economic ones for higher wages etc., the most prominent was for a decent working condition, particularly an eight-hour day, the demand that Marx and Engels had fought for. This rise of organized workers’ movement with just and legitimate demands, was, however, an ominous sign to the owners and the rulers, the capitalists. It was on this background in 1886 that there was a three-day general strike being observed by a very wide spectrum of working people, the industrial workers, artisans, merchants and immigrants. In course of that strike the workers of some McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago had been on a strike too. There, on May 3 in the name of maintaining order, the police opened fire upon the squatting workers injuring several strikers and killing at least four of them. A protest meeting was called at the Haymarket Square for the evening of May 4. The meeting was peaceful and drawing towards close. Yet towards the end, again in the name of dispersing the rally, the police moved in, accompanied by agent provocateurs, to hurl bomb. It injured and killed a few policemen; but, more important, it made the way clear for the police to unleash a riotous attack on the workers. They fired indiscriminately, arrested workers and their union leaders in numbers. A sensational show of trial ensued in which eight leaders were openly tried for their political beliefs, and not necessarily for any involvement in the bombing. Four of them were hanged in public. The attitude of the capitalist class and their henchmen, the police, was to put up an exemplary punitive measure to nip the rising workers’ movement in the bud. But the outcome was just the reverse. On the day of the incident, the victims, the workers had held high their blood-soaked dresses as flags undaunted; the government and the owners had to concede to their demand of eight- hour day; their comrades around the world burst out in indignation and determination. In the following years, the “Haymarket martyrs” were remembered with May Day observance through workers’ meetings and demonstrations. In three years time, in 1889 the Second International, under the leadership of Engels, declared to observe the May Day as the “Workers’ Day” to register fraternity and solidarity of the workers over the world in their struggle to defend their trade union and democratic rights. Engels also declared that on this Day the workers must take pledge further “to win political power in order to expropriate capital and convert the means of production into public property.”. It was in the 1920s, that the then Soviet Russia inaugurated the May Day observance through parades. It also inspired the workers of other countries to observe the May Day with firm resolve. At the same time, based on the invaluable teachings of Marx and Engels, Lenin, the great proletarian leader and architect of the November Revolution, had waged before and after the November Revolution, an incessant ideological- political struggle. In course of that struggle, he combated all kinds of deviations and aberrations in the working class movement. He strongly deplored economism in workers’ movement and warned that the trade unions of workers must rid themselves of economism-reformism. It was Lenin who emphatically established that trade unions are to be developed and strengthened as schools of communism. He guided the working class to realize increasingly that the observance of the May Day should not end with dwelling upon workers’ plight under capitalism and only with fighting for their economic demands. Lenin had further added: “It is a sheer mockery of the working and exploited people to speak of pure democracy, of democracy in general, of equality, freedom and universal rights when the workers and all working people are ill-fed, ill-clad, ruined and worn out…as a result of capitalist wage-slavery.. while the capitalists and profiteers remain in possession of the “property” usurped by them and the “ ready made” apparatus of state power. …Never share the “superstitious belief” in the “state” and never forget that that state even in the most democratic republic is simply a machine for the suppression of one class by another.” Hence it required workers to recognize that ‘fight for realizing some economic demands and winning and extending some democratic rights without a clearly defined and conscious political objective means only to try to secure some benefits within the very exploitative capitalist social system, keeping it intact’, as Comrade Shibdas Ghosh, the worthy successor of the great proletarian leaders and one of the eminent Marxist thinkers of the present days later submitted in elaboration of Leninist teaching. Leninist teachings provided workers with the ideological weapon to spearhead their attack towards developing sustained organized struggle to smash the exploitative capitalist system, and establish the new social-political order of socialism to lead to the path of ending with exploitation of man by man. The phenomenal success of the November Revolution and the socialist state of USSR developed thereupon, released a strong surge of communist movement throughout the world. It also invigorated, in its process, workers’ trade union and democratic movements. Equipped with the ideological weapon of Marxism- Leninism and organized firmly on its strength, fighting out and ridding themselves of deviations like reformism, economism, massive trade union movements forged ahead in different countries of the globe. The owners, the capitalists were compelled to concede to just and legitimate demands of workers, to add further momentum to the zeal and determination of the workers. At the same time, in many countries such strong trade union movements rose higher and stronger to develop into sustained organized revolutionary struggle to smash the exploitative capitalist system of their country and establish the new social-political order of socialism. As, such trade union movements leading into revolutionary movements grew stronger, the slogan of the May Day “Workers of the world, unite” grew into the embodiment of proletarian internationalism. As mentioned, the growing surge of trade union movements accompanied by strong international proletarian movement compelled capitalists to concede to workers’ legitimate demands. Not only that. It was in such a background of revamped militant trade union movements, the workers earned more significant victories. Though ILO, a tripartite body including representatives of the state or its government, the owners, i.e., the capitalists and the workers, was formed in 1919, it was only in Philadelphia Conference in 1944 that the ILO pronounced : Workers shall not be considered as commodity in trade, industry and business. It was the year when the capitalist- imperialist system was tottering from crisis and shock of the second world war and socialism was emerging victorious. Cornered and mortally afraid of losing power to revolution and socialism, the capitalist class posed benevolent and required to offer significant concessions to the workers. The ILO pronouncement recognized workers’ right to organize in unions of their choice, right to collective bargaining with the employers in cases of disputes. However, the ILO never awarded or suggested, nor held any convention for, the ‘right to work’. What it offered was only the ‘right at work’, that meant the worker has the rights only when he or she is employed. They circumvented the issue extending a provision, and guaranteed employment only to the extent, that if the worker can not find a work or loses it, he or she will be provided with unemployment allowance. Significantly, ‘right to work’ was made a basic and fundamental right in socialism and every able-bodied man and woman was given employment in the USSR by 1932. With continued pressure of mounting militant workers’ movements the owners- capitalists were further forced to gradually accept more benefits and rights of workers. These included, among others, better service and living conditions, permanency of jobs, pay scale, different allowances, medical insurance, right to education of workers’ children and allowance for that, old age pension etc. Not only did these fortified workers’ rights and life. One victory after another, helped the working people, already equipped with the invincible weapon of Marxism- Leninism, to become class-conscious fighters of the anti-capitalist revolutionary struggle in different countries and advance towards the struggle for smashing the existing capitalist state machinery and seizure of state power there. However, this victorious onward march of international proletarian movement and with that workers’ militant trade union movements faced obstacle and were halted with the cropping up of modern revisionism first in the erstwhile Soviet Union after the demise of the great Proletarian leader Comrade Stalin and then finally throughout the world to swamp the international proletarian movement. How pathetically it affected the movements! The arduous struggle of Marx, Engels and Lenin were betrayed. Proletarian movement as well as trade union movements were permeated with and finally devastated by economism, reformism, constitutionalism, unwarranted and unjust compromises, only to weaken these movements, as also the socialist countries from within. The imperialists headed by the US imperialists took full advantage of the situation and played instrumental in bringing about counter-revolution in one socialist country after another. This debacle of the socialist camp and total disarray in the world proletarian movement in the eighties of the last century, caused further damage to the workers’ trade union movements. It simply invigorated the world capitalist- imperialist order afresh to launch a new phase of all-out and barbarous attack. With no socialist camp to offer resistance and stand by the weaker capitalist countries of the world, the capitalists-imperialists headed by the US imperialism dished out the new imperialist panacea of globalization, new slogans of privatization and liberalization. It soon came out that globalization was nothing but the measure to enforce and consolidate unhindered and ruthless imperialist exploitation of the world market as a whole; privatization- liberalization meant opening up the whole economy of different countries, particularly the smaller and weaker ones to the profit-hungry monopolists, multinational corporates. Thereby, the capitalists-imperialists designed to thrust the whole brunt of their economic crisis on to the common toiling people of the world. The result of this new onslaught of globalization- privatization- liberalization was devastating. The attack was all-out. The common toiling people already reeling under capitalist- imperialist exploitation were subjected to increasingly fiercer onslaught. Unemployment, that had already characterized all the capitalist countries, reached astronomical figures in one and all countries, advanced or developing, powerful imperialists or weak capitalist ones, of every continent on the earth. Even by International Labour Office annual report global unemployment is estimated to rise tens of millions (in crores) annually. It affects every level and section of life, work and populace, men or women, black or white, old or young, long-term or short term employed, large scale or small scale industries or others. With it grows poverty. The same ILO report, mentioned above, also said that some 20 crore workers, mostly in developing economies, could be pushed into extreme poverty, as they eke out a living in informal , underpaid and unstable work specially in Africa and South Asia. This appeared still more devastating and demonic in face of the monopolists and MNCs making havoc in earning heaps of profit. Millionaires became billionaires; their pet media periodically made public the who’s who lists of the world’s richest people and the accounts of wealth amassed by them. As the blood-sucking tentacles of intense capitalist- imperialist exploitation pressed hard on common toiling people, capitalist- imperialist rulers, the governments of different capitalist countries or the international institutions, like the World Bank, IMF created by the capitalists- imperialists to look after and defend the interests of the class, bared their own fangs. To stifle any voice of protest, steps and measures were taken one after another, laws enacted, existing acts amended or simply thrown to the bin, to curtail and even snatch back the hard-earned democratic and trade union rights of the common toiling people. To the weaker and poorer countries that needed support the World Bank or IMF thrust strict and severe conditions forcing them to open up their economies to the imperialists and more particularly, to do away with all existing Labour Laws that stood in defense of the workers, so much so that the workers of those countries stand unarmed and cannot put up any resistance to unbridled exploitation of the capitalists-imperialists and their MNCs. Though varying in details, the scenario was the same in all capitalist countries. The eight-hour day, which even sometimes could be lowered to six-hour, was simply shoved beneath the carpet; the owners boastfully announced to have enforced 24 hour day and 7 day week working schedule. On the plea of technological advancement, labour-intensive industries were replaced by capital-intensive units, making a huge work force surplus. Lay-off, closure became the order of the industrial climate. In addition, the treacherous VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme) was introduced that became a means to retrench under sugar coats. Workers and employees were persuaded, in effect often compelled to accept VRS. Over and above these, the employers demanded right to ‘hire and fire’, to recruit and retrench any moment at will and convenience. Right to strike, right to chose union were virtually curtailed and the workers were forced to join the union often run by the social democrats or such other forces, which would defend the employers’ interests. All comprehensive industrial dispute acts were amended or simply shelved, snatching away whatever little legal protection of the job security, workers have been enjoying through their hard, long drawn struggles. Plus, and most dangerously came ‘job on contract’. Permanent jobs were increasingly withdrawn; such posts were frozen and replaced with recruitment on contract. It pervaded all sections of work, industries or service sectors, even education and health. It not only trampled the minimum job security by virtually enforcing the owners’, the capitalists’ right to ‘fire’, who could terminate the contract on any pretext at any moment suitable for them. It forced the workers and employees to accept wage-freeze and were made to work at any wage, a pittance for livelihood simply to save their jobs. In addition, there was introduced SEZ, with or without direct intervention of the state, which becomes a state within state, where the laws including the labour laws, workers’ trade union and democratic rights do not hold good; rather they may be tied in life-long contracts without any say or right. Instead the employers enjoy unthinkable tax reliefs, subsidized infrastructural facilities, such as power etc., freedom from pollution control rules of the land etc. A SEZ a haven for the capitalists, the MNCs of the land and foreign, thus becomes a deathbed for workers. Through a well-lubricated campaign machinery, values were attacked upon and eroded. Flouting even the tenets bourgeois welfare states had reached, capitalists boasted shamelessly, as it is the case with the European Union, that freedom of entrepreneurs, i.e., capitalists are more important than labour and trade union rights. The collective spirit was the first victim of the attack. Workers were driven to look after and be bothered about their own self. They were made to believe, even their families were threatened and persuaded to accept, that it was useless to fight and so they should not go for it. Rather, it came within the purview of their duties to ensure that the owner could keep his enterprise running and make profit with a view to providing sustenance to the workers. Social services and securities awarded to workers were withdrawn, welfare measures were stopped and snatched away. Workers were persuaded to think that it was the duty of theirs, and no concern of the state or the employers, to look after medical, educational, dwelling and other necessities of their own and families. All these services were partially or even totally commercialized, harping on the idea that ‘services are only to be bought’ Not only were the rights of workers attacked and snatched away; even the right to live seemed to be fast receding for the abject poverty stricken, unemployed or insecurely employed workers. More than a crore children under 5 years of age die every year in the world, mostly in poorer countries; life expectancy figures at 38 years in those countries, in contrast to the figure of 71 years in developed countries. Over and above this, trade union leaders and activists were even brutally murdered. As the General Secretary of the World Federation of Trade Unions(WFTU) submitted in his speech at the 96th ILC, Geneva in June 2007, 2400 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia in a decade time, more than 850 such murders were recorded in recent years from the Philippines, the US army led occupation forces butchered thousands of innocent workers in Iraq. In summary, the condition became increasingly horrific for the working people. Side by side with this dismal situation, where capitalists- imperialists, their MNCs, the owners are mounting fierce onslaughts on the working people, we now find massive movements of workers and employees being organized in different countries gradually spreading out all over the world, in all continents. In recent years there have been more than 1700 major strikes in Africa only of which the remarkable ones included the countrywide strike of government employees in Benin against foreign investment, a 22-day strike of the rail workers in Nigeria, strikes by the South African workers. The multinational mine-owners in connivance with the government, attempted to break the strike of Zimbabwean mine- workers, which move in its turn gave birth to a solidarity strike over the entire continent. National Union of Teachers (NTU) of UK lead a strike of 26 lakh teachers which forced the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to concede to their demands. Transport workers of Australia, unorganized workers of USA did also launch movement, the latter forcing the administration to promise to accept their demand of minimum wage. Automobile workers, be it of Hyundai of South Korea, Toyota of Japan, General Motors, Ford or Chrysler of USA, each launched remarkable movements against retrenchment and lay-off. In South Korea, workers and students set up barricades and fought pitched battle with the police, causing deep annoyance of the capitalists. Strikes of civic workers of Turkey, prolonged strike of government employees of France, strike of government and non-government employees against the conspiracy of reforming pension schemes in Greece, Spain, Austria, strike of defence workers of Italy, where the army deployed by the government fired upon the striking workers to kill 25 of them, inviting a general strike over the country, are some of the important instances of movement in Europe and Asia. In addition, hundreds of thousands of workers and employees of different countries are assembling themselves in massive demonstrations and protest rallies, notably in different advanced imperialist countries of America and Europe. The militancy and massiveness of such rallies, raising slogans against imperialist war and globalization, have even thwarted and stalled different summit meetings of capitalist-imperialist countries or the meets of the World Bank, IMF and such other bodies. In fact, apart from the numbers and massiveness of these movements, what becomes more important is a gradually increasing change in the character of the content and goal of these movements. In addition to being directed against individual owners or government of the country, some of these movements are raising slogans against the system itself. Jobless, homeless, pauperized workers and employees of even USA are realizing, and expressing it, that it is capitalism of their country which is breeding the crisis, including the present acute recession. More recently, in April this year, the massive demonstration of workers and employees from different countries staged before the G 20 summit in London, with banners and slogans writing ‘ Capitalism is not working any more’, ‘democracy is an illusion’. The demonstration against the IMF held in Washington on 25 April last also said “No capitalism” “ No Bail Out” thus protesting the capitalists’ attempt to save the banks, corporates and monopolists that were instrumental to the present unprecedented recession by bailing them out with public exchequer. In such a situation of fierce imperialist attack on common working people on one side and the growing workers’ movements on the other, the need of the hour is to develop and strengthen such movements with more vigour and conviction. In fact, workers’ movement has to be built up afresh freeing it from all kinds of deviations. And to perform that task, to free workers’ movements from economism, to defeat and uproot all brands of revisionism from them, these must be developed conducive to genuine revolutionary communist movement. The workers must try to find out the answers to the intriguing questions that loom large before them. Why even after the glorious martyrdom of the workers at the Haymarket Square, even after the stupendous success of the communist movement with revolution accomplished in Russia, China and many other countries, the imperialists could launch their fresh deadlier offensive through globalization, military aggression and such others? And, what are the problems that crop out before the workers’ movements today and what should then be the correct path to solve those problems and lead workers out of the present quagmire? The historic May Day urges upon the workers to deeply probe the questions, and leaves them with an occasion and scope for soul searching. The May Day was the symbol of protest, of workers’ determination to resist attacks on them. But what was the driving force, the inspiration, the guidance that helped workers stand so firm on their demands as to defy bullets, as to even not care for their lives? Surely it were the teachings of Marx and Engels and the anti-capitalist revolutionary movement that was gaining ground on these teachings. Thereafter, with the international communist movement taking long and firm strides under the leadership of the great proletarian leaders – Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong and others and establishment of the socialist camp and rise of national liberation struggles in many countries of the world, in which often the communists were at the helm, workers’ movement to defend and extend their trade union and democratic rights also had a strong fillip. As mentioned, teachings of Marxism-Leninism also made the workers conscious that they must rid themselves of economism and must develop as class- conscious politically- ideologically conscious soldiers of revolutionary struggles, who do not fail to recognize the prevailing capitalist- imperialist system as the root cause of their plight. But emergence of the modern revisionism turned the tide. Workers’ movement was shattered with confusion, opportunism and conciliation, even appeasement; revisionist, social democratic forces took over the rein from the revolutionary leadership. All this simply helped capitalists-imperialists to launch their fresh attack. On the May Day, the glorious day of struggle, the workers must realize this truth of setback in their movement and the reasons behind. At the same time, they must recognize, as Comrade Shibdas Ghosh pointed out on the edifice of invincible Leninist understanding, that emergence of revisionism lay in the fall of ideological standard of the communist movement for different reasons in the post-Lenin days. It is this fall in ideological standard that told upon identifying the enemy and recognizing the treacherous role of the revisionism within the movement. Workers could not recognize that, in the past, economism distracted workers from proletarian politics. It thus made way for the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties to create cleavage among the working class separating the rest from the fighting section and thereby create confusion among the people about the nobility of the revolutionary ideology. But, now in the days of totally reactionary moribund capitalism- imperialism, economism obstructs workers even from being conscious of their responsibility as cadres of working class revolution. Rather, it hinders their sense of obligation to the society and dampens the urge for complete dedication and sacrifice. This economism- individualism which crops particularly in socialist society and is designated as socialist individualism by Comrade Ghosh, is a great obstacle in the way of identification of individual and social interest, necessary for workers develop as revolutionary cadres even in capitalist countries. Hence the May Day calls upon workers to again strengthen their militant trade union movements freeing these from economism and other deviations making these conducive to anti-capitalist revolutionary movement in one and all capitalist countries. It means trade union movements should be conducted with such ideological and organizational leadership that workers become class-conscious cadres imbued with the invincible weapon of Marxism- Leninism. Thereby these will develop into struggles to help the process of giving birth to genuine revolutionary communist party in each capitalist country. Workers must recognize that only the genuine revolutionary communist party of each country, will be ideologically equipped against all sorts of distractions and conspiracies and will lead the workers not only in their fight to acquire, defend and extend trade union and democratic rights, but to fight against economism, revisionism and all sorts of deviations to generate an unstoppable Marxist–Leninist revolutionary movement to smash the exploitative capitalist state machineries and establish in their place the new socialist states. Only this will help them get out of the present unbearable situation. Workers of the World Unite! Long Live Revolution! Long Live Marxism- Leninism! লেখাটি প্রলেতারিয়েত এরা VOL. 42 NO. 18 1 MAY 2009 http://www.suci.in/era/era.htm Organ of the SOCIALIST UNITY CENTRE OF INDIA (SUCI) থেকে নেয়া। SOCIALIST UNITY CENTRE OF INDIA (SUCI)