requested by the Mujib regime - provided Bangladesh would permit this of the countries of capitalist Asla, The prophets of doom suggest all sorts of solutions: American or the European farmer, and so the vicious priorities of production nationally and internationally, wurkers; this will be done by the workers thentselves ,ities on a global scale in order to do away with famine of India shows. In other words a rational organsation The fact that on a world scale millions of acres of fighting.." Lenin could have added: hot only in ren of workers and peasants erica, nor for that matter in China and Russia, but erica. In three months this year nearly 200,000 people starved to death in Bangladesh. This is the price the world has to pay for the continued existence of capitalism in the imperialist countries.
-It is the functioning of the capitalist system its methods of production and distribution - that is the roof of the problem. It is capitalism which thrives on the co-existence of a situation of plenty side by side with the most grinding poverty.
their market from becoming flooded with food, thereby lowering its price and driving the farmers to the verge of bankruptcy. This is the logic of a system which is based on the private ownership of all the means of production.
pared to give you food in quantities we think are our conditions.
Conference. What it means has already been shown of peasants are starving to death every day.
their hands.
The indian subcontinent is today paying a heavy price, the result of not breaking with imperialism and capitalism, Mass starvation is the cost of maintaining a system based on a combination of capitalist and pre-capitalist forms of exploitation.
PLUNDER The continued under-development of India has its roots in the occupation of the country by British imperialism and the systematic plunder which characterised the latter's rule. The industrial revolution in Britain was financed to a large extent by the riches of india.
Between 1757 and 1780 alone, Britain extracted £40 million from India, and this figure doubled and redoubled in the decades which followed. To carry on this plunder it had to prevent Indian industry Irom developing, particularly in textiles, in order to secure the British monopoly.
A country witich exported cotton goods to Britain in 1815, India was turned in to a country which had to import textiles by 1850.
Flourishing cities were transformed into jungles as the country became a colony, totally dependent on British imperialism for manufactured goods Although local Indian capital was able to develop in certain fields at the beginning of the 20th century: taking advantage of the comperition and rivalry between the different imperialist powers, the real damage had been done, Indian capitalism had been lett with a permanent handicap. To see how imperialist colonialism from starvation. Most of them will be children under five, and virtually all of them will be the childThey are dying and will die not in Europe or Amin imperialist-dominated Asia, Africa and Latin AmOver the years American farmers have destroyed crops and cattle (8 million head of cattle were destroyed in the USA in 19341) simply in order to prevent last week wis not a discussion on how to plan priorforever. It was in essence the United States offering the "third world" a deal on its own terms: We are preboth suitable und desirgble, provided you accept all That was the message that Kissinger gave to the INDIA AND BANGLADESH are in the grip of a severe famine. Thousands Neither the "Empress of India", as the Economist dubbed Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, nor the self-styled "Friend of Bengal" Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, have been able to take any serious measures to reverse this situation apart from sending envoys to the west with begging bowls in and exploitation deformed Indian development one has just to note that Japan was also an underdeveloped country in 1850, in fact well behind India!
CONGRESS PARTY The Congress Party which fought and won independence for India in 1947 was a party representing the interests of both the Indian capitalists and the landlord class which agreed to supply one-beth of the amount of wheat would agree to stop exporting gunny sacks to Cuba!
from "Malthusianism' (Le, welcoming wari, epidemies and famines as a 'natural' way of keeping the popul ers less each week for everyone in the West.
system from which these problems originate is never mentioned.
and revolutions are...violent! This argument comes from those who tolerate the institutionalised violence of capitalism, which takes the lives of millions every year.
There is a way of solving the problem, and it has a name: socialism. To make this more concrete, let us consider how the land is organised in a large part of Asia and Latin America. It is privately owned, In other words, anarchy prevails in terms of determining Secondly, the less-developed capitalist countries remain tied to the capitalist world market, as a study of agriculture is not possible within the capitalist system. Extensive land reforms, co-opestive farming in the countries afflicted by the famine.
held sway in the countryside. For the Congress Party independence did not mean a break from impertalism. The Congress party merely took control of the old Britishcreated state apparatus and used in such a way as not to antagonise the landlords and the rich peas ants.
Indian 'state-capitalism" has
therefore been in important element in holding together the different class forces that are represented by the Congress Party. Today the crisis in the world capitalist system has brought the Indian economy to its biggest-ever crisis since independence.
Coupled with the droughts which have also struck, the situation for the masses is desperate.
The big cities of Calcutta and BonThai and Canton were before the 1949 revolution in China, Delbi, the capital, is only a little better ation down) to forced sterilisation and three fish fingBut the discarding of the outmoded and outworn After all, overthrowing systems requires revolutions, 1903: and - at a later stage - collectivisation is not possible ged..
fertile land remain uncultivated because of lack of re sources, advanced technology, etc.. gives us an indicup now and again.
it to develop Indian capitalism but hay are as poverty stricken as Shangpotential that remains. But the industrialisation that Africa and Latin America would not be good for the circle continues It is only those countries like China, North Kores and North Vietnam that have broken out of this Circle that have escaped the experience of mass star vation.
The solution is thus a political one. As Lent wrote in his article addressed To the Rural Poor in the only way to put an end te the poverty of the people is to change the existing order from top to bottom and to introduce u socialist order: in other words, to tike the land frown the landowners, the factories from the manufacturers, the money capital of othes will no longer command the labour of the and by persons elected by them. Then the fruits of Movement and machinery will go to all the toilers. all the workers. Wealth will begin to grow at a faster rate ..the worker' standard of living will be higher, all their conditions of life will becose completely chanThis requires a great deal of work and stubborn Rossia, but en a world scale.
off. Because it has to receive foreign heads of state some of the slums get whitewashed and cleaned The contrast between capitalist India and a country which had similar problems but broke with imperialism and capitalism-China- shows to millions of starving poor what a revolution can do in a semi-colonial country. Even the worst enemies of China admit that no one dies from lack of food there, and that social services are highly dey. eloped. The country operates on the basis of a national plan which allows the priorities of the people to be rationally determined, rather than left to the mercy of either the monopolies or state capitalism as in India. Of course there are many detects in China-not least the lack of socialist democracy but there can be iiftle doubt that compared to india it is a paradise.
The Indian ruling class is not seriously concerned with taking any measures to alleviate the sufation of the possibilities that exist and the anexhausted Muscow Party-hangs on to the coat-tails of Indira Gandhi on the open instructions of Soviet CP chief Brezhnev-on his last visit to Delhi, Brezhnev stated that he did not know why there was need for an opposifion to Indira Gandhi!
The CPI(M) - which claims to be independent of both Moscow and Peking cannot put forward any strategy for socialism, and links up with reactionary parties even some neo-lascists in order to 'unite the apposition". The Maoise CPIM-L) has largley disintegrated.
The masses do nor want to go on in the same old way, but their organisations give them no serious alternatives, and the result is the rapid rise and fail of leaderless mass morements.
This is the real tragedy of the In dian revolution, and it has to be overconie if capitalism is to be de stroyed in India. The latter could have important repercussions in the capitolist beartlands, having played such a vital part in the birth of capItalisin, we have to ensure that Indin now helps in its downfall.
Taric A
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from the bankers, to abolish private property and hand it all over tu the toilers of the whole country. "When this is done the rich who live by the labour