Click here to read in Hindi / हिंदी में बयान पढ़ने के लिए यहां क्लिक करें
Defeat Fascist and Regressive Forces, Defeat BJP and Allies!
Unite, Organize and Fight for People’s Real Alternative!
Unite for People’s Democracy and Socialism!
Introduction
1. Comrades, just a few days are only left now for the commencement of Bihar Assembly elections. As expected, the ground situation is posing very serious questions, as well as challenges in front of the working class, peasantry, the toiling masses and all other exploited/oppressed classes. What must be the concrete call to the people by the revolutionary left forces? Whom should the Revolutionary Left support, keeping in view the onward march of fascism in the country? The question before us is also this; to what extent, as a form of struggle, the bourgeois elections are effective in defeating the fascists, and which alliance in the field is committed to fight them. Such very serious and concrete questions are posed before all those who are concerned with the continuous rise of fascist onslaught in the whole country.
2. It is true that in Bihar, the fascist forces are still not so strong as to rule the roost alone. The NDA is also not well cemented. LJP has deliberately opted to remain outside Bihar NDA and target the Nitish Kumar leadership. Due to this and many other reasons, the relation between JDU and BJP is strained. Tussle for greater share of power has always been there. However, BJP is playing a very sinister game, though not unbecoming of fascists, by using tactics of deliberately pitting Chirag Paswan’s LJP from behind the curtain and trying to usurp power through other means, that smacks of a dangerous post-election plot. Hence, so far, the question of what comes out of Bihar election this time has assumed far more importance. Therefore, we need to discuss a comprehensive picture of our tasks being mirrored through Bihar election. Bihar is also poised to become the next hunting ground of the fascists as can be seen with respect to the overall political situation existing and developing in the whole of India.
Political Scenario
3. In this election, two main blocks have surfaced, namely the RJD-led grand alliance consisting of Congress, CPI, CPI-M and CPI-ML (Liberation), and few other groups on the one hand, and the Nitish Kumar-led BJP-JDU, the NDA alliance consisting of some small parties like Manjhi’s HAM and Mukesh Sahani’s VIP also, on the other hand. LJP under the new and young high command of Chirag Paswan, the son of the late Ramvilas Paswan, refuse to accept the leadership of Nitish Kumar in Bihar NDA and has opted to remain out, as said above. It is, though, well known that there is a clandestine election alliance of BJP with Chirag Paswan’s LJP which has declared to fight from wherever JDU fields its own candidates. Not only that LJP is giving tickets to those who are known Sanghis and erstwhile BJP functionaries. So, as of now, Chirag Paswan’s LJP is just an extension of BJP in Bihar. His most widely trumpeted, propagated and catchy slogan in this election is: ”Modi tumhse bair nahin, Nitish teri khair nahin”. This is an indication that he has been entrusted with some special role in this election i.e. the role of wrecking Nitish’s boat from outside with the help of (BJP’s) inside support.
4. The Bihar Deputy Chief Minister’s statement that ‘Come what may be the election result, it is only they who will form the government’ coming just in the wake of all these inner assaults and counter-assaults going on daily is neither just a slip of tongue nor a mere coincidence. Seeing the pattern of Modi Government using all dirty methods, including that of using the state machinery as well as money power, to help install BJP’s own Governments in the states, by hook or by crook, this statement indicates that far more sinister make sinister things to happen. It is well aimed to make gullible the administration that still takes orders from Nitish Kumar. This is also aimed to keep the morale of its own forces aroused to meet post-election ‘unseen’ challenges. In this lies an indirect threat to all those forces, whether in the administration or outside it, to support BJP’s efforts to come to power particularly when a situation of acute crunch crops up in which something untoward for BJP is likely to happen i.e. a situation where BJP is most likely to lose power. We know, as the very nature of fascists in general suggest, they will not easily digest such a situation. Clearly, a very grave situation may emerge in the event of BJP’s election fortune in Bihar is landing in trouble this time.
5. So, as far as the RJD-led grand alliance with the ‘left front parties’ is concerned, it is purportedly supposed to take on the fascists in the election, or in the post-election situation. But, the way in which the ‘left’ has completely submitted the reigns to RJD and has abandoned or deserted the leadership position and independent assertion of the ‘left’ politics shows nothing but a complete defeat of the purpose of taking on the fascists. What they have shown is sheer opportunism. Apart from this, there are other reasons that compel us to conclude that such a bourgeois party led alliance sans any solid and grand independent left block on its back will prove fruitless even if it wins a majority. For example, even if this alliance secures a comfortable win in terms of number of seats over NDA, there is no doubt that it will not be able to lead anti-fascist struggle to any meaningful conclusion.
6. So, the Revolutionary Left Coordination (RLC) clearly opines that the ongoing fascist loot and embezzlement of democracy won’t stop by merely swapping governments. Even the attacks on the mass movements and democratic voices in Bihar are not likely to stop. As a result, despair will engulf the masses after a short while. In the absence of any real people’s alternative, the ground for re-emergence of fascist powers will stay intact. The ruling classes and their lackeys (bourgeois parties of any hue and color) can in no way lead the masses to conclusively fight against fascism. The very high command-based structure of bourgeois parties built on fraudulent promises and their close proximity to the core interests of the present day crisis-ridden neo-liberal corporate capitalist class facing the threat of logjam of their profit cycle, promises no such hopes at all. Thus, opportunism is rampant and openly visible in both the camps.
7. On the other hand, the ‘left forces’ as a whole also promises no hope, not even a dimmed hope It does not at all appear that the ‘left forces’ are struggling to fill the empty space for revolutionary struggle. The parliamentary left, the CPI, CPI(M) and CPI(ML) Liberation, has gone with the RJD led ruling class parties’ alliance. Then, communist revolutionary forces should have taken up the task of putting forward a revolutionary alternative. But we do not see any eagerness on the part of many in this regard. That they take up numerous united struggles on immediate mass issues is a fact. But this unity shatters as soon as the question of intervening politically such as in the present elections comes up, even when we are facing the danger of fascism, when it is more important than ever to raise a united revolutionary voice, to put forward an immediate as well as long term revolutionary program before the masses without which the fight against fascism will not go further ahead. Without a constant propagation of the politics of revolutionary alternative along with fight for immediate issues of the masses, people at large can’t be mobilized against fascism. Unless people are mobilized to fight for real freedom from the yoke of exploitation and oppression, there can be no serious battle against fascism. The movement will have to pay a heavy price for such a failure. Organizational weakness is an issue for sure, but the primary reason here is a sense of fatigue, a sheer lack of will which has affected many, including creeping influence of defeatist thinking, as a result of increasing influence of right deviation, which is the main danger in the communist movement.
8. When this is the time for an all-out struggle for arousing the revolutionary potential of the masses, how serious is the disunity among the so-called CR forces can be seen when without considering the critical importance of defeating the BJP led forces to weaken the fascist onslaught, some of them are fielding candidates for self-satisfaction in aimless manner and there are seats where two or three candidates of them fighting each other!. Where will this lead us to at a time when fascism is spreading its domination fiercely?
9. We have seen the ruin of common people of Bihar under the coalition government of JDU and BJP with Nitish Kumar on the top. It is called the ‘government of double engine’. In reality though, it is a ‘doubly anti-people’ government. Murder, rape, police brutalities and corruption are rampant. Unemployment, poverty and starvation related deaths are ever increasing. As per the government’s data itself, 1450 rapes were reported in 2019, with one rape happening every six hours. The Nitish government has proved itself as an utter failure in tackling the issues of education, health, women safety, corruption control and safety from corona pandemic. Even something as basic as a ration card is not available to everyone. The food grain supplied are mostly rotten and uneatable. The government data showed that unemployment in Bihar rose by 3 to 10.2 percent during the year that ended in June 2019. Also, there is no limit to the perils faced by the corona infected patients and their families. Even the middle class is terrified after witnessing the dilapidated condition of government hospitals and the sheer uncontrolled loot in private hospitals that is going on in the name of healthcare. As of August 2020, there were only four covid-19 dedicated hospitals in the entire state. The IMA (Bihar Chapter) shared data on the deaths of doctors due to Covid-19, which indicate that Bihar has the highest death percentage among all the states. Floods cause havoc in the north Bihar region almost every year and no real measures are taken by the State Government. This year, during a raging pandemic, the Bihar floods affected 7.6 lakh people (till July) and the government’s effort to safeguard their lives and livelihoods was negligible.
10. It is to be specially noted that all the BJP-ruled states are worse off. Let us take the example of Uttar Pradesh. Apart from rape, murder, police brutalities and deteriorating conditions of healthcare, the situation in Uttar Pradesh is such that the students qualifying competitive exams for government jobs will also have to work for 5 years under a kind of contract system with meagre wages or salary where they’ll be subjected to an appraisal every 6 months and only after clearing all this will they be granted the status of permanent government employee. And to add to that, in order to curb the growing restlessness and shimmering revolt among the masses, the government is putting together a special police force called UPSSF (Uttar Pradesh Special Security Force) that will have the power to search and arrest even without a court’s warrant and also without any fear of legal reprimands as courts are also debarred from taking cognizance of any complaints filed in this regard unless the government gives its nod. There are also reports of the oncoming of an ordinance against ‘Love Jihad’.
What Is at the Root of People’s Sufferings
11. Voting is an essential weapon in a bourgeois democracy in order to give a befitting reply to the anti-people and oppressive governments. And the people of Bihar should certainly use this right, even when we have to put up a fight for this, as attempts of rigging will be made on a large scale by the fascist alliance and other adversaries using muscle, money and state machinery
12. It is in this situation, analyzing the present grave situation, based on a Common Program which calls for rejecting the neo-liberal/corporate economic policies which is a facing a collapse in the Covid19 pandemic, and an all out attack on the theoretical foundations of the RSS neo-fascism, the RLC was launched on 15th August in a webinar by the four organizations. RLC has called upon the people of Bihar that we must use this weapon, the elections, this time with a clear and a revolutionary understanding/perspective in the upcoming Bihar elections. For example, while we must utilize our right to vote against the fascist block, we must also address this question: If till now there has been no material (positive) change in the lives of the people by just choosing or removing a particular bourgeois government, how will it be any different this time? Can the fascists be defeated forever, or will it in any way do good just by voting them out? Will not the next government be a friend and servant of the capitalists? How can fascism be uprooted without overthrowing the present rule of the big and corporate capitalists, landlords and Kulaks who are all in collusion with imperialism and multinationals to keep intact the system of loot, fraud and plunder? Without putting before such questions before the people, they will neither understand the importance of the voting out the ultra-right, nor understand its historical limitations.
13. Based on the experience of the past 70 years and even before it, it is clear that the masses, especially the working class, peasantry and toiling masses cannot free themselves either from poverty or from their exploitation without completely doing away with and uprooting the capitalist system as a whole including the capitalist mode of production. With the onset of unrelenting economic capitalist crisis, there is now no other option or relief available to them. Be it Bihar Election or General Election, the masses have had the taste of every party’s rule. Today, the parties who sit in the opposition were in power yesterday and today’s rulers were in the opposition then. There wasn’t much difference in their regimes. Today, Congress is criticizing the Modi government but the economic policies of both Congress and BJP are pro-corporate. The regional bourgeois parties exhibit the same or even worse tendencies, and are no less, rather the most opportunist and corrupt. Today, the extremely anti-people deeds being done and executed by BJP are an extension of the anti-people policies of Congress itself. Even today, they share the same line and position so far as the economic policies of liberalization, privatization and globalization are concerned. All these parties who are squabbling and criticizing each other, are all faithful servants of the corporate capitalist class. If this is not the case, then how come only the capitalists are having increasing growth and prosperity? The parties which thrive on the vote bank of Dalits and backward classes and castes are also not an exception. So, no matter who wins or loses, nothing much is going to change for the masses. Even while keeping in mind the prime question of defeating the fascists and overthrowing them, we can say that the change of guards will only bring cosmetic changes and quite temporary relief from fascist attacks.
14. In present Indian society, prosperity for all is an illusion. Remember when in 2014 and again in 2019 Narendra Modi came with what appealing promises! It seemed as if this time he’ll take away all the grief and sorrows of the poor. But what actually happened or what is happening right now is before us all. Where the wealth of capitalists like Adani, Ambani and many others has multiplied a number of times, the conditions of the masses have further deteriorated. Not only jobs, but their rights are also being snatched away today. Tomorrow if their right to vote is also snatched from them, it won’t be a big shocker.
15. We know that in a class divided society, the fruits of labor are grabbed and enjoyed by the capitalists and other exploiting classes, owing to its special position in the society. They are the rulers who own the means of production and run their own production system with the help of the State Power they have built up and got entrenched throughout the society and into all its pores. The system, although, allows toiling people to choose and form governments by casting their votes and thus electing their representatives in the successive governments, in reality, it gives them neither a position of authority, nor any solution to their problems and sufferings as the capitalist and other exploiting classes take away all the wealth created. Thus people don’t have any respite, though it is they who choose a government. This system works so efficiently that no basic change can be brought by just changing or replacing a government as the system works mainly on the basis of omnipotence of capital which guarantees their rule by fetching support from all the pillars of the system even through bribes and other means. Corporate capitalists are the real masters of the society and this is the root of all the rotten things such as slavery, unemployment, hunger, poverty etc. and other related problems that the modern society today has to face everywhere in the world.
16. While the laboring masses are being exploited in more and more regressive manner as the time passes and the rule of the capitalist class consolidates itself, capital grows, concentrates and centralizes with more and more accumulation of social wealth in their hands, the number of the proletariat (those who live by selling their labor power alone) is also swelling very fast now-a-days. This is because with the rise and accentuation in fascist loot, the intermediary classes are also being ruined very fast.
17. We know that causes and factors leading to economic crisis that generally exhibit in tendency of over-production and fall in demands are inbuilt in the capitalist mode of production. When this crisis deepens, the cycle of profit tends to stop and accumulation of capital, the real motive force of capitalist production, is threatened. To deal with this, the capitalist class further intensifies the rate of exploitation and even destroys the capital and productive forces. This leads to ruin of the proletariat as well as those who are petty owners of capital. And if the crisis becomes structural and permanent, like the present crisis, then the big corporate capitalist class increases its loot in an exceptionally intensified manner. The destruction of productive forces rises too high and becomes too rampant.
18. Today, the anti-people and anti-worker policies imposed by the Modi government from the center as well as in various states are the result of this same economic crisis. With the help of the Modi government, just a few big corporates and capitalists are looting all the resources belonging to the people and created by man’s labour and nature, and sucking even the last drop of blood of the toiling masses. They are taking over all the resources and bringing them under their monopoly rule. Mines, farms, water, forests, mountains, minerals, airports, telephone services, defense sector, railways, banks, insurance, steel industries, petrol and diesel companies, eatables, education and research, school, college, universities, hospitals and healthcare sector, i.e., all the valuable public, private or natural resources available to mankind are being taken over by them and the government is aiding by curbing all the voices of dissent against this unprecedented loot and plunder.
19. We find that in the last six years Modi quite ‘magically’ did everything which was necessary for continuing the super profits of the corporate capitalist class. Without even removing the tag of ‘democracy’, the Constitution and ‘independent’ judiciary, the Modi government successfully took over all the institutions of the capitalist democratic state established after ‘independence’ and strengthened the foundation of Hindu Rashtra, the Indian variant of neo-fascism. The attack on democratic rights of people is ever increasing. In this way, the nexus of the State, corporates and the shrewd fascist gangs were successful in slowly but steadily digging the grave of Indian democracy. However, the shroud covering it to give the due appearance of democracy was left as it is. The difference between the existence and non-existence of the parliament and other such institutions has been eradicated by Modi. Parliament or no parliament, it makes not much difference. The way in which the farmers’ bill was forcefully passed in the parliament, the labour codes were passed without any Opposition’s presence, the National Education Policy 2020 was by the Cabinet bypassing the Parliament itself, are the latest and the most concrete examples and proof of this. Judiciary was also made to submit to the fascist powers as is quite evident after the recent verdict of the CBI’s Special Court in the Babri Masjid Demolition Case where all the 32 accused belonging to RSS-BJP-VHP were acquitted.
Rise In Arms To Fight For Socialist Future
20. Today, the election is in Bihar, but the truth is that the situation of the whole country is in danger, in peril and Bihar cannot alone escape the fate befallen on the country. If the country won’t survive as a democracy, then how will Bihar? Similarly, the people of Bihar have a solemn duty to give a befitting reply to the fascist forces who are hell bent to further intensify their rule also in Bihar so as to make it a most rabid hunting ground of the corporate loot.
21. On the other hand, the people will have to think about the ways to come out of the swamp of the current exploitative system because until then there would no letup in the assault of the corporate loot. RLC firmly believes there is no way out of this mess other than the establishment of a People’s State uniting with all the oppressed and exploited sections of the masses under the leadership of the working class. This is the only real option available not only to the toiling masses, but also to other intermediary classes whose existence will get extinguished if fascists regime is not overthrown which however can’t be done away with forever until its roots along with the soil i.e. in the capitalist system are not uprooted. Here merges our politics related with exercising our voting right to defeat the fascist coalition with the historical task of overthrowing the capitalist led old system and replacing it with an entirely new i.e. proletarian led society. Old has completely rotten and become fruitless so far as the forward movement and advancement of society is concerned. The old society and system ruled by capitalists has become permanently crisis ridden which breeds within itself and carries the germs of fascism. And until it is changed and completely overhauled destroying all the muck of ages, there can be no permanent solution to the acute problems faced by the masses today.
22. The change of government and defeat of fascists in elections is however not completely useless. It will bring a dampening effect on their morale, while it will help in creating a positive environment to lift up the democratic spirit and the morale of the struggling masses whose victory will not be attained in one single stroke. After this, the masses will more victoriously travel on the path ahead that comprises the further expansion and deepening of the mass movement and maintaining its continuity till an oceanic currents of Pan-India spontaneous mass movement, with revolutionaries on its crest, crushes, drowns and wrecks the whole capitalist system beyond any possibility of recovery. It is important to take a resolution for this, as the situations are becoming more and more ripe for this with the economic crisis bound to further deepen and engulf the whole capitalist system in immediate future. Signs of this are more brightening than ever before.
23. Therefore, RLC calls upon all the progressive democratic forces to come together to defeat the fascists in Bihar election and at the same time also declare that until the creation of a socialist state under the leadership of the working class our fight must continue. Only a proletarian democracy i.e. a socialist state can establish true democracy as its aim is to free the mankind from the shackles of capital and from all its ill effects and where all the people would be prosperous by ending the exploitation and oppression once and for ever.
24. At the moment, when fascism is engulfing democracy and democratic rights, our fight against fascism, for democratic rights and for a truly democratic state are united together intrinsically and intricately. Every step of small victory will add to our morale. Let us overcome all our differences to unite against fascism, the biggest enemy! Defeat RSS neo-fascism!
25. Let us unite all oppressed and exploited sections and launch a mass movement by combining the immediate demands of the masses with their long-term goal after the election is over.
With Revolutionary greetings!
CPI (ML) Red Star
CPI (ML) PRC
UCCRI (ML) Kishan
All India Workers Council
21st October 2020
PRC, CPI (ML) 