The Political Economy of Human Development and the Communist way forward.

 There has been much written already in the Bourgeois press about this topic, all mostly from the anti-Communist angst driven motivations of the authors, some from the angst of seeing another fort unnecessarily fall to the BJP at the worst possible time, and some finally from those in the Liberal camp who “always told you so.” This is all well and good but it has no basis in the ground voter per se. Some allude to the correct analysis but only accidentally in conclusion.

Here an attempt will be made from none of the existing angles and rather, from a fresh one.

The crux of the problem lies more in a simple economic reality of the state and what is ironically, a “problem of plenty”. This analysis is important because it not only describes the reasons for the downfall of the CPIM in Tripura but will also play an important part in the downfall of many other established stalwarts in other states.

What is the CPIM Tripura?

For all useful purposes, the CPIM Tripura is an extension of the CPIM Bengal, this is not because of the obvious Bengali makeup of the twain but rather in their strategic, tactical and mass lines as well as their style of governance. The only differentiation between the two lies in the tactical mistake of the Bengal unit, in Nandigram. Note: It is crucial to understand here that the mistake of CM Buddhadeb flirting with neoliberalism was not the death’s knell for Communist leadership in Bengal. Buddhadeb at best can be chastised for botching up the transition to neoliberalism. Though, the bigger ideological question of whether a neoliberalist shift was right or wrong for a Communist Govt to take ultimately would point to a resounding Wrong but only in the final analysis.

So, we return to Tripura… A state that was largely wracked by insurgency and militancy that is typical of the North East and almost outdoing Kashmir. CM Manik Sarkar had enjoyed a 25 year term in office in which he had done stellar work in improving the Human Development indices. His work in this field as well as removing martial law of AFSPA was something that was truly laudable. For most people who do not live in Tripura, this seemed like enough medals earned to last a lifetime in office. For the person on the ground, the removal of AFSPA and being able to read the newspapers made no difference. For this person now wanted more and more than what attending to the basics could offer. And this is where Manik Sarkar had indeed not paid enough attention to the very crucial economic point!

The Economic Demand and Supply of Labour

Economics is all about Demand and Supply and this is even more important when in a Capitalist system as is the case in India. When you lift a population up out of the gutters and make them some of the most educated within a certain limit, there has to be an economic demand for those people to be employed. This economic demand for skilled or educated labour comes from either the state or the private sector, as available in the area. Manik Sarkar it can thus be said, pushed the earning potential of Tripura’s labour up but didn’t make it earn. Thus, the net effect of Tripura’s stellar HDI was nullified and the state actually remained where it might as well have been 20 years ago.

When we contrast this to a state like Kerala which is also a Red State, you see the course that a Manik Sarkar should have taken. Kerala’s highly skilled population have the luxury of migrating out of the state to regions that are barely an hour or two away from the state, and then for a little more pain, they can easily have hopped on to the gulf bandwagon to be employed. Thus, the demand if not within the state in terms of industry existed close by enough to enjoy the benefits of living in Red State while working outside. Fast forward to the oncoming crisis in the Gulf and we see the Gulf migrants returning in huge droves. However, the Govt recognized this as a huge potential problem for the state and took the extremely astute step of reinvigorating the public sector units that were left to die by previous govts. These started posting profits, obviously job creation followed. In addition to this was the slow but steady growth of services in Kerala. Note that Kerala is not a populous state so even small measures in job creation have a good effect in the overall picture. Kerala’s finance minister has realized the demand and supply factors that influence labour extremely well, stellarly well in fact.

Let us now demonstrate this in a non Red State, Gujarat. Gujarat has a high unemployment rate and extremely low HDI numbers. One could chalk this down to bad governance and policy but no… it is by design. Gujarat relies on a model that highly class centric in educational access. Thus, the rich have the best of education, the middle class (who are largely in Petty Bourgeois professions) and the lower classes which have no way of increasing the earnings potential. Thus, whatever little jobs are created are mopped up by the elites, the middle classes are resigned to their earnings potential which they believe is directly proportional to commodity fluctuations only, and the lower classes who are led to believe that their fates are sealed due to the high price of education. This obviously would create tensions among the lowest classes who want upward mobility and this has to be done through either brutal state repression and ensuring that labour cannot organize. In short, it is a classical neoliberal model of a state.  This means that Gujarat, never has to bother about creating “Quality employment”

The Political outcomes of the economics of labour

The conclusions of the above analysis are actually quite bleak for regimes that have established themselves on pushing welfare and human resource development blindly without providing for an outlet for that development. This is even more dangerous in communities that place a near fanatical obsession on education and erudition – such is the case in the five Southern States. In these states, it is the Governments that have to rapidly catch up to provide employment opportunities – the human growth requirements in these states are thus not linear and a matter of scaling up, but rather of geometrical progression along with scaling up. In simple terms, better work and more work in general. A runaway situation eventually will develop and in a capitalist model, will lead to unemployment if the government can not keep up. To avoid this situation, the government must then concentrate on reducing exponential growth in population via measures like encouraging women in the workplace, taking a more feminist line, and in the worst case, penalizing population growth.

What this further means is that Governments that have gotten their votary in a comfortable position as is the case in Andhra, Telangana and Karnataka can surely look forward to being out of power in a decade or so ceteris paribus, purely on the economics of human development.

The role of the Communists and what is to be done?

The challenge for the Communist Parties involve redrawing up the Economic Program for each electoral constituency and state, to a lesser grand narrative. In terms of Marxist nomenclature, forgoing the primary contradiction for the secondary contradiction i.e focusing on the immediate threat.

1.       Among states it is no longer in power: This specifically implies Tripura. This state will have adopt a dual line of messaging that targets the peasantry and the new proletariat. The time-tested Marxian axiom comes back here but where the Indian Communist Parties have successively failed is in its ability to message the proletariat. In Tripura, the new fascist Government will attempt a neoliberal line and this will immediately cause distress to the lower classes in the form of takeover of land and a suddenly decrease in govt expenditure. The Communist party must thus publicize a “prediction of where the BJP will goof up” namely, job creation, land acquisition, internal and communal conflicts to distract the population, and cutting back on welfare. The Communist Parties must thus come back as a savior of the poor, huddled and abandoned masses. “We take those who this society has rejected and they will be our vehicles to power.”

2.       In the states, where there is communist strength but no presence of the BJP: Here the incumbent Govt will already be under an onslaught from one side. Bengal comes under this categorization. Here both opponents will only be able to fight on the communal angles not economic ones. The messaging here has to bring together a stagnant economy and a harking back to the communal harmony of Communist rule. Among the rural peasantry, the struggles must be more than simply protests and must be of getting deliverables to the table. This involves moving courts, blocking parliaments, and militant unionism.

3.       In states of no Communist presence: Maharashtra has shown the way here and is a model that can be replicated in every state. Find those who have been abandoned by the state and society, organize them to get their rights. There also has to be a coalescing of struggles here. Thus, the Dalit agitation has to be supported by the farmers movement and vice versa. Identity politics must mix with the Labour movement and this is an outreach that has to be done. Thus for a Bhima Koregoan agitation, Labour must strike and walk with the Dalits.

4.       In Red States: So far, Kerala has gotten it right but it must now step up the pace and fast. The two methods available are controlled Capitalism or massive regeneration of the PSUs. The motto must be… No man or woman unemployed! If Kerala can stick to the PSU model of growth then it will be the biggest success of Communism yet, economically. A cult thus come forth from Kerala, a cult of Communism that is reminiscent of the 70s and 60s.

These measures in are long, arduous struggles and thus will not happen overnight but through protracted efforts. All these measures do not include guerilla strikes politically to ensure that the Liberal and Right Wing forces every now and then are dented and destroyed.

To quote Lenin… Ensure a victory every time no matter how big or small but do not stop until the victory is delivered.

  

The Western Media has been Irresponsible in Reporting on Iran: Vijay Pra...

The parallels between the Iranian Revolution and Modi.

 With India in its 3^rd year under the jackboots of a Hindu Right-Wing, Nationalist and Proto-fascist Govt, as well as under severe Neoliberal and Imperialist assault, an Indian cannot help but wonder where the country went wrong and why. This is especially the case for those who have always been warning of the dangers of a genocidal leader like Modi, backed by the Hindu Terrorist NGO RSS. But there are also those who are newly disillusioned by what can only be described as prime rib incompetence at managing the economy. However, few people really look at the rise of the Hindu version of Religious Nationalism - which is otherwise manifest in the Muslim brotherhood in MENA, Buddhist Nationalism of Burma and Sri Lanka, and Tea Bagger Libertarians of the US – as a reaction to the economic assault of Global imperialist Capitalism.

This is not the first time that this has happened either. Back in the 1970s there was a movement in the midst of the spread of Communism all over the world that was different from the prevailing anti-imperialist trend and that was Iran. The Iranian Revolution unlike the Communist upsurges in various countries was a rising of a non-Secular movement against American Colonialism of the time. Of course, this was a threat of a new kind to American imperialism because it was anti-imperialism that didn’t need the “Godless Communists” that America was focused on. Few Liberal commentators at the time were equipped to understand that the primary goal of America was global domination and not just the dismantling of Worker’s Movements and Socialism.

A little note on the series of events that led to the Iranian Revolution. Iran was always a fiercely independent country. Through the course of World War 2, however, it did become an important outpost for resources for the war effort with the British and French having a presence there. As the post-war decades rolled on, the influence of America became more pronounced much to the chagrin of the local population. The election of Mossadek ushered in the blowback, where the Govt of Iran decided to Nationalise the oil industry. This resulted in the American sponsored overthrow of Mossadek and the reinstating of the Shah of Iran as a dictator. Such a blatant act of imperialism is what resulted in the Revolution. More importantly, it never waned or reduced in fervor precisely because Iranians remember exactly what the US tried to do.

Coming back to India, you see some similarities. Though India was never really a Socialist state, it had controlled, if nothing else, the Imperialist moves of the US. The ideological grounding of this resistance was that Globally, the USSR still existed, and the ideology of the Freedom struggle still prevailed. With the collapse of the USSR, the tide had turned and the calls for the Liberalisation of the Indian Economy grew. The rich and middle classes wanted to be the new bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie wanted to control the state like it does in the US, and the State was now ideologically committed to its fate as a puppet of the US – and to nurturing jingoism and national pride to fuel popular support for a neoliberal agenda.

On the cultural side, Indian society cleaved even further than its traditional Feudalistic hangover of Caste. There was now the Urban elites and middle classes, the English Speakers, the Armchair intellectuals and progressives, and on the other side – the uneducated, rural, conservatives. Now in all fairness, due to the absolute size of India, neoliberalism was able to send some wealth down the food chain to the rural populations. But as is seen worldwide, the trickle down is always miniscule, skewed, and doesn’t accompany in progressive thought.

A side note here is needed to reinforce what the Indian state should have done. Post-Independence, under the Nehruvian socialists, the focus was on Nation Building. This was in the form of infrastructure and building facilities for modernity, food security, etc. It did not correspondingly focus on destroying the Old – the conservatism that prevailed through religion, feudalism, and ending the Fascist cult of the Hindu Terrorist RSS. A fatal flaw. This is exactly why of all the post war countries in Asia, India remains one of the most socially backward countries prevailing out to the 21^st century.

As we look into this background and analyse today – in the 21^st century where Capitalism is breathing its last and People’s movements in the Left and Right are now pushing Liberal Capitalism out – we see the shadows of the Iranian Revolution rearing its head again in India in Hindu Nationalism. This can be seen in the rejection of a Secular agenda primarily. What was the evil of American for Iran is the evil of Muslims and Communists in India. What was the rejection of American cultural hegemony is the rejection of intellectualism, English and a revival of pre-dark ages philosophy in India. Of course, in India, all this is mostly rhetoric for the masses because the economic model has not changed nor is it any less imperialistic. This phase of Hindutva is also underscored as being the rise of the Conservative and Rural – Rural from the perspective of the mind more than the physical or geographical.

What the future holds for India thus is more subject to the vagaries of electoral rhetoric and economic realities. The growing radicalization of the majority Hindu population is thus destroyed by the nature of Capitalism pushing a progressive agenda where Nationalism and Insularity cannot sustain itself. Also, it would take decades if not impossible to turn the Indian population away from the lure of migration or of aspiring to ape and be as Western as possible. We must also remember that Capitalism itself is disdainful of insularity of the Indian Market and that corporations that worked so hard to breach the defenses of the erstwhile Indian state will not give up its victory ever.

What is more likely is that under the rule of the BJP, there will be more and more assaults upon Working Class consciousness. This is the real danger and most likely the inevitable death of Hindutva is simply the installation of a Corporate fascist state – something that is not even antagonistic to Hinduism as it is to Islam.

The other more likely assaults by Hindutva would be colonialist in nature upon the rest of India – especially the South. This will be a failed endeavor and any attempt to push the agenda aggressively would end up in a civil war. Thus Political Entropy is achieved yet again. 

"Companies are not employing now because they are waiting for unemployment to get worse!"

As the Indian economy is looking at its worst crisis since its independence, the big media is silent and largely ignoring the plight of the common office worker and labourer on the street. But media ignoring something doesn’t mean it is not happening. We every now and then have access to a few news outlets that do give us the true figure of over 9 million jobs lost just in this year. But the other side of this is the Corporations. Are they really in a fix businesswise or are they just holding their positions right now? An interview with an insider in the corporate human resources scene reveals the best laid plans of the Corporates.

Welcome and thank you for speaking to me. Could you state who you are and what you do for our readers?

You can call me Shyam. I am the Head of HR at a Media House and it is one of the bigger Channels out there. I have been in HR all my life and I started my career back in 2000 when liberalisation was at its peak. I would say that I have had a good career and a fruitful one.

So, it’s all good then? You don’t have any complaints against the Corporate dream?

Oh, I have many complaints about it and I despise what the work environment has rapidly deteriorated to but for people like me there is no real alternative but to slave away in these conditions. The funny thing is that we make light of the plight of farmers when they say, “if we cannot do farming, what else do we do?” that is pretty relevant for us Cubicle slaves as well. What choice but sitting in cubicles and pressing buttons do we have for a living? That aside, work since the 2008 crisis has been steadily on a downturn. When I joined the media world, hiring was what we did! We were building teams and teams built products and products sold etc etc. Now, being in HR is about firing people in the least amount of time possible – down to mere minutes in fact.

You mentioned 2008. What was that like?

To be completely honest, I know about it anecdotally and academically. Since the company I work in relies on the Indian market we weren’t hammered by the world downturn that happened in 2008. But all my peers who were working in IT were finished and I think the Liberalisation dream run was reaching its finishing line then. I look at India now and look back at that crisis and I can only thank the then Govt for steadying the ship.

So what has gone wrong now?

Well I would love to say GST and Demonetisation and stuff but those are just the straws that broke a camel’s back. Things like GST are badly implemented but cannot sink business and I refuse to believe it can. Demonetisation, yes. But it has been a year since it happened and even if it killed the economy it cannot be stopping its revival – and when I say revival, I am talking about employee strengths returning back to sane levels.

I will be more specific, what has gone wrong in Corporations from a Human Resource perspective?

Well we are all told that business is down and there is a recession. That has reduced budgets and therefore we have to fire you and you and you. And then five days later we hire for the same positions at 50% of the previous cost, usually some newbie or so. We are of course automating to such a level that we literally have no developers on the floor anymore. I can’t remember the time that development happened at the “factory floor” so to speak. Nothing is made in India even. All the software and hardware used are in a SaaS model. The hardware otherwise can be fixed and maintained by some Ukrainian coder paid $10 an hour when we pay $100. The only people that seem to be having it good are the Marketing, Strategy and Innovation teams. I guess that would be the case of course but if we are struggling on low sales, how come Sales and Marketing never pay that price?

So you are saying that India the “outsourcing capital” is being Bangalored?

It is true. For a long time since the call center boom what have we essentially been? A center for cheap labour and that is it. All these damn IT companies that we see like Wipro, Infy, etc that got their 20 year tax holidays and profited, where are the “Word, PowerPoint and Excels” that are made in India? That is essentially the problem. India was either a Call Center or a Coding Center. We never made the product itself so we lost the labour the minute the rest of the developing nations could speak English and code. And honestly, India got lucky. We have the worst work practices and worst quality of products. It had to collapse someday.

We hear that 9 million jobs have been lost in the Indian market, what is your take on that?

I can’t say I am surprised! I am no fan of Modi or BJP, I have seen both at work but I keep that aside when it comes to matters of economics. It has been three years of every other nonsense but serious work with this Govt, really. Let me save you time by saying that folks like Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha have it bang on with their critique of this Govt. That aside, I can definitely say that there have been massive layoffs in the IT and Media. But it is not very straightforward as firing because business is down.

What do you mean?

Well, none of these companies are close to sinking or even to a major hit on their bottom line revenues. Most of the firing of the lower level staff happened with a huge bang but all those positions have been quietly filled up again. Now, if business was really down that wouldn’t be the case, so this is a case of companies burning their budgets somewhere else and the factory floor taking the hit.

But hasn’t that always been the case?

Well yes. It has always been the entire point of being in business to increase profits but there is a difference. When you start out in business you make money by expanding, producing more and selling more. After that you peak out and then comes the cut backs and cutting costs to keep the rate of profit continuously going up. This is the problem. It is not that profit is lacking, it is that the Company wants more of it. So, instead of starting and chasing new lines of business and wanting to expand, the company wants to ride the wave.

How does that make sense in the current Indian context?

Well, take the case of the IT majors that did their layoffs. Most of those positions have been filled again with temps or contractual workers. Additionally, projects that don’t align with the overall company NPV are being dumped – which would be fine if this was 10 years ago when you could refuse business, not now. Also, a more nefarious tactic is being seen in the media world were the cost of Content Acquisition is a major component of the Retail price. What happened is that companies buy Content, which comes with a Price that is literally pulled out of the Content owner’s ass. And the cost of content is constantly increasing year after year, quality is increasingly bullshit, and audiences don’t watch it. So, instead of kicking the Content Owners out of their “Asset Bubble” broadcasters are cutting labour costs instead and the net result is that India now has some of the worst broadcast quality in the world! This at a time when the internet TV players with the big bucks are already ripping Indian distributors a new asshole!

So that means that the Work is there to be done but Companies can’t afford manpower for whatever reasons?

Not entirely. They can indeed afford to fill these positions but they have realised something. With three years of Modi’s disastrous economics, unemployment has increased to such levels that the labor cost has come down drastically. Worse, the trend is set to continue so Corporations are waiting for the pool of unemployed to increase to such a level that wages come down further. It is basically Wage speculation on right now.

But that affects business as well, doesn’t it?

This is India. Indians will lap up any nonsense that is shown on TV. So even if the quality dips in content or technology by 50%, people will still watch it. This is the endemic “Baniya” mentality that Indian companies have always had – that instead of investing in quality, find the market for bad quality.

So, the future is bleak is it?

Well, if you are just joining the job market, this is going to be the new normal. For older generations like me, yes… this is the end of the line. Best to leave India altogether.

It is time to kill the Poor and the Working Class!

This title sounds like a dystopian vision of the future, something straight out of Hollywood where the rich, living in their Elysium, have gained the ultimate upper hand over the majority, deprived masses. But dramatical pronouncements, if nothing else, are also the signs of something coming our way, the size and danger of which we will only realise when it is too late anyway. The danger here is the evolution of Capitalism, from Industrial Capitalism, to Finance Capitalism to Neoliberalism, and to the coming End Stage Capitalism, a phase I will call Capitalist Equilibrium.

Why Equilibrium? Because, it is in this stage of Capitalism that it will have to resolve its contradictions (Fallacies) that Marx had pointed out. I specifically speak here of the Monopolistic tendency peaking, the falling rate of profit being internalised and most importantly the Class contradictions being resolved along with Automation displacing workers. There are no resolute timescales to the Capitalist Equilibrium but it is safe to say that humanity is at its crossroads at this time to decide how it will survive on this planet.

Let us understand the nature of some of Capitalism’s contradictions first.

Tendency to Monopoly and the falling rate of profit.

All businesses and enterprises that are run are done for one sole motive: profit maximisation. This of course leads to competition and in the course of that competition, the strongest survive. This can be through the adoption of technology or through sheer weight of Capital and money power at the disposal of bigger Corporations. Our modern corporations like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, Coke, epitomise this trend, where they are able to destroy competition through the sheer weight of their resources, buyouts, or even through political clout. This has been the case for so many decades now that the dream of many a startup is to grow big enough to be acquired; what a laughable ambition…. To grow big enough to be nourishment for another. This very trend is indicative of how Capitalism has resolved its contradiction by changing society to believe in the power of the Corporation – that is the benevolent dictator, the employer, that which sprinkles its goodness though charity, and that if you cross will crush you no matter how, through money and political clout. Thus, we also see how the Bourgeois Liberal Democratic framework post World War 2 has aided and lubricated this transition by being a Politics of the Rich and resourceful. Marx had put forth the absolutely brilliant critique in Das Kapital of the Falling rate of Profit. Again, something that we see in action today but never mentioned by the Bourgeois Economists. The Falling Rate of Profit is largely mathematical but in layman language it is the tendency of businesses to compete to the point of collectively reducing prices and thus profit per unit. This leads to the tendency to monopoly but the side effects of the falling rate of profit in the interim are catastrophic, as the drive to keep gross margins intact cause labour retrenchment and subsequently increasing the mass of the reserve army of unemployed labour. A majority of the people of the world living under the doom of Recessions that is caused by such a state is now being touted as the norm and inevitable – as if economic recession is like that inhalation and exhalation of a living organism. In any case, those who suffer in a Capitalist economic meltdown are not those who have caused it.

Class contradictions

Class contradictions basically mean the inability of there to be consonance and peace between classes. In today’s world, to most folks, this might seem to already be resolved but that is only the case if you go by what you are being told to believe. Class contradictions inherently stem from Economic power, and who holds the power of Resources in society, which further decides the way Production and Consumption is organised, which finally decides political power. Capitalism places the Class that rules as that class that has the most wealth in society and those that must be ruled as the working class.  This inherently creates a contradiction that we see today of the 1% ruling over the 99%. To maintain this form of dictatorship of a minority, the 1% via the media they own, ensure that the 99% are never made aware of their ability to rise up, are made to believe that their position in this world is decided by how much they consume (of the product made by the 1%), are told that they are constantly unskilled and must upgrade their skills (again, by buying the education sold by the 1%), and finally that the essential problem is that working class are just too numerous and must contain their propensity to procreate. History has shown that this inevitably leads to class conflict and the 99% do rise up and occasionally take power. Thus, there are two states in which the working class, or Proletariat live in – A Bourgeois Democracy or a Proletarian Democracy.

But back to the present and we see that the three decade long Neoliberal project has largely ensured that the Proletarian class looks at uprising and mass organised revolt as something their masters do not appreciate. One cannot blame them, considering that the State – that is owned and commanded by the Rich Capitalist class – comes down heavily upon them, to the point of even censoring Free Speech the minute it threatens the power of the Bourgeois State. An entire two generations have now been born in the world since the collapse of the USSR and this means that no one knows what the alternatives to Bourgeois Hegemony are. This will continue as well – even despite the rise of Reactionary forces and Right Wing Populism – which ultimately does not contradict the rule of Capitalism anyway, just of democracy itself.

Therefore, we see that the working class have submitted to the rule of the Bourgeoisie and be it in the first world or the third, there is almost no revolutionary potential left. Class contradictions have therefore come to a stage of resolution where the working class is satisfied being just the working class that is servile to the Capitalist 1%.

Here we come back to Capitalist Equilibrium. The masses who should rise up to prevent this final stage of Capitalism are now docile, servile and supine. In this environment, the last project of Capitalism can be evoked and that is the slow genocidal elimination of the Poor and subsequently of the Working Class itself.

The destruction and killing of the Poor is a conscious project in nearly every country now except those that still claim to profess Socialism. This is done through insidious ways like cutting welfare, using the Police to clear out the poorest of the poor – making some citizens legally entitled to the country but only if they are wealthy enough to be so, ensuring that hygiene and healthcare is not something that exists for those who cannot afford it, and finally through high food prices and dumping food. In the third world, we see this project in more obvious forms like forced and incentivised sterilisation, evictions from ancestral lands, the use of the army and police to clear out those deemed to not support ruling governments and then there the use of Reactionary Ideology to orchestrate genocides to clear people from land as is the case in the Rohingyas.

As far as the Working Class that have some rights to exist in their societies because of what wealth they do possess, they are made to live in polluted environments, to suffer the cutbacks of govt expenditure on clean water, reduced regulation of industrial waste treatments, etc etc. This the Working Class might occasionally fight back against but cannot ultimately do anything about – take the examples of Fracking in the US, the Pollution in Indian cities, the potholed roads, the lack of Public infrastructure in cities.

Automation and Technology

The final blow that will end the existence of the Working Class is the advent of Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning. These technologies are being touted today as those that will free the Working Class from doing menial tasks – though Machine Learning has already blown the cover of the nefarious plans of the Bourgeoisie. Marx had predicted that Automation will be the single most potent weapon that will be used against the Working Class. Where automation and technology should have been used to reduce the costs in Capital and to ensure that more and more jobs are created, Privatisation of technological innovation has ensured that Technology innovation is only for driving Profit making.

Today, that project has reached the point where masses of people losing their job is seen as some sort of evolution of business, where in actual fact, it is simply the distortion of evolution by the Capitalist class. We today see this now where masses of IT developers are being made redundant and ironically, the most profitable IT developer jobs are in those that make the very damned software that will make them redundant! Why the Working Class, like mules, follow this nefarious genocide of their own without protest is a testament to the success of media, the alienation brought about by Capitalism, and Liberalism as the preferred ideology.

The Dystopia that stands before us.

From the above analysis, we can see that Equilibrium will be reached – not by the synthesis from a dialectical perspective but from the destruction of the antithetical thought itself. But what is the alternative to such a dystopia. It is the very the project that was initiated a 100 years ago in Russia – the creation of the worker’s state and the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The challenge here is one of confusion whether the Working Class gets Revolutionary potential first or the Communist movements stir the Working Class to Revolutionary potential. Yet another problem is the question of “What is Revolution?” Is it violent or democratic? This is the needless banter that promotes indolence – an indolence that is a result of Bourgeois academics endlessly ruminating in the realm of academia instead of taking to the streets. Revolution is the seizure of power – simple, where the state allows for it through democracy - good, where it must be seized through the violent overthrow of the Bourgeoisie, the better.

There is no alternative to the very existence of the Working Class than Socialism and there is no alternative to sustainable elimination of Class than Communism. The only other way is murder. 

The October Revolution and a middle-aged Communist

For many a 40 something year old, born in the Soviet century and raised in a Capitalist world, the October Revolution isn’t top of the mind recall per se. In fact, for the few who do venture into understanding what Communism, Socialism, Anarchism is it is an arduous task of sifting through now debunked propaganda by Robert Conquest, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell and, especially if you are an Indian, oodles of complaints about how Communism is the same as trade unionism. Once you get through that fog of misinformation, comes the real journey. But like all journeys, Communism and Marxism was never just about the textbooks but about real life itself. Thus, my journey….

I was a kid of the late 70s. The word was rife with revolutions, the Iranian Communist party the Tudeh had just been banned by the Shah of Iran at America’s orders and the Revolution there was coming to a head but with a theocrat as a leader. Vietnam was still on everyone’s minds and people were still talking about the puny Chinaman who brought down the might of American imperialism, though at great cost. Pol Pot was deposed and consigned to History by Communist Vietnam while the US refused to intervene in that crisis in Cambodia. South America….a pot that was always boiling since the Cuban revolution. The 70s in India (though I was diaspora at the time) were a time when every Indian youth was clamouring for Revolution and Revolt; Naxals were not the bad guys yet; Sitaram Yechury was firebrand orator! Though there was also the counter narrative by bourgeois cinema that always showed the Communists as either jungle fighters or trade unionists who just ruined the lives of those who went to work. All this hadn’t damped the spirit yet though. These were the times of the Cold War. Angola, Mozambique were all turning red. The world was poised to be a worker’s state!

The eighties perhaps marked the real fight back by the imperialist powers in the media. Everyone suddenly was told to stop romanticising Revolution, get to work and make money. A fair point considering that this was the start of the Neoliberal project and Globalisation was just beginning as a start up. And then came the mid-eighties… the time of Indira Gandhis death, economic turmoil, the initiation globally of trade agreements by the Western world through the World Bank and IMF. The end of Socialism began with these stabs.

Thus, the nineties of Gorbachev and Yeltsin… the miserable end of the Soviet dream began. It was at this time that my first tryst with Communism began in my early teens in Africa. Nelson Mandela had just been released from Robben Island and F. W De Klerk had declared that the end of White Rule in South Africa was imminent. This was a victory of the colored races but also the time of great reactionary sentiment and the first time that I had heard from the mouths of Indians…. “Why are you celebrating with the Blacks? Why are you touching them? Don’t you know that they are cannibals?” To which, I asked my mother with my feeble knowledge at the time…. “Amma, What is Communism?” She of course only knew of Communism superficially from her growing years in Kerala. Communism was liberation, fighting against discrimination, destroying the might of the rich, equality for all, building a new society, a soviet of Kerala even, and the how the evil American imperialist empire was all pervasive.

The latter part of the nineties put my initial Communist fervor to rest. India had taken the World Bank loan and shipped planeloads of its sovereign gold to the Bank of England as surety – the biggest insult to a country that threw English Imperial rule out of its soil. But in exchange, the Neoliberal project had begun! The USSR was no more, and Liberal Democracy was touted as the entropic state of the world – World history it seemed had come to an end as Francis Fukuyama was to later say.  But this was a time of opportunity… We graduated from college and there were loads of jobs if you could string together a sentence in English. We all targeted doubling our salaries every year by changing jobs….the dream run had begun! And as for that little churn in society called Babri Masjid and the communal riots – it was a warning sign that India and Bharat were not going to develop in economic harmony.

In came the 21^st century! The Neoliberal project was at its peak! Equality was unnatural! Welfare to poor a State Sin! The Poor had to be starved into oblivion! Until the eve of 2008, when the world suddenly crashed around us. Economic and financial terms were bandied about and we didn’t know what it meant! How can Neoliberalism and the Rich fail us? It was then that we all realised that there was something called Economics and we had to understand it – it was not trade, not industry but something far more dark, mysterious and sexy seeing how countries and their wealth would exist and disappear.

It was at these times, I suddenly became a manager and started handling big teams at work. I learnt about Production, Time, Materials, Productivity, etc. And when 2008 crash had struck I also saw how disposable people were to the modern Corporate machine. In the words of the man who gave me my first Pink Slip… “People come and go, there are a 100 to take the place of a Worker who doesn’t fall in line, is too old or is too costly. The Corporation is the new God and God must survive” Needless to say, he had no idea how true his words were when his Pink Slip came after he dutifully rendered 100 people jobless thinking he was sacrificing to his “God.” I promised myself that I would never be the guy who hired too much or too little, that no matter how high I climbed or believed I was higher than my crew, I was and always was a worker, and I finally realised that Work success was built by my Team not by Managers. The seeds of Worker Class consciousness were thus sown – not by a textbook or the Communist Manifesto but by Cold, Hard Capitalism.

The journey ends in Capitalist Dubai, a land where the Neoliberal project is at its most vulgar. Construction workers bussed from their quarters to work sites well before the more well-heeled citizens could catch a glimpse and be upset by the sight of them, a world where people could be told to leave the work in 10 minutes flat and escorted out by security, where no one fought back against injustice at work or in life but rather cooled their frustrations and insecurities in consumerism. A world that was make believe and fake. But more importantly, what was stark was that nobody was really Producing anymore. Work was outsourced, the “factory” was dead. Project managers were merely Executive Assistants to Directors.

The questions plagued me: If the population keeps rising and there is no more Production where will everyone be hired? Not everyone has access to expensive education like an MBA – which in itself was just a monetary roadblock to ensure that the lower classes would never be managers. And most importantly, if there is no job security, how the hell will I survive to old age when my bones don’t allow me to work anymore. Another system must exist! And that is when I remembered that it did… it was Called Socialism. My frequent meetings with a Kazak revealed a Soviet Union where, as he was growing up, you always had a job, you never were poor, you never had to worry about your healthcare, you never had to worry about being taken care of once you couldn’t work anymore. The State ensured all that. This was an anathema to the Indian experience! To everything I knew! But it was just the perfect solution! And thus I picked up Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto for the second time in my life. This time it all made more sense and the world Capitalist crisis, as foretold by Marx, had already come to pass and that made Marxism the most obvious solution in the world.

This is perhaps the greatest legacy of the October Revolution to my generation who are Communists. We never lived in Communism and only experienced its demise in the Soviet Union but through its demise and the impending demise of Neoliberalism, we learnt that a better world was not something Utopian and in the future, but was also a Reality in our past. Something that put us the Working Masses who sell our labour for sustenance at the seat of power, A form of Politics where wealth did not decide politics, where we would not be looked down upon for the color of our skin and that was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Lal Salaam, Red Salutes, Jai Bhim, Hul Johar!

Iquilaab Zindabaad! 

On the intellectual bankruptcy of subaltern politics of Feminism and Reactionary Ambedkarism

There has been a flurry of activity in the feminist camps as well as much churn over sexual harassment lists. The churn of course has caused a generational chasm between the young and old guard of feminists as well as calling out Savarna vs Dalit feminism. This in the end is a good churn as well. The fact of it all being that the victims of sexual harassment at the hands of male oppressors have done what they should have done – called out the Rapist and the young feminists have promoted and given voice to it. Of course, everything has a legal framework so if there is an end to the story it must end up as a legal one. But what is noteworthy is the allegation by the younger generation that the inertia of the older generation in showing concrete action is what has made the young guns take matters into their own hands. Why is this so and why as a corollary is the allegation of Dalit vs Savarna creeping in over here? This problem goes into the very root of two streams of subaltern politics – Feminism and Ambedkarism. 

Feminism and Ambedkarism seek a common objective for the people it represents – absolute and unequivocal equality. You can define the two streams in any which way you like but the objective is plain and simple at the highest level. If the end objective of these two streams of subaltern politics sounds a lot like Communism then you would not be completely inaccurate because these two streams of the subaltern realm stemmed from Communism and Fabian Socialism. So then, the obvious question that does arise is why did they all become separate or why they are not a combined force? Some historical context is required here on both the streams.

Feminism as movement has seen many names be it Women’s Liberation or the Suffrages Movement, etc. At the highest point of the movement for equality of women came the Soviet Revolution of 1917 that accorded absolute equality to women on par with men. This was followed by women getting the vote elsewhere and World War 2 completely changing the paradigm in the Western Liberal world. Fast forward to the fall of the USSR where the Soviet Revolutionary Worker’s state collapses but Women’s rights cannot be wished away any more anywhere in the world. Thus, Feminism is born out of the Reforming of the Radical line of Women’s Liberation – the Reform being that Women’s Rights and Capitalism are compatible.

Ambedkarism on the other hand can be seen in two prisms – as an attack on Religious Hegemony of the Hindu Orthodoxy and as a Civil Rights movement. As a challenge to religious orthodoxy, there has been no weapon as potent or as destructive as Ambedkarism to Hinduism – understandable because no genius like Ambedkar was able to articulate the need to end Hinduism to the masses. As a Civil Rights movement, politics in the Indian subcontinent as the petty minded nature of Hindus prevented the Dalits rights movement aligning completely with the Communist movement, as was the case in Apartheid South Africa. After the death of Ambedkar however, the dialectic of the movement came to an end – not politically but ideologically. Leaders like Kanshi Ram took the caste discourse forward albeit with a fragile and deft use of reactionary rhetoric to ensure mass uptake. At the current time, Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram are both long gone and there are new ideologues trying to frame Ambedkarism in the current Political Economy. However, as with feminism, the Revolutionary path has been abandoned to talk of Capitalism and Ambedkarism being friends.

 

If we are to look at things dispassionately. The subaltern movements have survived the so-called “death of Communism” that Liberal Imperialism so gleefully propagandises. So, the subaltern movements to stay alive had to talk to power to progress, for if the Left is dead, the subaltern becomes the mainstream left.  Therefore, if we calculate that the much-vaunted death of the Left happened in the 1990s, it would have been 30 years… in these 30 years, which of these subaltern movements have managed to capture power at the level where they could have changed Law, Constitution and Political Economy itself? None. Feminism has capitulated, and Dalit Capitalism is the new paradigm – despite the fact that women are no more equal and Dalits are not richer and Capitalism itself is on its last legs. 

So, what is to be done? 

The first step is that the subaltern movements have to recognise and accept its mistakes, which are as follows.

1. Equality is not an appeal to the conscience but rather a collective socio-economic edifice.
2. Abandon First-worldism, Bourgeois intellectualism, and armchair Progressive Liberalism.
3. Abandon compartmentalisation and name calling. It is infantile, reactionary, and a strawman argumentation
4. Feminism and Ambedkarism do not challenge authority – they work alongside it. Women’s Liberation and a Dalit Revolution destroy the Hegemon. 
5. Capitalism is fundamentally based on and promotes inequality. Capitalism is not just an economic method, it is method of organising production, society and class based on wealth and capital. This is an anachronism and a contradiction to the end objective to any subaltern politics.
6. Particularly to the Feminist movement. There cannot be something called Savarna Feminism and Dalit Feminism; there are no separate objectives for the Savarna or the Dalit woman. The end goal is one and the same – or at least it should be. So that means any attempt at factionalising the movement is pandering to reactionary name calling without an ideological basis. 
7. To the Ambedkarite movement. Brahminism and Hinduism is not a primary contradiction. If Brahmins and Hindus didn’t exist tomorrow, Caste would not exist but then Class would be the new Caste. For example, a Dalit in the US is still a subaltern class due to ethnicity and access to the means of production. 
8. The objective is not to formulate an ideological discourse for the sake of an ideology. Rather, the material conditions of the oppressed should formulate the ideology itself. Thus, there must be a Combat Liberalism and purging of top-down, trickle down ideology. 
9. Recognise that the most oppressed group in the world is the working class. Every subaltern movement must eventually accept that it is part of the working-class movement and thus address the question of Communism.
10. Combat Factionalism. Learn from history. The working class movement was divided by Capitalism by creating a class called the Middle Class as a false consciousness. 

 

The next point to be addressed is what is the solution and can a coming together of all subaltern classes to form a Working Class hegemony solve very specific problems. To be specific, do the issues of Women and Dalits get subsumed under the shadow of the Class struggle? The answer is a categorical, No. Feminism and Ambedkarism is not looking at Women’s supremacy or Dalit supremacy, it is aimed at equality of gender and the Annihilation of Caste. Therefore, what is that construct under which 99% of humanity can aggregate under? Class. 

However, that Class does have an identity that is a historical handed down reality. Being an advocate of Internationalist Class struggle does not negate ethnicity for example – that is impossible on any count. In the same vein, there will always Class and Identity but that identity cannot be one that becomes a contradiction to Class. Let us look at Identity from a different context – Nationhood – no matter how small or large the National group. You can be an Indian, Chinese or Russian Communist but neither nationality conflicts with being a Communist. Similarly, one can be a Dalit and a Communist – and in this case, the Dalit question is not antagonistic to Communism or vice versa. Here, in fact the true reactionary nature of the Present day Ambedkarite discourse is revealed in the fact that Ambedkarites, uncomfortably shun the alignment of Dalits with the Communists in Kerala, with the Communists who together attacked Landlords, who joined the People’s War, etc. A common refrain of Ambedkarites has been that “Where are Dalits in the Politbureau?” It is a very good question and a valid one that the existent Communist Parties must address but on the flipside the equally troubling question for Ambedkarites is “Where is the Dalit Communist party?” Note that Ambedkar was not against Communism but the Indian Communist Party, he was against violent Revolution but not against a Democratic Communism. This is something the Reactionary factions of Ambedkarites cannot wish away.

A note here might be in order to chart a course for the Annihilation of Caste under a Communist banner. The two edifices that Caste discrimination sits on is Brahmin hegemony and Economics. Smashing Brahmin Hegemony is a lengthy affair of re-education of society to ensure that the Brahminical narratives are removed from curriculums and media. Additionally, the mixing and mingling of the population is another step to prevent ghettoization of communities – to this end the abolishing of private property while at the same time making Housing a Fundamental Right will ensure no discrimination in housing. A push to secularism in the European sense would also be required to purge religious consciousness to the fringes of private life. It cannot be stressed enough here that the Ambedkarite strain that does not push for a complete exit of Dalits from Hinduism is a failed narrative.

In summation, the Feminist and Ambedkarite movements in their current form are a reactionary form of identity politics. It is also beholden to promoting Capitalism and thus holds its foundations in conservatism and inequality - talking about equality within an unequal construct. The solution is a return to Dalit Revolution and Women’s Liberation.