India: contradictions of the powder-keg

The Curse of India’s Growth

Written by Lal Khan
Monday, 06 December 2010

For more than two decades society has been under a kind of Orwellian spell where almost everything written or said in the mainstream media and intellectual circles in fact means its opposite. Clichés like “end of history”, “socialism has failed”, “capitalism has lifted millions out of poverty”, etc., reek of a moral and ethical decline of the system and society as a whole.

The most significant case in point is India. Its “spectacular growth rates” and its economic exuberance have been and are being glorified by the analysts and commentators. All this deafening noise about the “largest democracy in the world” is repeated over and over again as if to hide the stark realities that afflict Indian society today.

India has more billionaires than Japan yet almost half of world’s poor inhabits this “largest democracy”. For the last decade India’s growth rate has been around 8-9 percent, and yet of its 1.2 billion people 85 percent, or 900 million, live on less then 45 cents a day according to Newsweek. A decade ago these destitute souls were 770 million. This is a graphic illustration of the character of the “high growth rates” in these countries, where they have an inverse effect on the living conditions of the masses. It is the organic crisis of a decaying capitalism that has failed to develop society.

In another article Jawed Naqvi narrates an anecdote that elaborates on the plight of the masses in India. “In one of the visits to the sight of the Narmada anti-dam demonstrations led by Mehda Patkar, a woman protester was carrying a bottle of water to beat the scorching heat. She was surprised when some of the boys asked her what she was carrying in the plastic bottle. The boys simply refused to believe that it was water and nothing else… One of the boys produced his own version of water, a bottle of brown liquid, and insisted that water was brown and not transparent”.

The Times of India wrote, “Indians have learnt to live with pollution inhaling more particles each day than a chain smoker in the west. India’s cities are amongst the world’s dirtiest”.

Nationalism, cricket and democracy are the real opium for the Indian masses. The real face of its democracy begins to emerge when one takes a peep at the backgrounds of its parliamentarians. Three hundred of its 543 members are billionaires, while 180 are millionaires. More than 150 have criminal charges against them. In the last Lok Sabha there were 128.

A 2009 article in The Guardian, “In an election for the masses the rich will be the winners”, elaborates on India’s politics, “Party manifestos don’t directly address questions about acute poverty, lack of healthcare, education, sanitation or malnutrition which affects more than half of India’s children. Most parties don’t even make pledges on redistribution… Remarkably no party, not even the left, demands that the rich be taxed adequately… The affluent in India pay among the world’s lowest tax rates…” (21 April 2009)

Ministries are traded and the giant corporate houses buy them for their economic gains. The richest man in India, Mukesh Ambanis, is reported to have said recently that “Congress” was his “Dukaan” [workshop]. The same goes for most mainstream parties. India remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world. According to the Swiss Banking Association’s 2006 annual report, the top five depositors by nationalities were India: $1,456bn, Russia: $470bn, UK: $390bn, Ukraine: $100bn and China: $96bn. Graft in India is once again shaking the incumbent Congress-led dispensation. One of India’s top tycoon’s, Rattan Tata, is reported to have said that he was put off launching a domestic airline because of the “expectations of bribes” by the officials. The latest scandal involving ministers and chauvinist media hawks, in telecoms, is said to be worth more than $40bn. The “Global Financial Integrity” has estimated a loss of $460bn in illicit financial flows through India’s corruption since 1948.

In spite of India’s excruciating poverty, the regime has been spending extravagantly on arms purchases. Since 2005 India has been the biggest arms buyer among the developing nations. This year it has further increased its military spending by twenty percent. The astronomical costs of its nuclear programme have been an even greater scourge for the teeming millions.

Sixty three years after bloody partition, independent India has brought even greater misery on the inhabitants of this tragic land. The ruling classes have failed to carry through the tasks of the national democratic revolution. There nationalism has been a mere deception. Lakshmi Mithal, the largest steel producer in the world, who owns Arcelor Mittal conglomerate, has hardly a single foundry in India.

Superstition, black magic and witchcraft are endemic. Even the largest corporate magnates have astrologers sitting on their board of directors. The secularism of the Indian state is a facade. Religious obscurantism and bigotry are poisoning politics and society. The cohesion of the nation has started to fall apart and is in a phase of disintegration. In large swathes of India the writ of the state has been devoured. From Kashmir to Manipur, Assam and Orissa, the separatist forces are gaining support.

The social and physical infrastructure is a graphic expression of the combined and uneven development of capitalism. The ultra-modernity has failed to uplift massive regions from extreme primitiveness. The whole economic cycle excludes more than two thirds of the population and the market dynamics are based on a middle class of about 250 million. It is a substantial base but devoid of the vast majority of the population. Nehruvian socialism failed in its Keynesianism to develop a modern industrial society. “Trickle down economics” has been an even greater disaster for the masses.

The Indian proletariat has striven time and again to launch valiant movements to overthrow this rotten Indian capitalism. Its has been betrayed again and again. The Stalinist leadership of India’s mass communist parties has been hamstrung by its redundant ideology of the “two stages” and its parliamentary cretinism. At crucial junctures of revolutionary situations the left leaders have capitulated to the Indian bourgeoisie whose progressiveness was merely a mirage.

Today, however, there is ferment in the ranks of these left parties. The workers and the youth are yearning for a revolutionary socialist alternative. Maoism and guerilla tactics have revealed their failure in a huge industrial society. It is the mighty Indian proletariat that has to lead the revolution. And a Marxist leadership will ensure its victory.

SZ on "climate change" - empty, with loftiness of tone

December 2, 2010

The End of Nature

By SLAVOJ ZIZEK

The big ecological disasters of 2010 fit into the ancient cosmological model, in which the universe is made up of four basic elements: AIR, volcanic ash clouds from Iceland immobilizing airline traffic over Europe; EARTH, mudslides and earthquakes in China; FIRE, rendering Moscow almost unlivable; WATER, the tsunami in Indonesia, floods displacing millions in Pakistan.

Such recourse to traditional wisdom offers no true insight into the mysteries of our wild Mother Nature’s whims, however. It’s a consolation device, really, allowing us to avoid the question we all want to ask: Will more events of such magnitude turn up on nature’s agenda for 2011?

In our disenchanted, post-religious, ultra-technological era, catastrophes can no longer be rendered meaningful as part of a natural cycle or as an expression of divine wrath. Ecological catastrophes — which we can view continually and close-up, thanks to our 24/7 plugged-in world — become the meaningless intrusions of a blind, destructive rage. It’s as if we are witnessing the end of nature.

Today we look to scientific experts to know all. But they do not, and therein lies the problem. Science has transformed itself into specialized knowledge, offering an inconsistent array of conflicting explanations called “expert opinions.” But if we blame the scientific-technological civilization for many of our difficulties, we cannot do without that same science to fix the damage — only scientists, after all, can “see” the ozone hole. Or, as a line from Wagner’s “Parsifal” puts it, “The wound can only be healed by the spear that made it.” There is no way back to pre-scientific holistic wisdom, to the world of Earth, Wind, Air and Fire.

While science can help us, it can’t do the whole job. Instead of looking to science to stop our world from ending, we need to look at ourselves and learn to imagine and create a new world. At least for those of us in the West, it’s difficult to accept being passive observers who must sit and watch as our fates are revealed.

Enter the perverse pleasure of premature martyrdom: “We offended Mother Nature, so we are getting what we deserve!” It’s deceptively reassuring to be ready to assume guilt for the threats to our environment. If we are guilty, then it all depends on us; we can save ourselves simply by changing our lives. We frantically and obsessively recycle old paper, buy organic food — whatever, just so we can be sure we are doing something, making our contribution.

But like the anthropomorphic universe, magically designed for man’s comfort, the so-called balance of nature, which humankind brutally destroys with its hubris, is a myth. Catastrophes are part of natural history. The fact that ash from a modest volcanic outburst in Iceland grounded most of the planes in Europe is a much-needed reminder of how we, humans, with our tremendous power over nature, are nothing but one of the living species on Earth, depending on the delicate balance of its elements.

So what might the future hold? One thing is clear: We should accustom ourselves to a much more nomadic way of life. Gradual or sudden change in our environment, about which science can do little more than offer a warning, may force unheard-of social and cultural transformations. Suppose a new volcanic eruption makes a place uninhabitable: Where will the inhabitants find a home? In the past, large population movements were spontaneous processes, full of suffering and loss of civilizations. Today, when weapons of mass destruction are available not only to states but even to local groups, humanity simply can’t afford a spontaneous population exchange.

What this means is that new forms of global cooperation, which do not depend on the market or on diplomatic negotiations, must be invented. Is this an impossible dream?

The impossible and the possible are simultaneously bursting into excess. In the realms of personal freedom and scientific technology, the impossible is more and more possible. We can entertain the prospect of enhancing our physical and psychic abilities; of manipulating our biological traits via interventions into the genome; of achieving the tech-gnostic dream of immortality by encoding our distinguishing traits and feeding the composite of our identities into a computer program.

When it comes to socioeconomic relations, however, we perceive our era as one of maturity, and thus acceptance. With the collapse of Communism, we abandoned the old millenarian utopian dreams and accepted the constraints of reality — that is, capitalist socioeconomic reality — with all its impossibilities. We cannot engage in large collective acts, which necessarily end in totalitarian terror. We cannot cling to the old welfare state, which makes us noncompetitive and leads to economic crisis. We cannot isolate ourselves from the global market.

For us, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than serious social change. Witness the numerous blockbusters about global catastrophe and the conspicuous absence of films about alternate societies.

Maybe it’s time to reverse our concept of what is possible and what isn’t; maybe we should accept the impossibility of omnipotent immortality and consider the possibility of radical social change. If nature is no longer a stable order on which we can rely, then our society should also change if we want to survive in a nature that is no longer the good caring mother, but a pale and indifferent one.

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic. He is a scholar or visiting professor at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, the European Graduate School in Switzerland and a number of American universities.

Defending revolutionary conquests of USSR socialism

JOHN REES, COALITION OF RESISTANCE CONFERENCE, 27.November 2010

Election 2010 - a Marxist view

Do the 2010 elections really represent a right turn in US politics?

by John Leslie

Following the Republican victory in last month’s mid-term election, most of the media have pointed to a right turn in U.S. politics. They assume that working people showed by their vote that they reject “big government” and the “liberal” policies of the Obama administration.

Some Republicans claim a “mandate” for their reactionary policies, but other, more sober, members of the GOP caution against over generalizing.

Some have said that this rightward shift represents a white reaction to the first Black President. Racist attitudes toward Barak Obama are a reality. But how do we explain the fact that many white people who voted for Obama in 2008 repudiated the Democrats in 2010? Were they racist in 2010 but not in ’08?

The ultra-right Tea Party did secure a high level of influence in the Republican Party. The Tea Party leadership rests in the hands of reactionary and even white racist forces; but the base of the movement is more complex. Many at the base are older, white “middle class” people concerned with rising taxes, who were manipulated by claims of a “government takeover of health care” and government-controlled “death panels.” Some of them, because of their reliance on government programs like Medicare and Social Security, might be won to a broad defense of these programs against the coming wave of austerity measures and cutbacks.

The truth is that both capitalist parties campaigned on a program of austerity and budget cutting. This goes for the incoming “liberal” Democratic governors of California and New York—Brown and Cuomo. It should also be noted that no major party candidates made an issue of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats could have urged a shifting of war dollars to creating jobs at home, funding education and health care, and rebuilding the infrastructure, but that was not on their pro-corporate, pro-imperialist agenda.

The Democrats have accommodated themselves to right-wing attacks on Muslims and stepped up attacks on immigrant workers. For example, an incumbent Democratic state representative in Pennsylvania went so far as to visit construction sites to check the papers of workers. Democrats included language about “getting tough” with so-called illegal aliens in their campaigns.

Polls show that the Tea Party has the support of about 18% of the population. Interestingly, other polls show that about 30% of the U.S. population thinks that socialism is a good idea. Of course, many of these folks don’t understand what socialism means. This represents an opportunity to explain more fully what the socialist alternative would look like.

These numbers show not so much a rightward swing in U.S. politics as a lack of clarity amongst working people and the middle classes. The election does not represent a massive turn into the Republican Party. Instead, it appears that the mass base of the Democrats, demoralized and unmotivated, stayed home. On the other side, the ultra-right turned out its supporters. But the truth is that only 40% of the electorate bothered to vote, which shows a lack of faith in either capitalist party to solve the problems we face.

Without a firm political anchor in a working-class program and organization, voters will always tend to swing back and forth to punish those in power. I would caution against writing a premature obituary for the Democrats. In 2006, voters rejected the policies of the GOP by giving the Democrats a majority in both the Senate and the House. This majority was further enhanced in the 2008 election when Obama was elected. Afterward, the talking heads on TV talked about the “end” of the Republican Party and other such nonsense.

This trend shows that neither capitalist party is capable of offering any solutions to the crisis; only a continuation of war and austerity. This is why we have to link the “war at home” (one-sided class war against workers and the oppressed) and the war over there. This is what makes the building of the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) so crucial. The contradictions of this system are sharpening, and we are presented with the opportunity to build a fightback on issues that millions of working people feel are important to their lives.

We also need an uncompromising fight for independence from the parties of the ruling class. The Democrats are as much a part of the institutional set-up of U.S. capitalism as the Republicans. While the Republicans tend to be more reactionary on the surface, the Democrats have the function of disorienting and confusing opposition. They attempt to draw the leadership of mass movements into a relationship based on “access” and “influence,” and the working class gets sold out. To put it bluntly; the Democratic Party is where the peoples’ movements go to die.

In the recent election, the pro-Democratic Party “left” tried to play up the boogieman of an impending right-wing takeover led by the likes of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin. But how do we stop the far right? Certainly not by accommodating ourselves to their program at every turn.

After the election defeat, Obama said he hoped to work with the Republicans to move things forward. He spoke favorably about seeking a “bipartisan” unity to balance the budget and “fix” programs like Social Security. Concretely, this means an all-out offensive against programs that millions of people depend on. This is the purpose of the Obama Deficit Commission—to sell major cuts in programs like Social Security and Medicare in the name of fiscal responsibility. Forget raising taxes on the rich or solutions that favor working people.

More than anything, this election reflected a reaction by the mass of voters to the perceived inaction of the party that promised “change” and then did little to achieve it. Millions have lost jobs and millions more fear the loss of their jobs. They see the foreclosure crisis and bank bailouts while nothing is done for the most vulnerable. They see an economy that creates few jobs; and those it does create are low-wage, no benefit jobs—often part time.

They see a union movement that gives millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours to the Democrats but has done little to oppose concessions and trade deals or to defend the interests of the broader working class. There was no fight for EFCA, no fight for a substantial increase in the minimum wage, no mobilization for a real health care bill and no opposition to the wars that are draining this economy. After all, we can’t embarrass our “friends” the Democrats!

Bourgeois elections decide very little. The mass activity of the working class and the oppressed on the other 364 days of the year is what makes the difference. The way forward is not easy. We have several key interlinked tasks ahead of us—to build a mass antiwar movement that ties the social and economic crisis at home to the wars over there, to rebuild a class-struggle wing in the unions, and ultimately to form a mass party of working people and the oppressed that is capable of struggling for political power.

US economy plays pivotal role in world imperialist system

from http://www.marxmail.org/msg85029.html

The Fed has released the details of all its transactions/programs to combat
the great meltdown. It's worth a close look in that a) the Fed unleashes a
flow of about $3.3 trillion into the economy, and not just the US economy,
but the international capitalist economy and b) the Fed's actions underpin
central banks in Europe and Asia, as well as commercial banks.

So... so right before the meltdown, and again recently, many talk about the
US being replaced by... China, or China + Brazil, or BRIC, or BRIC + EU.
This newly released information shows how central, how primary, the US
remains to the functioning of capitalism globally.

Does anyone think Brazil, China, Russia, the EU-- or any combination
thereof-- not only has the resources, but would accept the responsibility
for keeping this entire house of cards from collapsing?

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/reform_transaction.htm

The Wolfe Tones - Fenian Record Player