Communiqué
of the 13th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India
(Reprinted from People’s
Voice, organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar
Party of India, dated June 16-30, 2008)
The 13th plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist
Ghadar Party of India was convened in the first week
of June 2008. Reviewing the situation in the world and in India, the
plenum noted that capitalism is in acute crisis and the liberalisation
and privatisation program is greatly discredited.
This offers an opportunity for the working class and communist movement to make
a breakthrough.
The plenum concluded that the urgent necessity is for communist
parties to boldly put forward and mobilize people around the alternative
program aimed at building a modern socialist society, where working people rule
themselves and production is oriented to provide prosperity and protection for
all.
Analysing the crisis of world capitalism, the impoverishment of workers
and peasants due to soaring prices of food and oil, the plenum concluded that
the root cause lies in the fundamental contradiction of the
capitalist-imperialist system. It lies in the domination of finance
capital over all aspects of society, and its relentless drive to reap maximum
profits, in spite of the objective tendency of the average rate of profit to
fall. The successive creation and bursting of one bubble after another –
including the IT or dot.com bubble, real estate bubble and now the commodities
bubble – shows that capitalism is unable to carry on without creating frequent
crises, and making the working people pay for maintaining the super-profits of
the super rich. The crisis is awakening more and more people around the
world to the dangers posed by capitalism, which has become extremely parasitic
and unbearable.
The fall of the Soviet Union was used by the world bourgeoisie
to push the notion that socialism is dead and that there is no alternative to
capitalism. Today this claim of the bourgeoisie stands discredited. More
and more peoples and nations are fighting the capitalist offensive. The crisis
is therefore an occasion for the progressive forces to advance a program for
ending the capitalist system and opening the door for society to advance to a
higher stage.
The plenum noted that the bourgeois program of liberalisation and privatisation,
pushed by the Congress Party, BJP and some others over the past 17 years and
more, has made the working class and people of India highly vulnerable to the
ups and downs in international markets. Rapid capitalist growth is
based on intensified exploitation of workers. The plenum stressed that
independent of anybody's will, this capitalist growth has and will continue to
aggravate the crisis in agriculture, driving peasants to ruin. This ruination
affects not only the poor but also middle and even rich peasants.
Based on this analysis of the crisis of capitalism and the
offensive of the bourgeoisie, the plenum called for a vigorous countrywide
campaign by the party and mass organizations, to step up the struggle to halt
and reverse the liberalisation and privatisation program, and oppose the shifting of the
burden of the capitalist crisis on to our backs, through soaring prices, longer
working hours, etc.
The plenum reaffirmed the need for the Indian working class to
lead the struggle against the bourgeoisie offensive and for establishing a new
system of economy and political power. In order to enable the class to
fulfill its historic mission, it is essential to expose and defeat those trends
within the communist movement that serve to de-politicise
workers and convert them into a tail of the bourgeoisie, by spreading illusions
about a 'secular front' with the bourgeoisie and a 'human face' of capitalist
reforms.
As part of efforts to politicize the class, the plenum decided
to activate and mobilise mass organisations
of workers to celebrate in July the centenary of the first political strike in
India, when thousands of workers marched on the streets against the
imprisonment of anti-colonial leader Tilak by the
British rulers in 1908.
Noting that the working class is now almost half the population,
growing in size and changing in composition, with rising level of education and
skills, the plenum reviewed the status of the ongoing study of the changing
profile of the Indian working class. It reiterated the importance of this
study to grasp what is going on, and to deepen the party's roots in the class,
and raise its level of consciousness and political unity.
The plenum noted that the Ghadar Jari Hai movement has struck deep
chords with the broad masses of Indian people, who understand that even though
colonialism ended more than 60 years ago, the legacy of British rule still
weighs heavily on us. The plenum reaffirmed the need to bring from our
past what is purest and useful to defeat the bourgeoisie today, such as the
notion that land and water are gifts of Nature, and hence cannot become
anyone's private property.
The plenum reaffirmed the conclusion that the kind of land reform
needed today is not the distribution of small plots to individual
tillers. Nor is the recognition of peasants' rights over their tiny plots
the main issue. What is needed is the restoration of land to its status
as social property, and promotion of its collective use by groups of peasants,
with free or cheap technical support arranged by a worker-peasant state.
Assessing the situation in Nepal, the plenum noted that the
successful election of a new Constituent Assembly is an important step forward
in the movement of the peoples of South Asia for their empowerment. The
plenum hailed the abolition of the monarchy and declaration of Nepal as a
republic. It resolved to expose and oppose all machinations of external
imperialist forces to undermine the movement for people's empowerment in Nepal,
including the machinations of the Indian bourgeoisie.
In India, too, the empowerment of the working class and people
is the need of the hour. This requires active participation of communists
in elections, to expose the flaws of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, and
agitate for radical changes in the political process, towards empowering the
people.
In the context of the coming assembly elections in Delhi and
other states, and looking towards the Lok Sabha elections due in early 2009, the plenum noted that
the ruling bourgeois class will try to find a way to continue with Congress
Party or BJP in power. This is the preferred arrangement of the big
bourgeoisie, in order to push ahead with its drive to become a major
imperialist power by 2020. Both these parties are discredited in the eyes
of our people. In this situation, it is essential for communists to place
before the working people an alternative to Congress and BJP rule – an
alternative to the liberalisation and privatisation program, an alternative to state terrorism
and communal violence.
The plenum resolved that the party will take initiative to
forge a new united front of all political forces opposed to the present course
of India, under communist leadership, to defeat Congress Party and BJP in the
coming elections. The defeat of both these parties, and forging of a
united front against the bourgeoisie, will be stepping stones to defeat the
bourgeoisie and its anti-social offensive. It will open the path to
worker-peasant rule, with direct democracy as the political process and
socialism as the economic system.
The plenum positively assessed the work of the Central Committee
and party organisations at all levels over the past
four months, noting that we are in a good position to launch major initiatives
to build political unity against the bourgeoisie. It discussed and
adopted measures to further strengthen the party organisation
at all levels, as the key to achieve our goal.