By
Theo Russell
The
latest issue of the Indian Marxist journal Revolutionary
Democracy ,which only recently arrived in Britain, has the usual valuable
selection of articles from around the world, this time with more of a focus on
India.
A report on the re-emergence of the national
liberation movement in South Africa by Raul Martinez is a timely and detailed
criticism of the “the neo-liberal economic policies and the perpetuation of the
neo-colonial dependence on imperialism” of the ANC and its close ally, the
South African Communist Party.
The current issue also has a swathe of
articles on India looking at the repression of national minorities, the
agrarian crisis, the role of the left, the growing danger of more Bhopal-style
disasters, the banking sector and other topics.
The article Agrarian Crisis: Life at Stake in Rural India describes the
fundamental imbalances in the agriculture sector, accounting for 58 per cent of
the workforce but only about 14 per cent of GDP.
Just over 5 per cent of landowners own
43 per cent of farmland, while 90.5 per cent share 43 per cent and 10 per cent
of rural households have no land. The mass of small farmers have a weak
position in the markets and are plagued with indebtedness.
The authors suggest that “farmers must
come together transcending caste and religious differences” and “consider
pooling land together to form production cooperatives”.
The
Labyrinth of the Neo-Liberal Crisis: The Indian State and Its Instrument of
Peace,
by Dr Malem Ningthouja, looks at the Indian state’s “carrot and iron policy to
tame (domesticate) people or wipe out those who dissent” in India’s
North-eastern provinces, where “a soldier could suspect anyone and kill with
impunity”. India’s “annexation” of the region aims to secure labour, raw materials,
markets and “a buffer vis-a-vis presumed Chinese social imperialism, and a
military stockpile and commodity stocked for commercial expansion in South and
Southeast Asia”.
India’s repressive actions in the
Northeast are much less well known in the West than its brutal oppression in
Kashmir, but Ningthouja also looks at the problems and weaknesses of the
various liberation movements in a region “inhabited by disunited and
economically backward tribal and peasant communities”.
Factionalism and splits have plagued the
many liberation movements, and a timeline of organisations in Manipur State
since 1948 shows that there have been no less than 40 parties and guerrilla
organisations resisting the Indian state in this one province alone, many of
them breakaways from existing groups.
In Trotsky’s
‘Exile’ and Social Democracy, written in Moscow in 1928, Clara Zetkin
attacks “the loyal band of followers of Trotsky and Zinoviev” for encouraging
and magnifying the “distortions, falsifications, calumny and suspicion” of the
Second International against the Soviet Union. She describes Trotsky and
Zinoviev as “a gift from heaven for all who hate and fear the world proletarian
revolution in the Soviet Union, and are intent upon choking it to death”.
And the article Gramsci Rejected the Ideas of Trotsky consists of excerpts from a
new book by Jose Antonio Egido, showing that while Trotskyists “shamelessly
attempt to appropriate Gramsci”, in reality Gramsci repeatedly criticised
Trotsky, denounced the “permanent revolution” theory and staunchly supported
the “socialism in one country” policy.
Other topics covered include the
formation of the International Stalin Society, and report on the 4th National
Congress of the Workers’ Party of Tunisia, the struggles against ISIS in the
Middle East, against an anti-democratic and militarist European Union, the
problems facing revolutionary forces in Latin America, a discussion between
Stalin and Zhou Enlai in 1952, and some surprising and controversial comments
by Mao Zedong on Stalin shortly after his death.
Revolutionary
Democracy, Vol XX, No. 2, September 2014, is available from the New Communist
Party for £5 plus £1 P&P. It is also
stocked at Housmans Bookshop in London and News From Nowhere in Liverpool.