CHARU MAZUMDAR
[At a recent meeting of Party comrades who are working among the workers, Comrade Charu Majumdar laid down the tasks before them. We publish below the notes taken at the meeting. The notes are approved by Comrade Charu Majumdar — Editor, Liberation].
Translated from the Bengali weekly Deshabrati, March 12, 1970.
From Liberation, Vol. III, No. 5 (March 1970).
The Party is the organization of the workers to overthrow the class enemy by fighting offensive battles, while the trade union is their organization to fight defensive battles against the attacks of the class enemy. But, today, it is not possible for them to defend themselves with the trade union organization. Hence, it is not our task either to organize trade unions or to bring them under our control or to bother ourselves about the trade union elections. Our task is to build secret party organizations among the workers.
But the trade unions are there and they will continue to exist and their leadership will continue to be mainly in the hands of the revisionists. Moreover, struggles will continue to take place through the trade unions and, since workers are by their very nature fighters, they will participate in these struggles also. Even though they know that, today, victory in the trade union struggle is not assured and that the revisionists will betray them, still they will participate in these struggles. We can never oppose any struggle of the workers against their class enemy. Such opposition is an expression of idealist petty bourgeois thinking. We shall not make the workers dependent on us for their struggles for economic demands or against any attack of the capitalists; we should inspire them with revolutionary politics so that they take the initiative independently. We should never make the workers mere followers of our Party cadres, nor jump in to lead them.
We should not prevent the workers from organizing trade unions where there is none. The trade union struggles will be carried on by the ordinary workers and our Party cadres should not involve themselves in such struggles. The task of our cadres is to propagate revolutionary politics and build secret Party organizations. Once we are able through this work to create confidence among the ordinary workers and help them take the initiative, individuals from among them will come forward to give competent leadership in trade union struggles also and fight the revisionists even in that sphere. This is not only desirable but also possible. But we should keep watch over them also and if we find any revisionist tendency in them we should make other workers criticize them. The Party cadres, however, should never involve themselves in such struggles. If anyone thinks that the workers may become distrustful of the Party cadre because he avoids taking responsibility directly on himself but only encourages the workers to advance to struggle themselves, then it must be said that the person who thinks like this has no experience whatsoever of the nature of the workers.
In this respect we must keep in mind two things relating to the Party. First, If and when any local Party unit considers it necessary to oppose any strike or hartal called or organized by the revisionists, it must inform the higher Party committee about this, and the final decision in this respect can be taken by the higher committee alone. Secondly, a time may come or an occasion may arise when we may have to oppose a general strike called by the revisionists. Only the Central Committee of the Party, and none else, is competent to take decisions in such cases.
In short, we certainly cannot foster any anti-struggle attitude among the revolutionaries and the workers in the name of fighting the revisionists because that will be disastrous.
While we should encourage the workers in any struggle they wage, we must, nonetheless, constantly explain to them that, today, the weapons like hartals and strikes have become largely blunted in dealing with the attacks of the organized capitalist class (such as lock-out, lay-off, closure, etc.). Today, the struggles can no longer develop peacefully or without bloodshed. To develop, the struggles must take the forms of gherao, clash with the police and the capitalists, barricade fights, annihilating the class enemies and their agents, etc., according to the given conditions. The revisionists are turning gherao into satyagraha; we must turn gherao into what it really is so that it can strike terror into the hearts of the capitalists. This will create tremendous enthusiasm among the workers, and their solidarity will grow at an accelerated tempo. The working class, through such actions, will then invent newer ways of waging struggle. The Party will not invent them for the workers but will give the workers revolutionary politics and it is they who, with the help of this politics, will themselves invent them. In fact, the workers’ struggle In India will continue for some time on these two lines: one, on the conventional line under the leadership of the revisionists; and, two, on the new line permanently and firmly.
In spite of its revisionist leadership, the Indian working class has built some kind of workers’ unity through numerous bloody battles. But, today, the revisionists are breaking even that unity by setting one section of the workers against another and are shamelessly parading this dirty crime of theirs as a sacred political task. As a result, our Party has to shoulder a heavy responsibility, the responsibility of building up the revolutionary unity of the workers. This unity can be built by gradually developing the new line while not rejecting the old line. Moreover, we must lay stress on solidarity actions.
We must be particularly concerned about organizing demonstrations or other kinds of movements in support of the workers wherever and in whatever enterprises they are attacked. It is irrelevant to consider what kind of leaders are leading them or to which party the workers of the affected union owe allegiance. The revolutionary workers must never involve themselves in fighting the other workers because some revisionist slogans are raised by the latter in their demonstration. It may happen during a solidarity movement that the revisionist leadership of a union, in which there are workers who are with us, is refusing to give the call for struggle even when that union is under attack. In such a situation the Party Committee should, on its own initiative, organize struggles, such as demonstration, even if it can rally only a very small number of workers for this purpose, though we generally do not organize demonstrations unless we can mobilize at least a thousand or so workers. Especially when any police repression takes place against the students, we must organize workers’ demonstrations in support of them, even if we can mobilize only 100 or even less, say 15 or 20 workers, for this purpose. In a situation like this we must be prepared to clash with the police, if necessary. It is also imperative to organize solidarity movements to resist the attacks of the ruling class against the other oppressed classes or sections of the society. The workers can rid themselves of their self-interest through such solidarity movements which make them conscious of their responsibility as the leader of the other oppressed classes. The revolutionary working class movement is an international movement. So, the working class must organize solidarity movements on various international issues as well. For instance, it is absolutely indispensable for the workers to organize solidarity movements now against the anti-China war-plots.
But in working on this new line the Party cadres must firmly grasp the revolutionary politics; otherwise, they may commit a serious deviation, namely, one of concentrating on the militant workers’ struggle in the cities and withdrawing from the struggle in the countryside, and thus blunting the edge of the Party’s ideological and propaganda campaign. So, the working class struggle in the cities may easily degenerate into militant economic struggle, if we start the struggle on the new line without firmly grasping the politics. In fact, this is the reason why the central leadership of the Party did not lay down this new line before the comrades earlier. Now that the Party comrades have gained some experience through political work and our political propaganda rests on a fairly strong basis, this line is being laid down. Even as we do it, we must remain very alert against this danger.
Our propaganda work among the workers still suffers from some shortcomings. This is why, though the majority of the most conscious and most militant workers are under our influence, very few among them are coming forward to join the peasant armed struggle in the rural areas. This is due to the fact that in many cases we try to inspire the workers to participate in revolutionary work by holding out before them the prospect of future economic gains. For example, they are told that their material hardships can be put an end to only when the agrarian revolution is completed. The first thing that can be said about it is that this is false. Because, after the revolution the worker will have to undergo a long period of hardship in the broad interests of the country, the people and the revolution, and also because he is the leader of the revolution. Secondly, instead of winning over the worker to the politics of revolutionary sacrifice, it instils in him the revisionist politics of self-aggrandizement so that he feels inclined to remain in the city merely as a passive supporter of the agrarian revolutionary struggle rather than to go to the countryside prepared to sacrifice his all and integrate with the peasant in order to participate in the rural revolutionary struggle. But if we bring the revolutionary politics directly to the worker, the result will be immediate; and we must do exactly this.
There is one more thing that we have failed to do : we do not rouse in the worker his sense of dignity. The worker, irrespective of his party affiliation, carries a sense of indignity for having to slave away for the capitalist, since it is he, the worker, who produces everything with his own hands and yet has to suffer the indignity of the capitalists and bureaucrats lording it over him. Now, once we are able to rouse his sense of dignity by giving him the revolutionary politics, it would be easier for him to smash the trammels of economism that hold him down now, and then he would become a terror to the capitalist with his daring and boldness. He would not only rid himself of his fear of losing his job but would also conquer the fear of death. If he loses his job in upholding his dignity he would either become a good Party organizer in the city or go to the countryside to join the peasant revolutionary struggle.
Once the worker in the city is inspired with the revolutionary politics he would become daring and start militant struggles at first in the industrial areas and may even start killing class enemies and their agents. But since Mao Tsetung Thought would make it clear to him that the peasants are fighting his battle for the seizure of political power in the countryside where the enemy is weak, he would go to the countryside to join that battle. Our party organizations should initiate and promote struggles on this line.
There is another grave shortcoming in our political propaganda work, namely, we do not generally help the workers read Quotations from Chairman Mao Testung. We are hesitant about letting the workers get a copy of this book. However, we are sure to get wonderful results once we put our reliance on the natural revolutionary consciousness of the worker and provide him with a copy of this book.
