The world today through Marxist eyes

 by Robin MacGregor

Revolutionary Democracy: Volume Two, No. 2 (New Series) April 2025 
£7.50 including p&p from NCP Lit, PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

 Once again lucky New Worker readers have a chance to purchase another issue of Revolutionary Democracy which has arrived from New Delhi. The tried and tested three-part format of articles on contemporary India and surrounding countries, statements of parties belonging to the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations (ICMLPO) and material from Soviet and other archives remains unchanged.  
 This issue opens with a self-explanatory piece on Emergent Fascism and People’s Resistance in India particularly the high-caste Hindu chauvinism promoted by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is related to that party’s neo-liberal economic policies. Next is a timely reprint of the Communist International’s December 1933 thesis on Fascism, The Danger of War and the Tasks of the Communist Parties which has all too many parallels for today.  
 A short article describes a police crackdown in late January on peaceful demonstrations by workers at the Maruti Suzuki plant in New Delhi, where temporary workers staged a massive protest against the Japanese owned car factory demanding permanent jobs at greatly improved rates of pay and an end to fire and rehire.  
 The huge dispute, involving around 4,000 workers, was significant for securing support from a new union and from other workers at supplier plants. At the plant 83 per cent of the workforce are employed on short-term contracts. “Only 5,713 permanent workers out of the total workforce of 34,918 enjoy the benefits and high salaries that the company claims to provide its workers”. This has become very common in recent years in India. The protest was met by a violent police charge and the uprooting of tents belonging to the workers who were perfectly entitled to make their protest. As a tail-piece the final piece in this issue is a book review dealing with the broader question of Japanese companies in India. 
 A similar piece deals with the continuing war against the tribal peoples in central India whose lands contain great mineral wealth. Here the false claim of needing to fight against the Maoist Naxalite movement gives the Indian state an excuse for mass murder to pave the way for mining companies. 
From the specific to the general we have a detailed analysis of the dire state of agriculture which involves 93 million households, the vast majority of which are very small and thus unable to take advantages of machinery. While in theory farmers are now less likely to be under a landlord’s thumb, they are now more likely to be tied to moneylenders. Despite the vast number of small farmers, “1.1 per cent of rural households own about 20 per cent of land and it is they who produce for the market and call the shots”. 
 Next comes an account of the RG Kar Movement which started with protests against the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, which snow-balled in mass protests across Bengal, involving many more than the medical profession.
The July 2024 Uprising in Bangladesh which saw the collapse of the brutal Awami League government is fully recounted by a regular RD contributor, Badruddin Umar. 
 From the archives we have a 1957 article on Commodity Production and the Law of Value Under Socialism by Soviet economist K Ostrovityanov, which editor Vijay Singh states was an important step in establishing a market economy under Khruschev. This is followed by another instalment of Lenin’s Criticism of Bogdanov’s Reactionary Sociological Views, first published in 1937 by A V Shchegolov.
 After some declarations by ICMLPO parties on Palestine, Syria and about the Kurdish PKK laying down their arms. There is also more archival material. 
From 1946 we have a document reflecting on Communist Party of India policies on the question of the formation of Pakistan and its implications for India’s national unity. Similar issues are also covered in a 1952 correspondence between the Indian and Soviet parties where the question of Kashmir loomed large.
Nearer to home for British readers is a brief 1947 discussion between Zhdanov from the Soviet Union and Nicos Zachariadis of the Communist Party of Greece concerning the civil war. All in all another interesting collection.

Revolutionary Democracy is a half-yearly theoretical and political journal published in April and September from India. It contains material on the problems facing the communist movement, particularly relating to Russia, China and India, the origins of modern revisionism, the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and developments in the international communist movement.