Changes in the Structure and modus-operandi of World Capitalism and the Working Class Movement of India: Challenges of a Revolutionary Resurgence
Paper presented in the second Arvind Memorial Seminar
Tapish Maindola
What is being termed as the globalization of capital today is basically a new phase of imperialism itself. The fundamental laws of motion of capital remain the same, but its modus operendi has undergone a number of important and fundamental changes. These very changes in the modus-operandi of capital have obliged us to seriously consider about the new strategy and new tactics of the working class movement.
In the era of laissez-faire capitalism itself, Marx had discussed in the ‘Communist Manifesto’ about the natural inherent tendency of capital to expand globally in the search of newer markets: “Owing to the need of the ever expanding market for its commodity, the bourgeois class explores every nook and corner of the world. It is forced to enter everywhere, consolidate everywhere and establish communication everywhere.” In the Manifesto itself Marx had made it clear that it is an intrinsic tendency of capital to create a world market across national borders by continuously searching for cheap labour power and new markets for the commodities produced. It was this ever-increasing speed of the international circulation of capital which led capitalism to the stage of imperialism which was the era of the creation of international market and the dominance of finance capital over it. Lenin formulated the characteristic features of this era as follows: (1) Export of capital along with the export of commodities and the former becoming more important. (2) Centralization of production and distribution in hands of large trusts and cartels.
Tapish presenting his paper
(3) The merger of industrial and banking capital. (4) The division of the world by the capitalist powers into their respective spheres of influence. (5) After this division the inter-imperialist struggle for the re-division of the world market.
What is being termed as globalization today is not a new stage of capitalism following imperialism, but a new phase of imperialism itself. The fundamental characteristics and features of imperialism are present as it is. Notwithstanding, howsomuch bleak the present and future might look to those who view history from their empirical viewpoint, the scientific outlook tells us that we are still in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. The prolonged and incurable structural crisis of capitalism is the biggest proof of the fact that capitalism is not immortal and neither is it the last stage of human history. The defeat of the proletarian revolutions of the 20th century also is not the last word of history. This is just the end of the first round of the proletarian revolutions, on the basis of whose sum-up, this historical march will move ahead in strides from the beginning to the victory of the new proletarian revolutions of the 21st century.
The proletarian revolutions of the twentieth century were the trend-setter revolutions of history. But the mistakes, flaws, incompleteness of the great trend-setter social experiments are quite understandable. Now it is the responsibility of generations of the vanguard, who are the bearers of the new proletarian revolutions of the twenty-first century, to analyse the revolutionary experiments of the twentieth century and take positive and negative lessons thereof. However, ironically, most of the people in the revolutionary left are prisoner of their dogmatic mulishness of blindly imitating the great revolutions of the past, in the name of learning from them. From the fact of continuation of the imperialist era, they deduce that the things are more-or-less the same as in the twentieth century and there is no need for any change in the policies and strategies of proletarian revolution. Whenever somebody talks of changing the policies, strategies and general tactics according to the changing circumstances, the victims of this dogmatism feel that it is a deviation from the ideology itself. It is difficult to move ahead without disentangling this knot of dogmatism.
A close look at the realities of life reveals that despite the fact that we are still in the era of imperialism, such fundamental changes have occurred in the modus-operandi of capital and the economic-political structure of world capitalist system has been so reorganized in such a way during the last two or three decades, that we can no longer suspend the task of rethinking about the policy-strategy and path of the proletarian revolution, and also, as a part of it, about the question of rebuilding the trade union movement.
First of all, we will discuss about these changes in brief. Firstly, today more than 85 percent of the capital of the world is unproductive finance and speculative capital which is invested in the share markets, usury, advertisement, media, cinema etc. This fact reveals that as compared to Lenin’s period, the parasitic, unproductive and decadent nature of capital has revealed itself on a much larger scale and the dominance of the finance capital has expanded. Unproductive investment on such a large scale in itself alludes to the fact that the sufficiently familiar disease of overproduction and depression has turned itself into an incurable structural crisis. Clearly, due to this crisis, the upward and downward swings of the share markets have become even more uncertain, whose heavy price is paid by the working class engaged in production in the form of retrenchment, semi-unemployment and obligation to sell their labour power at extremely low prices.
The second change: the movement of finance capital across the national boundaries has become increasingly unrestricted and rapid. Those imperialists having the might of unlimited finance capital, who have control over advanced technology through patents etc. and who have the hegemony over the world market, have forced the ruling capitalists of the backward capitalist countries which are moving slowly on the path of capitalist development after becoming free from their colonial-neo-colonial past, to open their economies completely by removing all barriers such as customs duty, making labour laws flexible and ineffective, removing the limits and conditions of investment in different sectors and by providing concessions to the trans-national corporations such as land at low cost, other infrastructural facilities and ‘tax holidays’, so that the imperialist capital could extract the natural resources and labour power of these backward countries at its will. It is both the compulsion as well as the necessity of the backward countries that they accept these conditions because they have to bend before the imperialists for capital and technology and for taking their raw materials, farm-produce and textiles etc. to the world market. The new Information-Technology has also ensured the unrestricted worldwide movement of capital. The technology has eased up the collection of information such as: where is it profitable to invest the capital; where the raw material is cheap; where and what kind of labour power is cheap; where and which commodity’s market can be developed; where and for what kind of industry the infrastructural facilities are present; in which country is it possible to invest at once and run away with the profits. Internet banking has given a magical fillip to the process of capital export.
The Third change: under the globalization of the capital or should we say as its part, the process of production has also globalised. The nature of the giant trans-national corporations is quite different from that of the multi-national companies of the sixth and seventh decades of the twentieth century. They are spread in many nations in such a way that it is difficult to find their country of origin, although on the world political and economic forums their interests are advocated and favoured by the governments of their country of origin. Thus despite the spreading of the imperialist enterprises outside their country of origin to the remote corners of the world, they are still related to the nation-state and this relation is used to safeguard their interest in the international competition. That is to say that globalization has narrowed down the role of nation-states but it has not ended it.
The fourth change: due to the international spread of trans-national corporations, now the possibility of something like a world-war for the geographical re-division of the world market in the form of colonies or neo-colonies has waned. In an almost open market of the entire world, it is the level of the development of the productive forces and the might of capital which determines the hegemony of imperialist powers. Undoubtedly, this determination does not take place though a frictionless process. Particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the competition is on for the plunder of cheap labour power and raw materials. Even in the domestic markets of the developed countries the inter-imperialist rivalry goes on continuously in the forms of trade wars, new alliances and trade agreements. In places like Iraq, entire Arab region, Afghanistan or wherever the regional wars and tensions are underway, along with the contradiction between the local population and imperialism there is an active role of the contradiction between the imperialist countries, though it is not visible on the surface. So, Lenin’s formulation about the inter-imperialist struggle for the division of the world market still holds good, but there is a low possibility of its explosion in the form of a world war. Its reason is the presence of trans- national corporations in most countries of the world. That is to say that today the condition of redistribution of the secured markets in the form of colonies-neo-colonies is non-existent. Most countries have capital investments of many countries. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons of fading of the possibility of a World War (of course, it is not impossible) is the nuclear deterrent as well. But it is not the main aspect. The main aspect is still the economic one.
The fifth change: the bourgeois states throughout the world – from imperialist countries to post-colonial backward capitalist countries – have thrown away the cloak of “welfare state” and given up Keynesian prescriptions. In the developed capitalist countries, these policies had become an impediment for the free flow of capital. It was important to do away with them in order to increase the rate of capital-accumulation. Without doing this, it was not possible to bear the burden of ever prevailing recession. Secondly, the imperialists were facing neither a challenge from the socialist camp, nor any pressure of the organized struggles of the working class. Thus it was easy to go back towards the policies of the era of open capitalist plunder. In the newly independent countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the capitalist class had adopted the policies of the “welfare state” along with the socialist mask because in order to compete with the imperialist pressure there was no option but to go for the policies of ‘import substitution’. Without building the public-sector industrial and financial institutions by extracting money from people, it was not at all possible to prepare an indigenous capitalist base. When this task was accomplished in three-four decades and the indigenous capitalist class assumed sufficient mettle of capital, then not only were the public enterprises sold to the capitalists on pittance but the fundamental responsibilities of the state such as education and health-care also were handed over to the market. The governments now openly started behaving like the “managing committee” of the capitalists. The rights earned by workers after long struggles began to be revoked one after another and the labour laws increasingly became meaningless. The ruling class of the post-colonial societies now entered into open partnership with the imperialists in their plunder of their toiling masses (even earlier they were partners, but there were limitations because to secure their relative economic sovereignty and economic independence the capitalists of most backward countries were not opening the gates of the national economy completely for foreign capital and were taking advantage of the inter-imperialist competition and the presence of the socialist camp). By the end of the ninth decade of the last century, opening the gates of national economy completely for foreign capital became both a compulsion as well as the necessity for the capitalists of countries like India.
The sixth change related to the changing nature of the trans-national corporations, development of technology and the unrestrained worldwide movement of capital was the change introduced in the production process and it was the formation of a sort of ‘Fragmented Global Assembly Line’ by the disintegration of the ‘Fordist Assembly Line’. The trans-national corporations (in which apart from the developed countries many monopoly houses and corporations of the leading third world countries such as China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina etc. are also included) employing modern communication facilities manage to find immediately where and what kind of raw materials and what kind of labour power is available at cheaper rates and where there is a demand for a particular commodity. Internet banking etc. has eased the collection of capital from international finance market and its investment at a decided location. The Trans-national corporations get the labour intensive works done at those places where the labour power is very cheap and the labour laws are extremely liberal. It is in these countries that most of the ‘Free Trade Zones’, ‘Export Processing Zones’ and ‘Special Economic Zones’ are built where the few remaining laws related to working hours, employment guarantee, social security, minimum wages, overtime, and the fundamental rights such as housing, health care etc. have become practically meaningless. These are the backward countries where the sources of raw materials are largely available and the labour power is also cheap here. The trans-national corporations plunder these raw materials at meagre prices and the indigenous capitalists also cooperate and compete with them in this plunder. Taking advantage of this situation, now the big industrial units are being fragmented at large scale and are scattered in small industrial units in the remote areas ( in the remote areas of a country and at times in different countries as well). Even those commodities whose market exists in the developed countries are scattered in small industrial units in places where raw material and the labour power is available at cheap rate. Even in these smaller units there are only a few regular workers and most of the work is done by daily-wage labourers and casual labourers or through contracting, sub-contracting and outsourcing whose last link are the workers working at home at piece-rate. Except for a few ‘overhead capital goods industries’, this trend is dominant in most areas of the industrial production and is continuously developing. Even the big industries of the organized sector give a lot of work on contract to smaller companies which get most of the work done at contract, daily-wages and piece-rate. Besides this, even the big industries often distribute their work in the remotely situated factories. Even there, the workers are recruited directly on contract or on piece-rate or on ad-hoc basis, ignoring the labour laws or the work is given to even smaller contractors. Even the big infrastructure companies involved in construction of roads, dams, factories etc. keep only a handful of technicians on their permanent roll and rest of the workers are employed on contract basis as per the project requirements and as soon as the project gets over they are shown the door. During work they do not enjoy even those rights that are mentioned in the Contract Workers Act. To summarise, today, besides the working population of the unorganized/informal sector, a large part of even the organized/formal sector workers do not enjoy the rights and facilities provided under the labour laws and they must be considered as unorganized workers only. This is a worldwide trend which is dominant even in India. Of the total working population of India, 93 percent constitute the informal or unorganized workers. But the important aspect of this fact is that this worker is not like the worker of the informal sector few decades ago who was living in the ‘subsistence economy’ and whose existence was relatively autonomous. Today the contract, daily-wage and casual workers of the small workshops and the contract workers of the big factories are the modern proletariat who work on modern equipment of production and are part of the ‘main circuit of capital’ and they work on an ‘invisible, fragmented, global assembly line’ which produces commodities ranging from shoes to cars for the world market. Ostensibly they are scattered far away in small workshops but a close perusal would reveal that this change has actually linked the workers of the remote areas and countries to one another.
It is also important to add here that along with the production-process, the globalization of trade through giant retail companies like ‘Walmart’ and trans-national corporations involved in the ‘agri-business’, has also linked the small producers of backward countries and a large population of the rural labourers employed in the ‘agro-based and allied sector’ to a global network of surplus extraction. These big retail companies get some commodities from the multi-national companies and procure some commodities (like fruits, vegetables etc.) directly from the small producers and get their sorting-knitting and packaging done on contract or piece-rate basis and after putting their stamps and them to their worldwide chain of shops. These companies have access to worldwide information about the market and they purchase commodities at cheapest rates from the producers. The competing suppliers are forced to sell at the cheapest price and its cost is borne by the labourers because every reduction in the price of a product can only be brought about by reducing the cost of the labour power. Another reason for the increasing ease of taking the raw material from certain part of the world and exploiting the labour power and taking the products to the consumers in other parts of the world and selling them is that during the last two to two and half decades the cost of trade has reduced significantly due to the lowering of tariffs. From 1980 to around 1995 the cost of shipping has become cheaper by 70 percent. Air-transport service has also expanded and it has become cheaper as well. The main reason behind such reductions (despite the increase in the cost of fuel) also lie in the reduction of the cost of labour power and secondly the curtailment in government taxes (which is compensated by increasing the burden of the indirect taxes on the majority of the population).
Now, the seventh change. The countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America which were erstwhile colonies-semi-colonies or neo-colonies, were mostly agrarian societies where pre-capitalist land relations were dominant. The process of political independence and assumption of power by the bourgeois class of these countries continued from 1950s till the end of 1970s. Among these, the ruling capitalist class of the top and medium level countries which were rich in natural and social resources, achieved capitalist development by adopting the policy of ‘import substitution’ and by taking advantage of the inter-imperialist rivalry and initiated the task of capitalist land-relations “from top”, “through a gradual process”, “in a non-revolutionary manner”, in “Prussian style” for the purpose of bringing the villages within the scope of the national market. In the era of globalization the process of the capitalist development in the villages got a fillip. The indigenous and foreign capital took even the remotest corners in its firm grasp. While this made possible the migration towards cities of the peasants uprooted by the blow of capital and the labourers freed of the pre-capitalist relations and their joining the army of industrial proletariat on a large scale, a large population of proletariat-semi-proletariat engaged in farms and farm based and allied enterprises also came into being in the villages. Even the population of the seasonal workers who at times work in cities and at other times in villages and also of semi-proletariat who for some time do farming and sometimes work as labourers has continuously grown. These trends are ever developing. The demands of the ownership and distribution of land have now become a thing of the past. The strategic class-demands of the rich farmers now are that of reducing the input prices and getting a better support price for their farm-produce. Whereas the strategic class demands of the proletariat-semi-proletariat population is to get better price for their labour power. Their demands constitute of of different provisions of social security, bringing the rural proletariat into the ambit of labour laws and implementation and supervision of the labour laws and that of bringing the housing, health, education etc. into the ambit of fundamental rights and that of getting employment guarantee and unemployment allowance from the government. In the areas of developed capitalist farming the contradiction between the labour and capital are stark. Even in the areas of backward agrarian economy the demands of minimum wages, the enacting and implementation of labour laws for the rural labourers, employment guarantee and the fundamental civil rights should be directly addressed to the bourgeois state. Among them, the uprooted lower middle class owner peasants would come along with the labourers on the demands regarding rights such as employment guarantee, unemployment allowance, social security, health-education etc., but the prosperous owner farmers would stand against the labourers in any case. Due to the rapid proletarisation the population of proletariat-semi-proletariat is growing rapidly even in the villages of India and the aim of the revolutionary left must be to organize them first. Those who are leaving them and are raising the demands favourable to rich farmers like input costs, support price can only be termed as Marxists in preaching and Narodniks in action.
After this brief discussion about the changes which have come about in the structure, modus-operandi and production-process of the world capitalism during last three decades or so and the changes in the socio-economic structures of the countries like India, we will now discuss in brief about the necessary changes in the policies and strategies for the resurgence and rebuilding of the labour movement in India in the new century.
First of all we will discuss about the problems and challenges of organizing the industrial workers in trade union movements afresh.
It has not only been an economic strategy of the capitalist class to break up the ‘Fordist mass production assembly line’ into small production units but a political strategy as well. Marx discussed about this fact in the ‘Manifesto’ as to how the modern industries have organized the workers like soldiers by concentrating them in the factories in large numbers. This material condition has made the workers realise their strength and has also injected among them the consciousness to organize. Although the ‘Fordist mass production assembly line” made it possible to earn more and more profit by getting the workers to produce more and more in less time through a production process based on an advance technology, at the same time the concentration of a huge population of worker in a single factory also prepared a large base for industrial workers to organize. These organized workers could secure their economic interest in a better manner through collective bargaining and also hampered the ever increasing rate of profit. At the same time, this organized power even had the potential to challenge the rule of capital in future. Even the bourgeoisie learnt some important lessons from the Soviet revolution, the unaccomplished revolutions of Germany, Greece and Italy and from the militant struggle of European working class in 1920s and 1930s.
Now wherever possible, modern industrial proletariat has been scattered into smaller units along with the fragmentation of the ‘Fordist assembly line’. They do most of the work on contract, daily-wages or piece-rate divided in small groups. The work may be of regular nature but it is performed by casual labourers. Apart from the workers who work in small workshop on contract or on piece-rate there are those workers who run small workshop themselves with the support of their family members ( not by hiring workers from outside) and work on piece-rate. The work on piece-rate is done both in the factory workshops as well as at home. Even most of the workers who are regular workers in all practically aspects do not enjoy the facility of attendance-card and pay-slip and practically their condition is akin to that of daily-wage workers and contract workers. A large part of the unorganized workers constitute what is known as ‘Footloose workers’ who sometime work as hawker or vendor, sometimes pull rickshaws, sometimes do loading-unloading and at times do work in factories. If we include all these kinds of unorganized workers then this category accounts for more than 93 percent of the total working population of India. This worker population is fragmented in small parts, but its bulk produces the ultra modern machines, electronic devices and durable and non-durable consumer goods for national and international market. This worker is not like the artisan or worker who used to run spinning wheel, live in ‘subsistence economy’ like iron-smith and carpenter enjoying relatively autonomous existence but it is a part of the ‘main circuit of capital’. It is this circuit which links the population of wage slaves working in the small workshops in the dark corners of small and big cities or the workers working on piece-rate in their slums to the to the giant trans-national corporations headquartered in skyscrapers of remote countries producing shoes, garments of international brands, electronic goods, computers, automobiles etc. and international retail-chains like ‘Walmart’. This describes the bulk of modern proletariat and we can not even talk of preparing a defensive strategy for the working class without thinking over new ways and means of organizing them leave aside the question of advancing their struggle forward.
Needless to say, but still for the benefit of adamant dogmatists, it is important to clarify that even today in the basic and infrastructural industries of public and private sectors, or wherever the industrial workers work together on a large scale within the confines of a factory, wherever the ‘Fordist assembly line’ is still present, there is no question of rejecting the revolutionary ‘potential’ of those organized workers. All these organized workers definitely cannot be called ‘elite workers’, though an upper layer is certainly elite. The remaining permanent or regular workers, owing to the better conditions of their life, are detached from the huge population of unorganized workers. Currently they are not a part of the struggle and affiliated national unions keep providing them with some relief and concessions through bargaining and limited economic agitations. But the experiences of India and the world tell us that even this population cannot escape from the blow of increasing economic crises. After the economic crisis of 2008 the organized workers too felt the heat of retrenchment-lockout, wage-cut and wage-freeze etc. and this condition exists even today to some extent. In the wake of a revolutionary crisis, this portion of the organized working class will become conscious of its historical role and is bound to come forward. The problem is that it is a very tiny part of the total working class population and is shrinking more and more. The fundamental question remains that of organizing the majority of the working class population. The second immediate problem is that the regular (organized) workers of the factories are under the bureaucratic and monopolistic control of the established trade unions as of now. This hegemony of the trade union bureaucracy not only enjoys the support of the parliamentary left parties but also that of the state. And the immediate truth of the day is that this segment of the workers is not even prepared to forge a wide unity with the majority of the working class for a radical struggle. the Revolutionary propaganda Undoubtedly needs to be carried out on a continuous basis even among this section of the working class and attempts need to be made to break the hegemony of the unions affiliated with the bourgeois parties and parliamentary left, even the possibility of working inside these unions should not be missed, but the fundamental question still remains as to how to organize the 93 percent proletariat population which is a contract, daily-wages, casual and piece-rate worker and which has a modern proletarian class outlook.
It is obvious that this working population cannot be approached at the factory gates because their locations of work keep on changing. They cannot be organized even at the level of small workshops. They can only be traced in their residential areas. There, they can be organized in unions area-wise or on the basis of their profession by forming different categories (different unions for different categories such as textile workers, engineering workers, chemical workers etc.). Irrespective of where they work, these workers have common demands such as working hours, minimum wages, E.S.I, P.F. and overtime on double rate. Apart from the demands related to wages, terms of service and the working conditions, the demands such as housing, education, health-care etc. are the demands of a political nature and are directly addressed to the state power of the ruling class. The demands such as housing, education, health-care, pension, PF etc. which would be raised by the unorganized population would obviously be addressed to the government because these people do not have a common employer. Even if the government fulfils these demands from the government exchequer, this burden would ultimately be borne by the masses because more than 90 percent of the government’s income comes from the indirect taxes extracted from the common people. Therefore it is important that the workers demand the imposition of ‘cess’ or special tax on the industrialists or on all the beneficiaries of appropriated surplus for these expenditures. The immediate demand of this majority of the working class population should be the implementation of existing labour laws and they should press for the provision of new labour laws in the long term. The demands of democratization of the structure of labour department, fixing accountability of the labour officials and bringing them under the scanner of mass supervision are also important democratic demands which are the common demands of all workers. Another such important demand is of the democratization of the labour courts, their expansion and of making them effective. It is important to bring all rural labourers within the ambit of all such demands of the unorganized labour population. At the same time even the specific demands of unorganized woman workers, migrant workers and independent daily-wage workers must be separately mentioned in the charter of the new labour movement.
The workers of the informal sector and the unorganized workers of the formal sector who are working on the invisible ‘global assembly line’ like wage slaves, think that they are very small in number, scattered and therefore weak and helpless. But this is their illusory consciousness. If this illusory consciousness is broken they can be made to realize the truth that the wage slaves having similar fate who might be toiling thousand miles apart and even in different countries have today got linked through an invisible global chain. The workers toiling in four or five Indian plants and the workers toiling in a dozen odd plants of a Japanese or Korean car manufacturing company throughout the world have a link between them despite being unaware of each other’s existence. The vanguards of the working class would have to carry out more intense, more diverse, more creative, more subtle, more extensive and more prolonged political propaganda, education and exhortation today as compared to the labour movements of twenty-first century to penetrate through this illusory consciousness of disintegration and reach the real consciousness of association. This is the biggest challenge. Only those could accomplish this who could analyse the new circumstances without any prejudice and with a scientific courage and those who could free themselves from the empirical philistinism and from the dogmatic obstinacy of blindly repeating the experiences of the past.
If the new tasks of the new circumstances are known and understood properly at the conceptual level then a situation can easily be imagined which may sound like a distant dream today. The workers of remotely situated plants of a company and those of all its ancillaries and vendors could halt production simultaneously. It can even happen in the units of a trans-national corporation that are situated in different countries. The same “Information Revolution” which has facilitated and expedited the movement of capital could become a means of halting and smashing the ‘global assembly line’ by enabling the workers to contact and coordinate the united and organized activities at the trans-national level. For this task, apart from the area wise labour unions, the unions of the workers of a particular corporate house/ trans-national corporation at the national and international level and unions of the workers of a particular sector (e.g. automobile, electronics, steel etc.) need to be set up which should include not only the regular factory workers but also all the ad-hoc/informal workers including those who work on contract and daily wages.
The globalization of the finance capital and the processes of production and exchange is in fact globalizing the labour (even though the apparent reality might be against this) and it is preparing a new ground for organizing the labour on a much larger scale (and ultimately at the international scale). A new material basis is getting prepared for the unity of the workers of the world which is independent of the will of the capitalists.
It is obvious that the realization of this material basis by the working class cannot be achieved only within the confines of the trade union movement. It would again be a trade unionism of a new kind. It is important to rebuild the trade union movement on a revolutionary basis, but it is not the end but just a beginning of our tasks. Even if the trade union movement raises some political demands apart from economic demands, there would be a limit to it. Trade union is the nursery of the labour movement but it cannot raise the consciousness of the working class to the level of an alternative socio-economic structure and the formation of a new state by crossing the boundaries of bourgeois democracy and eliminating wage slavery. The fundamental question is that of making the working class aware of its historical mission of the destruction of capitalism. This can be accomplished only by the vanguard of the working class – its revolutionary party. The fundamental question today is how and from where the process of the building of new vanguards of the new proletarian revolutionaries in the new century would begin? We believe that the people armed with the science of revolution and the scientific understanding of the circumstances would have to carry out sustained political education of the working class and political propaganda among them using different means (in which a political newspaper of the working class would have a prominent role), along with the routine economic and political struggles and the vanguard elements of the working class and its leadership would have to be developed from within the working class.
In the process of arousing, mobilizing and organizing the worker population alternative institutions like libraries, reading rooms, cultural centres, youth volunteer corps, mutual help committees, worker’s health clinics etc. need to be built in the workers neighbourhoods on the basis of mass initiative and under mass supervision. The local worker’s panchayats and not unions should have control over them. These institutions would also become a means of mass-vigilance against the bureaucratic and privilege seeking tendencies in the unions and at other places and they would also develop the wisdom of collective decision-making. Meaning hereby, that along with organizing the trade unions and the political vanguard squads of the working class, an attempt must also be made to develop such general mass-platforms which would promote mass initiative, inform the masses about the collective decision-making process and bring the leadership at every level under the scope of mass-supervision. The mass-unity formed thus would increasingly become firmer. The extensive mass-unity is the first condition for countering the attack of capital and its state-power. Along with the advancement of technology and the change in the capitalistic production process the modus-operandi of bourgeois states has also become more advanced today. Therefore new ways and means of organizing extensive mass-unity and reinforcing it have to be evolved.