Talk at St. Mark's Bookstore

Maoists in India

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=hub090711red.asp#

“Red train to Gurgaon,” by Saroj Giri

Rahul Pandita’s eyewitness chronicle of the Maoist movement and its affected lives is both sensitive and careful, finds Saroj Giri

HOW DOES one cut through the State and media’s dominant depictions of ‘marginal’ events and present a convincing story to a sceptical audience? One way seems to be to provide something incontrovertible — like an eyewitness account, something the writer has directly experienced, heard or felt. Take the recent writings on the Maoist movement wanting to tell the ‘real’ story, the ‘untold’ story. They bring us direct accounts of walks and journeys, travels and conversations in the Red zone — a jangalnama.

Rahul Pandita’s choice of title for his new book adds a familiarity to this directness: Hello, Bastar. The book presents his travels in the Maoist heartland and brings out both the movement’s history and the actors involved. Maoist ideologue Kobad Ghandy recommends the book for its authenticity and reliability. The presentation is not lyrical but not dryly factual either — it carefully lays out the oral history that circulates and nourishes the movement.

Pandita achieves a sensitive and humane account of the real lives of the people in the Maoist movement by cutting through not just State and media propaganda but also through Maoist ideology. There is a palpable unease about the political ideology these people supposedly believe in. Apparently, Maoist practice in its immediacy and local context is adorable. But ‘communism’ is, we are told, an irreparable problem — made clear in Arundhati Roy’s writings.

Pandita also sketches a touching account of Anuradha Ghandy, Maoist leader and Kobad’s wife. Coming from a well-off family, “Anuradha wouldn’t shy away from hardships; she did everything that other guerrillas would do.” In Nagpur, she lived and worked in Dalit bastis. Bicycling for political work around the city, she was known for her sensitivity and concern.

ARE ANURADHA’s Maoism and her justice-loving self irreconcilable? Isn’t trying to discover the ‘real’ person — unmediated by ‘ideology’ — part of a depoliticisation? Is ideology that pernicious?

Pandita narrates: “They might learn big words like comprador, bourgeoisie or imperialism, but the motto for an ordinary cadre is: datt kar khao, datt kar chalo (eat as much as you can, walk as much as you can).” Cleansed of these “big words”, the struggle gets construed as local and contingent — not what is usually understood as Revolution. Maoists are shown as fighting local violence and oppression by landlords and forest officers backed by the State. Their honesty and commitment melted Adivasi hearts. Little Tarakka and her family faced years of oppression by forest officers. Today, that is a thing of the past. She is now known not just as a Maoist rebel but also for her beauty.

Unease with political ideology and ease with the local and the directly experienced gives way in the last chapter, however, to hints of a broader generalisation — enacting a Giridih or a Bastar in Gurgaon. The imagination, dream and perhaps ‘ideology’ inspiring Ghandy’s humane acts and ‘big words’ start to silently underpin Pandita’s text. Let’s dream the urban agenda — Hello, striking workers!

Giri teaches political science at Delhi University
saroj_giri@yahoo.com

Saroj Giri: “Where are the popular classes?”

http://sanhati.com/excerpted/4049/

In Venezuela, when the right-wing upper middle classes attack the progressive government, the popular classes come out in militant defence. Why is this not the case in India?

By Saroj Giri

The ongoing anti-corruption movement is dominated by social-network yuppies, YFE kind of rightist caste-supremacist anti-reservationists and Muslim-haters, Ramdev-Ravishankar followers, people who don’t vote and want Modi’s rule. Right or wrong? Right. It has touched a deep chord with vast sections of the popular classes. Right or wrong? Right.

The thing is, unlike Left intellectuals, popular classes do not as it were check the (right-wing) credentials of a person or movement before joining it – ‘joining’ here is not ‘an intellectual decision’, a choice. So rejecting the movement by reading the CV of its leaders or checking its formal declarations and credentials, can amount to a sterile radical posturing. Don’t give up on the popular classes just because they are today running behind Anna Hazare – for if anything it is not your denunciations of the right-wing, but precisely these classes that can possibly prove the right-wing’s undoing. And news is, India’s democracy and Parliament are not the allies of the popular classes – at least not when the latter are out in the streets and are feeling political.

News is also that the government’s social justice does not inspire the popular classes to now come to its defence and confront the selfish, authoritarian upper middle classes. I was imagining a vast militant rally of Dalits, Muslims, adivasis and the working classes in defence of ‘India’s democracy’. Or maybe something like the suspension of Operation Green Hunt and a historic alliance of the government with the Maoists and all those on the left, a popular front against the right-wing upper middle class onslaught! Or is it that instead the government will ultimately reconcile with the so-called right-wing middle class mobilization – which only means so much of affective energy and agonizing over the government-Hazare conflict is contrived. There is a lot of inter-elite shadow boxing happening – so there are no sides to be taken here and the only intervention can be one of retrieving the political agency of the popular classes.

Coming back: so yes, the anti-corruption movement definitely has an upper middle class right wing core, with a cross between a Modi and a Lee Kuan Yew as inspiration. Yet, call it the constraints of seeking hegemony, this movement is nothing without the participation of the popular classes – without the involvement of the popular classes, the dabahwalas and autowallahs, the legitimacy of this movement would drastically shrink. The RSS might be mobilizing for this movement but this is an anti-corruption movement and not a movement for Ram temple. There is always a gap beyond the control of RSS functionaries. These are the constraints of what is called ‘hegemonic politics’. Team Anna has to and does speak, for their own good, in the name of the nation – and the nation includes (thankfully!) classes that might prove dangerous for any right-wing agenda (and for a left-wing agenda too if ‘the right’ successfully mobilizes).

What is clear today is that the popular classes are not with the Parliament and its democracy. The way to fight the so-called authoritarianism of the middle classes is therefore not to defend the rotten Parliament and democracy but to increase the assertion of the popular classes beyond Team Anna.

II

Some Dalit leaders and left activists have rightly denounced the right wing core of this movement. However we must ask why it is that Dalits and other popular sections do not feel inspired to be proactive in defending social justice, defend the Parliament and Indian democracy. Thus here you have the most decisive indictment of Indian democracy and its progressive avatar – the basic orientation of these social policies for the poor and the marginalized were to contain them and their resistance in order to ease the passage of neoliberal policies. Instead of any real politicization of the popular classes, they at best led to interest groups and pro-state factions within deprived or marginalized communities – so that even social movements were so focused on getting this or that progressive social policy passed, as is the case today where the Left is supposed to back the best version of the Lok Pal Bill.

The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela has an interesting way of not reducing the popular classes to mere recipients of benefits but of keeping them politicized, so that they have their own political subjectivity. Hence they fight right-wing upper middle class mobilizations, defending Chavez and the government often with great militancy.

In India, however, the popular classes have sensed that the Parliament and the political dispensation here (precisely in its democratic best) is more interested in democratic containment than any real ‘empowerment’ of the masses. Even if the democratic spaces provided by Parliament can be sometimes used to further develop the progressive movement, the government’s basic orientation is to favor a right-wing agenda. Moreover, Indian democracy has been opportunistic right since its inception in and around 1947. It can be shown for example that it was really to contain the demand for separate electorates that secularism for minorities and reservations for Depressed Classes were adopted. Today the proponents of Indian democracy talk about secularism and reservations as though they emanated from a singular and definitive commitment to these ‘values’. Similarly it is only to defuse the situation after the Telangana armed struggle that bhoodan (land redistribution) was carried out. More recently you have for example the Home Secretary saying that Forest Rights Act is necessary in order to contain the attraction adivasis have for the Maoists. So it is not entirely inexplicable that the popular classes rally behind the so-called authoritarian upper middle classes than defend the present Parliament and its democracy.

III

And yet, were the dangerous classes to assert themselves, the right-wing middle classes will most likely go over to gang up with the Parliament and the government – the default mode. They are extremely chummy on intensifying Operation Green Hunt, on the question of terror, privatization, relations with the US-Israel axis and so on. That is, both ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘democracy’ would be on the same side – no real divide between the two.

This shows that this divide cannot be sustained in any real sense. It is only when the dangerous classes lie low that the dominant classes enter into internal conflict and disagreements even though their fundamental class interests are the same. Thus, the so-called authoritarianism of the middle classes is merely a continuation of the authoritarianism of the Parliament and the ruling classes.

This is not to deny that there is a fight for now between authoritarianism and democracy. This fight is about the hawkish middle class telling the government to shed off the democratic garb and tone down mass politics and instead usher in ‘clean governance’, technocratic rule and fast growth. Thanks to Parliament and its democracy, the dangerous classes are internalized and included enough to no longer require reservations, rights, social justice, mass democratic politics and the like. How long will inclusive democracy, reservations and so on continue? If democracy and reservations continue beyond what is necessary to contain the poor and the marginalized, then they become part of corruption: vested interests, vote banks, appeasements and so on.

Social justice is equal to corruption. That is the equation the right-wing middle class is trying to establish. Hence the best way to fight the social justice and push the free market agenda is to say merely that you are against corruption. Those opposing NREGA are not going to tell you that they are against the poor or that they are against social justice. They need only self-righteously say that they are against corruption and that will do the trick. For, isn’t it established, the argument goes, that NREGA leads to corruption, vested interests, and ultimately to vote bank politics?

The crucial upshot: the poor can not only be deprived of the benefits of social justice policies but can also be mobilized for the same, all in the name of the apparently just cause of fighting corruption! So if the popular classes are so coopted, so internalized and included in democracy, then why bother with social justice and representative democracy and so on. Bring about Modi style rule all over the country with high growth, public amenities, and a happy people about to transform India into another Hong Kong or Singapore!

IV

To recap:

Social justice is about democratic containment (by the Parliament and the government)

Anti-corruption is about technocratic containment (pushed by the right-wing forces).

Since technocratic containment is pushed in the name of a benign sounding anti-corruption movement, the popular classes get enrolled in this right-wing agenda.

The left response cannot be to choose ‘democracy’ (read democratic containment) over ‘authoritarianism’ (read technocratic containment) since they are really two sides of the same coin, just two modalities of rule. That is, there is a link and continuity between the Parliament, the authoritarian middle classes and the present version of the anti-corruption movement. The conflict within the dominant classes (the Anna Hazare versus government stand-off) is about the hawkish upper middle class trying to push the government to bite the bullet and usher in a full-fledged technocratic regime.

Lastly, imagine: the Maoists publicly announce that they are sending (and they actually can!) one lakh adivasis (ok unarmed) to Ram Lila Maidan to join the fight against corruption. What impact will this have? Will these new ‘participants’ simply dissolve and become part of the right-wing agenda or will their intervention radically change things? For the political impact to take place, the Maoists do not even need to actually send them: only give a call and see what follows. The point is to grab the initiative instead of counting our beads and getting depressed by the right-wing character of this movement. Clearly this means we are neither for this or that so-called best version of the Lok Pal Bill. The only way forward from the viewpoint of the popular classes is to take the anti-corruption movement in new directions (the CPIML Liberation has taken a step in this direction). Anti-corruption cannot be separated from the question of social transformation. Can we take this idea forward?

Oakland Strike / Day of Action

http://www.occupyoakland.org/2011/10/general-strike-mass-day-of-action/

Below is the proposal passed by the Occupy Oakland General Assembly on Wednesday October 26, 2011 in reclaimed Oscar Grant Plaza. 1607 people voted. 1484 voted in favor of the resolution, 77 abstained and 46 voted against it, passing the proposal at 96.9%. The General Assembly operates on a modified consensus process that passes proposals with 90% in favor and with abstaining votes removed from the final count.

PROPOSAL:

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.

We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.

All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.

While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.

The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.

The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting everyday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All strike participants are invited. Stay tuned for much more information and see you next Wednesday.

Revolt Must Not Be Motivated by Consumerism

Democracy is the Enemy

Slavoj Žižek 28 October 2011

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/10/28/slavoj-zizek/democracy-is-the-enemy/

The protests on Wall Street and at St Paul’s Cathedral are similar, Anne Applebaum wrote in the Washington Post, ‘in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions’. ‘Unlike the Egyptians in Tahrir Square,’ she went on, ‘to whom the London and New York protesters openly (and ridiculously) compare themselves, we have democratic institutions.’

Once you have reduced the Tahrir Square protests to a call for Western-style democracy, as Applebaum does, of course it becomes ridiculous to compare the Wall Street protests with the events in Egypt: how can protesters in the West demand what they already have? What she blocks from view is the possibility of a general discontent with the global capitalist system which takes on different forms here or there.

‘Yet in one sense,’ she conceded, ‘the international Occupy movement’s failure to produce sound legislative proposals is understandable: both the sources of the global economic crisis and the solutions to it lie, by definition, outside the competence of local and national politicians.’ She is forced to the conclusion that ‘globalisation has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies.’ This is precisely what the protesters are drawing attention to: that global capitalism undermines democracy. The logical further conclusion is that we should start thinking about how to expand democracy beyond its current form, based on multi-party nation-states, which has proved incapable of managing the destructive consequences of economic life. Instead of making this step, however, Applebaum shifts the blame onto the protesters themselves for raising these issues:

‘Global’ activists, if they are not careful, will accelerate that decline. Protesters in London shout: ‘We need to have a process!’ Well, they already have a process: it’s called the British political system. And if they don’t figure out how to use it, they’ll simply weaken it further.

So, Applebaum’s argument appears to be that since the global economy is outside the scope of democratic politics, any attempt to expand democracy to manage it will accelerate the decline of democracy. What, then, are we supposed to do? Continue engaging, it seems, in a political system which, according to her own account, cannot do the job.

There is no shortage of anti-capitalist critique at the moment: we are awash with stories about the companies ruthlessly polluting our environment, the bankers raking in fat bonuses while their banks are saved by public money, the sweatshops where children work overtime making cheap clothes for high-street outlets. There is a catch, however. The assumption is that the fight against these excesses should take place in the familiar liberal-democratic frame. The (explicit or implied) goal is to democratise capitalism, to extend democratic control over the global economy, through the pressure of media exposure, parliamentary inquiries, harsher laws, police investigations etc. What goes unquestioned is the institutional framework of the bourgeois democratic state. This remains sacrosanct even in the most radical forms of ‘ethical anti-capitalism’ – the Porto Allegre forum, the Seattle movement and so on.

Here, Marx’s key insight remains as pertinent today as it ever was: the question of freedom should not be located primarily in the political sphere – i.e. in such things as free elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, respect for human rights. Real freedom resides in the ‘apolitical’ network of social relations, from the market to the family, where the change needed in order to make improvements is not political reform, but a change in the social relations of production. We do not vote concerning who owns what, or about the relations between workers in a factory. Such things are left to processes outside the sphere of the political, and it is an illusion that one can change them by ‘extending’ democracy: say, by setting up ‘democratic’ banks under the people’s control. Radical changes in this domain should be made outside the sphere of such democratic devices as legal rights etc. They have a positive role to play, of course, but it must be borne in mind that democratic mechanisms are part of a bourgeois-state apparatus that is designed to ensure the undisturbed functioning of capitalist reproduction. Badiou was right to say that the name of the ultimate enemy today is not capitalism, empire, exploitation or anything of the kind, but democracy: it is the ‘democratic illusion’, the acceptance of democratic mechanisms as the only legitimate means of change, which prevents a genuine transformation in capitalist relations.

The Wall Street protests are just a beginning, but one has to begin this way, with a formal gesture of rejection which is more important than its positive content, for only such a gesture can open up the space for new content. So we should not be distracted by the question: ‘But what do you want?’ This is the question addressed by male authority to the hysterical woman: ‘All your whining and complaining – do you have any idea what you really want?’ In psychoanalytic terms, the protests are a hysterical outburst that provokes the master, undermining his authority, and the master’s question – ‘But what do you want?’ – disguises its subtext: ‘Answer me in my own terms or shut up!’ So far, the protesters have done well to avoid exposing themselves to the criticism that Lacan levelled at the students of 1968: ‘As revolutionaries, you are hysterics who demand a new master. You will get one.’

Occupy Strategy: The Importance of Silence

Please see the full entry at:

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/773-occupy-first-demands-later-slavoj-zizek

[....]

Žižek asserts the importance of silence:

What one should always bear in mind is that any debate here and now necessarily remains a debate on enemy's turf; time is needed to deploy the new content. All we say now can be taken from us—everything except our silence. This silence, this rejection of dialogue, of all forms of clinching, is our “terror”, ominous and threatening as it should be.