Workers' Socialist Party Declares its Founding and Unveils its Program

Our Correspondent/ 7.11.2012

 

 

Today, on 95th anniversary of the October Revolution, the Workers’ Socialist Party (WSP), made public declaration of its founding at Press Club of India, New Delhi.

Apart from party activists, the conference was well attended by representatives of different political groups and media persons.
 

The WSP is a section of the movement of ‘Fourth International’ established by Leon Trotsky in 1939, in the aftermath of degeneration of the Third International (Comintern), consequent to the betrayals of Stalinists.

On this occasion, the WSP launched its 35 page program, titled as ‘Political Statement’, calling upon the youth and workers to organise the revolutionary Marxist party of working class around the program of permanent revolution. The program can be accessed at: http://new-wave-nw.blogspot.in/p/our-programme.html
 

Political Statement of WSP has called upon the youth and workers to resurrect the revolutionary Marxist party- ‘Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India (BLPI)’, that was formed in late 1930’s and had existed through 40’s, before its unfortunate dissolution in CSP. WSP has criticised this dissolution and has vowed to resurrect the BLPI, declaring itself as true inheritor of the BLPI.
 

BLPI has glorious history to its credit. In contrast to the Stalinist CPI that had shamefully collaborated with British Colonialists during 1942, the BLPI called upon the Indian working class for overthrow of the British regime through a socialist revolution. BLPI was only party which had consistently fought against colonial power and openly supported the naval mutiny in 1946, bringing industrial workers on roads in open demonstrations in Bombay and Madras. BLPI opposed the Mountbatten plan of communal partition of India and creation of two dominion Hindu-Muslim states of India and Pakistan on communal basis. The party termed the 1947 settlement as shameful compromise between foreign and Indian bourgeois, which CPI had welcomed as ‘limited freedom’.

In its program, the WSP has termed Stalinist, Maoist and Centrist parties as agents of Capitalism and enemies of working class and has vowed to fight against them. Party has severely criticised the left parties for their complacence with and capitulation to the capitalist-landlord regime in the country.
 

WSP criticised the Stalinist left parties for adhering to the ruling Congress on the pretext of keeping fascist BJP at bay. The party insisted that fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction, and working class is all capable to smash its ugly head. Fascism can win only if Stalinists, centrists and social-democrats continue to hold back the working class and prevent it from responding to the impending capitalist crisis through a revolutionary struggle to uproot the capitalist rule. WSP rejected the policy of “popular frontism” pursued by Stalinist-Maoist parties in forging ‘fronts’ with bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties. It pointed out that ‘Popular frontism’, the capitulationist thesis propounded by Stalin for collaboration with sections of bourgeois, has caused immense damage to world proletarian revolution, from China through Germany to Spain.

Party severely criticised the Stalinist-Maoist “two-stage” theory of revolution, i.e. ‘democracy today-socialism tomorrow’. It said that all talks about ‘new democracy’ ‘peoples democracy’ and ‘revolutionary democracy’, isolated from socialist revolution are nothing but empty phrases of Stalinists-Maoists to mislead the working class and hold it back from taking to power.
 

WSP is the only party to clearly propose dictatorship of the proletariat in place of dictatorship of capitalists, cloaked under the veil of ‘democracy’.

WSP proposed the “permanent revolution”, as the only road to revolution, that had formed the basis of October revolution. Path of Permanent Revolution, is opposed to the Stalinist-Maoist idea of “two stage” revolution, through which they propose to postpone the establishment of proletarian dictatorship for indefinite future and bind the working class to bourgeois democracy.
 

Party termed the collapse of Soviet Union and the East European countries as the collapse of Stalinist nationalist program.  WSP also said that Maoism is nothing but the Chinese variant of Stalinism and is backyard of world capitalism, its industrial workshop. It said that 1949 overturn in China was a bureaucratic overturn, and not a proletarian revolution.

WSP sets itself the aim of proletarian revolution in South Asia leading to a Socialist Union of Soviet States of South Asia on voluntary basis, thereby undo the partition of Indian sub-continent in 1947, and through it, advance towards a world socialist revolution.
 

Party rejected any legitimacy of slogan of ‘national-liberation’, except that of declaration and acceptance of a formal ‘right to self determination’. WSP underlined that the unification of national states on a socialist basis, is the only resolution to the problem of nationalities including Kashmir and North-East, and to innumerable wars and violent military conflicts among the nation states. Needless to say that coming to power of the proletariat through proletarian revolutions, is the necessary condition for such socialist unification.

The party scornfully rejected the Stalinist-Maoist theory of achieving Socialism in one country as bogus and un-realizable, terming the very idea as ‘national socialist’, making it clear that realisation of socialism within national frontiers of any single country in the world, is unthinkable.
 

Party emphasized the international character of the revolution and said that the same stands ratified by the recent upheavals in Middle-East and struggles in European countries, where masses in several countries from Tunisia to Egypt and from Greece to Spain, had risen together against the ruling elites.

Party said that a global crisis, no less intense than that of 1930’s, has once again engulfed world capitalism. As capitalist states attempt to shift the burden of this crisis to the shoulders of working class, it fights back, triggering a widespread unrest and huge political crisis everywhere in the world from Europe through Asia and Latin Americas to Africa.
 

WSP termed the uprisings in Middle-East, offshoot of a systemic failure of the corrupt and exploitative misrule of capitalists, leading to a real crisis, other side of which is unveiling itself in European sub continent- from Greece to Spain through Italy and France- where working class is up in arms not only against capitalists, but the Trade Union bureaucracies too.

The turmoil, that ensued recently, from breakdown of the global capitalist system, has awakened and mobilised millions of workers against capitalist states, bringing the working class onto the centre of political stage, once again. Mighty mass movements have ousted the ossified regimes in countries of Middle East and North Africa, one after the other. However, absence of revolutionary program and revolutionary party at the head of the insurgent mass, dampened the hopes of a real revolution in advance. Sections of financial and corporate elites, thus once again took control of the situation and could re-stabilise the capitalist system for the moment.
 

The whole political crisis in our times reflects itself into the crisis of leadership of the sole revolutionary class- the international working class.The challenge before the working class, thus, is to build a genuine socialist alternative to capitalism. This requires, at the outset, a revolutionary program and a revolutionary party around it. The Party said that its first and foremost task is thus to arm the advanced elements of working class with this revolutionary program and organise them into the sole revolutionary party, WSP, in order to forge genuine leadership of the revolution.

WSP pointed out that the major and determinant contradictions in today’s world, are twin contradictions- i.e. between developing world capitalist economy and the ossified cage of national-states on one hand; and on the other between the socialised production and private consumption. The two world wars and innumerable military conflicts in the last century are result of this conflict, which remains unresolved even today with ever more sharpening of these contradictions. WSP claimed that only World Socialist Revolution can present a real viable resolution to this conflict.
 

WSP criticised the role of trade unions, invariably headed by bureaucracies, in repeatedly failing the working class and its struggles. These Trade Unions, as they remain dominated by rightist BMS, centrist HMS-INTUC and Stalinist AITUC-CITU, have played a pernicious role in binding the workers to meagre economic demands and prevented it from opening a broad political offensive against the ruling pro-corporate governments. Citing the recent Maruti-Suzuki struggle as glaring example, where all of these Trade Unions after pledging for ‘industrial peace’ have held back the workers from organising a general strike against savage repression by corporates and the state under them, after similar betrayals in Foxconn and BYD, the party claimed that these trade unions have consistently betrayed the interests of working class and have become hand-tools of capitalists. The party called upon the workers to overthrow the yoke of the ossified trade union organisation, come out of their decayed shells, set up independent struggle committees everywhere comprising of most militant workers, and develop them into soviets of workers, gradually.

WSP made it clear that its aim is to overturn the rule of capitalists and establishment of dictatorship of the Proletariat, in the form of a Workers’-Peasants’ Government. The party pointed out that the main hurdle on the path of revolution are the Stalinist-Maoist and centrist parties who are misleading and holding back the working class from taking to the path of revolution. The party took it to itself to expose these alien trends, the covert agents of capitalism inside labour movement, and defeat them politically, as it’s focussed and primary task.
 

The WSP would have its primary built up in key cities and industrial centres in the country and would focus on its work on arming the advanced sections of the working class and youth with lessons of October revolution and the strategic experience of the last century, through successes and failures.