People's Democracy

PART II OF THE POLITICAL ORGANISATIONAL REPORT

CPI(M)’s Approach On Certain Policy Matters

  Sitaram Yechury

THE 18th congress of the CPI(M) discussed and adopted Part II of the political organisational report, “On Certain Policy Matters”, which deals with many pressing policy issues that have occupied the attention of the Party comrades in recent years. These relate mainly with the current phase of globalisation taking place in the world capitalist system, the consequent wide scale socio-economic-cultural changes in general, and, in particular, its serious implications through domestic economic reforms for the Indian economy and the Indian people.

The central committee had initiated the discussion on the issues taken up in this section since they have a direct bearing on the Party’s policy prescriptions. It was necessary to have a proper discussion and a commonality of understanding in the entire Party on these issues. This is all the more necessary in the background of a vicious campaign that the media mounts to try and ascribe different positions on these matters to different sections within the Party. For instance, there is a constant propaganda that the line pursued by the CPI(M)-led government in West Bengal is different from the pronouncements made by the Party centre on issues relating to economic reforms. Again, on issues relating to privatisation and the public sector, there is constant calumny that the positions taken by the trade unions and the Party are different. While our class enemies continue to propagate such disinformation, there are many well-wishers of the communist movement and progressive people who are also concerned about these issues.

In this background, it was absolutely necessary for the Party to discuss at its highest forum our attitude to major questions that are arising in the present period. It is to meet this need that this section of the political organisational report discussed:

• Party’s approach to globalisation in general;

• International capital flows (including finance and industrial capital)

• Public sector;

• CPI(M)-led state government’s approach to foreign loans;

• Withdrawal of State from meeting social obligations;

• Our stand on NGOs; and

• Our attitude to self help groups.

The adoption of this part defines our approach on these issues and the commonality that has emerged in the process.

The 17th congress had decided that there was a need to update the Party document, “On Certain Ideological Issues”, adopted at the 14th congress.  Unfortunately, this task could not be completed and the 18th congress has enjoined the new central committee to undertake and complete this task within one year. Many of the issues discussed in Part II of the political organisational report, however, could not wait till this task is completed given the fact that on all these issues, there was an urgent need to have a uniform and consistent approach. It is keeping this in mind that the 18th congress discussed and adopted this section. 

Globalisation

This section of the political-organisational report notes: “Globalisation, as the present phase of capitalist development is known as, is a process that must be understood in its totality”. 

Globalisation is a development that has to be assessed on the basis of the internal laws and the dynamics of the functioning of the capitalist economic system. Karl Marx, in his seminal work Das Kapital, had shown us that as capitalism develops, it leads to the concentration and centralisation of capital in a few hands. As a result of this law, huge amounts of capital get accumulated.  This, in turn, needs to be deployed to earn profits which is the raison d'etre of the system.

Towards the end of the 20th century, more specifically in the decade of the eighties, this process of centralisation led to gigantic levels of accumulation of capital. The beginning of the nineties saw the internationalisation of finance capital which had grown in colossal leaps.  In 1993, the global stock of principle derivatives was estimated to be over $20 trillion. Subsequently, this globally mobile finance capital had acquired unprecedented dimensions. At the turn of the 21st century, the turnover in the global financial transactions was estimated to be over $400 trillion, or, nearly 60 times the annual global trade in goods and services estimated to be around $7 trillion.

This huge accumulated finance capital requires a world order that places absolutely no restrictions on its global movement in search of predatory speculative profits.

Simultaneously, the huge accumulation of capital taking place with the multinational corporations, the assets of some of whom outstrip the combined GDPs of many developing countries, also created conditions which required the removal of all restrictions on the movement of this industrial capital in search of super profits. Similar pressures also developed for the removal of all trade barriers and tariff protection.

Thus, the laws of capitalist development by themselves created the objective conditions for the current phase of globalisation whose essential purpose is to break down all barriers for the movement of capital and to dovetail the economies of the developing countries to the super profit earning drive of multinational corporations. This is sought to be achieved by the global trimoorti, viz, IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. The objective that clearly emerges is one of seeking the economic recolonisation of the developing countries or the third world.

As this process of globalisation was underway came the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the socialist countries in Eastern Europe. While it is a matter of a separate discussion to examine whether the process of globalisation and the collapse of the Soviet Union were merely coincidental, or, are related in some manner, it is sufficient for us to note here that this convergence at the beginning of the decade of 1990s set in motion a renewed aggressiveness by the remaining superpower, USA.

The visions of a "new world order" under the US leadership unfolded. The efforts to impose a comprehensive US hegemony on all global matters was unleashed. The post-cold war bipolar international situation, instead of moving towards multi-polarity, is sought to be short-circuited by USA to create a world of uni-polarity under its tutelage.

These efforts have been intensified further following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. The "war against terrorism" has today replaced the cold war imperialist slogan of "war against communism" as the excuse and pretext to militarily intervene in sovereign independent countries to advance US hegemonic interests. The war against Iraq and its occupation by the USA is the most brazen expression of this trend. 

Thus, under globalisation, what we are witnessing today is an effort towards the economic recolonisation of the third world and simultaneously a world that is sought to be dictated and ruled upon by US-led imperialism.

WIDENING INEQUALITIES

While these are the objectives that imperialism seeks to achieve, certain other features of globalisation need to be noted. These are important to underline the fact that for the bulk of humanity, globalisation means nothing else, but greater misery and exploitation.

First, globalisation is accompanied by the utilisation of vastly growing scientific and technological advances not for the benefit of the vast masses of humanity but for strengthening the rapacious plunder for greater profits. The nature of capitalist development increasingly is based on such advances. The net result is, while moderate growth is achieved, it is done without generating employment and, in fact, reducing its future potential. This is the phenomenon of "jobless growth". In the third world, this is assuming the character of “jobloss growth”.

According to the International Labour Organisation, while 12 crore people were officially registered as unemployed at the turn of the century, there were an additional 70 crore who were underemployed. In addition, 130 crore people live in absolute poverty earning less than $1 a day. While 300 crore people, in addition, live on less than $2 a day.

Secondly, this phase of globalisation is accompanied by sharp widening of inequalities. This is true for both between the developed and the developing countries and between the rich and the poor in all countries. This is starkly illustrated by the fact that the combined assets of 358 billionaires in the world is greater than the combined annual GDP of countries constituting 45 per cent of the world's population, or, 230 crore people. The share of the poorest 20 per cent in the world's population is less than one per cent down from 1.4 per cent in 1991. The Human Development Report 2004 reveals that 46 countries have become poorer now than in 1990. 

Such large-scale impoverishment of the vast majority of the world's people means the shrinkage of their capacity to be consumers of the products that this globalised economy produces. This renders the entire process of globalisation to be simply unsustainable. This is the third feature. 

The enormous growth and mobility of international finance capital had created illusions that this was a balloon that could be inflated to infinity. Burst it did, shattering many illusions created by this "virtual wealth.” All the stock markets in the world, including the fancied Nasdaq, suffered major collapses by the middle of 2001. This was before September 11, and hence, it would be only a deliberate effort to try and link the current global recession to the terrorist attacks. If anything, the "war against terrorism", has to some extent bolstered public investment, particularly in the armament industry given the aggressive US hegemonic drive. (Signs of recovery, led by the war against Iraq, are now visible. This, however, does not appear sustainable in the long term.)

The only way imperialism seeks to sustain this unsustainable exploitative order is by intensifying its political and military hegemony. The burdens of the economic crisis will surely be shifted to the people who are already groaning under the globalisation onslaught. In this context, it is pertinent to recollect what Marx had noted in the Das Kapital. "With adequate profit, capital is very bold.  A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; and 300 per cent and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged."

Thus, what awaits humanity is a fresh wave of assaults and onslaughts. Unless of course, the people's movement against globalisation, which has been rapidly growing in recent years, attains levels that can halt and reverse this process. But that can be possible only if an alternative to the capitalist system emerges as the objective to achieve freedom and liberty. History has repeatedly shown that no amount of reform within the capitalist system can eliminate exploitation which is inherent in the very production process of the system. An alternative socio-economic political system has to be put in place and that can only be socialism. Humanity, thus, has a choice. As Rosa Luxembourg many decades ago and Fidel Castro today put it: this choice is between socialism or barbarism.

Thus, notwithstanding the ideological offence that continues to parrot the so-called invincibility and eternality of capitalism, (the Francis Fukuyama variety) its global economy is in a serious crisis and imperialism has embarked on a hegemonic drive to enslave the majority in the world's people.

Concluding this section, the Political Organisational Report notes: “However, anticipating in many ways the contours of such developments, the CPI(M) Updated Party Programme notes: Despite the fact that the international correlation of forces favour imperialism at the end of the twentieth century and capitalism continues to develop productive forces with the application of new scientific and technological advances, it remains a crisis-ridden system apart from being a system of oppression, exploitation and injustice. The only system, which is an alternative to capitalism, is socialism.

 (To be continued)