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Artesian wrote:
>Think history has clearly shown that "never" is the
>proper answer to when it makes sense for socialists
>to enter into bourgeois governments.
I think Artesian may be on to something here as evidenced
by the situation in W.Bengal and the entrenched position
of the CPI-M via their popular front alliances with various
bourgeois partners. What kind of results has this produced
for the people, especially the poorest and most oppressed?
The party program sounds resolute, but how effective
has it been?
{From ‘People’s Democracy and it Progamme’)
>While adhering to the aim of building socialism in our country,
>the Communist Party of India (Marxist), taking into consideration
>the degree of economic development, the political ideological
>maturity of the working class and its organisation, places
>before the people as the immediate objective, the establishment
>of people's democracy based on the coalition of all genuine
>anti-feudal, anti-monopoly and anti-imperialist forces led
>by the working class on the basis of a firm worker-peasant
>alliance.
I will leave it to others here to show me of the CPI-M did
indeed achieve a people’s democracy in one, two or even three
provinces while they functioned as the regional authority
for the Indian state in alliance with the Congress party.
Elsewhere In India I am aware of the many problems which
the bourgeois regime is no closer to solving now then they
were 40 years ago. It is this stark fact which is at the
base of the Naxalite insurgency.
An article from the Economist in 2006, described
the conditions endured of some of the poorest and
most oppressed in the villages of the Bastar forest:
<http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=77992
47>
>In the tiny, dirt-poor villages scattered through the forest,
>the Indian state is almost invisible.
>In one there is a hand-pump installed by the local government,
>but the well is dry. There are no roads, waterpipes, electricity
>or telephone lines. In another village a teacher does come, but,
>in the absence of a school, holds classes outdoors. Policemen,
>health workers and officials are never seen. The vacuum is filled
>by Naxalite committees, running village affairs and providing
>logistic support to the fighters camping in the forest. For the
>past year, those fighters—mostly local >tribal people—have been
>battling not just the police and the six paramilitary battalions
>deployed in the district, but their own neighbours.
The “Viceland website also gives a tour of this same region:
<http://www.viceland.com/int/v13n10/htdocs/mao1.php?country=us>
>There are some 30 tribes in Chhattisgarh, and they all have
>different languages and levels of socioeconomic development
>ranging from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to factory workers.
>What unites them is poverty and isolation. In Chhattisgarh, a
>common cure for financial trouble is to murder your family
>and then commit suicide. A common thing for young girls to
>do here is get raped by a forest officer….
>The reason things in Chhattisgarh have remained so fucked
>despite 60 years of official concern for the backward population
>is basically this: Money allocated for development of tribal
>areas gets wheedled away by corrupt officials at every level
>of India’s bureaucracy. Vijay has written of this insurgency
>extensively and his argument is that it serves no purpose
>but to make the condition of these people worse and that
>support for armed struggle in general is the clueless pastime
>of the intellectual.
VJ wrote:
>The gun is an anthem for the deracinated middle class romantic,
>but not the glory song for the dispossessed, for whom only
>suffering comes at the gun's mouth.
Something tells me that the those in India confronting the
police and paramilitary death squads are not middle class
romantics bit rather those who are sick of being abused,exploited
and robbed becasue hey are the most abused,
exploited and robbed.
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