Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Ignored in India's Election

There are more than 1,600 registered political parties in India. To register a party with the Election Commission, you need to supply a host of details, including name, address, number of members (at least 100), objectives and structure. Then, once the registration fee of 10,000 rupees (£100) has been paid, you have a party.

Who are the World Socialist Party (India) with such a grand sounding name but can hardly fill a meeting-hall? The WSP(I) is part of the even more grandoise titled, the World Socialism Movement, which presently is also more of an aspirational title than a true reflection of its strength and influence. Yet we should not let this lack of numbers prejudice us against the validity of the viewpoints being advocated. After all, for many decades, Marx and Engels could count only a small circle of correspondents for the receptive audience of their ideas.

Nevertheless, words and writings produce nothing and will wither on the vine for want of action. If you do not act, you do nothing. If you do nothing but complain and not proceed to act that is throwing away one's life. If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it.  If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want the harvest without the necessary hard labour of ploughing the soil and sowing the seeds. There are no magical, miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the mundane ones: the search for understanding through education along with organisation and action. It requires the commitment that will persist regardless of the  many failures and limited successes we meet but which inspires the hope of a brighter future. Helen Keller said:
 “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” 

 We should always remember that a rebellious worker is wiser than any learned professor who is hired to write apologies for the chains that shackles him.

According to Bakunin there are but three ways for people to escape their wretched lot. The first is via the wine-shop, the second is the path of the temple; but the third is by way of the social revolution. The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. If those in charge of our society, the professional politicians, corporate bosses and media moguls can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. Little has changed over the years since a late nineteenth-century political schemer told a business audience:
"I believe in a division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass the laws under which you make money and out of your profits you further contribute to our campaigns funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money" 

Except for the rare few, politicians will surrender whatever integrity they possess, claiming to be ‘pragmatic’. But those in the WSP(India) are not politicians, but workers. We have no political office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth.

Engels said:
 “Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul” 

The WSP(India) possesses no charismatic leaders and those impressed by power are rarely critical and seldom of a revolutionary character. Rosa Luxemburg wrote:
"Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee."

The WSP (India) does not want you to follow it because if a political party can lead you to the “promised land",  another equally could as easily lead you out again. The role of the WSP(India) is to persuade - better still,  to help people persuade themselves. If workers wants to take part in the self-emancipation of their class, the basic requirement is that they should cease allowing others to teach them and should set about teaching themselves.

 The WSP(India) in its principles promote the desirability, and above all,  the possibility of a fundamentally different form of society in which men and women, freed from the pressures of scarcity and from the insecurity of everyday existence under capitalism, shape their own lives, collectively deciding who, how, when, and what shall be produced. It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. It is the shift from the “I” method of looking at human affairs to the “we” method of observing and appreciating human relations. The person who retains the old “I” attitude stands in the way of human progress. Provided that we regard nothing as property, not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's. As The Buddha said:
"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared

A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting self-imposed deprivation. In capitalism legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways and the few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all. The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. So long as the demand is not for the ownership and control of our livelihoods we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that a small elite may live in luxury. The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another’s labour by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he or she must get to live.

Former American President Jimmy Carter explained “Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers...”  while the true reality has been explained by the past president of the ABB Industrial Group, Percy Barnevik “I would define globalization as the freedom for my group of companies to invest where it wants when it wants, to produce what it wants, to buy and sell where it wants, and support the fewest restrictions possible coming from labour laws and social conventions." 

 Because the condition of the workers of all countries is the same, because their interests are the same, their enemies the same, they must also fight together, they must oppose the international cartels of the capitalists with a brotherhood of the workers of all lands. Workers have no country to fight for. Our true nationality is mankind. Most workers have never read Marx’s Capital, but they have the marks of capital all over them. You show us a capitalist, and we'll show you a bloodsucking leech. The aim of the world socialist movement is the abolition of social classes- and once achieved, the power of the state, which now serves only to keep the vast majority of producers under the yoke of a small minority of exploiters, will vanish, and the functions of government will  become purely administrative.

World socialism is where there is neither rich nor poor, neither master nor servant, neither brainworkers nor handworkers but a society in which all men and women will be living in equality, and will manage their affairs with the full consciousness that an injury to one would mean injury to all. The real harm is done by those millions who merely want to exist; those men and women who just want to be left in peace and don’t want their lives disturbed; those with no causes; those who do not want to make enemies; those for whom freedom, justice and principles are only words in books.

However, increasing numbers of the working  working class today are acquiring revolutionary knowledge and conclusions and they do not need look to the academics and universities for their enlightenment. The truth of their wage-slave existence is in their daily lives, taking part in the activities of the labour movement, is the most stubborn fact in history workers begin to acquire consciousness of their existence. Holding the political theory that the class struggle is the most stubborn fact in history, the World Socialist Party (India) is a party not of reform but of revolution.

World Socialism Party (India)
Email wspindia@hotmail.com
Website http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org/

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