Sunday, May 8, 2011

THE DEMISE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

THE DEMISE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN



THE DEMISE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN
Davide Ferri

US president Barack Obama announced that Al Qaeda leader
Osama Bin Laden was killed on Sunday during a Navy Seals
ground operation in Pakistan.

'Servant of Capital' Osama Bin Laden — undoubtedly one of the
most philistine symbols both of the decay of Islamic Bonapartist
Capitalism and the irrational 'backfire' of US imperialism — dies
at the age of 54, leaving behind many doubts to the 'liberal
analysts'; especially those on the alleged willingness of Pakistani
government, military forces and intelligence to provide the US
with a full 'inter-capitalist' collaboration in the 'War on Terror'.

The Saudi-born 'radical' had been nicely hiding for more than 3
years in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad — a hillside retreat
popular with retired paunchy Pakistani generals about two hours
north of Islamabad — wherein he could build a concrete
compound and even hire up private guards to be displayed on the
structure roof and the surrounding area:
all 'allegedly unbeknown' to Pakistani intelligence.

The typical military and political 'negligence' of the Pakistani
authorities — which emerged as particularly self-evident through
the recent events — is nothing new for the US intelligence, which
by no means trust its Asian ally in the War on Terror.
The same CIA director Leon Panetta e.g. bluntly stated that the
US did not intend to alert Pakistan for fear that the Pakistani
authorities might have blabbed out all to Bin Laden [1]
Beyond the rhetoric on the importance of such an operation which
is promptly seasoned with liberal intellectual deliria on justice and
the achievement of a safer world [2] — it must be said that Bin
Laden's death has little strategic importance for the US affairs, as
C.de Auken pointed out. [3]

Though Bin Laden's mere existence 'as a wicked bearded monster'
and his reactionary threatening video-messages kept on
legitimising the US-led War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq in
terms of propaganda, it is quite evident that the Al-Qaeda leader
did not play a crucial role in the opposition to the US occupation
in Afghanistan, despite the sheikh's rhetoric. [4]
It is also self-evident that his demise is not going to wipe out the
inherent problems of Islamic and Liberal Capitalism, as well as the
oppression and repression of all the material/immaterial workers
in Afghanistan and all the Middle East.

Within the framework of US foreign policies in the 'patriotic' 80's,
it must be said that Bin Laden's activity as a jihadist played an
active role in favour of American Capitalism during what is
historically known as 'the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan'.

The Soviet occupation — planned in 'help' of the Stalinist clique
of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan — definitely
marked the determination of the US to give the final blow to an
already-crippled bureaucratic USSR, at least abroad.
Bin Laden greatly facilitated the US attempt to get the 'Soviet
bear' stuck into mud in Afghanistan, along with the contribute of
'less radical' Massoud and the jihadist clique of Hekmatyar.

For years, the US Reagan administration kept stirring the jihadist
mob against the (fake) socialists of Afghanistan and the Soviet
troops, surrounded by the usual inoffensive political passivity of
'Liberal' institutions and NGOs; which are so much loved by post-
Marxist apologists à la Negri and Hardt.
The United States administration would historically succeed in
hindering the geopolitical plans of the USSR.
It would do it by dint of coughing out millions of dollars for the
most reactionary anti-communist jihadists, whose practical
approach was known as remarkably violent, especially against the
women and petty bourgeois activities.
The Soviet Union, in its turn, would soon fall into the neo-liberal
abyss; especially thanks to the inherent contradictions of its
Stalinism, whose loyal representatives all of a sudden revealed
themselves as investor-friendly IMF friends in the 'happy' 90's.

As has been pointed out by Zuyara's words — which I will cite at
length — the active role of Pakistani and US authorities is
politically quite evident:

'Between 1980 and 1992 alone, more then 35,000 Islamic
fundamentalists from 43 Islamic countries joined the Afghan
mujaheedin. Pakistan had already given standing instructions to all its
embassies abroad to give visas with no questions asked to anyone
wanting to come and fight in Afghanistan. Among the thousands of
foreign recruits, one was Osama bin Laden. […]
Bin Laden once admitted that: “to counter the revolution in Afghanistan,
the Saudi regime chose me as their representative in Pakistan and
Afghanistan. I recruited volunteers from many Arab and Muslim
countries who came to answer the call. I set up camps where Pakistanis,
Americans and British officers trained these volunteers. America
supplied the weapons, the money came from the Saudis.' [5]

In this regard there are several sources, both Marxist and non-
Marxist [6][7] , which more or less shine a light on the current
political ambitions of Pakistan, the United States and International
Capital in general here in Central Asia; within the framework of
what is commonly known as the new Great Game, as the 'old one'
was already 'played' by British Capitalism against Tsarist Russia in
the same region in the XIX century).

After the killing of Afghani president Najibullah at the hand of
the Talibans — hanged to death with its genital parts stuffed into
his mouth — the growing influence of the jihadist movement in
Central Asia started revealing itself an unbearable burden for the
american imperialistic ambitions.
These puppets would slip out of control of the US authorities,
which would soon invade Afghanistan, that meantime had become
an Emirate on the footsteps of the first millennium caliphates.

Soon after the events of 9/11, US president Bush authorised
'Operation Enduring Freedom', that is, the invasion by US, UK et
al of the then-Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with the excuse of
capturing Bin Laden, regarded as the mastermind behind 9/11
attack.
On the other hand, president Bush soon showed no interest in
insisting on Bin Laden's capture, as he even admittedly confessed
in an interview saying he was 'truly not that concerned' about the
whereabouts of the Al Qaeda leader [8]

The US authorities in December 2001 definitely knew that Bin
Laden was hiding along with Al Qaeda fighters somewhere in the
Tora Bora caves complex at the border between Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
It should be noted that Bush administration — which authorised a
military operation against Al Qaeda in the same place commonly
known as the 'battle of Tora Bora' — surprisingly failed in
capturing the fundamentalist sheikh, allegedly 'by not deploying a
consistent number of troops'.

A Senate report on the battle of Tora Bora requested by US
Senator John Kerry showed that by deploying a high number of
US military forces both Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar
would have been easily killed in the operation. [9]
In this regard, the then US Secretary of Defence D.Rumsfeld
ambiguously commented at the time by saying that a larger
number of troops would have created resentment amongst the
Afghan population.[10]. Gen. T.R. Franks, even more ambiguously,
declined to comment on the matter though he pointed out the
uncertainty of Bin Laden's presence inside the Tora Bora caves
complex in the White mountains of Eastern Afghanistan. [11].

Leaving aside the rhetoric and non-rhetoric of the official
evidences:
wasn't Osama Bin Laden's capture one of the most important
propagandistic 'Official' excuses to invade the then Taliban-led
Emirate of Afghanistan after the 9/11 events?
Wasn't it the most efficient excuse to go there and 'smoke him out
of his cave and get him eventually' as US president Bush would
have remarked in his cowboy-style rhetoric?

Despite the liberal boring circumlocutions of high officials on the
matter, there is evidence of Bin Laden's presence in Tora Bora
complex in December 2001.
Dalton Fury e.g. — allegedly the officer in command during the
battle Tora Bora — stated in one article "Our job was to go find
him, capture or kill him, and we knew the writing on the wall was
to kill him because nobody wanted to bring Osama bin Laden
back to stand trial in the United States somewhere," [12]
Furthermore, Fury (who also wrote a book on the battle of Tora
Bora) stated that, as the officer in command during the operation,
requested a land mines dropping on the mountain passes which
led to Pakistan — that is, on Bin Laden's escape route; but the
plan was disapproved for reasons Fury doesn't know. [13]

The US forces, attacking Al-Qaeda with fewer than 100 troops
committed to the area, literally failed to capture Bin Laden, who
then fled to Pakistan.
It goes without saying that such events and evidences leaves plenty
of doubts on the nature of US-led and UN-backed invasion of
Afghanistan in the name of Bin Laden's capture for a safer world
and the War on Terror. If trapped within the analytical framework
of a liberal boring set of explanations, these events don't clarify the
US 'official' geopolitical intentions in general.

Now that Bin Laden has died — after years of relaxing absconding
in Pakistan at few steps from one of its most important military
academy — the average unconsciously-servile liberal journalist is
surely more than ever confuse about the aims of US and Pakistan,
after most of the western media supported the War on Terror,
whether indirectly or bluntly, for the entire 2000's.
Even a kid understands that Pakistani president Zardari's care for
underlining no responsibility in the raid against Bin Laden [14]
and at the same time his denial of any organisational negligence
[15] by Pakistani authorities give blunt hints about the deeply
rotten character of Pakistani Capitalism; both in terms of
corruption, as well as economic and political organisation.

However, though Bin Laden's demise represents little, many 'party'
reactions to his killing means a lot; as they undoubtedly shine a
light on the non-progressive and philistine political character of
certain factions of the likes of Hamas [16] et al in Palestine; which
put the entire struggle on 'ethnic', religious and postmodernist
matters.

It should also shine a light on the 'perceptive' aims of certain
European petty bourgeois 'socialists' and their worthy enjoyment
of 'useless', nay negative, support for Hamas, which is everyday
hindering the workers' struggle in the region by blows of post-
modern apology in the west and Bonapartist bigotry in the east.

Transcending all the liberal circumlocutions in regard to the
recent events — Bin Laden's demise is not going to have any
political consequence for the liberation of immaterial and material
workers in the Middle East.
Islamic and 'Liberal' Capital — from the vales of Chechnya to the
mountains of Swat — is not going to stop lengthening its tentacles
on the workers' surplus.
In this regard, we should acknowledge that the primary concerns
for US Capitalism are not the principles behind the War on Terror,
but the economic and political returns generated from this 'War' –
which has been material and ideal [17]

The anti-Islamic mood generated by the events of 9/11 and the
'patriotic upheaval' of European and American media certainly
contributed, in terms of popular consent, to a more friendly
environment for US imperialism.

The regime of Saddam Hussein, once the 'petty bourgeois
socialist' friend of the US, has been neutralised after the clique of
Paul Bremer, without too many concerns, took direct political and
economic control of Iraq by forming the Coalition Provisional
Authority.
This wouldn't have obviously occurred without the 'worthy' efforts
of the US-led coalition in the Second Gulf War, shamefully
disguised as 'War on Terror'.
In fact, it must be said that petty-bourgeois reactionary 'socialists'
à la Hussein in Iraq were certainly not the friends of the anti-
communist sheikh wanted by the US.[18]
The 'provisional' clique of Mr. Bremer — the 'US administrator of
Iraq' — in the process of Iraq's privatisation and commodification,
nicely allowed American firms to cast their tentacles on the
national reconstruction [19], in a highly-devastated country where
lakhs [20] of innocent civilians died; not to mention the huge
'returns' of the American Capitalists achieved thanks to military
expenditure for howitzers, tanks, equipment etc. for the US-led
War on 'Terror'.
It must also be said that a friendly 'Washington man' of the likes
of Al Maliki — whose government hasn't certainly boasted
democratic pioneering — is definitely more convenient for stable oil
pricing policies in Mesopotamia.

Bin Laden dies with the growing weakening of Islamic investor-
friendly radicalism, which is nothing but a desperation sigh
produced by the rottenness of Islamic Capitalism.
Most of the workers of the middle east — though still unaware and
confuse by the liberal promises — are now merely choosing a less
Bonapartist direction.
We could witness such tendency in the last months in Egypt and
in most of the MENA region in general, where Bonapartist
capitalists like Ben Ali and Mubarak have been ousted through the
unprecedented social (liberal) uprisings.

On the other hand, in these areas the risk of philistine 'reaction' is
still high.
The clique behind the human face of Obama — who during the
Egyptian uprisings acted with the 'let-us-see-who-is-
gonna-come-to-the-top' strategy, typical of imperialism— is not going to
drop the support to reactionary Bonapartist Capitalists à la
Mubarak and Ben Ali.
By no accident the United States, whilst caring for the 'Libyan
human rights', they neglect those of Bahrain; wherein the US fifth
fleet is based and where the élite of Al-Khalifa keeps repressing
demonstrations and killing innocents.
But the liberals pretend not to see.
In their rhetoric of free trade, free choice and freedom, they only
'see' what and where they want to see by self-flagellations of
cognitive assonance, just like Hilary Clinton proves it in the flaunt
of her miserable opportunism, with phrases of the likes of "I am
impressed by the commitment that the government has to the
democratic path that Bahrain is walking on” [21]
The demise of Osama Bin Laden is not going to liberate the
working class, but undoubtedly will make the reactionary clique of
Obama sigh with relief, as the temporarily revived enthusiasm of
the common liberal American will make the crises, the
unemployment and the growing inequalities pass unobserved for a
while.
However, the economic factors — which determine the social ones
—weigh like a burden on people's consciousness and will sooner
or later make themselves felt.
The demise of Bin Laden will not liberate anyone, just like its
'social' consequences, though some idealist big professors in their
enjoyment of false consciousness — whether within the
framework of pure apology or post-Marxism — will surely not
grasp it.
As Marx would put it, the liberation is a material act, not a mental
or spiritual one [22]


Delhi, May 4, 2011

REFERENCES:
[1] Al Jazeera, CIA feared Pakistan would alert Bin Laden,
html, retrieved on May 4, 2011


[2] Al Jazeera, 'Obama says world safer without Bin Laden',
602.html, retrieved on May 4,2011

[3] Bill Van Auken, published on WSWS, “The killing of Osama
Bin Laden and the War on Terror”, May 3, 2011,
May 4,2011


[4] Ibid


[5] D. Zayar, Afghanistan, Bin Laden and the hypocrisy of
American imperialism, published on In defence of Marxism,
Quetta, September 26,2001, http://www.marxist.com/afghanistan-
bin-laden-hypocrisy260901.htm retrieved on 4 May, 2011

[6] Something to be read, though to be taken obviously 'with a
pinch of Salt', is the work “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the
CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to
September 10, 2001”, of Steve Coll, 2004, Penguin Press


[7]See the Interview to Gary Schroen on Frontline posted june 20,
2006
en.html retrieved on May 4, 2011


[8] “Bush: Truly not concerned about bin Laden (long version)”
4,2011

[9] Senate Report Explores 2001 Escape by bin Laden From
Afghan Mountains, New York Times, A version of this article
appeared in print on November 29, 2009, on page A20 of the New
York edition.
rieved on May 4,2011


[10] Ibid.


[11] Ibid.


[12] Elite Officer Recalls Bin Laden Hunt, CBS, first published on
Oct. 5, 2008. It was updated on July 11, 2009.
7.shtml retrieved on May 4,2011


[13] Ibid.

[14] Al Jazeera, Zardari: Bin Laden raid not joint operation
html, retrieved on May 4,2011

[15] Osama bin Laden's Pakistan , Brahma Chellaney, published on
Al Jazeera
513531.html, retrieved on May 4, 2011

[16] Noteworthy is that Hamas regards Bin Laden as an 'arab holy
warrior', Haaretz, “Hamas slams killing of 'holy warrior' Osama bin
Laden”, Published 14:27 02.05.11,
killing-of-holy-warrior-osama-bin-laden-1.359416 retrieved on May
4, 2011

[17] The Oil Factor, behind the war on Terror, Gerard Ungerman,
docid=1130731388742388243#

[18] Bill Van Auken, published on WSWS, “The killing of Osama
Bin Laden and the War on Terror”, May 3, 2011,
May 4,2011

[19] The Oil Factor, behind the war on Terror, Gerard Ungerman,
docid=1130731388742388243#


[20] 'Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006', Iraq
Family Health Survey Study Group
N Engl J Med 2008; 358:484-493 January 31, 2008, retrieved on May
4, 2011

[21] The Guardian, Bahrain protests a worry for US and its fifth
protests-us-fifth-fleet, Thursday 17 February 2011 13.38 GMT,
retrieved on May 4, 2011
[22] Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1846
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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Deschooling Society

School has become a fuzzy entity today. It is confused not only with education, which is a key mistake but also proposed as a solution to a wide spectrum of problems – vandalism, lack of 'culture', backwardness, an ability to read, write and count, lack of a sufficiently 'developed' personality, exploitation and poverty. It is invoked positively by a wide spectrum of people –  on the Left as well as those on the Right, social reformers and university professors, the middle-classes and the corporates and even – sometimes most fanatically – by the poor (or more often, those who claim to speak on the behalf of the poor). Of some people, we say, “Oh! He's basically a good person”. School is like that – it is “basically good” and therefore, infinitely improvable. We need better teachers, better buildings, better books, a better curriculum, regular attendance, more money, more discipline, no, more freedom, more Science, easier English, less pressure. But school is good at heart.

To discuss school critically then, we must move away from all the meanings it has come to have and try to define it. Ivan Illich's definition of school as “the age-specific, teacher-related process requiring full-time attendance at an obligatory curriculum”[1] will do for now. The definition itself raises questions: Why only children? Is learning (at that age) a result of teaching? What is the effect of full-time attendance on students? Is one obligatory curriculum suitable for everybody?

Childhood appears natural to us now, it is even seen as a something of a right. Shantha Sinha, the chair-person of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights set up in 2007 has repeatedly said in her talks, essays and interviews while working for the now well-known MV Foundation (www.mvfindia.in) that all work is hazardous and harms the child. To quote:

The MVF model...regards every form of work done by children as child labour. It also asserts that in the rural Indian context there is no such thing as an idle non-school going child. Any child not in school will sooner than later is [sic] put to work. In this model there are thus only two categories of children, those who go to work viz. Child labourers and those who go to full time formal day school. This is the genesis of the MVF ‘non-negotiable’ that every child out of school is a child labourer.

MVF believes that every child has a right to childhood and an opportunity to develop to his/her full potential and that every form of work done by a child interferes with this right. Coupled with the understanding that only children who are full time students can be kept away from work it believes that the only way the child’s right to childhood can be fulfilled is by making the child a full time student. In the MVF model therefore, securing to a child his/her right to childhood, elimination of child labour and universalization of education are all a part of the same process.

George-Bush style, Sinha divides us into two camps – with her, or with the child exploiters. She does not even distinguish between work that may be useful, a “learning experience” as fashion has it and child labour. But whatever moral stands Sinha and her ilk may take, childhood like other institutions, has a history.  And one that is closely intertwined with the emergence of capitalism, as Philippe Aries points out in Centuries of Childhood. It is in the increasingly industrial society of the last two centuries that the mass production of 'childhood' became feasible and came within the reach of the masses. This has led to a situation where people whose children do not get their 'right' to childhood feel short-changed; while those who have this 'right' also have the 'duty' to go to school (where they have none of the rights that adults have).

But the central question is: Is learning the result of teaching? This is the axiom of school and institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In fact, most of us, including those who went to elite schools, know that we learnt little from our classes. Yet, because school is “basically good” (or because there seems to be no alternative), its near universal failure in achieving its aims is attributed to one or the other of the common excuses mentioned above.

In fact, even as “knowledge” is regularly invoked, both parents and children know that school has little to do with scholarship. Yet, the question of knowledge or scholarship must be faced. The argument is that in earlier times, there was less knowledge; now, there is so much. Surely, a child needs to be guided through this knowledge. Such a view either criticises the curriculum or the teachers. And yes, we must acknowledge that perhaps scholarship is not possible without some formal structuring; and it is true that universities are now, to some extent, the seats of scholarship even if they are inefficient and unequal. But like other institutions, the school and the university also have a history which, like childhood, is intimately linked with the advance of capitalism. The present form of the school and university in England (the form that India has adopted after independence), the United States and Germany is only some two centuries old.

In a society with greater community and less mobility, the skills that were required to perform a task were virtually unchanged from generation to generation; children learnt them from their parents in the course of their daily activities. There were “great inequalities in wealth, political power and other aspects of status but differences in the degree of autonomy in work were relatively minor, particularly when compared with what was to come”[2].

The school did not have much political power – either it prepared children for the still inconsequential civil service or for a career in the university. But as Illich points out, “...the university protected an individual's freedom of speech, but did not automatically convert his knowledge into wealth. To be a scholar in the Middle Ages meant to be poor, even a beggar.” The extension of capitalist production, particularly the factory system, undermined the role of the community as the major unit of both socialisation and production.

An ideal preparation for factory work was found in the social relations of school – in its emphasis on discipline, punctuality, acceptance of authority outside the family/community and accountability for one's work. The social relations of the school would replicate the social relations of the workplace and help young people adapt to the social division of labour. Moreover, because schooling was ostensibly open to all, one's position in society could be attributed to a lack of talent or application, instead of birth. This is not to say that the connection between mass education and capitalism is as simple portrayed here; nor to say that schools serve exactly the same functions now but simply to show that the modern school-university system comes more out of the needs of capitalism than to facilitate scholarship. The school and university in India today serve various functions – from indoctrination, to incarceration, to providing the middle-classes a justification for their own position and a ladder to climb just a little higher, a provider of ready labour for the corporates (though they are bad at this, as Ivar Berg pointed out even forty years ago; the corporates also regularly moan about the disconnect between the university and the industry), and here and there, more in print than in person now, as a place for the exchange of ideas and scholarship.

So, we question the very axiom on which school rests – that learning is the result of teaching. We must also see that scholarship exists in spite of the usual functioning of the university today and that the connection between schools and scholarship is tenuous.

But the axiom itself is a myth – the modern myth of unending consumption (that is, the more we consume, the better it is and there is no end to this consumption), that process inevitable produces something of value. School teaches us that instruction produces learning; the self-taught man or woman is discredited and non-professional activity is rendered suspect. All our activities then take the shape of client relationships to specialised institutions. We accept service in place of value. To quote Illich again, “medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety...the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of schools, hospitals and other agencies in question.” We can only demand our rights, not question them.  The quantification of values means that we can only be short-changed, never betrayed.

 

[1]    All quotes from Illich refer to Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich

[2]    'Unequal Education and the Reproduction of the Social Division of Labour' by Samuel Bowles

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On the Worker’ Strike at RICO, Gurgaon

A pamphlet by Correspondence.

Ajit Kumar Yadav, a worker in Rico Auto, Gurgaon was murdered by goons of the management. Four other workers were shot at and sixty others sustained injuries.

The management had been evading the workers’ demand to form a union for long. A month back sixteen workers were expelled in this regard and others (all 4,800 of them) were prohibited from working for engaging in ‘illegal activities’. Meanwhile, the management hired around 1,000 goons to prevent workers from coming back to work. In addition to this, the management’s goons, with the supervision of the police, brought around 300 workers from the unorganised sector to resume work in the factory. It should be noted here that these workers are not allowed to leave the premises of the factory and there are reports of torture by the goons. The workers sat in peaceful protest outside the main gate, demanding work and their unionisation. On 19th October the goons attacked the protesting workers and murdered Ajit, shot at four others and injured sixty. In response to this, more than 1,00,000 workers from more than 150 factories in Gurgaon participated in the strike on 20th October.

The Hindu reported the incident on the 19th as ‘a clash between two groups of workers’. Such an explanation begs the question: Why should there be such solidarity amongst the workers if it was a ‘clash between two groups’? Furthermore, both The Hindu and The Times of India have lamented the fact that production has been affected. Whether it is the Maoist question or the incident at Rico, the media turns to the establishment to create a narrative. To understand this aspect of the media we need to locate its position as an industry in the capitalist system. There is a unity of logic that binds the media to the capitalist state. In times of need, notwithstanding their contradictions, all organs of the capitalist state come together as a whole.

This is nothing new. Workers have time and again asserted their right to determine their conditions of work. Workers’ agitation at the Honda factory in 2005 is not a separate incident. It comes from the same strain for self-determination. In Coimbatore, Pricol workers’ demand for the recognition of their unions is met with pressure from the management to withdraw from the road of struggle and sever ties with ‘Marxist-Leninist’/’Maoist’ forces. The unfortunate death of the Vice President of the Human Resources Development of Pricol Ltd in the workers’ agitation has led employers and sections of the corporate media to demand a ban on trade union struggles and advocate labour reforms to give employers a free hand. A single day’s tragic incident is now being deliberately sought to be used to prejudice public opinion against the Pricol workers and suppress the truth of the nearly one thousand days of their united and determined struggle. Similarly, in Gorakhpur three activists and one journalist have been arrested for participation in workers’ demands for implementing labour laws.

When we condemn the war against the Maoists, or express solidarity with people’s struggles anywhere, we see things through the prism of geo-political distance that separates us from them. True solidarity however will not exist unless we realize that though there is a distance separating us, and the forms of struggles that others engage in are not relevant to our own context, the larger questions raised are the same. The struggle for self-determination and true democracy is one of which all of us are a part. A tribal in Chattisgarh faces the state in its most brutal forms, and as we see here, so does the factory worker. And to push it further, the student confronts the same state, may be in a seemingly milder form. Even as the above mentioned events were unfolding elsewhere, a multi-party meeting was organized on 20th October in North Campus to take up the issue of fee-hike in colleges. The struggle is to ensure that we have a say in the decisions that affect us and to make sure that no decision that goes against the students’ interests goes unchallenged. All these are moments of contradictions when the facade of equality and democracy that the state covers itself with is exposed as a facade and nothing more. At these moments it is our task to make sure that the state does not go unchallenged, and that we recognize that each challenge to the state is part of our own larger struggle.

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Monday, December 7, 2009

The Art of Naming: Meditations on Queer Activism in Delhi

This is another article published in the first issue of the magazine. Akhil Katyal, the author, has completed B.A. (H) English at Hindu College and M.A. English at St. Stephens College, both at Delhi University. Since early 2006, he has been a member of Nigah, a queer collective based in Delhi. He blogs at akhilkatyalpoetry.blogspot.com

…when words found mouths
when tongues wagged their way
into minds,
and each object shrank, suddenly,
to fit its own precise outline.

You could say
that was when the trouble started:

When things stepped into the cage
of a purpose I must have had
somewhere in my mind.

- Imtiaz Dharker, ‘Words find Mouths’



What is in the name: homosexual? If you say it again and again, homosexual, homosexual, homosexual and so on, it begins to sound like a creepy symptom. It is one of the bad habits of words to give way on the slightest bit of repetition. The word leaks out of itself on being repeated, becomes what it originally (!) was – the deceived one brought into the menacing contract of meaning making. Repetition is a paradox: it both consolidates and shatters. To repeat something is to validate it, confirm its thereness and give it a nod of approval; at the same time, repetition, for repetition’s sake has a sincere cheek; it kills the word with a master stroke: pulls it out of contingent frameworks and shows the ghastly madness of the name. The words straight, lesbian, gay, homosexual, MSM are names with the classic weaknesses of names; words which totter if they are not continuously and shamefacedly propped up by dense political, medico-legal or religious frameworks of conception that are consubstantial with their usage. Every name is a product of a particular framework. The name does not define; it is rather a variable within a hopelessly circular (infinitely repeatable!) process – that first gives the premises of naming and then performs the very act of naming based on these premises – and then smugly locates this whole process at the origin of things, before everything else, ala ‘I am gay’, ‘Are you a lesbian?’, ‘We are queer, we’re here, get used to it.’, exercises in definition making, processes of self-identification, loveable repetitions but not simply so!

I am not sentimental about LGBT activism (with about twenty years of a movement behind us in India, no one better be!) but I would be a part of all of it all the same, with an unforgiving self-irony and a constant clapping on one’s own head. Queer activism, here and now in Delhi, as I have lived through for the past three years, is composed of varied definitional excursions that are precisely that, definitional excursions, baggy monsters, simplifying technologies that take enormous and complicated raw material, lets say of the morass of human sexuality (itself a finished product of another technology of conceptualisation), and try to produce, indeed with success, finished products, peculiarly sexualised individuals, gay or straight. These are historical occurrences; contingent responses for a world that can only be dealt with strategic generalisations, with the steady repertoire of names, with banners asking for gay rights, hijra rights, lesbian rights, or with pleas composed of canny statistics. Queer activism in Delhi then, composed of a heterogeneous lot of organisations, collectives and individuals responds practically(!) to this situation of frameworks. For the current case that the Naz Foundation and Voices Against 377, a collective of several queer, child-rights, women and human rights groups, are fighting in the Delhi High Court against the anti-sodomy law, section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, we (the activists? I won’t dare choose to speak for everyone, though!) would present ourselves as minority legal subjects within the immediately available framework of the Indian legal system. Using the weapons at hand, we would shape ourselves strategically and then indulge in another process of self definition: legal State citizens, Indians, homosexuals et al. That some of us provisionally or really buy into such logics of articulate, if not artificial, self definitions and make them the markers of understanding ourselves for ourselves (in our personal diaries!), can not and should not be denied (because why not? we encounter another circular logic here, albeit of much socio-political significance!). Politics is a name for strategies; the desire for and the social process of change have to make use of available names, categories and obstructions and then plunge into a continuous process of remoulding these. We can not start (or end) with something that is already mutatis mutandis. Queer activism, as I have seen in process in Delhi, is the utopian process that deliberately excludes the possibility of a Utopia. It is a utopic process that finally understands the concept of Utopia (for it is only the concept we can possibly discuss; Greek ‘ou’ is ‘not’, topos is ‘place’, ‘utopia’ is a ‘noplace’, it does not exist!). The Utopia is the defeat of all that is utopian and not what we could and have always easily and non-rigorously believed in, that utopia is a the realisation of the utopic. The Utopia is implicit within the utopic; it does not follow it like a flower does a bud or like a child does a foetus.

The legal framework then becomes (pardon the repetition!) precisely that: a framework. The relationship of a framework of conceptualising people and that of the people’s processes of self-definition is a complicated one, like the contract of the name with the person that it names is a contingent and necessarily self-short-circuiting one. This is not to judge the process of naming as simply undesirable or desirable within activist agendas, to get caught in the enquiry of whether it is right or wrong. One of the editors of this magazine, Labanya, mailed me, saying ‘We'd be glad if you write a non-fiction piece on Sexuality, Identity and the Indian State (this is not the title of course, I'm not deciding anything for you). By this I mean that while writing through your subjective experience on what it is to be homosexual in India, you also make mention of Article 377 and it's practical/psychological impact on the everyday.’ Labanya would of course forgive me for quoting from her email, a text sent casually, an anticipatory text in preparation for more formal, definitive texts to follow (“I’m not deciding anything for you.”). It is of course not an act of misrecognition; she could not possibly have been off the mark by saying I could write about being ‘homosexual in India’. To narrate my subjective experience then would be a narration that would consolidate an essay on the homosexual in India, generalised from a grossly localised somewhere of myself and my everyday. The essay would be a point of departure and also the point of arrival, having traversed unrepentant the multiplicity of homosexual subjective (or subjective homosexual?) experiences available within the available ground-space of India. Acts of narration are thereby also acts of naming if they eddy around word clusters, points of identificatory gestures. To say that the concept of the name works contingently i.e. historically, that we circularly imagine them into being within certain points of history, is not to say that they are unreal or fantastical with no palpable effects (the provisional bridge between the editor and me was the common grounds of understanding, by which we imaginatively place each other, homosexual in India or young editor who I’d like to know more). This terrain of the imagined, with all its imports, can hardly be dispelled or easily demarcated from the real. There is no escaping the realities of the name (as if that was desired or possible; names are the basis of how we interact, it is how we generalize ourselves, names mark our presence even when we are absent, kill me, I’ll still be known by my name! The name is everything!) but it is possible for all of us to see what conditions make what names possible for which people within certain moments of history. I could call myself gay; have done that in the past, will do that in the future, but what are the stakes involved here; not the stakes of security, rather the stakes of the very process of finding and legitimating a name for oneself, queer for instance, or even Akhil. When and how does the fact that I love men, that I want to fuck them or get fucked by them, become a variable for what I – want to – call myself? When does the sex-bit get into the name-bit and how does this process work? When does desire become sexuality or sexual-orientation i.e. if it does exist prior to them? Queer activism considers that it is significant to resurrect the sex-bit within the name-bit. The heterosexual is the unmarked sexuality (treated conceptually), it is the presupposition, the grounds we took for granted. The heterosexual need not name himself; he is the beginning of things, he is unlimited dark space. The queer then appears as a name that queers; the sex-bit in the name-bit marks the alternative sexuality, the light from a chink. This marking is a politically indispensable process and politics rushes in my veins (another way to enter oneself, to access and define oneself!), so that I have no way to describe myself without names that do not already try and define something about me; otherwise they would be non-names (ideal, theoretically truly queer, stupid utopias!).

Queer activism is strategically played amidst this game of names. We commemorate the first gay protest in Delhi, the AIDS Behdbhav Virodhi Andolan’s public protest against police harassment of gay men, on the 11th of August, 1991, we co-memorate this event and its participants; collectively memorialize the first gay protest that then becomes (or threatens to become) our common undisputed history as stringed together through a certain name (they were gay, we are gay!). Names are these trajectories we carve for ourselves and others that are carved for us within the otherwise perversely multiple ways in which histories of individuals or a people can be drawn. One of the events that my queer collective Nigah (nazariya? nazar? a way of looking? a perspective? a name?) organised to mark this now historic date of August 11th was when we met at a particular venue at Cannought Place, made presentations about queer urban histories, talked about them, talked about personal experiences and all our first protests, loves, kisses, and then wore T-shirts that we had painted a day ago and walked around the inner circle of Cannought Place wearing those T-shirts with red roses in our hands (the first(?) public LGBT gatherings in Delhi used to happen on the terrace of the India Coffee House in CP; they used to keep a red-rose on the table as a clue, a locally acknowledged symbol; we chose to extend this curve of history, keep on a tradition, use their strategy of self-identification, use their name) and finally got together in Central Park and ended the evening with more songs and chats. The T-shirts we wore (see Figure. 1) on that day with slogans such as 377 Stinks, We’re Queer, We’re here, Get Used to it, Aadmi hoon Aadmi Se Pyaar Karta Hoon, Queer and Lovin It!, Aawaz Do Hum Anek Hain et. al. function like names; they form a visual vocabulary for self-identification within a dense public space like CP in Delhi. They want to disrupt the unmarked heterosexual space, dirty it and produce effects of alternative and strategic namings and spellings (new spells that we cast?). These names, as I have pig-headedly(?) tried to drive home the point, are not at the beginning or the end of things; they are caught in the mire, just like the people they seek to stain.
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Failure, Consumerism and a Counter Strategy The IP College Protests: An Insider’s Diagnosis

This article by Paresh Chandra was published in the first issue of our magazine.

Without the clause of class-consciousness that makes the connection between career and exploitation plain resistance becomes a perverse (the usual) form of consumerism, the commodity bought and consumed is “peace of mind” and the cost is a few days out in the sun.

The Protest in Perspective

Almost all theorists of our times have spoken of the trespass of consumerism in all spheres of modern existence; some may seem to like it while others may seem to dislike it, some may like it while others may dislike it, but they do not deny it. Instead of locating signs of this trespass on television or in the mall, which are typical instances used for the criticism of consumerist culture, one needs to spare a glance for what seems to lie at the opposite end of the line. Instead of regurgitating what we as part of this resistance have swallowed from books and essays, we must try something different; we have been walking on feet for too long, it is time to walk on our hands (as some like Slavoj Zizek have tried to do). The observer needs to observe and understand how resistance to consumerism changes into consumerism of resistance—like in all times one must not underestimate the stubbornness of capital, a system that has been able to survive for decades apparently in a moribund state surely has great capacity to integrate all resistance into its folds.

The following paragraph is a somewhat passionate report a propos the recent protests that followed an incident of sexual molestation of girls from Delhi University, published in a hypothetical daily.

A Sunday morning saw the future law keepers of the country participate in a private pogrom. A group of men who had come to that area to attend a police examination decided that they deserved to celebrate the end of exam by molesting a few hundred girls. Such ‘celebrations’ made the students angry and their souls rose against such injustice. The result was discerned in the series of protests in and around the university. A memorandum was brought that asked for the exam to be annulled. Various other demands were also on the list. Delegates visited the vice-chancellor, the commissioner of police, the NCW, the Home Ministry and even Arjun Singh. What went wrong then? If such was the anger in their hearts then why did it stop? And what came out of it? At least we tried—somebody replies; our hearts can be easier.

It would be stupid to explain the short-lived-ness of this agitation purely with reference to conditions specific to it. So before going into a discussion of those specificities I will try to locate the failure of this movement into what has become a tradition of failed protests—the easy acceptance of the failure of agitations that seem astonishingly effervescent to begin with is not uncommon these days. Did the massive anti-war demonstrations in New York and London stop the war in Iraq? An acquaintance of mine who returned from the US recently had me understand that many protests in the US take place on Sundays for matters of convenience. It is strange because these demonstrations supposedly signify a motion against the establishment and yet clearly the principal interests of both the establishment and resistance coincide—workdays and workday traffic cannot be interrupted. In this light the demonstrations were not failures at all, in fact both sides came out of it satisfied—it is a “strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance” [Zizek], to use Zizek’s words. “The protestors saved their beautiful souls”—they made it clear that they did not accept such attitude from the administration. It is a perverse (and the usual) form of consumerism, the commodity bought and consumed is “peace of mind” and the cost is a few days out in the sun. Such battles are fought not to change the world, but achieve a sense of satisfaction that I have done my part—and now that my conscience is at ease the world can go to hell. Every advertisement on televisions tells me that I am not a perfect person unless I consume that product; similarly “resistance” becomes a product advertised in politically correct classrooms.

In the last analysis the interests of the agitators and the administration were the same. During the IP College protests this fact came out in the open most blatantly when on one of the days of demonstrations the students from IP College became rather disconcerted on hearing a rumour that the college would be sealed if the protest continued. It might have been due to the highly institutionalised setup of that college that kept the students in a convent like state of innocent ignorance that they were unable to see through the joke. They were unable to realise that the fight was not between the college and the university; it was hard for them to perceive that the smaller as well as the larger entity were seats of the same central power that the students needed to fight. But more importantly, it became clear that the prospect of really shaking things up had never occurred to them.

At no point are such protests directed at the base of power; rather the people in power are accused of betraying their own professed principles. The protests in this case were directed against the “unsympathetic attitude of our vice-chancellor and our police”; as if the entire episode was an aberration and not the rule. A strange but expected conjecture entirely in observance of the customary practice of complaining about the ever-increasing number of “injustices” and not questioning the status quo. The “solution” that was proposed by the students—nullification of the exam—was more a form of appeasement than anything else. What if this demand had been met? Would that have led anywhere? It is a strange situation—if a movement like this fails in achieving the goals it sets then it gets buried, since all that could have been done is done and nothing came out of it. In future agitations of the sort, those who participated this time would opt out since they know that it would not work. If the demands are by any chance met, even then it gets buried. Mission accomplished. Either way the eventual result had to be the same, so in a fashion logical enough, the easier way was taken. It cannot be denied that each battle has its particular aims and large distant goals alone cannot keep things going, but the strange part is that since this battle was fought only to wear the armour and get a photo clicked, warriors returned home after the horn was sounded. Because of the lack of a larger anti-establishment perspective the demands became ends-in-themselves, incidental to the desire of putting up a show and effectively inconsequential to the agitators; the administration knew that they did not need to satisfy the former. The demands need not be met for in the act of putting forth demands the demanders had been satisfied.

That under all circumstances we stay a part of this system remains the single most important idea that governs our actions. It defines our interactions with the system, whether the interactions are friendly or antagonistic. What we observed above was that even those interactions, which are apparently antagonistic, are often undercut by“faithfulness” to the system. However the dialectical contrary of this understanding, which is that even when our interactions are on surface friendly, underlying it is a deep antagonism, escapes us. I will come to the nature of this antagonism at the end of the essay. Meanwhile I will move on to an analysis of the specificities of the protest that made it so short-lived.

A Digression and a Return

Jean-Paul Sartre differentiates between two modes of existence for an individual as a part of society. In one case persons perform roles that can be describe as being those of “we-subjects” while the in other case they can be described as “we-objects”. The role of persons as “we-subjects” corresponds to a way of associating with other people that Sartre calls “seriality”. Sartre uses the concept of seriality to describe circumstances in which a person’s relation to others is limited to a uniformity of behaviour and isolation otherwise [Jameson 238]. Each person models her/his mode of being after what s/he thinks is the mode of being of the Other, or individuals inhabiting society at large, but any real association with them is lacking as the others don’t really exist, except as a “vast optical illusion, a kind of collective hallucination projected out of individual solitude onto an imaginary being thought of as”public opinion” or simply “they”” [Jameson 239]—such a relation has no real meaning for individuals. For instance when one is in a theatre one feels a part of some sort of community (of viewers); however this feeling of community has no consequence for anyone, self or the other. The situation of those involved in the protest that is being analysed remained by and large a serial situation—being part of the demonstrations had no real consequence for an overwhelming majority of the people that included most of those who stood at the forefront. The aspect of conscience easing is included in this concept; for in this case too the person in question enters the demonstration to fulfil what s/he thinks is the duty of every responsible person—an idea that is defined once again by the clause of public-opinion. Here too then genuine association with others that is required for continued participation is lacking.

The second mode of existence, that as “we-objects” depends upon the formation of genuine groups to get over the helplessness of a serial situation. Such a group is formed only when “I feel myself become an object along with someone else under the look of such a “third” that I experience my being as a “we-object”; for then, in our mutual interdependency, in our shame and rage, our beings are somehow mingled in the yes of the onlooker, for whom we are somehow “the same”…” [Jameson]. How a group maintains its authentic existence (an existence of this mode i.e.) is not our concern here—but it comes into existence against some common enemy and is defined by the vision of the Other. On this occasion the common opponent eludes all concrete formulations and the concept stays limited to a faceless crowd. If this protest had been connected to a larger anti-establishment perspective it would have been easier to sustain, and the demands might have been formulated in a more fruitful manner. It is not strange to find that it was because of a few individuals who formed such a group that held such an anti-establishment that the movement survived for whatever length of time it survived.

(Revision: The larger question at stake in this entire episode was that of sexual harassment and gender and the shared identity that had to be interpreted in a manner to allow for the construction of an authentic group – that of students). This article is an attempt at analysing this protest and the reason behind its short-lived-ness. So the larger question of gender would be a pointless digression; it might also prove a question too large to cope with in an essay like this. When I call it a digression I refer to the fact that in this essay my attempt is to analyse the construction of authentic student groups. The fight against sexual harassment can also allow for the construction of such groups. Further on I will attempt to locate the identity of being anti-sexual harassment fighters in the scheme of things, but I feel the need to warn the reader that this attempt might seem half-hearted owing to its contingency as far as this article is concerned.

For now however this leaves us with the identity of being students. Many locate this identity in a vague notion of a shared journey through the realm of knowledge. Another popular perspective would place the experience of being students in the set of consumer experiences that constitutes modern existence; education being the commodity consumed. Both these notions and most others still remain stuck in definitions of persons as “we-subjects” and a genuine group identity (defined in opposition to something) is denied. I shall proceed to propose one possible definition of a student that could allow for the formation for a genuine group (this would take us to the idea that was left undeveloped at the end of the first section).

We as students are workers-in-making. This statement needs to be qualified for the understanding of who is a “worker” might be different for the reader and the writer of this article. “Worker” here refers to every person whose participation in production is as a wage earner. A worker is a person who owns no “means-of-production” and depends upon his “labour power” to earn his livelihood; in this sense a worker could be a factory “hand” earning a few hundreds a week or a CEO earning in millions or for that matter a college professor earning a few thousand. If this is the definition of a worker most students are workers-in-making. This agreed upon, it is not hard to see that the basis of an authentic student identity that will allow for the formation of genuine groups, genuine students’ organisations that is, will have to depend upon an understanding of the fact that our current relationship with the system remains one defined by class struggle; the aspect of our existence in the eye of the system that we oppose will be our existence as workers-to-be.

Another digression would allow us to look at the role of groups formed against sexual harassment or for that matter all sexuality/gender related questions. Duncan Foley says somewhere that there is never a “democracy of determinants”. In a capitalist society the system of class and the process of class struggle are the determinants that sit on top of the hierarchy of determinants. All other determinants (or structures of exploitation—for all societies till now have structured themselves so as to base themselves on exploitation) form the guard that surrounds this determinant. Race, gender, and caste—all of these are systems that capitalism uses to run its show. However it is important to note that capitalism does not depend upon these structures to reproduce itself. As a result whenever a stage is reached where these structures become hindrances to capitalism, they are questioned—which is not to say that feminist struggles are an offshoot of this tendency, but merely to suggest that the development of capitalism in its industrialized form facilitated, or made it relatively (when compared to earlier modes of production) easier for these struggles to be waged with great success.

All movements and all groups need a degree of self-reflexivity to maintain their revolutionary potential. At this point in history feminist movements need to understand the manner in which capitalism has been able to bottle the revolutionary potential of feminism in revolutionary moments that are past. To free this potential of the chains it has been bound by the fight against patriarchy and harassment made possible by the system of patriarchy needs to be combined with struggle against capitalism. If the power equation in society is decided on the ownership of means of production then the social location of the proletariat provides the proletarian identity a revolutionary potential that is unique among all identities. Our fight against sexual harassment and gender discrimination will become all the more potent if combined with our struggles as workers-to-be and subsequently workers.

In all circumstances a student, consciously or unconsciously understands this relation in whom s/he is bound to the system, what is lacking is the clause of class-consciousness that would make the connection between career and exploitation plain. In the above case, as in most cases this connection is not perceived and the result is submissiveness that exists under the facade of resistance. If and only if this submission is transformed into struggle, would any agitation succeed for the success of all agitations would lie in the manner in which they fit into the battle against the system. Until a vision of this larger battle informs our actions our attempts would be directed towards reform, and the discourse of reform is pointless in a system that cannot exist without inequity. The pointlessness of the demand of increasing police security in the campus, when the people who committed the crime were aspiring policemen is a remarkable instance of the uselessness of reform unconnected from a larger logic of struggle. A system that is defined on the leitmotif of profit cannot be reformed into being a “considerate” system—it can of course sell “consideration” in the market.

Bibliography

1. Žižek, Slavoj, Resistance Is Surrender,[ http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_. html], accessed on 16th August, 2008
2. Jameson, Fredric, Marxism and Form, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1974
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Thursday, December 3, 2009

On Permanent Revolution

An article published in the October 2008 issue of our magazine. The author, Kumarila, is a left political activist who has worked in various parts of India.

A basic task for a Marxist is to expose programmatic issues concerning revolutionary praxis today and to critically judge political conceptualizations and practice from this perspective. With this concern we reorient ourselves here towards Trotsky's theorization of ‘Permanent Revolution’ and judge its usefulness in informing our debates and practice. However, reading Trotsky’s classic works today would require a point of reference in the context and debates that produced them. Below we try to present a brief overview of this context so as to make available this reference point.

Like any social theory, a Marxist theory of social revolution must be analyzed in the context of objective conditions at the time of its theorization, but its correctness must be judged in terms of its potentiality to trace the tendencies and possibilities inherent in the historical evolution of existing social conditions. Its meaningfulness at the present stage too is determined by this potentiality, as only then would it enrich the conceptualization of present reality and guide our practice. This requires us to visualize societal transformation as a culmination of the contradictions inherent in the historico-logical process producing and reproducing a particular social structure.

Marx’s whole life work and his theoretical endeavors were towards the sole aim of unfolding the processes constituting capitalism and the catastrophic tendencies inherent in them, posing the possibility of a complete emancipation of humanity from class exploitation and oppression. Transcending capitalism requires a complete negation of its essence. Marx saw its eventual transcendence only in class struggle and conscious endeavours of the proletarian class - the only class capable of completely breaking away from the ‘prehistoric’ (or rather transhistoric) nostalgia that afflicts all the other classes. These conclusions were the result of his immense research in and a thorough critique of the political economy of capitalism. Although Marx was always conscious of the political transformations throughout the globe and was involved in vocalizing the evolving agenda of the working class politics, he was still striving towards a dialectical conceptualisation of capitalist reality, and its logical and historical processes.

During Marx's time, capitalism had just become politically triumphant with the 1848 revolutions, that too with enormous compromises. Marx found Germany and the rest of the Continental Europe still suffering “not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development.” (Marx, Capital Vol.1) The possibility of a wide-scale proletarian upsurge against the system was still not evident anywhere (Paris Commune of 1871 being the first experience), hence it was not possible for Marx or anyone at that time to pre-empt all the intricacies of the world revolution coordinating varied class experiences in the societies at various levels of capitalist development.

This is not to say that he did not have any theory of revolution at all, but it was still latent in his political economic researches. It is in this light that we can understand Lenin’s view that imperialism is the age of socialist revolutions, and during Marx’s time capitalism was still in a pre-imperialist phase. Marx’s writings starting from the Communist Manifesto to The Civil War in France, on Paris Commune etc must be studied as his reflections on the objective conditions and social changes that were effected by the French Revolution and the growth of industrial capitalism, culminating in the rise of industrial working class movement which first came into the forefront with the 1848 revolutions. Of course, Marx’s contributions in this regard were not simply historical “interpretations”; rather they established the theoretical foundation for revolutionary proletarian praxis directed towards “changing the world”. But Marx more than anybody else was aware that “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) Hence, the circumstantial limitation imposed on the proletarian praxis at the time delimited its direction. This is true for all conceptual and practical aspects of revolutionary praxis of all ages. The same holds good for Lenin’s theory of imperialism or Trotsky’s “permanent revolution”.

It was in the struggle against Bernstein’s evolutionism at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth that the issue of the relationship between class-consciousness and the negation of capitalism became most prominent in the revolutionary discourse. Bernstein saw socialism as a result of the natural processes within capitalism, thus he rejected any revolutionary endeavor for building it. He was severely criticized by his comrades in the Second International, especially Kautsky and Plekhanov, who fore-grounded the issue of a conscious destruction of the capitalist system.

The radical bloc of social democracy led by Kautsky and Plekhanov did the groundwork for the future revolutionary critique of the Second International and social democracy found in the works of Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and others. These revolutionaries for the first time systematically confronted the issue of revolutionary agencies and the nature of revolution itself. One reason for this was essentially conjunctural, as capitalism was exhausting its capacity to reproduce itself after the crisis of 1890s. This state of moribundity leading to imperialist clashes and regimentation, to an upsurge in working class radicalism with the increasingly cohesive national liberation struggles in the colonies, made an eventual collapse of the world capitalist system seem sufficiently possible, forcing the revolutionaries to take the task of making this possibility a reality through insurrections, mass strikes, soviets and workers controls. The lassitude of the traditional working class parties in Europe and their accommodation in the political competition characterizing bourgeois liberal polity compelled the revolutionaries to polemicise against the legalist leadership of these parties, and sharpen the conceptual and practical tools simultaneously. The strategic and tactical formulations comprising the major theory/theories of revolution were the product of this burning time.

Till this period the Marxists always viewed proletarian politics in an international framework aiming towards an eventual destruction of world capitalism. It was not that they glossed over the local specificity, but they saw capitalism as a world system thriving on unevenness, hence the coordinated efforts of the revolutionaries all over the world were the only possible way of realizing socialism. The minimal tasks defined in a particular locus have to be coordinated to realize the maximal goal, their dialectical convergence being the only radical resolution of the crisis determining both. Their mechanical separation led to revisionism and scholasticism, evident in the Second International. This was the conclusion to which all the formidable critiques of the Second International came separately or together. This conceptual solidarity led to their eventual camaraderie whenever the situation demanded despite their mutual diatribes of many years, during the Zimmerwald Congress and the October Revolution. Trotsky recognized this when he said that by reissuing his 1905 work, Results and Prospects (where he for the first time tried to systematically deal with the theory of permanent revolution), in 1919 he “only desires to explain the theoretical principles which rendered it possible for him and other comrades, who for many years had stood outside the Bolshevik Party, to join their fate with the fate of that party at the beginning of 1917.”

The phrase ‘revolution in permanence’ was used first by Marx in his 1850 address to the CC of the Communist League. Marx took revolution to be continuous, an uninterrupted bottom-up negation of capitalism. He viewed capitalism not as any pure and even system, which many have endeavored to put in his mouth, but as essentially comprising of simultaneous existence of various levels of capitalist development even combined with pre-capitalist vestiges. Hence, anti-capitalist revolution cannot be achieved in installments, but continuously. But as noted earlier the circumstantial limitation delimited Marx’s reflections. He could provide the basic foundation for such conceptualization, but the task of its elaboration was left to future generations.

The concept of permanent revolution as understood by Trotsky was representative of the revolutionary spirit prevalent at that time, which recognized capitalism as a global system on the one hand (thus its negation had to be global too), while on the other it took into account the unevenness of capitalist development (thus necessitating the strategic-tactical formulations specific to locations). It is dialectical to the very core viewing revolution as a continuum embedding the particular in general and appearance in essence, with the latter necessarily getting represented through the former. It seeks to stress that the localized peasant struggles and the struggles of other classes and communities against their oppression and alienation can be successful only if they are articulated with and in the world proletarian struggle against capitalism. This becomes more and more true with the evermore intensification of capitalist accumulation that thrives on the continuous subsumption of living labour by capital (formally or actually).

With the introversion of the Russian Revolution as the world revolutionary situation subsided after the defeat of the German revolution, the Soviet Union became more and more isolated—being in power and creating firewalls around it became an existential problem leading to the petty bourgeois nationalist formulation of ‘socialism in one country’. Socialism in this framework was reduced to nationalization, cooperatives and planned economy. This reaction concurred with the nationalist introversion throughout the world due to the particular crisis that capitalism faced with the 1929 Great Crash. With direct colonialism becoming burdensome and unsustainable, the regime of capitalist accumulation demanded a reconstitution of national economies. In this situation, the world revolution lost its immediate appeal, as the ruling class everywhere found the nationalist shell of Keynesian/welfarist policies not only effective in refurbishing the capitalist economies, but sufficiently ideological too to contain the anti-systemic mobilizations through welfarism, full employment and doles. One finds a strong structural and ideological affinity between the political economic governance under ‘socialism in one country’ and Keynesianism, thus licensing the conceptualization of the Soviet economy as State/State-Monopoly Capitalism. But the scope of the hegemonic struggle between the bureaucratic/intermediate class/petty bourgeoisie and proletarian segments in the party and the state justified the notion of a ‘degenerated workers’ state’ of Trotsky.

Simultaneously, the fascist menace that capitalism nurtured to gather the fruits of reaction after the defeat of the European proletarian radicalism in the 1920s and pre-empt any further working class consolidation became a very dangerous option for global capitalism itself, as it began curbing the reconstruction of advanced economies devastated by the Great Crash. It was in this phase that the Comintern’s existentialist policy of the United Front was envisaged in their late attempt to counter fascism. This definitely provided a popular base for the Allied forces in the Second World War. This tactical formula when transformed accordingly and sustained was sufficiently corporatist and useful for bourgeois polity, as it could delay any radical resolution of the capitalist crisis co-opting the leadership of the working class in its service. And this was what the existential logic of socialism in one country led to in the Cold War phase—the Soviet Bloc in order to sustain its influence around the globe blunted the radical movements by nurturing collaborationist tendencies so that the ruling classes of the newly liberated countries were not alienated and did not fall in the lap of the Anglo-American bloc. Hence, the United Front was extended to the anti-imperialist struggle, quite contrary to Lenin’s conceptualization, thus disarming this struggle of its anti-systemic tenor. This trend of disarming the working class by preaching neo-corporatism got its ultimate representation in Khrushchev’s theory of peaceful coexistence.

Nonetheless the Soviet model was posed as a model for nationalist reconstruction in opposition to the liberal model sold by the Anglo-Americans and their agencies. This competition coupled with militarism marked the global polity in the post-World War II era. It is not to say that revolutionary situations did not arise during this phase. They definitely arose, but at the wake of no preparation and frequent betrayals by the unconfident ‘vanguards’ in the name of countering and curbing anarchism and adventurism, they were crushed easily but bloodily. Wherever radical upsurges really became successful they had to struggle against isolation and regimentation before getting recognition, as Cuba and Nicaragua. The existence of the Soviet bloc definitely was a boon for the ruling classes of the underdeveloped world as it allowed the latter to bargain in the world polity. But it acted as a hindrance in the radicalization of the movements against exploitation and oppression, as its own existential problems demanded stable support from the regimes there. This pragmatic requirement guided the officialisation of the formulaic Marxism (which DD Kosambi termed as OM - Official Marxism) that was nurtured to suit the exigencies of the Cold War. This brand of Marxism reified tactical notions and presented them as universally applicable laws and principles. Varieties of ‘democratic revolutions’ were conceptualized to explain the popular upsurges under the communist leadership. They not only explained the class limit of these upsurges, but more importantly they inhibit their transformation into an “uninterrupted revolution” under a proletarian leadership. These conceptualizations became weapons to contain working class radicalism, preaching class collaborationism and blunting the class offensive at crucial junctures as in Indonesia and Iran. The ‘stage theory’ of revolution is always defined in a nationalist framework, despite the lip service paid to proletarian internationalism. It mechanically dissociates anti-capitalist revolutionary politics from democratic struggles, which are essentially reformist. This deconstructs the uninterrupted revolutionary politics of the working class into discrete moments never allowing it to heighten itself onto a newer ‘stage’. And this is justified in the name of pragmatism and practicality.

In retrospect, the struggle between the dialectical conceptualization of permanent revolution (involving a continuum between maximal and minimal agenda of the working class movement) and that of socialism in one country is a struggle for ideological hegemony over the working class movement between the proletarians and national/petty bourgeoisie. This struggle has been going on right from the time of Marx and Engels, when they contested Proudhon, Lassalle and Bakunin. The importance of Trotsky’s concept of permanent revolution lies in its analytical ability to discern moments in revolutionary politics without reifying them. It takes revolution to be continuous.

Rereading Trotsky’s classic works on “permanent revolution” acquires a new meaning today with the collapse of “official Marxism”, on the one hand, and with capitalism being in a perpetual crisis, sustaining itself through the export of this crisis from one region to another, on the other. It provides a formidable departure point for a critical assimilation of revolutionary struggles dominated by the tendencies of which it was one of the first critiques. Furthermore, at the time when proletarian internationalism is evidently the only answer to capitalist globalization, the concept of permanent revolution provides us with a powerful tool to confront programmatic issues in coordinating local struggles and articulating them within the anti-capitalist struggle, which is intrinsically international.


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The Media Question

This pamphlet was co-written by Correspondence and the editors of Radical Notes. It is the 3rd pamphlet published by us.

Admittedly it has been an old problem with most movements, that they have treated the media only as a means to an end, ‘a way of making themselves heard,’ and so long as they got some coverage with the help of conscientious friends within the media, they were satisfied. The larger dynamics of the media, as a certain sort of work, in a certain sort of work place, with human agents who are workers here, has not been addressed. Newspapers and news channels should be and can be the strongest arms of a democratic society; they can make sure that the voice of the people finds representation. Though cliché, one has to point out how the media can raise difficult questions, but the onus is upon journalists as responsible citizens and in their capacity as workers to raise them.

The decidedly undemocratic tenor of mainstream newspapers and news channels, whose editorial bosses seem to be dummies through which the state on the one hand and multinational capital on the other preach their doctrines, is not merely a sign of the larger move away from democratic values, but also of the way in which journalism is becoming an alienated activity. Responsible journalism, bent upon bringing out the democratic truth languishes as the unholy nexus of the state and moneyed interest decides the ‘line’ of a newspaper. The inability of journalists to raise their voices against recent pay-cuts in houses like TOI is not unconnected from the destruction of democratic space within journalism and mass media. Both of these get subsumed in the large movement away from true democracy – maximization of profit that a few make, in the last analysis determines all these tendencies. That is to say that the general antipathy to democratic movements visible in the lack of honest media coverage and an anti-people, non-democratic shift in the Indian situation at large not only go hand in hand but are also born out of the same tendencies.

Where do we see all this? For one, in the highly disproportionate coverage of various people’s movements by mainstream media. For instance, the space/airtime given to non-violent movements like Narmada Bachao or in Tehri is negligible. The violent movements do manage to get their attention, but nonetheless they are covered very selectively. The struggles in the North East against AFSPA are barely covered. No true attempt to understand ULFA or LTTE is to be found in the mainstream, no attempt to go to the depths of the issue and to not simply report (and reinforce) the state’s position. While the many social activists who have done serious work in the North East, J&K, or Chattisgarh report the excesses and violence committed by the paramilitary, Special Police Officers or the Salwa Judum on innocents, it is only rarely, if ever, mentioned by the media. At the moment though, with the Maoists taking centre stage on the front pages of newspapers and on prime time news, one cannot complain on grounds of quantity. But on grounds of quality, there is a lot to be said.

It has been assumed that the Maoist movement is not a mass movement; it’s only a bunch of ‘outsiders’ imposing themselves upon hapless tribes. The absurdity of the ‘outsider’ clause becomes obvious if one spares a moment’s thought to the way in which they function. The nature and width of their activities could not have been made possible without mass support. This is not the place to substantiate this assertion. What one needs to recognize at the primary level is that this is an open question and needs to be treated as such. If it is an open question with many opinions, the least the media can do is give space to these opinions, and accept the complex nature of the issue. It might be pointed out that the debate shows on news-channels do bring in people of different opinions. However, a closer look at the dynamics of these shows will demonstrate how easily the biases of the mainstream hijack the entire debate. The newer, uncommon opinion cannot be expressed in the 10seconds given to the participants, unlike the hegemonic narrative that we are all so familiar with. This inability to say everything in the imposed time limit is read as the lack of substance in these new voices, and a consensus on the issue is ‘created’.

Arnab Goswami is a good example. He seems to have found answers to all questions posed by him on his show. Furthermore, his show is an exercise in forcing his moment of epiphany upon others. ‘Mr. Varavar Rao, is Kobad Gandhy an ideologue or a terrorist, ideologue or terrorist, yes or no?’ We need to move beyond these multiple choice questions – reality is more layered than the media’s projection of it. We can all do with some thinking, including our editor-in-chief. Arnabism is actually symbolic of the lack of depth, and the fear of depths that haunts the journalism of big news houses. Maoist violence is highlighted again and again, often with cheap melodrama (showing the lack of humanity implicit in this form of reporting) as if it exists in a vacuum. Such portrayal denudes an act of its nature as an utterance, which responds to a situation (possibly another violent act on the state’s part) and is informed by necessities of a spatio-temporal/socio-political position. In the same way the struggles for self-determination are seen solely as ‘separatism,’ (one could go out on a limb and suggest that the refusal to understand or explain Islamic violence, as something more than madness or blood-thirstiness is a sign of the same problem). Just touching the surface, there too a very small section of the surface, the mainstream media presents it to its consumers (for that is what passive reception is) as the entire reality, the sole and complete truth.

It needs to be understood, and this cannot be stated any other way, that the media is responsible for manufacturing consent for war. It has taken the state’s call for war forward by eliminating dissenting voices within. In addition to several other things, the majoritarian nature of the media poses serious questions about any semblance of internal democracy. We have to make a choice between pushing for greater democracy within and allowing ourselves to get subsumed in the state’s narrative. If we choose the latter then we need to question the idea of journalism being ‘free and fair’ and see it as an instrument in the hands of a few who hold power and seek to keep it in their hands.

It is not only that journalists should try and understand the crucial position they can occupy in the struggles of the people. It is important for them to place themselves within these struggles, for even if they try to ‘keep out,’ their attempt to exclude themselves becomes the shape of their inclusion. It is never somebody else’s fight, it is always our own. In the final analysis journalists are nothing but (whether high paid or low) workers working under the imposition of capital, continuously losing control over their own work, unable to determine the conditions of their own existence.


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