alanjjohnstone
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A summary of Ferguson’s views on our blog
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/human-nature-and-violence/
Tha basic classic is Kropotkin’s ‘Mutual Aid’
Another foundation read is Ashley Montague
And V. Gordon Childe
But use the search facilities of the Socialist Standard and our blog and many many articles and book reviews will crop up.
As people know i am not a fan of the BBC news but here is its observations.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55798003
“…This agitation has been a “non-party political protest” whose rallying point has not been religion or caste, as is usually the case with agitations in India. It’s primarily an “economic movement” by a group of unions…The farmers’ agitation is led by dozens of unions of all political persuasions…”
The BBC in all its wisdom has its better solution.
“…mass movements need a unified political leader…’When you have a large following, the following can begin controlling the leadership’ ”
The capitalist ideologues were boasting how the system worked. That because of the business incentives of capitalism, vaccines were developed in record time (despite they garnered government subsidies and were assured of a guaranteed market for the product)
Now are they taking responsiblity for the failure to manufacture and distribute sufficient quantities of vaccine? Not at all.
Patent laws, intellectual ownership copyright regulation, means that facilities for turning out the vaccine is not being utilised to the full.
The urgency of the pandemic takes second place to the profits of Big Pharma.
I merely speculate, but i am sure there are investors rubbing their hands in glee that coronavirus mutations are occurring around the world and that the vaccine is only temporary and requires perhaps an annual boosting because it means regular upgrading to new improved vaccines as we see with the the flu jabs. A regular future market to always tap into.
ALB, and perhaps you have gone a bit too purist and forgotten how class consciousness is acquired and expect people to wake up with the Declaration of Priciples inscibed in their hearts and minds. People learn from experience and the education it is never a straight course.
You keep saying it is a movement controlled by the better-of farmers. You have provided little evidence of this and disregard that the vast majority of the farmers are small-holders, many are tenant-farmers and most are in debt. Is there any movement opposing the farmers, other than the government and its ruling party? So the reason for mass solidarity is that the poor and the landless have been duped by the well-off and it is not that they also perceive that they have something to lose and that the strike is in their interests too.
The WTO, World Bank and IMF have for years tried to end what they consider India’s unfair trade rules and introduce the free market and end its protectionalism. What is happening in farming is also taking place in all other parts of the economy. It is the feature of globalisation being imposed by a government offering an open-door welcome to the multinationals so to lift the burden of state spending, facilitating that new investment with repeal of restrictive regulations and customs.
I explained that the farmers unions are changing to become more inclusive. Perhaps i have picked up info on local problems such as caste which even in the liberal mixed state where i lived, was deeply engrained in everyday life and relationships. Casteism, despite all the laws forbidding it, is a major issue in India particularly now there is a hindutva government which is encouraging its return. The farmers movement is acting to reduce the influence of caste (and the anti-muslim sentiments) because the threat of the new laws calls for unity of action. Of course, such grassroot cooperation could be recinded in future but much of it will last in some orm or other.
They also have the wide support of non-farmers since the laws will effect the subsidised food urban dwellers receive. Most Indian citizens get cheap or free food through its Public Distribution System (PDS) programmes. The changes is the privatisation of the food chain which will raise the cost of living for many more than farmers. While the farmers seek a minimum price guarantee from the government for their crops to protect incomes, workers seek to retain maximum price controls in the retail outlets. All retail products in India must be marked with Maximum Retail Price (MRP). Shops cannot charge customers over the MRP. So for the competitive edge, some shops charge below MRP to draw more customers to their shops.
Workers everywhere organise and resist within the retraints of capitalism. It means accepting the laws of capitalism and as i said eventually they prevail. The farmers may win a battle but will lose the war. But they might learn an important lesson that could be a step in their emancipation. Certainly they will not be able to avail themselves of any instructive advice from the WSP(INDIA). Indian workers will have the responsibility to educate themselves.
The Farmers Strike is not a socialist struggle but nor is it a Punjabi or a caste conflict and it is, as i believe, indeed, a class struggle. We have to live under the rules of capitalism and try to weather its storms the best we can. Trade union are sectional and the right-wing critics accuse it of protecting the privileges of the better organised workers, particularly in the public sector, using strikes as a black-mail tool to harm the interests of the non-unionised and the self-employed and the population at large. We resoundingly reject such notions and understand the wider picture, don’t we? We also reject the concept of better-of workers as “middle-class” or the euphemism for the more comfortable, “middle-income”, when we consider class relationships.
India has never been ideal but often its problems have been exacerbated by outside factors such as the British Raj looting it, something Marx highlighted. Malnutrition may still exist but no famine has happened since India implemented food security policies.
Corruption remains. Inefficiency persists. Wastage widespread. But the new laws are not primarily being introduced to address those. It is to provide the incentive of higher profits to global conglomorates. And again as i stated, we cannot treat what is happening in India as an isolated example. Africa, Latin America and Asia it is the same. And also in North America and Europe too, but because of the existing welfare state, the economic pain is softened, leaving the crisis invisible to most. India is having that safety-net removed and many other countries don’t even have any social protections. The strategy and tactics we now see in India, could offer an example of how other peoples elsewhere can postpone the inevitable to sometime in the future and permit a breathing space to exact more elbow room when it comes to demanding social services from the State.
Again i reiterate i hold out little hope of any remedy. Socialism or Barbarism.
But is the answer is to judge that such resistance being shown by a broad alliance, no matter how futile, does not have our sympathy. Do we dismiss any potential of them gaining knowledge from how they are resisting?
Finally, you seek comparison with Canadian farmers. Perhaps closer to home would be a better analogy – the Crofters War
https://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2012/05/crofters-wars.html
There is speculation that the raising of a Sikh flag at the Red Fort was a deliberate attempt to foster sectarianism.
The person who carried out the act, Deep Sidhu, is a prominent BJP activist, not a farmers’ leader
https://www.scoopwhoop.com/news/deep-sidhu-defends-hoisting-flag-at-red-fort/
Further to the Jimmy Dore video elsewhere on the forum
Reaching out to the “enemy”
An Open Letter to Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys (CC: ANTIFA)
A new word for me
“…anarcho-fascist Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters…”
anarcho-capitalist i have heard, national-anarchist i have heard.
Because of EU shortages there is a renewed call for suspending the patents on the vaccine.
So far, however, no corporation has released the rights. A Finnish MEP argued in the European Parliament that three months’ delay in the vaccination campaign meant hundreds of thousands of additional deaths.
When the London dockers downed tools to support Enoch Powell, nor were they on our side. Alf Garnetts of the world exist. My family connections is with the forelock touching, cap-tipping subservience to the local landowner. And relations eager to join those anti-worker organisations of the Freemason and Orange lodges. Throughout working class history examples of our fellow-workers acting against their very own interests abound.
But I find this type of arguement pointless.
The working class are at this moment in time not socialists and not on our side, voting repeatedly for pro-capitalist parties. No-one is saying what is occurring in India is a socialist movement. But it is contributing to a change in political and class consciousness within the rural communities, where people are identifying shared problems and engaging in a common cause to resist government policies that they perceive as a threat yto their livelihoods and standard of living
My post tried to suggest that the farmer strikes are the expression of a process bringing previously antagonistic elements together. I’m sure it is not going to be all smooth sailing ahead and there will be hic-cups but i feel the general trend cannot be halted.
Are we to dismiss a popular movement as big as this and although the attention is on the Punjab and Delhi blockade, similar actions are nation-wide and sympathy for the goal was shown by 250 MILLION strikers and across India and in many industries. The fact that an authoritarian such as Modi is hesitant to use force signals to me that that he is well aware of where peoples’ loyalties lie and it is not with his government. And nor am i surprised that his rivals in the Congress Party and the CPI(M) are jockeying for influence within the farmers strike movement. Some reports say this is a relatively leader-free protest, or perhaps multi-leader is better way of describing it, too many leaders for one to dominate.
Whether the farmers succeed or not is not the issue. We know all resistance to the capitalists is eventually doomed if they and their State are determined to prevail and fully incorporate India’s farming into the world market where the global businesses hold the power over food production. It is unstoppable and can only be delayed. India is not the only region facing the exact same attacks on tradional small-holder farming methods.
But it is the struggle to fight back which is important as it is in this strike that people are discovering solidarity and unity against the religious and cultural differences which had been used previously to keep people divided.
The media will not, of course, categorise Israel as the aggressor war-monger but will maintain it is defensive, ready to go to war for peaceful objectives.
Israel’s top general said on Tuesday that its military was refreshing its operational plans against Iran
“…I have instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare a number of operational plans, in addition to those already in place…”
From your observations, YMS, i can guess that if the welfare state was dismantled and there was a return to laissez faire capitalism, the Party’s response would be que sera sera and our fellow-workers criticised for resisting the loss of those state protections.
I do have a weakness at writing screeds so sometimes some things are missed such as when i said:
“…Once again, workers are combatting the consequences and effects of the operation of the economic laws of capitalism. Once again, they place their illusory hopes in the regulatory power of the State…The present law has not prevented poverty and land-grabs but the proposed new laws will exacerbate the problem, in the interests of the capitalist class. It is ultimately a futile fight but if they don’t resist, they may as well roll over and be walked all over.”126 million farmers together owned about 74.4 million hectares of land — or an average holding of just 0.6 hectares each — not enough to produce surpluses which can financially sustain their families.
https://www.livemint.com/Politics/k90ox8AsPMdyPDuykv1eWL/Small-and-marginal-farmers-own-just-473-of-crop-area-show.html
I daresay that the farmers’ protests are led and supported mainly by the second group of “semi-medium and medium land holding farmers” who will also be those who employ, exploit and even oppress the landless or virtually landless agricutural wage labourers. If the cap of “kulak” fits then so be it.This article suggests that:
“…for the first time in Indian History the barriers of religion, caste and class have been eliminated. Not only farmers from all the religions (Hindu/ Sikh/Muslim) are together in this fight but also the caste divisions that were deeply engraved in the rural areas have been negated; leading to the emergence of a massive united farmers front. These protests also saw the merging of the gap between the urban and the rural populations as the youth and general public of the nearby towns and cities regardless of their caste or creed have over fervently fully empathized with the farmers and have extended all kind of required support. This humongous support extended to the farmer’s protests have never been witnessed in any of the movements or protests carried out in recent past.”https://countercurrents.org/2020/12/the-power-of-the-powerless-rise-of-the-indian-farmer/
This isn’t a conflict between medium sized farmers and the landless but between corporate farming and traditional farming.
“…the Modi government wants a new model of farming in India. Having been under tremendous international pressure from the World Bank IMF, US and Europe, the BJP government wants to replicate American or Australian model of farming in India, where corporates will own vast swaths of land and they will do the farming…”
Farmers protests: why India’s agriculture problems are much deeper
Unity is the biggest strength of this movement. The strike and protests rather than fighting each other has brought a fresh understanding that brought the different communities closer together.
“…This sense of unity has come through the transparency and control over leadership of common but awakened and conscious masses/farmers, which make leaders take all decisions democratically and not over the heads of the people… through this unity, farmers’ organizations have not only strengthened themselves; they have also helped defeat many sectarian movements and trends… Unity has been developed between so called high caste Jats and Dalits as well. People of all castes and religions are cooking and eating together… The equality between men and women has also been the shining part of this movement. Men are doing services like cooking and cleaning, while women are addressing supporters from stages. Men and women are sharing all work without the gender divisions practiced inside the homes…”
This is a class struggle and class solidarity that now pushes back against the Modi’s Hindutva programme.
Your analysis reflects the government message that the opposition to the new laws is coming from large, prosperous, and politically powerful farmers, who dominate Punjab’s farmers unions and who benefited the most from the old system. It ignores the wide social support for the protests which has cut across class, caste and gender divisions. On the demonstrations a prominent slogan is mazdoor-kisan ekta zindabad (“long live labour-farmer unity”).
In past decades, it is true, the Punjabi farmer unions brought together Jat Sikh farmers to suppress Dalit agricultural labourers organising. But today small farmers and farm labourers both strive to make ends meet under debt burdens and that economic reality is now the basis solidarity between farmers and labourers in the state.Punjab’s largest farmer union, has overcome the caste divide and have supported Dalit resistance and their demand for land rights.
Sure we can say conditions in India are not perfect, that there is still a long way to go, but this struggle is a definite first step in that journey. To discourage it is to side with India’s ruling class but also with the global corporations. It is a struggle mirrored in Africa and Latin America. It is also identified in the decline of family farms in North America and in Europe. We take the side of the exploited and the oppressed and our definition of who is a capitalist does not include those working a few acres of land, hiring a couple of labourers or even owning larger farms. We view class as a social relationship.
A report on the Kisan Sansad – (Farmers’ Parliament)
We now have reports questioning the efficiency of the vaccines and it is difficult to ascertain with some accuracy what is the truth of the matter.
The latest is from Germany with the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) assessment to show the AstraZeneca vaccine to be only 8% effective among the over-65s.
The German government also voiced concerns about AstraZeneca’s data reporting: “It has been known since the autumn that fewer seniors were included in the trials supplied by AstraZeneca than the trials of other manufacturers.”
With the new mutations and those overly-optimistic predictions from pharmaceutical corporations, this pandemic may well linger for a long time.
For the poorer nations it will be 2024 before a vaccine campaign bears fruit.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2021/01/global-pandemic-but-no-global-vaccine.html
I think if we are looking for an analogy, the Dustbowl years of USA may well be appropriate when banks took advantage of the difficulties of farmers and re-possessed the land, driving a migration. Nowadays it is the Big Ag corporations that control and determine food production in the USA. Farmers are now sub-contractors. Should we have said to Steinbeck, stuff your suffering Okies. All they seek to be is aspiring property-owners?
The Indian political system is based on caste plus communalism (a positive sounding word but entirely negative).
The Delhi blockade is mainly Punjabi Sikh dominated but the anti law movement is nation-wide, multi-cultural and involved the trade unions acting in solidarity. As with most anti-government protests, grievances spread and become incorporated in a general strike.
When did small family farmers, many subsistence, become class-enemies? Land owners? Yes (but more than likely re-mortgaged to money-lenders). Capitalists? I don’t believe so. Operating under the rules of capital? Don’t we all.
An article from the same journal ALB cites
https://thewire.in/rights/farm-laws-legal-rights-constitutionThe Corn Laws were repealed because the factory owners wanted low food prices for their workers so to lower the wages? These laws will raise the cost of food for urban workers, with rural workers paying the price.
Once again, workers are combatting the consequences and effects of the operation of the economic laws of capitalism. Once again, they place their illusory hopes in the regulatory power of the State.
We can sympathise with the farmers struggle as we do with the trade union struggle or the struggle to protect the environment. When the potential of such struggles transcend sectional interests then we cannot with-hold our solidarity but instead we should reach out with the socialist analysis and answer to the problem.
The present law has not prevented poverty and land-grabs but the proposed new laws will exacerbate the problem, in the interests of the capitalist class. It is ultimately a futile fight but if they don’t resist, they may as well roll over and be walked all over.
Small farming such as in Asia is dependent for success on co-operation, helping eachother out on shared schemes such as irrigation. Dog-eat-dog rivalry over a bone between them would be suicidal for survival. They develop their own local mutual aid decision-making, the Russian mir exists in the form of India’s panchayat.
They are not kulaks. But perhaps the Naxalites are the Narodniks.
