CHARU MAZUMDAR
Translated from the Bengali weekly Deshabrati, March 12. 1970.
From Liberation, Vol. III., No. 5 (March 1970).
Today, the masses of workers should think of the hundreds of millions of poor and landless peasants who have been exploited and oppressed for centuries and who now find their conditions unendurable. The working class can earn for itself a status of dignity in society, a status which it is entitled to as the producer of wealth, only by overthrowing the crushing burden of exploitation which is weighing down heavily upon the poor and landless peasants. Once the workers and the peasants, the producers of wealth, are united, a tremendous force will be generated. It is this powerful force that will make it possible to accomplish the people’s democratic revolution, and then to establish the socialist system in India by destroying the exploiters and the system of exploitation. It is the working class that must shoulder the responsibility of realizing this possibility and must assume the leadership. The working class can fulfil this task only by grasping firmly Mao Testung Thought and by integrating with the poor and landless peasants in the countryside and participating in the armed peasant struggle. Only thus can the working class liberate itself. This is because the working class can liberate itself only by liberating the exploited masses.
The working class struggle is a struggle for asserting its dignity and for establishing social justice. The gravest crime of the revisionists is that they try to keep the working class — the class that must lead the revolution — confined within the four walls of economic struggles. To serve the interests of their masters — the reactionary ruling class — the revisionists try to make the working class forget that it has to shoulder its sacred task of leading the revolution.
The capitalists say to the workers: “Do not struggle.” But the working class is fully aware that struggle is the law of life. That is why it is the working class that is and will continue to be in the forefront of every kind of struggle. Mao Tsetung Thought is the ideology of the working class. Therefore, it is the working class that must shoulder the responsibility of developing people’s war in the countryside. The revolutionary workers can never remain passive in the face of the attacks of the capitalists. To avenge every attack of the enemy is a necessary virtues of a revolutionary. At a time when the capitalists use lock-out and closure as their weapons, general strike naturally loses much of its effectiveness. So, the working class must itself invent new tactics and find new ways of launching counter-attacks. It is the revolutionary workers who” invented and developed the weapon of gherao[1]. But the revisionists have turned it into satyagraha.[2] Satyagraha is the wailing of the weak and the supplication of the cowardly. This is the reason why the revolutionary workers despise satyagraha.
The worker does not fear to face death, and has never lagged behind in making sacrifices. The road to victory in the revolution is paved with the sacrifices made by hundreds of thousands of people. The working class as the leader of the revolution should set new, glorious examples of making sacrifice. The Indian workers have laid down many lives for the cause of India’s liberation and have a glorious history of innumerable struggles. The working class has always marched ahead along the path crimson with the blood of martyrs. It is only because the revisionists diverted the working class from this path that hundreds of millions of the Indian people are still suffering under the crushing weight of cruel exploitation and oppression.
Notes :
1. Gherao (literally means “to encircle”) is a militant form of workers’ struggle in which capitalists and bureaucrats are forcibly kept confined to make them concede the workers’ demands. It is now widely used by the toiling people and students all over India.
2. A reactionary form of struggle introduced by Gandhi; the people taking part in it are forbidden to use any kind of force against the enemy and are required to remain passive and non-violent in the face of counter-revolutionary violence.
Today the Indian working class, armed with the weapon of Mao Tsetung Thought, has become invincible. The liberation of the vast millions of the Indian people is near. The peasant revolutionary struggle is already raging in the countryside. Led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the poor and landless peasants are setting new glorious examples of sacrifice and developing people’s war in various states of India. This revolutionary war waged by the poor and landless peasants is striking at the foundation of the system of exploitation, and the entire structure built on this foundation is tottering. Stricken with panic the ruling class is at its wit’s end, and a fierce dog-fight is going on among its members in order to save their own skin. The anger of the masses is bursting forth throughout the vast expanse of India, and they have become vocal in their hatred for the ruling class.
In this excellent revolutionary situation that now prevails in India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) calls upon the working class: Let hatred for the exploiters burn fiercely in your hearts; wake up to your responsibility; set examples as befit you, who are the vanguard of revolution; rally under the leadership of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)—the Party of the working class; march resolutely onward along the path of struggle. Victory certainly belongs to us !
Thrown into confusion by severe crises, US imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism are trying to get out of them by launching aggression against the great socialist China. They are out to turn India into their base for this aggression. They will not only impose the crushing burden of their war of aggression against China on the 500 million Indian people, but will also use the Indian people as their cannon-fodder. If US imperialism and social-imperialism succeed in launching aggression against China, a great responsibility will fall on the shoulders of India’s working class. The working class of India will then fulfil its glorious role and bury imperialism and social-imperialism in the soil of India by developing the revolutionary war that is now raging. Then, the system of imperialist exploitation will be destroyed throughout the world and the conquest of the world by socialism will become a reality.
Chairman Mao himself is the great helmsman directing this great affair of world revolution. And it is he who has given the call to prepare for waging revolutionary war and destroying the imperialist system. In response to this stirring call the working class in various countries of the world is on the march. There can be no doubt that the working class of India will march onward alongside the workers of the rest of the world in fulfilling the most sacred task of mankind. It is Chairman Mao who is personally directing this war. Hence, victory certainly belongs to us!
