WHEN THE LEFT GETS IT WRONG
We all the know the story. A government sets up a blandly named ‘Export Processing Zone’ within it trade union rights and other forms of worker protection are suspended. Workers often young women are paid a few cents an hour for trainers or clothes that retail for big dollars. Multinationals are tempted in by near zero labour costs and jobs sucked out from countries and regions that treat workers like human beings instead of little more than slaves. Along with appalling working conditions and high levels of pollution, come land seizures, the world over peasants are turfed off their plots in corrupt land deals and pushed into destitution.
It makes you want, in a world where capitalism rules, to find a discarded statue of Karl Marx and kiss it. However in West Bengal the ruling Marxists in a post-Maoist guise, are selling out the peasants and welcoming in the multinationals. When the left act just like the right, the political choice becomes seemingly impossible. In Nandigram in West Bengal, the Communist Party(M), originally a pro Mao splinter, which has been in power for decades, has seized land from peasants to make way for an Indonesian chemical works. The peasants have resisted and have been attacked and even killed by ruling party militants.
‘This month, communist party cadres broke that resistance by forcing their way in and shooting at villagers, locals said. Opposition parties said innocent villagers who fought communist cadres had been killed and their bodies carried away.
This week in a further embarrassment for the communists, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee admitted that Nandigram had been a “political and administrative failure.”
Leftist intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali have supported the government, claiming that it is wrong given the dominance of Bush to divide a socialist party that oppose the Iraq War. Even the West Bengal feminists are divided despite allegations of rape at Nandigram, part of the process of softening up the peasants to push down protest.
It doesn’t stop with the violence at Nandigram. The Indian peoples car the Nano Tata, which have heard so much about, is also built in a factory in West Bengal, guess what local peasants say their land has been taken illegally to build it. So if you have been intrigued to see Indian protesters burning effigies of the Nano, you now know that they are not local members of West Bengal Greenpeace. The Times of India report that protesters in New Delhi had t-shirt with the slogan “The ($2,500) car has Singur people’s blood on it.”
When the left gets if wrong, it is vital that those of us on the left make our voices heard, politics involves difficult choices and the temptation is to remain silent in a world where the left is weak globally. But not to speak out is simply wrong, I support the peasants whose land has been seized and have even died for speaking out.
Can you imagine the wage levels needed to produce a car at 2,500 bucks!
And no, knowing Tata, this won’t be a “lights out” manufacturing operation either (although the workers probably do have similar rights and priviledges to robots).
Thank you for raising this!
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 21 January, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
There was actually a disgraceful Open Letter signed by Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Michael Albert, Howard Zinn, Victoria Britain calling for left Unity on the Indian left.
I should put on record that most of the above thinkers I usually think adopt very sharp political positions, but to call for unity in the context of a “Left” party massacring workers resisting neoliberal reforms and carrying out rapes is shocking!
The letter was used (as obviously it would) to prop up the credibility of the CPI(M) and was the kind of apologia you would expect for a similar event, say Soviet tanks rolling into Prague, from stalinist hacks.
Good reply to Tariq Ali:
http://indiainteracts.com/members/2007/11/24/Nandigram-An-Open-Letter-to-Tariq-Ali/
Comment by Adamski — 21 January, 2008 @ 6:05 pm
Another excellent reply to Ali et al:
http://www.kafila.org/2007/11/22/chomsky-zinn-tariq-ali-and-the-seductions-of-stalinism/
I have to confess I was astonished by Tariq Ali whose eloquence I am a fan of and Chomsky put their names to such a appalling letter.
Comment by Adamski — 21 January, 2008 @ 6:17 pm
Just as a matter of record on Mary Rizzos nonsense.
This site ranks at 286,152
Her racist blog at 1,426,575.
She’s deluded.
Comment by tim — 21 January, 2008 @ 6:18 pm
Reply to criticisms by Michael Albert, Tariq Ali, Akeel Bilgrami, Victoria Brittain, Noam Chomsky, Charles Derber, Stephen Shalom
We are taken aback by a widespread reaction to a statement we made with the best of intentions, imploring a restoration of unity among the left forces in India –a reaction that seems to assume that such an appeal to overcome divisions among the left could only amount to supporting a very specific section of the CPM in West Bengal. Our statement did not lend support to the CPM’s actions in Nandigram or its recent economic policies in West Bengal, nor was that our intention. On the contrary, we asserted, in solidarity with its Left critics both inside and outside the party, that we found them tragically wrong. Our hope was that Left critics would view their task as one of putting pressure on the CPM in West Bengal to correct and improve its policies and its habits of governance, rather than dismiss it wholesale as an unredeemable party. We felt that we could hope for such a thing, of such a return to the laudable traditions of a party that once brought extensive land reforms to the state of West Bengal and that had kept communal tensions in abeyance for decades in that state. This, rather than any exculpation of its various recent policies and actions, is what we intended by our hopes for ‘unity’ among the left forces.
We realize now that it is perhaps not possible to expect the Left critics of the CPM to overcome the deep disappointment, indeed hostility, they have come to feel towards it, unless the CPM itself takes some initiative against that sense of disappointment. We hope that the CPM in West Bengal will show the largeness of mind to take such an initiative by restoring the morale as well as the welfare of the dispossessed people of Nandigram through the humane governance of their region, so that the left forces can then unite and focus on the more fundamental issues that confront the Left as a whole, in particular focus on the task of providing with just and imaginative measures an alternative to neo-liberal capitalism that has caused so much suffering to the poor and working people in India.
Comment by Andy — 21 January, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
Yeah, I read the reply and it was lame. Take this bit:
“Our hope was that Left critics would view their task as one of putting pressure on the CPM in West Bengal to correct and improve its policies and its habits of governance, rather than dismiss it wholesale as an unredeemable party. We felt that we could hope for such a thing, of such a return to the laudable traditions of a party that once brought extensive land reforms to the state of West Bengal and that had kept communal tensions in abeyance for decades in that state. This, rather than any exculpation of its various recent policies and actions, is what we intended by our hopes for ‘unity’ among the left forces.”
After Nandigram, the CPM is unredeemable. In the context, the statement could not be seen as other than lending support to the CPM. There is a need for left unity in India and a left alternative to the VJP. But it has to take place through a process of left allignment that might involve activists from the CPM tradition but outside of the structures of that party.
Comment by Adamski — 21 January, 2008 @ 6:58 pm
By the way.
A big welcome to Derek Wall as a new contributor to the SU blog.
Comment by Andy — 21 January, 2008 @ 7:37 pm
LETTER FROM ARUNDHATI ROY AND OTHERS
We read with growing dismay the statement signed by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and others advising those opposing the CPI(M)’s pro-capitalist policies in West Bengal not to “split the Left” in the face of American imperialism. We believe that for some of the signatories, their distance from events in India has resulted in their falling prey to a CPI(M) public relations coup and that they may have signed the statement without fully realising the import of it and what it means here in India, not just in Bengal.
We cannot believe that many of the signatories whom we know personally, and whose work we respect, share the values of the CPI(M) - to “share similar values” with the party today is to stand for unbridled capitalist development, nuclear energy at the cost of both ecological concerns and mass displacement of people (the planned nuclear plant at Haripur, West Bengal), and the Stalinist arrogance that the party knows what “the people” need better than the people themselves. Moreover, the violence that has been perpetrated by CPI(M) cadres to browbeat the peasants into submission, including time-tested weapons like rape, demonstrate that this “Left” shares little with the Left ideals that we cherish.
Over the last decade, the policies of the Left Front government in West Bengal have become virtually indistinguishable from those of other parties committed to the neoliberal agenda. Indeed, “the important experiments undertaken in the State” – the land reforms referred to in the statement - are being rapidly reversed. According to figures provided by the West Bengal state secretary for land reforms, over the past five years there has been a massive increase of landless peasants in the state due to government acquisition of land cheaply for handing over to corporations and developing posh upper class neighbourhoods.
We urge our friends to take very seriously the fact that all over the country, democratic rights groups, activists and intellectuals of impeccable democratic credentials have come out in full support of the Nandigram struggle.
The statement reiterates the CPI(M)’s claim that “there will be no chemical hub” in Nandigram, but this assurance is itself deliberately misleading. This is the explanation repeatedly offered by CPI(M) for the first round of resistance in Nandigram – that people reacted to a baseless rumour that there would be land acquisitions in the area. In fact, as the Chief Minister himself conceded in the State Assembly, it was no rumour but a notification issued by the Haldia Development Authority on January 2, 2007 indicating the approximate size and location of the projected SEZ, which triggered the turmoil.
The major factor shaping popular reaction to the notification was Singur.
Singur was the chronicle of the fate foretold for Nandigram. There, land was acquired in most cases without the consent of peasant-owners and at gun-point (terrorizing people is one way of obtaining their consent), under the colonial Land Acquisition Act (1894). That land is now under the control of the industrial house of the Tatas, cordoned off and policed by the state police of West Bengal. The dispossessed villagers are lost to history. A fortunate few among them will become wage slaves of the Tatas on the land on which they were once owners.
While the CPM-led West Bengal government has announced that it will not go ahead with the chemical hub without the consent of the people of Nandigram, it has not announced any plans of withdrawing its commitment to the neo-liberal development model. It has not announced the shelving of plans to create Special Economic Zones. It has not withdrawn its invitation to Dow Chemicals (formerly known as Union Carbide, the corporation responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Bhopal) to invest in West Bengal. In other words, there are many more Nandigrams waiting to happen.
In any case, the reason for the recently renewed violence in Nandigram has been widely established to have nothing to do with the rumour or otherwise of a chemical hub. Print and visual media, independent reports, the governor of West Bengal (Gopal Gandhi) and the State Home Secretary’s police intelligence all establish that this round of violence was initiated by the CPI(M) to re-establish its control in the area. We all have seen TV coverage of unarmed villagers barricaded behind walls of rubble, while policemen train their guns on them.
With the plans it has for the future, regaining control over Nandigram is vital for the CPI(M) to reassure its corporate partners that it is in complete control of the situation and that any kind of resistance will be comprehensively crushed. The euphemism for this in the free marketplace is ‘creating a good investment climate’.
The anti-Taslima Nasreen angle that has recently been linked to the Nandigram struggle against land acquisition is disturbing to all of us. However, we should remember that it is largely Muslim peasants who are being dispossessed by land acquisitions all over the state. There is a general crisis of confidence of the Muslim community vis-à-vis the Left Front government, inaugurated by the current Chief Minister’s aggressive campaign to “clean up” madarsas, followed by the revelation of the Sachar Committee that Muslim employment in government jobs in West Bengal is among the lowest in the country. While we condemn the attempts to utilize this discontent and channelize it in sectarian ways, we feel very strongly that it would be unfortunate if the entire anger of the community were to be mobilized by communal and sectarian tendencies within it. Such a situation would be inevitable if all Left forces were seen to be backing the CPI(M).
This is why at this critical juncture it is crucial to articulate a Left position that is simultaneously against forcible land acquisition in Nandigram and for the right of Tasleema Nasreen to live, write and speak freely in India.
History has shown us that internal dissent is invariably silenced by dominant forces claiming that a bigger enemy is at the gate. Iraq and Iran are not the only targets of that bigger enemy. The struggle against SEZ’s and corporate globalization is an intrinsic part of the struggle against US imperialism.
We urge our fellow travellers among the signatories to that statement, not to treat the “Left” as homogeneous, for there are many different tendencies which claim that mantle, as indeed you will recognize if you look at the names on your own statement.
Signed by
Mahashweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, Sumit Sarkar, Uma Chakravarty, Tanika Sarkar, Moinak Biswas, Kaushik Ghosh, Saroj Giri, Sourin Bhattacharya, Nirmalangshu Mukherji, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Swapan Chakravorty, Rajarshi Dasgupta, Anand Chakravarty, Apoorvanand, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Nivedita Menon, Aditya Nigam
Comment by Adamski — 21 January, 2008 @ 7:40 pm
It’s not true, by the way, that the CPI(M) was a ‘pro-Mao’ split from the official CPI - the pro-Mao split was the slightly later CPI(M-L) of Charu Mazumdar and Naxalbari fame, which lives on in a number of splinters. The CPI(M) were for being even-handed between Moscow and Beijing, but the split was rather more to do with the communists’ relationship with Congress (and through them the ‘national bourgeoisie’). The CPI(M) founders were for maintaining a more critical distance from Congress than the CPI.
Comment by chjh — 21 January, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
The CPI (M-L), or maybe the fragment of the CPI (M) I’m aware of with that name, has now 125 000 members (not many for India!), but most interestingly has developed from Maoism to a “traditional Leninist” approach of mass action and a working class led alliance of the poor masses. Their speakers have impressed at DSP and other Australian conferences over the last decade or so. The above issue, and the CPI (M-L)’s background and recent conference are covered at:
India: Socialists call for people’s resistance, left resurgence
Sue Bolton, Kolkata
18 January 2008
In a sign of solidarity with the struggle by the peasants of Nandigram against the West Bengal state government’s attempt to seize their land for a Special Economic Zone, the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist), publisher of Liberation magazine, held its 8th congress in Kolkata, the state’s capital, December 11-16.
Full http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/736/38121
Comment by Nick Fredman — 22 January, 2008 @ 4:42 am
Further on Nick’s comments you can see some photos of the post Congress Rally in Kolkata at the CPI (M-L) Liberation’s website http://www.cpiml.org/.
Comment by Chris Latham — 22 January, 2008 @ 7:16 am