Page THE MILITANT saturuny, rebruary 3, 1930 The Proletariat and Peasantry in the Indian Revolution The essence of the colonial nationalist By Max Shachtman tics are wrong. Considered from the standtheory is that the pressure of imperialism point of revolutionary Marxien, Roy reon the colonies has welded together a Not only that, but the meager holdings But for the Indian proletariat to be cap mains what he has been for years; a Mennation, all of whose native inhabitants have of the 210 millions of peasants a:id landless able of leading the peasantry behind it, shevik of the colonial type, e. shot through identical social and historical interests in a laborers are usually squeezed to exhaustion it must have, as its first pre requisite, with nctionalist ideology.
Joint fight for liberation from the foreign by heavy rents, exorbitant taxation, and the political and economic organization, e. That the ruling regime in the yoke. This is a theoretical trait common ruthlessness of the village usureres. Any trade unions and a revolutionary proletar has changed its position from the days of to Chinese, Indian and all other petty bour typical taxation year indicates the brutal lan party. Without these all talk of the the Chinese revolution, is incontestable; geots nationalist movements. According exploitation of the peasantry.
Where, in leading role of the proletariat is just so that it has not, however, adopted the corto them, the colonial domination of imper England proper, direct taxation for 1923 24 much wind It is precisely in this capital rect revolutionary standpoint which would ialism abolishes the class struggle in the covered 54 percent of the tax revenues, it question that the leadership of the Com be an acknowledgement that the whole colonies and creates a united front of all covered less than 10 percent in India. In munist International has shown its most struggle against an alleged Trotskyist devlayers of the population. This conception, direct taxation in India for 1924 25 (cus catastrophic bankruptcy in the last few iation in the Chinese revolution was a embodied for example in Sun Yat Senism, 18 toms, excise, stamps, salt, oplum) brought years, to such an extent, in fact, that the monstrous fraud is equally true. Every the theoretical justification of the colonial in 63 percent of the whole, and taxation on whole immediate future of the Indian revo possible course has beon adopted by the bourgeoisie for its domination and suppresland, an additional percent. The results lution is imperilled. At the present moment, Centrists and the Right wing in the Intersion of the working class and peasantry in of this practical course are shown in the there is no spokesman for the Stalin fac national except that of the burningly urthe struggle against imperialism.
conclusions of a noted British investiga tion in any C, P, that can say with authori gent formation of a Communist Party. The It was reflected in the Communist In tor (Dr. Mann. In one of the first vihages, ty just what is the Comintern policy in Communist Party of India is today a ternational in the period of the Chinese he found that 81 percent of the buildings India. The Daily Worker is a typical in myth; it is non existent. No serious atrevolution (1925 27) in the theory of the could not under the most favorable cir. stance of hopeless confusion. Its special tempt has been made by the Comintern to national government of the bloc of four cumstances maintain their owners. In fets write on India one day that the aim aid in its organization. On the contrary, Classes (Martinov Stalin Bucharin Roy. another village, far froin an industrial cen of the revolution is the democratic dicta it has been deliberately neglected. The which was the Justification for chaining ter, he found 85 percent of the population tership of the workers and peasants. policy of the in India, as expressed ofthe proletarian and peasants movement to in literal misery. Further, the peasants are (Browder. and other day that the Left ficially by Roy for years, has been: the war chariot of Chiang Kai Shek. This usually heavily in debt. Then they are at wing in the trade unions. will lead the What is needed is a revoluticnary Peotheory, in any of its multitude of variations, tacked by the landlords, who frequently masses of the workers and peasants to ple Party which is alone capable of deis a glit edged guarantee in advance that teke half of what the cultivator is able to Soviet power (J. Ford. tending the inmediate as well as the ultithe coming Indian revolution will be produce.
The Absence of a Communist Party mato welfare (90. of the toiling masses.
strangled in the blood of its own working These are some of the reasons why the The fact is that the decisive element Or else: The organization of a party class and land slaves.
Indian masses have the highest death rate required for a successful revulutionary of the workers and peasants has become In the previous article, we described in the world. These facts account for holo struggle is lacking in India, primarily bean indispensable necessity. The Communthe position of the Indiarr big bourgeoisie causts of famine and epidemics sweeping cause of the policy pursued by the Comist Party of India. is called upon by and feudal and monarchial lords, the full the country, and as in the influenza epidem intern in the last five years: a revolutionhistory. to play this role.
fledged allies of British imperialism, and ic after the war, hilling off 13, 000, 000 peo ary proletarian (1. e. a Communist) parAnd: We will endeavor to push the the petty bourgeois nationalists, at present ple at virtually a blow.
ty. For years in which splendid opportunimiddle class nationalistis forward in the dominating the movement and ready at any movement in India that does not ties for the creation of such a party were struggle. We will force the (National)
and every opportunity to make a compro place on the agenda as one of its leading at band, the policy of tho Comintern in Congross to declare boldly for a Republican mise with the British in order to prevent tasks the solution of the agrarian problem India was in no esential different from India, the rise of a genuine mass movement. the agrarian revolution) cannot be desig that followed in China, that is, the creation And more: Where then is the BolThere remain the basic forces of the Indian nated a revolutionary movement, or even, of a Kuo Min Tang on an Indian scale.
shevism in our programme? Wherein lies revolution, the workers and peasants. for that matter, a movement that conducts The most prominent spokesman for the its danger to the established order of capiThe Indian Proletariat genuine struggle against imperialism. policy in India was Roy, the talist society. Yes, that is what we The Indian workers are among the But what class can lead the struggle for heat of whose nationalist passion burns would like to know: Wherein. most scandalously exploited in the world. the agrarlan revolution? In the answer to through the thin coat of Bolshevik Veneer Roy Line Was Stalin Line The last Factory Amendment Act recog that also lies the reply to the question acquired by rubbing shoulders with Lenin This was not Roy line of thought nizes a maximum working week of 60 hours of the character and leadership of the In while the latter was alive.
and action; it was the line of the whole of and an 11 hour day; needless to say, the dian revolution.
It is pitiful to read the diatribes dir ficial Comintern (Stalin Bucharin). applied actual working day frequently runs as high What is clear from all modern history ected against Roy today by the very same in India and in China. Through Roy, the as 15 hours. Tens of thousands of women is that the peasantry itself, as a class people in the International who defended Comintern flirted with the national bourand children work not only in the light (a petty bourgeois layer of society whose his views for four or five years previous geoisie for years. It proposed an alliance industries (textile, etc. but in even heavy, social and economic base tends to dimin to his expulsion. The only crime of which with the bourgeois League for IndependSlangerous industries, like mining. Wages ish steadily. can play no independent role Roy is guilty is that he is faithfully con ence. It formed and assisted the hybrid are hideously low, frequently making any. in the class struggle. The peasant gov tinuing the policy oficially sanctioned by caricature of Marxism, the All India Workthing but the barest existence impossible. ernment of Stambulinsky in Bulgaria, the Stalin, Bucharin and Martinov for the Chin ers Party 10 ioad the Indian revolution. Records of wages, writes Dutte in Croatian peasant movement led by Rad ese revolution, and for India as well, during and kept it going until less than a year Modern India. show the average wage Itch, the North Western farmers movethe whole struggle against the Russian ago, when it died of theoretical and social a Bengal coal miner in 1922 as 12 annas ment in the United States which is dominat Opposition. Roy continues this policy: mal nutrition. It gave the clever bourgeois an anna is about cents, coin) per ed by the bourgeoisie and its social concep Stalin has not yet entirely dissassociated policcians at the head of the Indian Trade day, of an Assam plantation laborer as tions (not to speak of the Russian peas himself from it. And the party members Union Congress innumerable opportunities annas, and of Bombay skilled textile work antry in the March and November revolu have every right to ask Stalin and Co: to refresh their fading reputations at the ers as 12 annas to rupees. (about 50 tions. all these demonstrated that the Why is the policy of the Comintern iu apparently inexhaustible fountain of the cents) per day. What these figures mean, peasantry is elther an instrument of the the Chinese revolution, never condemned so called League against Imperialism in even in the case of the better of Bombay bourgeoisie or an ally of the proletariat; or rejected, inapplicable to a similar situa order to protect them with a Bolshevik workers, is shown by the enquiry of the any other position is a deception and a tion in India today? Why is Roy wrong coloration from the attacks of tho masses.
Bombay Labor Office into 2, 473 working dream.
for advocating a revolutionary democratic In short, every subterfuge has been tried to class budgets. The enquiry showed: Peasantry and National Bourgeoisie alliance, which under present Indian con avoid the only possible road to revolution: That no less than 56 percent of the The more than 200, 000, 000 Indian peas ditions will embrace well over 80 percent the consolidation of a Communist Party Income went on food. That even so the ants are today principally under the com of the population without saying a word which alone can lead the proletariat, and quality of food obtained did not reach the mand of the national bourgeoisle, for whom about working class domination of the bloc through the working class entrain the peasprison standard. The general conclusion they are nothing else considered essen when that is what Stalin Bucharin Mar antry behind it and utilize the lower secis that industral workers consume a maxi tially than troops. The nationalist bour tinov carried through in the Chinese bloc tions of the urban petty bourgeoisie. The mum of cereals allowed by the Famine geoisie of India cannot carry out the agra of four classes? Why is Roy wrong for absence of a Communist Party to this day code, but less than the diet prescribed in rian revolution, and will not carry it out, warning that the process must proceed in is objectively the greatest obstacle in the the Bombay Gaol Manual. That 97 for they are joint exploiters with imperialstages, when it was precisely with the road to a victorious advance of the Indian percent of the families were living in over ism of the misery existing in Indian agri same theory of stages that Bucharin and revolution.
crowded single rooms. That 47 percent culture, The national democratic revo Roy Justified the suppression by the Kuo But for that, there is a revival of the amilles were in debt.
lution carried out by the revolutionary Min Tang of the agrarian revolution and exploded heory which breaks with Housing conditions in the city are democratic alliance under the leadership workers strikes during the Chinese revo Bolshevism that the trade unions or a secfrightful. In the Bombay one room tene of the petty bourgeoisle the program for lution? Why is Roy wrong for forgetting tion or wing of the unions will lead the ments, the Medical Officer Report for 1921 India envisaged by Roy (Revolutionary entirely the elementary requirements of revolution his theory tentatively addeclared that 18 percent contained ten or Age, No. 7) cannot and will not solve the proletarian leadership of the movement, vanced in 1924 by Zinovlov, was applied more persons and 73 percent of the work problem of the peasantry by carrying out of the creation and strengthening of a to England. It is not certain, wrote Zinoers children are born in those one room the agrarian revolution.
Communist Party, training the young move viev, whether the revolutionary movement tenements. Ibid. All recent history proves this. The ment to regard the nationalist bourgeoisie will come through MacManus (1. the BrlIt is not surprising, therefore, that the Chinese revolution, in which the workers with suspicion, when Stalin and Bucharin tish Communist Party) or through the Genpronts of industrial enterprises in India and peasants were led by Chang Kal shek overlooked all these requirements in the eral Council of the British Trade Unions.
rival the most gorgeous fantasies of the and the national bourgeoiste (assisted, alas!
Chinese revolution? What is wrong with The British General Strike two years lafirst conquerer of the country.
by the Comintern) did not solve the agra Roy completely Lorgetting the slogan ter removed even Zinovier doubts.
The Spollation of the Peasantry rian problem, which is just as acute today of Soviets in India, when the official Com variation of this, theory is now being The conditions of the Indian peasantry as it was before the establishment either intern virtually expelled the Russian Op advanced in India. The Stalinist press are even worse if possible. The ryot (pea of the Canton, Nanking or Wuhan gov position for demanding that slogan in Chi speaks of the Left wing in the Indian Trade sant) is constantly on the verge of physical ernments. The bourgeois democratic move na at the moment of a rising revolutionary Union Congress as of the organizing and annihilation. The ruthless destruction of ment of Kerensky equally failed to solve tide? Finally, what 18 wrong with Roy directing center of the proletarian revoluall handicrafts, the driving of the artisan the problem of the agrarian revolution. conception of providing the masses with tionary movement. The only thing that can and even many thougands of industrial That task was executed only after the Bol program of National Democratic Revo come out of such a conception is incalculaworkers back to the land has resulted in shevik revolution, during its 80 called lution and (leading) them by stages in the ble harn. The proletarian political party can an overcrowding of agriculture. In one democratic perlod. 1917 18) when the struggle for the realization of that pro not take the place of the trade unions; but section of the country, inquiry showed that land program was put through by the cof gram. a conception that conceals the the trade unions or any section of it can the average holding had decreased from laboration of the Communists and the Left real aim of the victory of the bourgeois certainly not take the place of the revolu40 to acres in less than 50 years. The Social Revolutionaries. In Russia, the agra counter revolution and the subjugation of tionary party. The political party of the corollary to this situation is the immense rian revolution was accomplished only un the workers and peasants when that was proletariat is its principal arnt in the strug.
expanse of land not placed at the service der the leadership of the proletarlat. That precisely the conception that animated all of the peasants. in blg landed estates, etc. holds true with equal force for India, des the activity of the in the Chinese rev The Aftermath of Non Cooperation which is neither fallow nor cultivated, and pite the fact that, unlike Russia, it is a olution?
by Manabendra Nath Roy, Published by the amounts to practically 25 percent of the colonial country. Otherwise the whole les Where Roy is Right and Wrong Communist Party of Great Britais, ontotal cultivable and uncultivable acreage of son not only of the Russian revolution Considered from the standpoint of the don, 1926. Page 37.
British India. The land hunger of the In but also of the Chinese revolution, has pas officially endorsed policy of Stalin in the Ibid, Page 47.
dlan pamants is as acute as it is remed bserve by the revolutionar Chinese revolution, Roy is to day conPage 48 able mnyament sistent and correct, while his Staliniat cm Ibid. page 89.