THB MILITANT Saturday, July 11 THE REVOLUTION IN INDIA By TROTSKY The Jailing of Gandhi The «Only» Missing Condition India is the clasthe Orient in general, Stalin advanced sic colonial country 1924 himultaneously with the reactionas England is the well that the loss of India would not only From passive forms of struggle, the ary idea of socialism in one country, the no classic metropolis, mean the crash of its sufficiently rotted peasantry has more than once in history less reactionary idea of dual composition All the viciousness worker and peasant parties. This was world power but also a social collapse in passed over to the severest and bloodiest of the ruling classes, another formula for the same rejection of its own metropolis. It is a struggle of wary against their direct enemies: the land every form of opof independent policy and of an indepenlife and death. All forces will be set owners, the authorities and the loan sharks.
pression that kapdent party of the proletariat. The unforin motion. This means that the revoluThe middle Ages were full of such peasant tunate Roy has ever since that time become Italism has aption will have to mobilize irresistible ener wars in Europe; but they are also full of plied against the backward peoples of the the apostle of the super class and supramerciless suppression of easant wars.
sy. The many millioned mass has already Passive resistance of the peasantry as well class peoples or East is most completely and frightfully democratic party.
begun to stir. They showed their hall blind summed up in the history of the sigantic The history of Marxism, the development force to such an extent that the national as its bloody uprisings can be turned into colony on which the British imperialists bourgeoisie was compelled to come out of a revolution only under the leadership of the of the nineteenth centrury, the experience urban class which thus becomes the leader of the three Russian revolutions everyhave settled themselves like leeches to drink its passivity and master the movement in its blood for the past century and a half.
of the revolutionary nation and after the thing, everything passed for these gentleorder to break the edge of the revolutionThe English bourgeoisie has diligently fosvictory the bc. urers of the revolutionary men without leaving a trace. They have ary sword. Ghandi passive resistance 18 not yet understood that the power. In the present epoch such a class Workertered every remnant of barbarism, every the tactical knot that combines the naivete peaagant party is conceivable only in the can be only the proletariat, even in the institution of the Middle Ages which could and sell denying blindness of the disunited Ornt.
form of a Kuomintang, that is in the form be of service in the oppression of ma. by and petty bourgeois masses with the treach.
It 19 true that the Indian proletariat of a bourgeois party leading behiad liself man. It forced its feudal agents to ous manoeuvers of the Hberal bourgeoisie.
occupie a smaller numerical place in the the workers and peasists in order ater on adapt themselves to colonial capitalist exThe fact that the chairman of the Indian composition of the population than even the to betray and crush them. History has ploitation to become its links, its organs, Legislative Assembly that is, the official Russian proletariat on the eve of 1905 and not yet invented another type of a supraIts convoys to the masses. The British imorgan of the machinations with imperialism, class, or intra class party.
1917. This comparatively small size of the After all, not perialists boast of their railroads, their in vain was Roy the agent of Stalin in gave up his post to head the movement for proletariat was the main argument of all canals and industrial enterprises in India the boycott of English 800s, 19 of a the phillistines, all the Martinovs, all the China, the prophet of the struggle against in which they have invested close to tour deeply symbolic character. We will prove Mensheviks against the perspective of the Trotskyism. the executor of the Martinbillion gold dollars. Apologists for imovist bloc of four classes. in order to to you, say the national bourgeoiste to permanent revolution, They considered perialism triumphantly compare present the gentlemen on the Thames, that we are fantastic the very thought that the Russian become the ritualistic scape goat for the day India with what It was prior to colindispensible for you, that without us you proletariat, thrusting the bourgeois aside, crimes of the StaWnist bureaucracy after onial occupation. Eat who can doubs for the inevitable defeat of the Chinese revoluwill not calm the masses; but for this we would take hold of the agrarian revolution tion a moment that a gifted nation of 320, 000will present you with our own bill.
of the peasantry, woull give it a bold Six years passed in India in weak000 people would develop immeasurably swing, and rise on its wave to the revoluening and demoralizing experiments with uker and more successfully were tionary dictatorship. Therefore they conthe realization of the Stalinist prescription freed from the burden of systematic and sdered realistic the hope that the liberal for thtwo class worker peasant parties.
By way of reply, MacDonald puts organized plunder? It is enough to recall bourgeoisie, leaning on the masses of the The results are at hand: potent, provinGhandi in jail.
the four billion gold dollars which repreIt is possible that the city and village, would complete the deincial worker peasant parties. which wasent the British investment in India to lackey goes further than the master in ocratic revolution. But it turned out that ver, limp along or simply melt away and tends, being conscientious beyond reason their social statistics of the population are reduced to nothing precisely at a moimagine what England extracts from India in order to justify his faith. It is possi are far from measuring the economic or met when they are supposed to act, that in the course of only some five or six years.
ble that the Conservatives, serious and exAllowing India carefully weighed doses the political role of single classes. The is, at a momeat of revolutionary tide. But October revolution, by experience bas there is no proletarian party. It must stil. of technique and culture, exactly en ugh perienced imperialists, would not at the present stage go so far with repressions. proved this once and for all and very conbe created in the fire. of events ind at that to facilitate the exploitation of the riches But on the other hand the national leadvincingly.
it will be first neceshary to remove the garof the country, the Shylock of the Thames bage piled up by the leading bureaucracy.
could not however prevent the ideas of ec ery of the passive opposition are themSuch is the situation! Beginning with 1994, selves in need of repression rs support for onomic and national independence and freethe leadership of the Comintern has done their considerably shaken reputations. Il today the Indian proletariat ly nudom from penetrating more and more wideMacDonald does them this service.
everything that could be done to render While merically weaker than the Russian this in ly into the masses.
impotent the Indian proletariat, to weaken shooting down workers and peasants, he itself does not at all pre determine the the will of the vanguard, and to elip its Just as in the older bourgeois countries, arrests Gandhi with an abundance of fore smaller swing of its revolutionary possibwings.
the various racial stocks that exist in Inwarning such as the Russian provisional ilities, just as the numerical weakness of dia can only be fused into a nation by the Russian proletariat compared to the While Roy and the other Stalinist pupils government used to arrest the Kornilovs means of a binding political revolution, American and English was no hindrance were wasting precious years in order to eBut and Denikens, ID Aborate a democratic program for contradistinction the older to to the dictatorship of the proletariat in If India is a component element in the countries, this revolution in India is a Russia, On the contrary all those social supra class party, the national bourgeois internal rule of the British bourgeoisie, colonial revolution directed against forpeculiarities which made possible and unsle utilized this dawdling to the maximum then on the other hand, the imperialist avoidable the October revolction are preeign oppressors. Besides this, it is the in order to seize the trade unions. If not rule of British capital over India is a sent in India in a still sharper form. In politically, then in the trade unions, the revolution of a historically belated nation in which the relations of feudal serfdom, component element of the internal order this country of poor peasants, the hegeKuo Min Tang has been accomplished in caste divisions and even slavery exist of India. The question cannot at all be mony of the city has no less a clear charac India, true, with the ditference that the reduced to one of the mere expulsion of ter than in czarist Russia.
alongside of the class antagonisms of the The concencreators have in the meantime become some tens of thousands of foreign exploit tration of industrial, commercial and bourgeoee and proletariat which have frightened by their own handiwork, and ers.
have jumped aside heaping slander on the grown greatly in the last period.
They cannot be separated from the banking power in the hands of the big bour executors.
internal oppressors and the harder the in geoiste primarily the foreign bourgeoisie, ternal oppressors and the harder the preson the one hand; a swift Centrism «Left Jump The colonial character of the Indian sure of the masses will become the less growth of a sharply defined. proletariat, will the latter want to separate. Just as on the other, exclude the possibility of an This time the Centrists Jumped, as is revolution against one of the most powerin Russia the liquidation of Czarism to Independent role of the petty bourgeoisie known, to the Left. but matters ful oppressors masks to a certain extent gether with its inebtedness to world in of the city and to an extent the intellect not improve by this.
the internal social antagonisms of the The official position ance capital became possible only because tual and transform by this the political of the Comintern in the questons of the country, particularly to the eyes of those to the peasantry the abolition of the monmechanics of the revolution into a struggle Indian revolution is such a tangled ball of to whom such masking is advantageous.
of the proetariat with the bourgeoisie for yarn which is apparently intended especIn reality the necessity of throwing off the archy grew out of the abolition of the landthe leadership of the peasant masses. So far ially to derail the proletarian vanguard system of imperialist oppression which, owding magnates, to the same degree also there is only one condition missing: and bring it to despair At any rate, halt in India the struggle with imperialist opwith all its roots intertwined with the old Boshevik Party. And that is where the of it goes on because the leadership strives Indian exploitation, demands the greatest pressions grows out of the countless masses problem les now.
constantly and willfully to conceal its misof the oppressed and semi pauperized pearevolutionary effort on the part of the takes of yesterday We were witnesses to the way the leadantry, out of the necessity of liquidating ership of Stalin and Bucharin carried out The second half of the tangle must be credited to the hapIndian masses and by that itself assures a the feudal landlords, their agents and inlesg nature of Centrism.
gigantic swing of the class struggle. Britermediaries, the chinovniks and sharks.
the Menghevik conception of the democratic tleh imperialism will not abandon its posirevolution in China. Armed with a power Ve have in mind at present not the tlong voluntarily; while dropping Its tall The Indian peagant wants a just ful apparatus, this leadership had the posprogram of the Comintern which ascribes to distribution of land. That is the basis before America, it will direct the remains sibility of applying the Menshevik formuthe colonial bourgeoisie revolutionary of democratism. And this is at the same of ite energy and its resources against inlae in deeds and by that alone was comrole, completely approving the constructions surgent India.
time the social basis of the democratic rev pelled to carry them to a conclusion. In of Brandler and Roy who still continue to What an Instructive historical lesson olution as a whole.
order best to secure the leading role of wear the Martinov Stalin cloak We also At the first stages of their struzgle the the bourgeoisie in the bourgeois revolut is that the Indian revolution, even in do not speak of the innumerable editions ignorant, inexperienced and disunited pea tion (this is the basic idea of Russian Men.
its present stage, when it has not yet broof the Stalinist Questions of Leninismº gantry which, in single villages, opposes shevism) the Stalinist reaucracy trangken loose from the treacherous leadership where, in all the languages of the world, the individual representatives of the hated formed the young Communist Party of of the national bourgeoisie, is being crushthe discourse on the dual composition China into a subordinate section of the naed by the socialist government of Mac regime, always resorts to passive resistworker and peasant parties continues. No.
tional ourgeois party. In connection with We limit ourselves to the present, to toDonald. The bloody repressions of these ance. It does not pay rent, does not day latest posing of the question which is scoundrels of the Second International who that, according to the terms officially arpay taxes, it escapes to the woods, rived at between Stalin and Chiang Kaiin conformity with the Third Period mispromise to introduce socialism peacefully or deserts from military service, etc.
Shek (through the intermediary of the pretakes of the Comintern in the Orient.
in their own home countries represent so The Tolstoyan formulae of passive resistBent People Commissar of Education, The central slogan of the Staliniste far that small deposit which British Im ance were in a sense the first stages Bubnov. the Communists had right to for India, as well as for China, still reperialism brings in today on its future ac of the revolutionary awakening of the ccupy more than one third of the posts mains the democratic dictatorship of the counting in India. The sweet social dem peasant masses. Ghandi does the same in within the Kuo Min Tang. Thc part of workers and peasants. Nobody knows, noocratic deliberations about reconciling the regards to the masses of the Indian people. the proletariat this way entered the revo body explaing because Lobody understanda interests of bourgeois England with dem The more sincere he 18 personally, the lution as an official captive of the bourge what this formula signifies at present, in ocratic India are a necesary supplement more useful he is for the owners AB an olsle with the blessings of the The re the year 1930, after the experience of the to the bloody repressions of MacDonald, instrument for the disciplining of the mass sult is known: the Stalinist bureaucracy past fifteen years. In what way is the dem.
es.
who is of course ready, between executions, The support of the bourgeoisie for glew the Chinese revolution. History has ocratic dictatorship of the workers and peafor the thousand and first commission of peacefu resistance to imperialism is only never known a political crime equal in sants supposed to be distinguished from reconciliation.
a preliminary condition for its bloody re extent to this one.
the dictatorship of the Kuo Min Ten ch The British bourgeoisie understands too sistance to the revolutionary masses.
For India, just ag for all countries of massacred the workers and pene Social Antagonis. ns in India