PRICE 35 PAISE

NASSER'S MISSION

JULY 13, 1968

r

Moscow has again promised to help Mr Nasser in liberating Arab, territory under Israeli occupation. The UAR leader should be

,lture enough, after his June 1947 experience, to know that this does not~an that he can employ the Russian arms at his disposal in another trialo. strength. The Kremlin believes in time and patience, and however';<1lingthe present situation' in West Asi£l ~Il1ay be to the Arabs, they vill

~ ;Ia'~ to, on a State level, put up with" it till Mr Kosygin can persuade Mr.Tf)I1\sonto persuade the Israelis to make a gesture.

The Egyptians ha.ve bee trying to put their horse in order. The am.·hasl,leen purged of many unreliable elements. In principle, it is acknow-If;'.rl~~that mere arms are not enough-the six-day war proved this to theh~~t,'what matters is the'quality of the men that handle the arms, and thei.leade;Ship. Whether the Russian tactics based on time and patience arec( "t ;ive to the creation of the right type of revolutionary army is debat-

Algeria and Syria think otherwise and so do the guerillas who noVl. ~ lie brunt of the resistance to Israeli occupation. Their two organi-.atiQMare now closer to each other and their present image is such that

f'.he Kig of Jordan dare not discipline them. The Israelis, now and then,exhibn: heir unease ; it is uncomfortable to have a large, hostile Arab popu-lation vithin their new frontiers. Last year Moshe Dayan pointed out thatthe ideaof guerilla warfare (!.gainst Israel was unreal because the guedllas,having r::>'local bases in Israel to operate from, would be like fish out ofwate.:. Jut the presence of so many Arabs in - Israeli-occupied territorywould .Iei:' the perspective to a considerable extent at least in those areasif the gu([illas extend their organisation and operations. This would leavethe Israds with a few options: they can squeeze out the Arabs and reset-tle the areas with men of their faith, a process already under way, althoughin Ct li!lli ld .manner; they can strike out across the border when it suitsthem; or. h~y can launch another surprise, massive attack to break theEgYJ-lian blild-up in th~ belief that everything would again be left to theSecur,;ty Comcil. No political option is on the cards at the moment.

The Anbs thoroughly mucked up their case last year by talk ofannihc'ation 'Jf Israel. A State which was formed 20 years ago with thecommon cor'ent of the Western Powers and Russia cannot be wished

or.

]6.

Editar : ·:Samar Sen

VI- RDICT IN FRANCE 1.-

O' REVIE\\ }f)

On Other i'ages,

B. P. ADHIT{ARI 5

PRINTED AT MODERN INDIA ",G."RAJA SUBOba 'ULLICK S~UARE,Ct:TTA-13 ANI1 l'UllLlSHED BY SAMAil

I FROM 61. MOTT ):..ANE. CALCUTTA-13

A THIRD PARTY?

FROM. A POLITICAL CORRES-POXDtNT 4

HE V: NGUARD-ll

I 0\ \11 G~PJ) o\RD • 9

HE PRE

HI='JK,I, 'G ON FR.\NCE

':'\LCUTTA m RY~

CYAN KAJll'R ]2

'lEW FROM DELHI

Vol. 1: No. 14

that State have been belied. If not any- et the people are not going to return Morthing else, Tenkasi should at least . 0 the fold of the Congress. The latterleave the lesson behind that wish-ful- '.10 longer remains as a viable alterna- With hi5fil~ent is no substitute for detached ttive. The results of the recent munici- \tulya Greporting. pal elections may have nurtured other Imount of

But Tenkasi should prove some-, notions in some hearts, but the tran - night havething else too, namely, that the deep formation in attitudes which has come :ess of hi~South has turned away trom the pat- about in Kerala is abiding enough to Wcst Ben!tern of Aryavarta politics more or less be able to withstand such minor buf- nonths. Acfor keeps. In most of the northern fltings. f\nd now Tenkasi, coming in vas one ofStates, the Congress had come to grie' the walfe of a sustained Congress lid not lo~in the fourth general election partl effort to retrieve lost ground, suggests allowing t]on account of internecine quarrels, alii that perhaps Madras too has gone .1r P. C.partly also because of an accretion i Kerala's way. Whatever one's doubt Mongress nstrength by such right-wing parties s.,ab?ut, some. of the slogans in the aturday. Ethe Jana Sangh. In State after Stal, DMK s mamfestos, there is a basichat it wasCongress regimes were dethronedJ9t streak of progressive thinking in the hat he mubecause of any fundamental shilllll manner it has gone about since assum- lust haveelectoral opinion in favour of rrm. ing office in Madras: its policies on uitc someprogres~ive forces, but becausethe food and tenurial arrangements, its ccn unaw~left parties teamed up with Jana an- caveat on the size of defence expendi- lC State Cghites and Congress dissidents. ]Ven ture and its general stance on such attle but nin West Bengal, the dominant elerenf; issues as language and educationalle weekenin the Bangia Congress-the ,(OUp . system have been characterised by a nd somewhich was marginallyinstrumen1l in nonconformism of the most welcome) do battledefeating the Congress in the Stat was ",ort.· A succession of by-elections-ould not ITreactionary to the core. Thesepoly- now capped by Tenkasi-have con- )nal respo'glot combinations were against rat~re, firmed that this non-conformism has :Icction Coand soon started coming aparr T e the unabashed backing of the Madra ad so upseiCongress restoration in the Ntth, as electorate; no amount of cajoling on 'Om Newillustr ted by the ,results of t~ mid- the part of New Delhi wi\.l now induce romised thterm 'Poll in Haryana and the ollapse them to go back on their DMK future.)t duringof rival regimes in several oth~ Statd, News of the Madras by-election c Prime ]I

therefore merely signrfieo a Itllfn to "defeat has come at an awkward time c Wcst Bea .more ~atural stat. of aff~s. ~ot- . for the Congress in West Bengal. The >t bc awlthstandmg the verdict of pr~esSlOn- hundred quarrels within the United' suggest tII .. At' J.1£ alle- . th fa. optlmists, ry~varta re alV..~' .' Front have bloomed in the newspapers, mpa e iC.

glance to reaclton, a fat v411Ch but till las' week Mr Atulya Ghosh' The cour5subterfuges and artifices canot conceal- C '. 't' ( . b t 'ttd counter-b d b· f k d Th"'se ongress orgamsa ion, more a ou 1. b b'eyon ne wee en s... ... a sor JOgprofessing faith in socialisrrand secu-. later), totahtanan~fashion, was ~ble, oftcn retolar democracy will have towork hard to suppress all news of the rumbIll1g 'css poIitiland long for the mind of A:yavarta: 0,( d~sco~tent within the ~arty over th ate, that itpost-election manoeuvres Will be of nommatlOns for the mid-term poll.)velty. Nono avail if there is no shiflin attitudes This had created an optical illusion'inciples neat the grassroots. and made the United Front appear in is all a rna

This is what marks of1Kerala and a poorer light as an electoral alliance d group inMadras from the rest of the country. Mr B. S. Nahar's rebellion has nowe O1ost inIn both these States, th disenchant- brought the Congress linen out in themc playedment with the Congres-and the open. To that extent, Nature's balance~ xl?ense:mores it represents-ha reached a has been redressed. Maybe this also"rcaS1Qg dr:stage where the process h~s become provides an occasion for rt'1llindingOose. b~weirreversible. Kerala's Leftists may If h h C '. and re DSC III se~. . l' onese t at t e oncrress 1:>, -continue to wash theirdralectlc men. . b th t 19 to the sin public, the administation. they are mams, the mam enemy til e momen ~;t; if one hiable to provide, withir the limitations a fact that gets ?lurrt'J be.caus~ of th j bosses clset by the ConstitutioJ, may" continue cam~uflage which PreSident s fule.Ca!led reIto fall short of being exemplary, and prOVides to the local target. tene rule, (

._ ay or wiped out. And the Israelisare tough fighters. The Arab propa-

.; ~dnda should have been against theZionists of Israel, and not against thentire Jewish popu,lation whose brutal

persecution by the Nazis had earnedthem worldwide sympathy at the timeof the creation of Israel (though theArabs may still be wondering why theyshould pay for the sins of Hitler). Per-haps the successful activities of theJewish terrorist organisation left me-mories too bitter and too humiliatingto encourage any idea that Arabs andJews can live together on friendlyand co-operative terms under a newdispensation. The perfidy of 1956buried any such idea five fathomsdeep. But strangely, this idea was voicedby two Communist members of theIsraeli Parliament after the June warlast year. These were voices in themidst of triumphant chauvinism. Oneof the curious facts of history is thatthe Jews who did not put up muchresistance against the Nazis even whenthey were led to the slaughter-houseshould exhibit so much virility andviolence against the Arabs. Anotherirony of today is that the

. -infernal suffering of the Vietnamese"nd their magni'ficent resistance should

•. he1p another Power to parade its arms"~and warships in West Asia and else-~,where and at the same time proclaim

and practise the virtues of peacefulco-existence and collaboration withthe aggressors. Mr Nasser should be-ware. That the announcement of likelyanti-ABM talks with Mr Johnsoncame on the day when the Americanshad dropped 1,800 tons of bombs inNorth Vietnam shows the extent towhich the Kremlin can go to accom-modate Big Brother~ In the short aswell as in the long run the Arabs willhave to help themselves.

Tenkasi

Krishnagar has been counteredby Tenkasi. The Congress has gonedown to a resounding defeat in the by-election from the latter constituency inMadras. Some of the reports in thenewspapers about how the DMK in-fluence has been declining steeply in

t"":',' JULY 13, 196 LY 13~ 19

LY 13, 1968 LY 13. 1968

ot going to returnongress. The latter

a viable alterna-the recent munici-ve nurtured otherts, but the tran -which has come

biding enough tosuch minor buf-nkasi, coming in

tained Congr~ground, uggestss too has gonever one's doubte slogans in thethere is a basi

~ thinking in theout since assum-

;: its policies onarrangements, itsdefence expend i-

stance on suchand educationalaracte.rised by a

most welcomf by-elections-asi-have con-

conformism hasg of the Madrat of cajoling onwill now induce

leir DMK future.as by-election

awkward timeest Bengal. Thein the Unitedthe newspapers,Atulya Ghosh'(more about it

ion, was able~f the rumblinge party over thmid-term poll.optical illusion

I ront appear inectoral alliance.bellion has noWinen out in theature's. balanceaybe this 111sofor renfinding

ess is, and re-at the moment,because of theesident's rulerget.

More Of The Same

With his considerable cunning Mrtulya Ghosh combines a certain

mount of sang-froid. At least so itight have appeared during the pro-

~ess of his return to power in theWest Bengal Congress in recent!lonths. According to some reports, hewas one of the few men present, wholid not lose nerve in the confusion

Howing the landing of a missile onI1r P. C. Sen's venerable head at atongress meeting at Kharagpur lastaturday. But then Mr Ghosh knewhat it was more important than ever'

at he must keep his wits about. Heust have been a worried man for

tuite some time. He could not haveleen unaware that his opponents inhe State Congress might have lost alattle but not all their weapons. Overhe w ekend Mr Bejoy Singh Nahar

d some others seemed determinedb do battle again. Even Morarjibhai

uld not mollify them by taking per-onal responsibility for the Congress£Iection Committee's decisions whichad so upset them. Over the telephone'om New Delhi Mrs Gandhi herselfromised them a hearing, which they;:Jt during the deluge; consideringe Prime Minister's feelings towardse West Bengal ;party boss, it would>t be a mere polite formality

suggest that the hearing would beympathetic.

The course of these murky movesnd counter-moves may no longer bef absorbing interest. This is a tale) often retold in the history of Con-fess politics, particularly in thistate, that it has lost all excitement of

velty. No policies are involved, norinciples need even be mentioned;is all a matter of personal ambition

nd group interest, of trying to makehe most in an unabashedly corruptarne played for so many years atle expense of a people forced intocreasing distress. There is little tooose between those in power andose in seeming revolt; they all be-ng to the same disreputable lot. Inct; if one had to choose between the

id bosses clinging to power and theo-called rebels protesting againstoterie rule, one could hardly be sure

o' a new era p.£ friendship and co-sHe, are eqmile' unprincipled, what-e~r their professions, the one whichis rrore clever and at the same timemCfe brazen may be the group onemi/!1 prefer to deal with. Therewodd at least be fewer faMe pretences.

Tlis. of course, is a digression. Therecan b~ no real question of choosingbet~en two forms of the evil. Thelates' developments should only exposethe eti! once again; it shows the Con-gress for what it really is. If somepeople ,till choose it, it is their busi-ness; whether they prefer Mr AtulyaGhosh or Mr Bejoy Singh Naharmakes ro matter. Yet the develop-ments ale not without certain impli-cations d general interest. They pro-vide at Imst some explanation for theCongresl party's anxiety for a post-ponemert of West Bengal's mid-termelections. "'he demand for ~ postpone-ment has reen more than a little intri-guing, fO" there seems no obviousreason wly the Congress should bemore poplhr in February than inNovember. in fact, postponement, ifdecided Urol, would give the party'sopponents 1 valuable propagandaweapon. Nr Ghosh and his croniesmust have mown this from the begin-ning; if ther still chose to ask forpostponemeIt there must have beensome inner om-pulsion. It now seemsthat the par\r bosses want more timein order to Qal with the grave inter-nal dissensiolS. Perhaps Mr Ghoshalso hopes tht after the next cropthe jotedars a~d rice-millers would bein a better pe;ition to provide himwith the funds he needs for the elec-tions. But, agan, all this is part ofthe same old sbry.

A Nev AllianceA correspondett writes:

What is really lappening in South-East Asia? With the U.S. forces ofoccupation sinking irretrievably in themorass of Vietnam the region is grow-ing 'restless. The m.kers of South-EastAsia's destiny are blsy hopping aroundeach other's capital (not to mentionthe pilgrimage to Vashington) and

signing joint communiques and sun-dry other treaties. A dawn perhapsof preferring the latter. When bothoperation in this troubled part of thegl be? But a probe beneath the crustof lofty speeches and communiquesreveals a new pattern which isnot particularly benevolent or peace-ful in intention. It is perhaps onlya perverse mind that looks for a snakein the garden. But then reality is noless perverse.

The emerging pattern of allianceshas to be viewed against the back-drop of mounting guerilla activity inthe region. After the traumatic expe-rience of 1965 Communist guerillasare again surging back tq life in Indo-nesia. Some areas of Malaysia arcevery day posing greater security prob-lems. A murderous ambush -recentlymounted by Chin Peng's elusive· gue-rilla band on a Malaysian armyconvoy is a serious alarm signal forKuala Lampur. On the mainlandSouth-East Asia a vast ring of terri-tory from the frontiers of North Viet-nam to that of Nagaland runningthrough the jungle-covered hills ofLaos, Thailand and Burma is control-led to a varying degree by the insur-gents of the respective countries. Laos,Meos and Lahus in Thailand, Shans,Kachins and Karens in Burma-thetribal South-East Asia is in revolt.But revolt of the ethnic minorities inSouth-East Asia is an old story. Whatreally makes it particularly ominousto the Free World is the colour of therevolt. All the tribal insurgents areeither led by or allied with people whodraw inspiration from thc works ofMao Tse-tung. Although betweenthemsclves thc insurgents do not seemto have done anything more than cx-change pledges of proletarian s{)lida-rity the governments they are 'fightingare too scared to sit back. And every-body from Suharto to SouvannaPhouma, from Thanom to Ne Winbegins to feel that they will have tohang together if they are not to hangseparately.

Examples are not wanting either. Theanti-guerilla united front of the LatinAmerican oligarchies led by the U.S.

View from DeM..i

FROM A P '!CAL CORRESI'O DENT

A 'Tl1w Party ?

LY

Id 1I(

Pmgou

Ira

it~ leaders was sickeningly ju ·a.rmle' and self-righteous. One II Itsthem told newsmen that it was ~l jlogic of the split working itself o~ chThere was ill-concealed jubilation 0 ~rethe CPI(M)'s discomtfiture and a for.,htahope that some of its following wo lat;

Ire-defect to the sarkari ,p arty. But t t tsplit after Burdwan was not the 10 ssof an e.arlier split. If anything, it c~~the logIC of a compromise with {-so-called softliners like Mr E. M. J~rNamboodiripad and Mr Iyoti Bas~ a eTenali. Ie I

The CPI (M)'s participation in t inJUnited Front ministries in Kerala !II ereWest Bengal seems to have taken jtrentoll of ideology. The party's ma ~ytpreoccupation now seems to be dl thold power in Kerala and recapture coin West Bengal. The price: anoth CF~& ~ i

It might be an accident that dlrd

General Secretaries of both the officiThe

Communist parties are from Andh ~Pradesh. But it is by no means certa I 0

that the third one would be led rmc

another Andhra because it looks Ii: t'Athere will be many "third" CommuI( crparties in the country shortly, raisi I (!1the basic question: can there be .:culall-India communist party in the r- aUsense? Back in 1948, long before,nt.came to be known as such, the AndnY' IICommunists were for a Mao line In 0the CPI's need to suborn its inter lr~n'to Moscow's resulted in the emascu.~lOrtion of the Telcngana uprising. N~ wly 20 years after, Naxalbari got all kedsheadlines and Srikakulam none. rethose described as "N axalites" do ~mh~endorse what is known as the Srik n 1

lam line or the Andhra line, I sterwould ordain that the Anahra e nturnmists form their own party. E notMao's thought is not anyone's m I'd (poly. me

The pressure for the expulsionn p~the Andhra Pradesh leaders car dl~from the leadership in West Be r ~

(

JULY 13, 19I(N

THERE are things morc p~ndand less psychedelic d the

Communist split to talk about irPec-table company. The poor Primjnis-tel' is yet to find herself a ;ioushouse to live in. Poor Mr ineshSingh had to keep off Geneva' timebecause Mr MorarjiDesai ,d notallow him foreign exchangelVhichshould remind us that the r' tradewith the Soviet Union has Ited ina balance in our favourild MrDange can still hop to M everyweekend to sort out the ms ofIndian revolution and "an stillsend a jumbo-jet-size c:}ltion tothe Sofia Youth Festival ,no obli-gation to buy TU- 134 rS' MrsGandhi and Mr C. B. la havemade up at last, and t'lieve thepolitical grapevine, U.pegemonyover (India would be. res I soon.

ut hardly anyone hled to askthe question: would thntre allowthe third Communist ly (if andwhen formed) to functlS a party?The third party has toformed be-fore it could be bann a prema-ture ban would prev me of theultras fr~m quitting cond partyto join the third. It ld thereforesuit the Home Mini'fine to waituntil all the ultras been drivenout of the CPJ(M)' When theofficial leadership t fight theultras on the po!iti lane, the bestexpedient is to dene! them as pro-Peking as Mr Dan arty did once,and le<tve the rest e Government.Mao shirts would been the fash-ion with our Com t Establishmentif only the Chine n~t lai? claimto territory whid believe IS ours.

The CPI's ofQ reaction to thesplit, as could b from the com-munique at the pf its CEC meet-ing, was rather ous. The refer-ence was to the munist elements"outside the organised par-ties. But theJlce. of some of

4

·f

~.lve a.Lready got down to action. InAfrica- in Angola, South Africaand Rhodesia the governmentsare closely cooperating in theirlfight !lgainst tlje black insurgents.Thcy exchange not only infor-mation about the guerillas but alsomateriel to deal with them. In South-East Asia too regional cooperation in.counter-insurgency operations is al-ready an unpublicized but establishedfact. Malaysia and Indonesia arehelping each other in fighting insur-gency in Sarawak. The Thai and Mala-ysian armies arc conducting joint ope-rations against guerillas of the Thai-land Patriotic Front and MalayanLiberation Army. Thailand isalso sending assistance to Laosto stave off the Pathet Lao re-lentlessly pressing forward. Lat-est in the series was the agree-ment between non-aligned Burmaand Thailand which one French jour-nalist has termed thc "largest U.S. air-craft-carrier." During their recent mee-ting Generals Thanom and Ne Winagreed that troops and police of eitherThailand or Burma would be allowedto enter the other's territory in the pur-

suit of mopping up operations againstthe insurgents. They have even agreedto press into service Koumintang Chi-nese irregulars prowling in the intract-able north of Burma and Thailand whowere only yesterday the main securityconcern of the governments. Viewedin this context the Indo-Burma talks onborder security and the Indo-Malaysianarms deal take on a new sign~ficance.

Cutting across the old lines ofSEATO and non-aligned Asia a newinternational seems to be taking shape.But this fact docs not deprive it of theblessings of the Pentagon which is('lready channelling massive warmaterial to the individual mem-bers of the new alliance. Andintended as it is to preservepeace and stability in the regionthis anti-guerilla international can alsoreasonably expect encouragementfrom the pragmatic Communists of theworld. Russian accusations in the NewTimes against China for supportingthe struggle against the governments ofBurma, Malaysia and Singapore are apointer.

d Kerala which dreads a ban on thePI(M) as nothing else because dfe party's proximity to power. An:~·ing else is expendable but not: pOVl~rrough the United Front. But in Ap-ra Pradesh the Iparty is nowhere

. . ar power and therefore a majorityngly JUv its following can foresake it and

s. . ne II for a hundred Vietnams. Jt isat· I.t was t uch the same thing in Madras StateIg. It~elf oUhere the extremists provide the mostIbllatlOn ov ilitant cadre and have managed to'e a~d a fOlate the superannuated leadership.lowmg wou t the sheer size o~ the party and itsarty. But t ass character make for a qualitativenot the 10 ffcrence in Andhra Pradesh. Evenrthing,.it w r Sundarayya has admitted that these With t ajority of active members in AndhraMr .E. M. adesh would go over to the ultras.TyotI Basu e majority of a party's active fol-

. . ing cannot be without a partypatIon t t ereas the small groups of expelledn Kera a a~tremists can for some time be. Soave t~ken rything points to the formation ofparty s brna distinctly Andhra party if attemptsms to e co-ordination with other groupsj. recapture CPI (M) extremists fail. In whichnee: anoth e there will be more than one

trd" red party in the country.jent that t. The CPI (M)'s repeated protesta-Ith the ;~~ ns about its faith in parliamentaryfrom n thods and Moscow's anxiety to~ea~: ~:~t mote "unity ~f. action:' between. 1 k r two Communist ;parties preclude

"ltC

00 Sly crackdown by Government on the

lomm~~ I(M). But the interesting 'point to

IOrt y ralSI I h' h ld bh ' b eu ate on ere IS: W at wou et .ere h e attitude of a United Front Govcrn-

:y IIIbt fC r nt with CPI (M) participation,ong e ore . W B I Kith th Andh ' 10 cst enga or era a, 0 aMer b n on a party to be formed by the

~o .Inte lremists? In the Lok Sabha last1 Its 10 ere. 1 h U 1 f I A . . .hi Sian, w len ten aw u ctlvltJeS

t ~. ema~u I was being discussed, a cpr (M)pn.smg. nCt kcsman rushed in where othersIan got a red to tread and wanted to knowTIl' ~?ndc. )m Mr Chavan whether he woulda Ites 0 tr .

h S'k kn hiS party or not. Mr Chavan, thes t lie n: ster ot false logic, asked a question: dhne, °t"turn: would his :party support China~n ra ex" .

t Ev not? The CPI (M)'s anXiety topar, y. mo I'd off a ban was exploited by the

lyone s mc Ministry and the strategy be-~ expulsion 11Pj.aying.off when the CfPI (M) ?e-1 d ca (Isownmg one group 0 extremIstsea ers h Th 1 . 1 .W t Ben r anot er. e oglca culmma-

es of this trend would be theLY 13, 19 r(M)'s co-oper~tion, where it is in

LY13,1968

FRONTffiR

power. with the Centre in smashing,the u~tras or any organisation theymight set up.

The ;prospect of power through theUnited Front has distorted the think-'iU,g of every major political party.With mid-term elections due to takeplace in the entire Indo-Gangeticvalley, from Uttar Pradesh to Bihar,the old compulsions have surfacedonce again. It was amusing to hearMr C. Rajeshwar Rao rationalise hisparty's honeymoon with the J anaSangh in Bihar. It was a kind of meta-physics. "We may have a hundredand one principles but in life we haveto make so many compromises," hesaid. It was not only. metaphysics; itwas a bit of quantum physics too.Where the Jana Sangh is not bigenough to create mischief, the cprwould join a United Front with it. Andagain, if the SSP, another "leftist" par-ty, insisted on having the lana Sanghin the Bihar front to achieve leftunity, the cpr would have to aim at"democratic" unity which is a euphe-mism for united action with the J anaSangh.

There is no decisive index of: anyswing back to the Congress all over thecountry. Th.e .Congress won a margi-nal victory in Haryana and wrestedthe Krishnagar seat in West Bengal.But then it has lost two by-elections inMaghya Pradesh and suffered a disas-trous defeat in Tenkasi . in Madras.The marginal anti-Congress voter inthe 1967 elections might be non-voterin the inid-term elections. In someplaces, the non-voter might be a deci-sive factOr' in favour of the Congress.To that extent, the outcome in UttarPradesh and Bihat; might be unpredic-table. But in large areas of the coun-try, whatever the voter's disillusion-ment with' the United Front ornon-Congress Governments, he is notin a mood to vote the Congress backto power. Tenkasi is one such jnstance.The middle-class disenchantroent withthe DMK is almost complete inMadras State but the anti-Congresswave has not subsided. The anti-Cong-ress vote in Madras is largely ananti-Centre vote, 'Fhoever manages' toget it.

j .~;~,I,July 7, 1968

.."Tftjnktng On F{ance

'....1

. B. P. ADl-IIKARI

THE May events in France a. the J tIne electio results ,have

evoked the expected response from[present-day "left-wing" Communiststhat the revisionist French C6mmunistParty has betrayed the wo' ing cla;;sin not attempting to seize politicalpower, and from "right-win~" Com-munists that it was correct ~.ot to dQso. Proclamations and prolestationsfrom both sides have as usual beencategorical and full of an appmentconviction of truth, though diametri-cally opposite to each other. Tl1ereis nothing new in this~ as 1110StIewriting of all shades in India is t 0facile, the writers being either too sureof their own accurate understandingor of the wickedness or folly of others.However, there are many basic ques-tions of the strategy of the 1e[:,move-ment, particularly Communist, whichhave remained unresolved for lack ofa scientific debate, which explains the.frequent incoherence between pro-fession and action in both the Com-munist camps in the country. Itwould therefore be pertinent to posesome of these questions. Since wehave started talking about France, weshall discuss slpedfically the questionsof left strategy in that COUlltlY and inother industrially advanced countriesof Western Euorpe, with the hope thatsomeone will have the courage to ex-hibit similar doubts and questionsregarding India in the columns ofFrontier.

Let it be understood that by leftmovement we understand active massmovement by political parties '.viththe object of putting an end to capita-list relations of production and esta-blishing socialist relations of produc-tion. Let it also be understood thatthe present-day schism in thJs move-ment from the point of view ofpractical strategy is in advocating apeaceful transition Or a violent over-throw as a necessary means to theabove end.

It is well to remembf.'r when talkingof strategy today, that there are only

.,.('

C'

VIi

lenife111

SI

anocabshwetOJ

coevequsalcerareTheredidthi5qUE

conthefealdevtheParecolcstaof Ired"azainde

\\the,be prcgaFrenUnivthisrelatimostniciaJA sUl

that Istudefrompropochangeducaamonlporteeor IeSI

JULY

JULY 13, 191

and overthrow the order of things,pick upon identifiable persons ofcapitalist class whom they would hso much as to physically harm thif necessary? It is submitted hthat the French working peoplenot itching for a lfight to do awaythe capitalist class. Nevertheless,basid capitalistic relations of ownship and production remaif\ intact aby the laws of dialectical materialithere is the standard inherent cantildiction of this mode of productiHew is it going to be resolved,when? It is difficult to see that tcontradiction is getting visibly shaened in France Or in several simieconomies. When will such sharping take place? Will it come onown, if things go on as today, hasted by agitational work by a Marpolitical party or will the hidden cflict suddenly come to the fore wthere is a crisis of capitalism, whever that, happens? It is maintaihere that quantitive working-class dmands for the improvement of livilconditions will not bring about ddownfall of capitalj m in these cotries, because, willy nilly, capita'has come to realise that the immeDtechnological development of reyears can be so used as to give aenough to pacify the unambitiworking class and keep them failwell-fed and in fair comfort, andmake more money than could everimagined.

The strategy of the revolutiol1lleft movement will depend onanswers to the above questions, giwitbout quotations from the Maclassics. If, for example, the Comnists of these countries do not kin what manner a crisis of capitawill come, or if such a crisis will cat all, they will necessarily have

remain as mere watchdogs of thenomic interests of the working clkeep up a well-oiled trade union oqnisation and pray that one day thmay be peacefully voted to poafter which they will build socialiIf, on the contrary, they knthrough scientific understanding thacrisis of capitalism will certaircome, at which time capitalism 9ruthlessly consign the working c1'

FRONTIER.

profitable to lfind a description o~ theFrench situation which, undoubtedly,will have much in common with the~ituation in most Western capitalismsof today. The economy is highly indus-trialised, with a peasantry which iineither poor nor landlord and Kulakridden. The industrial worker does notexist face to face with an enemy armyof unemployed, and the peasant doesnot fear eviction or feudal exaction.A majority of the working class livesmuch above the subsistence level anda fair number can even think of theregular intake of as many caloriesfrom food as are advocated for heal-thy life by experts on nutrition. Gua-rantees of social security and old agebenefits are (provided by the Statewhich has also made lower and highereducation easily available to theirsons and daughters. The State partici-pates extensively in economic activity,in mines, power generation, industryand transport, and has enacted legis-lation both to regulate the operationof capital and industrial relations-the' latter in favour of the worker. Thestigma which a politically consciouswOtker carried on himself of being aci~izen of a colonial country has beenobliterated. The last ten years havenot only seen substantial economicdevelopment which has brought mate-rial benefit to the worker, he has alsoexperienced an ample dose of nation-ali~tic pride, singularly in contrast withwhat he felt during many of the post-war years. Above all this, his materialinterests are effectively protected andenhanced by a strong trade unionmovement whose voice is felt andheard both by the State and the ca,pi-talist class.

Lest I should be taken to be sing-ing the virtues of capitalist benevol-ence or of being some brand of aKeynesian I should state forthwiththat the sacrifices and determinedendeavour of French Communists arein a large measure responsible in get-ting for the worker much of what hehas. But here comes the rub and ourproblem. If the above description isbroadly accepted and too many faultsare not found, are tlie working peoplein France in a mental condition whichwill impel them to desperately go out

Material InterestsWith the full awareness of how

, comparisons can be odious, it is still

Ithree countries in the world-t1:teUSSR,. Chma and Cuba-where theworking 'people have succeeded inachieving tHe above objective of theleft movement and that this has hap-pened in each case through violentmeans. In operative terms, the workingpeople, either through their own eXipe-rience or through the political educa-tion of an organised party, have felten<:JUgh desperation mingled withhope, and enough hatred against iden-tifiable persons or groups of persons,to use physical violence against themor to cruelly dispossess them of theirproperty. What el~e would be upper-most but this hatred and desperation inthe minds of the worker and the pea-sant of these countries? There was abackward and ill-developed industryin the midst of an impoverished pea-santry, which meant for them livingbelow or barely at subsistence level andin fear of unemployment or evictionfrom land. There was complete inse-curity 1 old age, and for the familywhen the worker would die. The Statedid not participate in the economy,nor did it even create the semblanceof protection of workers or restrictionof the vices of capitalism. It did notcare to create an illusion of powerand participation among the peoplethrough a formal democracy, and theruling classes abandoned the spirit ofelementary nationalism in the face offoreign occupation or domination byan alien country. The ruling classes

, and the organs of State presented anunabashed picture of callousness, cor-ruption, inefficiency and depravity

. which shocked the sense of morality inthe common man. Finally, in the USSR

•• and in China the ravages of warpulled the people irrevocably away

,.from the ruling classes. In such a situ-ation organisations of courageous anddevoted men and the legendary lead-ers which they produced could effec-tively canalise the wrath of the peopleand give them the hope that only by acruel and violer.t overthrow wouldthey possibly open the road to anhonourable survival.

-.

~er of things,l persons of tthey would hacally harm thesubmitted he~~ng people arto do away witevertheless, th

ions of owneemail\ intact antical materialisITinherent contr

e of productiorbe resolved, anto see that th'g visibly sharr

/l several similill such sharperI it come on ias today, haste)rk by a Marxi. the hidden corto the fore whcapitalism, wheIt is maintainworking-class dvement of livi

bring about tm in these couV nilly, capitalisthat the immenpment of recej as to give aw

the unambitiokeep them fair

comfort, and yhan could ever b

the revolutiona!1 depend on t~Ie questions, giv

from the Marxitnple, the Commtries do not knocrisis of capitalisl

a crisis will comecessarily have Itchdogs of the eethe working ciaa trade union orgthat one day th

voted to powe~ill build socialisn:rary, they lennderstanding thatm will certainme c~pitalism

the working cIa

JULY 13, 19

even lo starvatIOn and death, theywill have to very clearly explain thisto the working class and keep it orga-nisationally and mentally preparedfor the day when it would have tomake the final show of strength.

Student RebellionHow does the student rebellion

and tha subsequent strikes and factoryoccupation by workers fit in with theabove description and questions? Itshould be noticed that wherever theworkers intransigently occupied fac-tories, they did not seriously wantcontrol either of the government oreven of the factories. They only madequantitative demands of an exorbitantsalary increase and the restitution ofcertain social security benefits-whichare negotiable and were negotiated.They did take advantage of the moodcreated by the rebellious students, butdid so for quantitative demands, ifthis repetition is excused. The subse-quent elections do not. necessarilycontradict the erstwhile militancy ofthe workers. One may express thefear that the French worker might bedeveloping a dual loyalty-towardsthe trade unions and the CommunistParty for the satisfaction of theireconomic demands and towards theestablished order for the satisfactionof political aspirations. Exhibition ofred flag for bread and the tricolour for"azadi" has been seen in India beforeindependence.

What remains to be understood isthe student upheaval itself. It wouldbe pertinent to point out some factsregarding the student population ofFrench universities, particularly theUniversity of Paris. The students ofthis university do not come from therelatively poorer classes, and aremostly children of intellectuals, tech-nicians and white-collar employees.A survey about ten years ago showedthat less than 2 per cent of the 70,000tudcnts of Paris University came

from working-class families, and theproportion would presumably not havechanged drastically even today. Theeducation of a very large numberamong all students is financially sup-ported from State funds to a greateror lesser degree, and many students

JULY 13, 1968

FRONTIER

.find it possible to change disciplincsbefore the end of studies. There isvirtually no unemployment after uni-versity education. What is it, then,which has gone wrong?

Let us look at a simple demogra-phic exercise. It is known that in coun-tries invOlved in a world war, there isa sudden increase in the number ofbirths just after the war ends. As thelarge group of new borns during thefive years after war grow in age, theysequentially pose serious problems ofnurseries, !primary schooling, second-ary schooling, higher education, jobs.Besides, when these babies suddenlytake the shape of a large student po-pulation between 18 and 22, there isthe problem of their ideology, sense ofidentification and values. The studentsof this age today were born since 1946and they have suffered from inade-quate educational planning from theage of lfive. More important than this,they have grown up without having toface a challenging social or philoso-phical thought, without having to thinkand take sides in confrontation witha bold and revolutionary ideology.Their situation is in sharp contrastwith the situation of the children bornimmediately after the First WorldWar. Thc latter had the yet hereticalideology and practice of Communismto reckon with, and every thinkingyouth had to place himself sharplyvis-a-vis this doctrine. Then, as if tosave capitalistic society from the prob-lem of ebullient youth, the SecondWorld War started in 1939 and suckedall of them in a vortex towards death.But now 23 years have gone by andthere has been no war. Communismhas become a respectable commodityand there has been destalinisation ontop of that. The only two things theelders have promised are peace andmaterial well-being both of which, letus say, there have been. If for manystudents of science and technology atleast there is real excitement, there isnothing similar for those who willstudy the social sciences. Moribundcapitalism is still kicking, the money-dominated bourgeois social systempersists with all its hYiPocritical values,and the students face the future life ofa cog in the big wheel of the service

sector which is meant to perpetuateboth. It is no longer religion whichseems to be the opium of the people,but achievable material well-b ingand the indecent striving for it.

The rebellion of the student is per-haps mOre than anything else an angryprotest against a general i~tuitiveknowledge of his inevitable future.But short of a radical social changeor a perspective of such change forwhich it would be worthwhile to stakethis future, rebellion of this kind islikely to remain a memory to nostal-gically remember and perhaps repeatat another moment of collective des-pair.

It would really help very much ifthere was a thinker who would sortout credibly and convincingly theinterplay of social forces today, pointout the most important of the contra-dictions and lay down guidelines ofaction for change. A Marxist whostarts only with the materialism ofphenomena and the dialectics of pro-cesses, who has driven away inhibitionsof thoughts, is fearless of the esta-blishment of left movement and hascultivated a deep insight into society-such a person seems to be a tallorder today.

7

ASSAM BENGAL RIVER SERVICE PVT~ LTD.POWER BOAT BUILDERS & ENGINEERS

26A, EZRA MANSIONS

10 GOVT. PLACE EAST,

CALCUTTA-l

caain.viilu'Inprcadeje(mlinocin

lalimCIticstrso·haeCI

ofovTtthtac.cl2enSUi

be:theneldefaltotlutideSU(

caltreSt~m2halth~in~UntoeTh

DAVID GODUARIJ

The Vanguard-II it is an outright contradiction of suchrolitics. The moment a socialist partyis admitted to bourgeois democracy, itceases by definition to be revo-lutionary. If, indced, it was inthe first place. The historyof E u r 0 pea n socialist partiesis in total accord with this contention.Contemporary European Communistparties such as the French and Italianto say nothing of the reforming social~ist parties, cannot there·fore be trustedto carry out a revolutionary transfor-mation of the capitalist system, desp~tetheir political power. They are bour-geois, reformist parties which haveabandoned socialist principles of revo-lution. In effect, both left-wing poli-tical ;parties and the trade union move-ment have: been co-opted onto thecapitalist system. Moreover, a bour-geois society could not tolerate thelegitimate existence of a revolutionaryparty. If it was co-opted it would haveto be transformed ideologically.

9

BureaucratizationThe question of bureaucratization,

alr,eadY noted by Michels and Weberin Germany at the end of the 19thcentury, is also significant in respectto co-optation. Bureaucratic organi-zation is inimical to revolution becauseit represents a totally inert and con-servative force, and an arena for theemergence of inflexible vested interests.Administrative personnel have a deepand abiding interest in the continua-tion of the administrative apparatus,and develop a distrust and suspicion ofthe clients in whose interests the ap-paratus sup;posedly functions, but whomay also represent a threat to its exis-tence. The American and Europeanworking classes have had no little ex-perience of bureaucratization and havehad ample time to discover that itcan never be a force for rapid change.The enormous British T & GWU isperhaps the most well-known case ofa union organization bureaucratized tothe extent that it cannot act effectively,and whose anti~democratic characterhas resulted in an alarming rate ofapathetic withdrawal on the part of themembership. A revolutionary organi-zation, on the other hand, has no needof and cannot afford a large-scale ad-

laboUKhas obvious, fascist implications,and a high probability exists that inthe event of severe crisis (induced byevents external to the metropolis).white labour would go even furtherright than it is already. To a some-what lesser extent the same is true ofBritain and other European countries,although the working class there, atleast, has the benefit of a protectivetraditional socialist ideology, exceptthat it is an ideology. quite lacking inrecognition of contemporary capitalistconditions. The continuing declineof Britain, with the inevitable shocksto the social structure and political lifethat this is bringing, is already havingthe consequence of increased disaffec-tion from the left, a resurgence of animpotent nationalism, anti-American-ism, and an intensHication of the rac-ism which already contaminates theBritish working class to a high degree.

The development of a legitimatemachinery of collective bargaining (in-stitutionalization of class conflict) ac-ceptable to the capitalist class hasmeant two things: (a) the struggleagainst capitalism has been narrowedto a struggle over the distribution ofmaterial rewards accruing from capital-ist enterprise, so that the inequality ofrewards has become the primarysymbol of ca:pitalist exploitation, effec-tively masking from the working classthe total irrationality and ultimate ty-ranny of the capitalist system (econo-mism). (b) The institutionalizationof collective bargaining and its le~ti-mization by the capitalist bourgeoisieis nothing else than the effective controlof the working class by the bourgeois-ie. Institutionalization means incor-poration into the capitalist system, andincorporation means control.

Precisely the same can be said ofthe development of working class poli-tical :piartieswith a legitimate positionin the political spectrum and a voicein parliamentary democracy. Revolu-tionary socialism means rejection ofhourgeois politics and political values ;

THE lessons to be learned from thefailure of European and Ameri-

can labour movements to developa revolutionary consciousness areinstructive from the point ofview of the potential for revo-lution in underdeveloped areas.In addition, the reasons for that failureprovide us with an explanation of whycapHalism at an advanced stage ofdevelopment does not create the ob-jective conditions for revolution in themetropolitan countries, while it does soin the underdeveloped regions whichoccupy a totally subservient positionin the capitalist system.

The stru~gle between capital andlabour in Western countries has beeninstitutionalized to a high degree.Class conflict itself has been institu-tionalized with the d'evelo;pimentof astrong trade union movement, andsocialist parliamentary parties whichhave been oriented to basic social andeconomic reforms within the contextof capitalism rather than revolutionaryoverthrow of the capitalist system.The success of the European left ,andthe American labour movement inachieving major gains for the workingclass, cannot and should not be under-emphasized. But the effect of thatsuccess has been to increase the gapbetween the social consciousness ofthe workers and their real socialneed's. In other words, social cons-ciousness has become progressivelyfalse and irrational to the point oftotal ignorance and rejection of revo-lutionary socialism. Nowhere is thisideological refraction of the politicalsuccess of the working class undercapitalism more evident and more ex-treme than in the contemporary UnitedStates--except pierhaps Britain. Themajor part of the white working classhas become so idiotized and befuddledthat it is no longer capable of perceiv-ing the true nature of the role theUnited States is playing in the worldtoday, or if it is, of condemning it.The jingoistic nationalism of American

trial sector. This has had the effectof creating a working class clite, diffcr-cntiated from othcr manual workersmore by incomc than by skill. More-over, this elitc has dcvelopcd a seH-consciously bourgeois style of life, asin the United States, which has entail-ed a rejection of proletarian valuesand political ideology. They have'moved radically away from workingclass collectivism in the direction ofpetty-bourgeois individualism.

Puerto Ricans to the urban areas ofthe ortll. But the Pucrto Ricans ar~only thc latest wavc or migrants, al-though probably the last. The UnitedStatcs, like Argcntina, industrialized It is011 the basis of successivc waves ofhe ve'immigrant labour. This pattcrn ap- ecessi1pears to have seriously inhibited the on ofdevelopment of a proletarian tradition nd thof solidarity and recognition of com-he carmon class interests in both these coun- hastries. Indubitably then, the total roletaeffect of migration (both historically nitorand at the present time), has been to lism,increase the tendency towards bour- apital:geoisificatioll of great parts of the renceworking class, and thus to deepen the loiteddivisions and weaken the solidarity of rise,that class. Instead, at a late stage of evelocapitalism, a new solidarity is emer- ingging among the bourgeoisi'fied workers, sm.)a solidarity in affluence, in com;peti. e Vtion for status, and in the ethos of ulymass consumption. ined

But the true reality of. bourgeoisi1fi· fricacation can only be understood in the heapcontext of imperialism and neo-colo· end(nialism. In the past 50 years, the estecapitalist wealth of the economically vestladvanced countries has been derived omp(from the massive exploitation of mar· t atkets and raw materials in the under·developed regions. At the end of the a19th century falling rates of profit in igh I

caphalist countries led to the diversion]i~h ,of vast resources of surplus capital to rics :hitherto barely exploited regions ofopmethe world. A reservoir of cheap labour y nc(made possible astronomical returns he ,on capital investment. Capitalism igh Imoved into a new stage, the stage 01 umelslJlPer-prorfits, achieved not at the ex uantpense of the European working cIas$ rivalbut at that of the "natives". More- evelover, capitalism since the 19th century mphhas become totally dependent on thl n otsu;per-exploitation, precisely because ionof the long-term fall in the rate ofdomestic profit. The rate of returnon U.S. foreign investment is still inthe region of 1270 pcr annum, com·pared with often as little as 4-5 % perannum on domestic capital formation.Secondly, a very small percentage 01 ccethese superlPTofits remains in under- Tldeveloped: countries. In the, case ofthe oil industry, for example, onlyabout 10% of oil revenues actually

~ FRONTIERJ

Divide, Rule and ProfitA distinction can be made between

the traditional and modern sectors ofthe European working class, but itwould be far less stark than the dis-parity between black and white in theU.S. There the white working classhas enjoyed high wage levels becauseof the capitalist exploitation of theblacks (and because of the desire ofthe capitalist class to keep black andwhite racially divided against thepossibility of solidarity action in whichclass interest transcends racial antago-nism). The blacks have been areserve army of unemployep who, be-cause of the racial cleavage with whiteworkers (fostered for a century bythe bourgeoisie), have been exploitedmuch more ruthlessly and systemati-cally than the whites. It has, in effect,cut two ways. Capitalism has beenable to exploit racism, which it itselfcreatcd, to retain a chea:lY labour sup-ply, by the. acquiescence in racism ofthe white labour movement, and at thesame time prevent the uni1fication ofthe working class and the true deve-lopment of proletarian consciousness.A classic strategy of divide. rule, andprofit. A similar phenomenon occursin Europe with the im:pIortation offor e i g n, unskilled workers-WestIndians, Pakistanis and Indians inBritain (and traditionally the Irish),or Spanish, Greek, Turkish, and NorthAfrican workers in France and Ger-many. The indigenous working classhas moved up the occupational and in-come hierarchy as large numbers offoreign unskilled, often semi-literateworkers have moved into the low-in-come, low-prestige occupations. Thesame course has occurred in the Unit-ed States with the mass migration of

ministrative machinc. In thc interestsof action, it nceds a bare minimum oforganizational structurc. The uttersimplicity of the cell-structure· of theAlgerian ALN and FLN, or the dis-mantling of "unnecessary" administra-tion by the North Vietnamese in theinterests of achieving maximum speedof response to immediate problems,are cases in ,point. In the same waythe Chinese Cultural Revolution re-cognises the serious dangers of institu-tionalized inertia and authoritarianisminherent in bureaucratic organization.The encouragement of "criticism frombelow" is a major step in the deinsti-tutionaJjzation of authority structures,not only because they conflict withprinciples of socialism, but also be-cause they interfere with the efficientand rapid prosecution of the urgenttasks of socialist reconstruction.

While the factors already mention-ed have been signitficant in transform-ing the working class into a bourgeoisclass, the main mechanism of bour-geoisification has been economic.While statistics of income distributionin Western countries do not show thatmanual workers have increased theirshare of national income in the last 50years,l it is nonetheless true that theworking class is materially better offin absolute terms than it waS 50 yearsago. The standard of living of workershas risen to the point where, in theUnited States, the majority of whitemanual workers enjoy a middle-classlevel of consumption. The same istrue to a lesser extent of Europeanmanual workers, especially those inthe modern rather than the traditionalsector of industry (in secondary in-stead of primary industries). Thisindicates that while the share of theworking class as a whole in nationalincomc may not have risen, there hasbeen an increasing tendency for mark-cd income differentials to appearwithin the working class. This isobviously true of white and blackworkers in the United States, in bothNorth and South, but it is also trueof the European working class. Thewages of workers in the expandingengineering and consumer goods in-dustries in Europe have risen a:ppre-ciably faster than in any other indus-

FRONTIER

AccessoryThe proletariat of the metropolitan

countries is, therefore, in a totallyequivocal position in this historicaldevelopment. Their high wages are a

(Concluded)

NOTICE

Business ManagerFrontier

be returnedhy return

JCf. G. Kolka, Wealth and Power inAmerica. R. Titmuss, Income Dis-tribution and Social Change(London, University Press, 1966).

2principally through Baron's analysisof monopoly capitalism and the rootsof backwardness in Poliical Eco-nomy of Growth (N. Y. MonthlyReviEW Press, 1957) the majorsource of inspiration for Frank'sCapitalism and Underdevelopment

in Latin America. The present papersimply draws certain conclusionsfrom Baron and Frank which re-main implicit in their work.

For FRONTIER readers inWest India can contact

S. D. CHANDAVARKAR10, Kanara HouseMag-a! Lane, MahimBombay-16

Articles cannotunless accompaniedpostage.

mate form, a form by which neo-colo-nial peoplcs are completcly proleta-rianizcd by the world ca.pitalist system.

If capitalism is to fall, it will do sothrough the actions of this new prole-tariat, only recently awakened but al-rendy 'fighting in a dozen countriesaround the globe. The future of do-mestic capitalism in the West willthus depend in the end on whathappens in Latin America, Asia, andAfrica, events which will not be signi-ficantly affected by the working classof the West. exoept insofar as it con-tributes to the systematic underdeve-lOipment of these continents throughits participation in nco-colonial exploi-tation, whether consciously or uncon-sciously.

direct function of low wages in thesatcllized nations. AndiE capiLdistexpansion in Western countries is ulti-mately de{pcndcnt on thc success ofsuper-e:xploitation in the satellite COUll-tries, which generates their further un-derdevelopment, then increased wage-levels in the metropolis can only meanfurther impoverishment of the workersin the satellites. The proletariat ofthe West thus particiJpates in, and be-nefits directly from, the: exploitationof the masses in the underdevelopedworld. Active or inactive, it is anaccessory to imperialism. The: rela-tionship is identical to that whichobtains between indigenous and mig-rant labour in Western capitalist coun-tries, as discussed above. In this case,sections of the European and Ameri-can working class exist parasiticallyon the exploitation of migrant labour,often consciously and actively contri-buting to that exploitation. For ex-ample, in Britain the trade unions dis-criminate overtly against migrantWest Indian worke:rs by controllingaccess to particular occupational cate-gories.

The net result of this major histori-cal change, a change which has onlyquite recently been brought to explicittheoretical consciousness in Marxism,2has, as suggested above, been to trans-fer the task of making revolution andtaking power from the Western work-ing class to the working class of theunderdevelolPed world. The Westemworking class has for the foreseeablefuture been co-opted onto the capita-list system of the metropolis and istherefore no longer a proletariat inthe true sense of the word. It is atotally bourgeoisified and ossifiedworking class without potentiality fora revolutionary consciousness. Itmust, however, be emphasized that theWestern working class as a whole can-not be blamed for this failure, eventhough its leadership has too oftenbeen olPportunistic and self-seeking.We should talk less of the failures andmistakes of European and Americanworkers, many of whom today haveretained a socialist consciousness, thanof a historical movement which hasinevitably passed them by becausecapitalism had not achievyd it& 1l1ti-

Ian areas of aches the people of the llnderdeve-) Ricans are ped regi0n in the (onn or wages andnigrants, <1J- cal payment for dOl1lestically produ-The United 'd supplies for the oil corporations.

ndustrialized It is perfectly clear, therefore, that'Ie waves of he vel')' survival of capitalism haspattern ap- leeessitated the large-scale incorpora-

nhibited the ion of raw material ,producing areasan tradition md their indigenous populations intoon of com- he capitalist system. In consequence,these coun- t has meant the creation of a newthe total H'oletariat outsidc the political and

historically rritorial boundaries of Western capi-has been to alism, but nonethele:ss within the total'lards bour- apitalist system. (It makes no diff-trts of the rence whether that proletariat IS ex-deepen the laited by domestic or foreign enter-

;olidarity of Drise, since domestic capital in under-lte stage of eveloped regions only comes into:y is erner- eing as a function of world capita-ed workers, ·sm.) The consequences of this forn com:peti- e Western proletariat have beene ethos of ruly momentous. Super-:pwfits ob-

ained through the exploitation oflourgeoisi'fi- frican, Asian, and Latin Americanood in the yheap labour have made possible tre-I neo-colo- mendous increases in wage levels foryears, the Western workers. High returns on

:onomically Investment abroad have more thanen derived "ompensated for a falling rate of pro-)n of mar- t at home, so much so, in fact, thatthe under- he viability of capitalism is dependentend of the to a very great degree on continued)f profit in high rates of foreign investments. Bute diversion high wage! levels in the Western coun-capital to tries are an integral part of this deve-

regions of lopment. High wage levels are vital-eap labour IY necessary to domestic capitalism inal returns ~he West, because they generate aCapitalism ~igh level of effective demand for con-Ie stage of umer products, which increases theat the ex- quantity (if not the rate) of domesticking class, rivate' PfQfit, i,n turn affecting the, More- evel of domestic investment and thusth century m,p·loyment and income, and so on.nt on this In other words, the degree of e'Xpan-, because sion possible to domestic capitalismIe rate of has, in great measure, been a functionof return of thc degree to which capitalism couldis still in successfully exploit the labour-powerurn, com- of the po/pulations of the satellite re-4-5 % per aions.'ormation.'entage ofin under-3· case ofpIe, only; actually

13, 1968 JULY 13, 1968 11

GYAN KAPUR

Calcutta Diary'rl:sll

the other he is angling for a foothol ~d tWest Bengal for thc Swatantra P ery13 h . h' leanC 1 at as It I1l::lY, t ere IS no reto suppOse that his statement is s ca

'Ipont ruc by and large. • ld

To come to my point, when fo toon a large scale is being allowed P~yrot and waste and witheld from m npeople who need it, there seems to f~e(a method behind the madness. . ed

b . I d' . d . ltecannot e sImp y Ismlsse as Justefficiency. It cannot be a mere c e.r'd h II h' d rtlcuCt ence t at a t IS wastage an

ting has been mainly on food sent bC~~West Bengal. Even if we grant u~there has been no deliberate atte s't~

. h h' S h I 'I 10to punts t IS tate, t e on y 0 Tru'conclusion is that the powers that .. N D lh' , II IOU:10 ew e 1 were Just ca ouscared little one way or the other awhat happened to the people.is the price one has to pay for faito pay homage to the Congress jgernaut so long as it holds sway at ~~(Centre like the zamindars of old. t(

~ ~ rle (

Of a piece with the wheat-c memaize scandal is the Centre's repo nreply to the West Bengal Gave y

ment's petition for milk powder 1fHaringhata-increase the price or awithout additional quantities. By i?\v~plication we should be grateful tbthis condition has not been insis aupon for the existing supplies. r2

Obviously the present clique 1 \(

officials who euphemistically go by ps,tme

name of West Bengal Government din no position to question the wisd r~!of the Centre. Rice, it seems, can ,1 1

sold at subsidized rates in Madras i mKashmir but not milk in CalcuttBut then GovernOr Dharma Vira Thno Annadurai to tell the Centre ulemind its own business, nor is W turBengal another Kashmir. In spite aall the scare of Chinese agents, cnspite even of occasional shouts th'Mao Tse-tung Zindabad' no one ralso far dared to utter on the streets attlCalcutta the words 'Indian dogs' asKashmir not so long ago. Likeschool bully, the Centre seems to UIderstand only one language, It

~ ~, asWhatever the 'recent Crime Prevehe'

tion Week might or might not hadone, it at least exhibited for th L

all over the country even for a week,there would have been no problem ofcovered wagons. No one, however,bothered to take any such step.

It is difficult to prove any such thingbut if we look at the results, we canhave suspicions about the motivationbehind the causes. The results havebeen plain for all to see. Wastageleading to a little less food and neces-sarily a little more support to the sag-ging price level. And what an openinvitation to wagon-breakers to lifteasily bags of wheat without the trou-ble of going through the complicatedritual of breaking open the wagonsand facing the police when they mighthappen to be about, may beby inadvertence.

On top of this has come the state-ment of Prof N. G. Ranga whichmakes matters clear. Round about thetime when the UF Government inWest Bengal was booted out uncere-moniously the price of maize flourwas Rs. 2 or so a kilo and many peo-ple had to exist on it, rice being be-yond their means. I had wonderedJwhat happened to the bump~r maizecrop and why it could not be broughtto this unhappy State, the price in theproducing State being less than aquarter what it was here. Now ProfRanga's statement has provided theanswer. Maize worth crares ofrupees, it appears, lies rotting inwagons on wayside stations and evenunloaded on different stations inHaryana all because the Union Gov-ernment considered the shipmentsillegal and thus seized them. Thatthe exporting State had allowed it andthe railways themselves had acceptedthe consignments knowing full wellwhat they contained apparently count-ed for nothing with the Czars of NewDelhi who also did not feel it theirduty to resolve the legal tangle andrelease the food for hungry people.

Possibly Prof Ranga may be killingtwo birds with one statement. Onthe one hand he is championing thecause of the Haryana dealers and on

TIMES have changed since thedays of the 1929 great depres-

sion. Then one saw the astonishingspectacle of wheat and cocoa beingburned in the boilers of ships whilemillions hovered on the brink of star-vation. Now, of course, we havePL480 assuring the USA of political'f:iety and at the same time a marketfor the surpluc; wheat. Among thosewho were horrified then at the sense-less destruction of food were somewho today wield power in this coun-try. But time is the great leveller andno doubt tbese gentlemen have attain-ed wisdom which laughs at the follyof their younger days.

No one can really say what is thecorrect position but it does seem thatprices on the food front had a ten-dency to fall owing to increased over-all production in the last few months.That is if they had been allowed tofall. However, the Union Govern-ment in practice has been sufferingfrom a phobia about the price of any-thing coming down, while at the sametime expressing pious hopes aboutmaintaining the price level.

It would be simplifying things toomuch to dismiss the transportation ofwheat in open wagons as just anotherexample of the inefficiency of Gov-ernment departments. There seemsto be a method in the madness allround. The theory of shortage ofwagons does not really hold water.Only a few months back the railwayshad been crying about idle wagonsand so many new departments havesprouted up on commercial lines car-rying out investigations and trying tosell freight to trade and industry.Apart from that, in case of bottle-necks, the normal practice in the rail-ways is to stop booking to or fromcertain stations for all or certainclasses of goods. It is significant thateven while wheat was being sent inopen wagons eJQPosed to rain and alsolay rotting on uncovered platforms, nosuch restrictions were imposed. Hadit been done even on a limited scale

but there was nothing he could do.Later in the day he was called to thephone. It was the Editor. Hewanted to know the colour of the dog.'What do you mean?' angrily askedthe millionaire; 'Why didn't you askme earlier and publish it in the ad-vertisement? And why have I notreceived today's paper'?

'What?' carne the re,ply from thesurprised Editor. 'How could therebe a paper this morning? I havebeen busy looking for the dog sinceyesterday.'

13

by the sweep of evcnts. Now that thetide has receded they are makingamends for the default. This renewalof allegiance is unconditional, in spiteof all that the p'apers said in the past.Only a hope has been expressed thatPresident de Gaulle will not in hishour of triumph forget the revolt ofstudents and workers and will try toremove their genuine grievanceswhich, in effect, means that he shouldada,pt his policy to the liking of Bri-tain and the USA.

Going further than other papers inpleading the Anglo-American case,The Hindustan Times says that thewage increments offered to the workerseven before the elections amount to atidy sum and will compel the Govern-ment to think of economies. Oneobvious direction is to cut down thenuclear strike force, to revise, inother words, Bresident de Gaulle'sostentatiously self-sufficient foreignpolicy based on force de frappe. Pre-sident de Gaulle's deal with the Gener-als for army support in the facc ofthe near revolution would make itdifficult 'for him to take a hard deci-sion on sizable cuts in the militarybudget. But the more bitter pill isthe necessity of having to admit thatFrance cannot afford his policy. Thepaper is also worried over the pro-mise of workers' participation in in-

FRONTIER

The Press

vourite dog, he phoned the newspaperoffice asking the editor to put in anadvertisement for the lost dog-theifinder to be rewarded Rs. 1,000.

The next day the millionaire wait-ed long for the morning paper withhis advertisement but there was nopaper. He rang up angrily the office,to be only answered by the, office boy.·Where is the Editor ?' he demanded.'He went out yesterday and hasn'tcome back since,' was the answer.

The millionaire fretted and fumed

COMMENTATOR

TJ erdict In France

THE reaction of the newspapers tothe elect6ral verdict in France

is quite amusing. A few weeks ago,they rejoiced over the riscollfiture ofPresident de Gaulle and had no hesi-tation in declaring that he had losthis hold over the French masses. Hewas practically labelled as a wastelf whohad gambled with the future of hiscountry. They contended that the ipic-ture of French pro&perity was a shamand the Gaullist regime was crumbl-ing because of internal decay. Al-though no word of encouragement waswasted on the students and workers,there was an under-current of appreci-ation in all editorial writings of theway they were cutting down theirP,resident to size. All this has changednow, and President de Gaulle hasonce again become the symbol ofFrance's stability. There is no attemptto conceal the glee over the debacle ofthe leftists in the election, and theyhave become a convenient whipping-boy for all that France had to passthrough recently. The French peopleare being praised profusely for puttingthe critics of the regime in their placesand for their massive mandate to Pre-sident de Gaulle to work out France'sdestiny. It would seem the anti-Gau-llist writings of Indian papers at theheight of the crisis were a temporaryaberration; they were overwhelmed

It was a small town but it couldoast of a daily newspaper. So, whene visiting millionaire lost his fa-me Preve

t not had for tho ULY 13 1968,, 13, 196

rested that the tools of the tradeItl be quite simple. The armed

watantra Pa bery on the postal van resulting in'e is 1]0 ~ lean get-away of about Rs. 4 lakhslea . d . h datement " s carne out WIt pretty cru e

IS pons, considering the haul. If truthnt whe f told, the whole episode only servedin~allo~ dOprovide a little free sensation in theheld fro~ Idrum life of the a~er~ge citizenre seems t gucd by numerous mlsenes.

madness~ Thc robbery ~n its ow~ way high-,sed as' t lied the steadIly worsenmg law and~ a me/u~o er situation in the State and instage a~d r rticular in and around Calcutta.1 food nt course attempts have been madewe ara~~ t build up a story that with the dis-)erat~ atte s~~1of the. UF Government the: only ot SltJonhas Improved.lowers that ~ruth, however, will be out and:t callous a nous statements have been made]e other ab ' among others, the Home Secre-people T y, Mr S. B. Ray, to the effect thatlay for' fail n-political crimes" are on the in-Congress j ase such as use of daggers andIs swa at t nades and murders.:s of ~d' Those whose memory is not too

:to • art will remember that in festivalWh at- Ie during the unfortunate UF Gov-

e cu , " 'bl ftre's report ment s reIgn, .It was pOSSI e . orgal Go en unaccompall1ed women and grrls

, owde;e f go all over Calcutta even in the: ~rice or all hours of ~he .morning and hardlyties B . Y untoward lllcldent was reported.gr;tefu? t~ What intrigues me, however, is thebeen . . t e of the phrase 'IPolitical crimes' by

mSlS l' b S'l lies. e,~o Ice .o~ses. m~e w~en ~asttP I' lttlcal actrvlty, even If agamst SIlly

c Ique b . If"Ily b t WS, ecome a cnme? It IS averng~en~ a ime, then why are they still keepingI th . d der detention without trial 28 or so

e WIS 0 1" l' Wh'e Itrca Ipnsoners? y not put- ms, can f' I f h'" ,Mad em up or tna or t elf cnmes?rnsa :to •

n Calcutt

~m~ Vira The situation in Calcutta this week~ ~nt~ uld be passed off as a visitation bylor IS. e ture-once in 50 years-but those

In spIte .ho live is bus tees know that it hasa~ents, I 'en man-made over the years, thankss outs the Corporation. It is time the Cor-

no one h ration went. But would that improvel~ str~ets . alters, with the country being run

i~k as y people who, at best, should have1 e teen municipal commissioners?

~ems to u • •ge.

dustry which President de Gaulle hadheld out as his panacea for labourdiscontent. A definition of participa-tion that would satisfy the workersand not alienate the conservatives whorallied to his support in the electionswould tax the ingeniousness of theGovernment. The sweeping majorityin the National Assembly is not amandate for continuance of the "au-thoritarian and paternalistic" rule,and the domestic issues will have tobe tackled eXipeditiously and withcircumspection.

The Hindu says that in giving a ma-ssivc vote of confidence to the Gene-ral, the people Of France have rejectedviolent rcvolution and voted for order-ly change. For the General had bothasked for a mandate to change thestructure of French society and toldthe people that the only choice beforethem was between orderly progressunder his stewaDdship or chaos intowhich totalitarian Communism wouldsurely plunge the country. The vastmajority of Frenchmen obviouslyviewed the May disorders as a pre-view of what might happen if a Leftcoalition led by the Communists shouldmove into the, seat of power. The Leftcoalition has been badly mauled, allconstituents together getting onlyabout 90 seats as against the 193they held in the previous Assembly.If the massive popular backing shouldtempt Gen. de Gaulle into becominginflexible and dictatorial again, thatwould most likely spell a return ofFrance to May. If the stirring eventsof that month proved anything, it isthat the French people have no moreuse for the General's paternalisticprescriptions. They want drastic eco-nomic and social changes, a dramaticbreak from the past, and if they failto get it, they could withdraw theirsupport to the General as quickly asthey have given it now and perhapsviolently again.

Discussing the effects of the elec-tion on the French left The Indian.Express says that it has received ashattering blow at the polls. The Com-munist Party in particular has suffereda reverse from which it is unlikely torecover for some years to come, if itcall recover at all. The irony of it

14

FRONTIER

will not be lost on the French Com-munist Party's leadership. The officialleadership more or less collaboratedwith President de Gaulle and PrimeMinister Pompidou in the worst daysof the crisis. However, the fact that theleaders of the left showed themselvesto be reluctant revolutionaries didnot help them at the polls. The mili-tants in the Communist Party maynow get the upper hand in the councilsof the party, but their capacity formilitant action has been blunted ifnot totally crippled. The electoratehas voted overwhelmingly not only forstability but for Gaullist stability. Thatit has done so as a reaction to thealmost anarchic situation that haddeveloped during the student revoltand the general strike is clear enough.However, it would be a mistake toconsider the results merely as a reac-tionary and negative swing to theright. President de Gaulle would bemaking a grave mistake if he interpre-ted his spectacular victory as a voteonly for the maintenance of law andorder. Stability should not be equatedwith the maintenance of the statusquo.

AnticlimaxThe Times of India calls the result

of the French election as an anti-climax. Only a month ago, it lookedas if the Gaullist regime, discreditedin the public eye, was on the verge ofcollapse. Now, after a crushing vic-tory at the polls, the regime is in a farstronger position than any Republi-can Government in French history.The parties of the left have lost morethan half tteir seats in the NationalAssembly. Most of their middle-classsupporters, taking fright at the eventsof May, have fled from them. It iseasy to see in retrospect why theCommunists were so nervous over theturn of events in May. They fearedthat the paralysis of life would alienatethe middle-class voter and that in anextremity might even facilitate a mili-tary take-over. Where they made amistake was in wanting to hunt withthe hound and run with the hare.They gave a call for a general strikeand were in a desperate hurry tosettle it. They were frightened of

chaos and tried to make usc ofchaos as there was to secure p9 thefor the partics of thc left,. What t thehoped for was a revolution on teancheap. They havc only themselvesblame if they have had to pay dCI~~rrfor the~r ~pportunism. For the n thesthe antl-cllmax to the evcnts of aris a warning to young hotheads in :richer half of the world that an af wd'.Y. h d' nvent society, owever eep Its neu Bh2sis, will have stability rather tl starchange. or

Pointing out that no other Gave ~ ement in the history of Republic t~orFrance has ever had such overwhel 'nqiing sway as the Gaullists now h. ~ea'The Statesman says that the Comn offinists and Socialists, the principal : streversaries of the GaulIists, have tal ina thorough beating. Even more telli s'mhas been the decline in the Comn .]

Il1gnist vote from a consistent 25 per Cl thesince World War II to just under soper cent; and the most shattering bh railto the leftists has been the defeat moGrenoble of M. Mendes-France, P thehaps the most attractive and ima benative politician in France today. 1 anIGaullists made no secret of t~ Radetermination to "punish" him I serhaving lent his powerful supportthe insurrectionary students w pn

no'workers, and their success is a mesure of the French people's inten Bacommitment to order against anarcl anWhile the Gaullists undoubtedly OV( atplayed the threat to the RepubJie a ralmany in France were elearly frig! agened, the groundswell of feeling m:favour of stability under General ticGaulle cannot be explained aw tr)in terms of :panic alone. It is nol atlworthy that the Gaullists have won n mlonly in the ttaditionally eonservatr ofcountryside but also in the citadel ccrevolution, the city of Paris. irr

RAIL WAY ACCIDENTS CCthIf anyone thought that the Railw.

Ministry was sleeping ovcr the scri feof train accidents in the country, whi( ofhave become almost a daily occu glrence, he would be unfair to those trcharge of the railways. From Wa frington Krishan Bhatia reports in TI atHindustan Times that a large group I 10senior railway officials was studyil tl-

ojJULY 13, 196

J1

The composition of power relationstook a new turn in the Ipost-war periodwith the beginning of the U.S. policy ofcontainment of Communism-a ringof bases throughout the world. InAsia, Japal!, Taiwan, Thailand, thePhilippines etc exposed themselves toAmerican pressure. Many then expec-ted the U.S. militancy to be matchedby a Peking-Moscow mobilisation ofpower. But Russia's insistence onplaying the role of "Big Brother" inthe world Communist movement andthat the Communist parties shouldpractice self-abnegation to enhanceher interests was soon challenged byChina. This set off a chain reaction.The USSR moved closer to the USAand a new chapter in the history ofinternational relations O'pened.

Prof Beloff wistfully talks of the"possibility of :l new period of Japa-nese influence on the mainland" inthe wake of the "present upheaval inChina"; in another context he saysthat if there is no large-scale break-down of the Peking regime and amajor economic setback, China'simpact as one 'potential great Powerwould be felt among her neighbours.

he Professor seems to have a wrongnotion about the Chinese cultural re-volution.lBeloff is also wrong when he says

that except in Laos and Vietnam theAmerican policy in Asia "might seemto have succeeded' In his words thispolicy constitutes containment ofC mmunism, overthrow of the Peo-ple's Republic of China and her isola-tion from commercial and technicalcontracts with the West. The record,however, is different. American esca-lation of the war in Asia has beenmet bv Asian counter-escalationChina's'trade with the West is mor~broadbased and diversified than it wasa few years ago, and she looks moredynnmic than before.

Prof Beloff's vision is howeverclearer on other subject:;-for instanc~-on the 'P'rospects of survival of par-liamentary democracy in India andthe capability of the Government tosolve the fundamental problems of thecountry and make a breakthroul!h intomodernism. He does not c~nsiderIndia any longer a "competitive adver-

THE BALANCE OF POWER"..By Max Beloff

George Allen And Unwin Ltd,London. Pages 73.

the working of U.S. railways towards Book Reviewthe beginning of this year; a smallerteam of railway general managers iscurrently going over the same ground.It seems whatever improvementsthese frequent visitors to the U.S.A.arc bringing about in the Indian Rail-ways are being frustrated by wayward IN these three Beatty Memorialdrivers and negligent railwaymen. lectures given in Canada in 1967Bhatia, however, is unable to under- Prof. Beloff, whose works on Russianstand the utility of such jaunts and foreign :policy have been acclaimed inwonders if the particular sub-commit- many quarters, analyses the changingtee of the Union Cabinet which sane- alignments between groups of rivaltions official travel abroad earnestly countries in Europe and in Asia. Theinquires in each case if the journey is emphasis is on the southern rim ofreally necessary. He says railway Asia; Prof Beloff believes that thereofficials come to the U.S. in a steady exists a power vacuum in the area andstream to study a system functioning the difficulties of establishing a balancein circumstances which have scant there are most acute. Though balancesimilarity with the conditions prevail- of power as a subject has long ceaseding in India. The traffic pattern in to arouse much interest among largethe two countries is totally different; sections of enlightened people,so arc the problems facing the two Prof Be off is not one of them. Herailways. Also, computers and other considers it to be "a ermanent, amodern gadgets that the railways in ~essary, and, to a larg~ exte~t, athe U.S. employ extensively will not healthy aspect of all international po-be available to Indian railways for litics dangers arise; where it isanother ten years, perhaps more. The Absent and that the role of tryingRailways are not, however, alone in to preserve_it within a particular sys-sending officials to the U.S.A. on one tern .. is b no means a dishonourablepretext or another. Bhatia writes that one." On this assumption is based hisnotwithstanding the eagle-eyed Reserve evaluation of the contemporary inter-Bank, a team of Indian bureaucrats national situation. As he concentratesarrives in the U.S. almost every month, on analysing ev~nts rathe.r than theoryat times even oftener on assignments he stands the nsk of bemg overtakenranging from formal' signing of loan by events, the mOre so about Asia.

Before the Second World War theagreements to some vague study of b If' A' d. . . a ance 0 power ID sm was eter-market conditIons m respect of a par- ml'ned b th t t' 1 f h. I .. . y e con ras IDg ro es 0 t etICl!ar commo~lty. A Fmance Minis- principal maritime Powers 011 the onetry team w~s m the U.S. recentl~ to hand and Russia on the other. Japanattcn~1 the World Bank ConsortIUm made an attempt to consolidate hermeetll1g.and an inter-m~nisterial group Chinese conquests by applying ski 1-of offiCials was travelling across the fully her naval ad military strengthcountry to determine how Indian against Powers who were then involv-import of fertilizers from the country ed in the European war and by ex-could be improved. Bhatia says that ploiting the nationalist opposition tothe pattern of domestic demand in foreign rule. But Japan in the long runfertilisers is something that an attache coul? not avert .the. collapse of herof the U.S. Embassy in Delhi would emplfe; the combmatIon of the West-gladly explain to the Supply Minis- ern Powers was enough to overwhelmtry on tele.phone. Yet, senior officials he~ and the nat~onalist leaders inf 0 M" t . f S 1 F Chma would not Just accept Japaneser m l~IS fIes 0 upp y, mance, domination as a substitute for Westernand Ag~cu~ture had to make a pro- rule. The process of decolonisationlonged pllgnmage to th~ U.S to kn~w was, however, hastened by the waythe pattern of domestic consumptiOn Japan humiliated the Western Powersof fertilizers. on different occasions.

other Goveof Republich overwhelts now ha

the Comprincipal

s, have tatl more teJlithe Comt 25 per c

'ust underattering blhe defeatFrance, p

and imatoday.

ret of thp" him fI supportudentsss is a mIe's inteninst anarc,btedly ov~epublic alearly frig~f feeling

Generallined aw

It is notave won nonservati

e citadel·s.

13, 196

,he Railw'the seri

ntry, whiily occuto those'am Wastsin T

~e groupIS studyi

'e use of so seeure p'Jleft. What tlution on

themselvesto pay deaFor the r

events ofotheads inthat an aep its neu

rather th

JULY 13, 1968 15

JU

at IingComuludmenisi

Ials~Iy itheUnanetin!ChInamilBigreais i

erelizeAn1mup\lisOnsta'ciaragfroqUl

\l~

StacalqUi

onlbUI

reaghl

Letters

spli. thesupply." "In a word" "that IS to say", , StOI

Mr Hcrsburgh has beaten the record of otmediaeval schoolmen's longwinded n.debates on the question as to ho ~~glmany angels could be made to stand hon the point of a needle I After acMr Horseburgh's stunning perform- ~fIance, one should be able to stand any-thing, including Seth Govind Das' ~a:promised parade of Gandhian cosmo- a~:~~. ~e

Saroj Acharya tic~

a fda)tiOl

JULY 13, 1968

The SplitFrontier is really fine. Commenia-

tor's stricture on The Statesman inthe June 29 issue was delightful toread, so were the first two comments inthe July 6 issue-'The Left Debacle'and 'Galling'.

It was however distressing to readnext to these 'The Split' by a'A correspondent'. There are somepoints in it, but in the lfirst place thewhole thing is written in a loquaciousway. We are used to hearing fromFrontier a simple austere undertonecombining meaning and passion inequal proportion and to regard it andits writers as part of us, as friends ofthe 'people. We always thought. thatthey took the cause of the working:people with seriousness, understandingand sympathy and that they write toserve their cause with their talents andnot to create theatrical effects.

A disservicc is being donc to therevolutionary movement by those am-ong the intellectuals who fight shy ofinternal struggle among the Commu-nists. They are well meaning but futilepeople and their cries are futile. No-where in the world has the Communistmovement come into being, nor couldit have come into being, all at once,in a pure class form, ready made, likethe Ganga from the matted hair ofSiva. The history of Marxism is thehistory of inner party struggle, thehistory of struggle against opportu-nism. Not only Mensheviks but hiscomrades often accused Lenin of be-ing extremely fond of controversy and

FRONTIER

time. Meanwhile, we have Mr Hors-burgh's study of Gandhi's moral equi-valent of war. If war is immoral, couldit have a moral "equivalent" in itsdictionary sense of being "equal invalue" or "having the same result"?One wonders. Yet Mr Horsburghexactly means that; he discusses themethods of Gandhian satyagraha as amorally preferable and comparablyefficient way of achieving the ends tobe obtained by warfare. But the endssought might be territorial conquestor economic gains. How could Gan-dhian methods of non-violence mor-ally justify such ends or succeed insecuring those ends?

Gandhi had a few simple ideas,borrowed mostly from Thoreau andTolstoy; these he worked over as bestas he could in the light of his ownexperience. Gandhi didn't developany system; on occasion he concededeven the use of violence. Mr Horse-burgh has attempted to build up anelaborate system of non-violent def-ence. It may be a proof of his earnest-ness but hardly of his Judgment. Alsojust because his thoughts are woollyand arguments involved in a lot of'ifs' and 'buts', his dissertation is wrap-ped in an impenetrable fog of verbiage.A single example will show the use-lessness of Mr Horsburgh's scholastic,performance. In his chapter Non-vio-lent Defence, Mr Horsburgh writes,"In a word, although a non-vio-lent community would employ coercivemethods to protect itself from its lesscorrigible offenders, its system ofself-protection would be clearly dis-tinguishable from a system of punish-ment, first because it would not aim atthe infliction of avoidable suffering,secondly, because it would return off-enders to the main body of the com-munity as soon as it was satisfied thatthey were prepared to conform withthe essential requirements of civilizedlife, and thirdly because it would adoptthe same attitude towards its offen-ders as it would adopt towards itsexternal opponents, that is to say, itwould be as ready to learn as it waseager to teach, recognizing that evena criminal's obduracy may be partlybased on the perception of a needwhich the community is failing to

tisement for parliamentary demo-cracy."

Since the First World War interna-tional organisations have been lookedupon as a means of eliminating theprecarious factor of balance of 'Power.In the League of Nations a suitablebalance of power was not possible asmember States were reluctant to com-mit their forces, being uncertain abouthow changes in the status quo wouldaffect their national interests. TheUSA, a major maritime Power, wasnot a member. Though the framers ofthe UN Charter claimed that they haddrawn objective lessons from thefailure of the predecessor organisa-tion, the UN had not been providedwith automatic rQ,achinery for dealingwith the balance 0): power. The inter-ests of the great Powers have beenadequately guaranteed through themachinery of the Security Council andthe veto. Prof Beloff observes that theUN will be effective where the interestsof the USA ap..d the USSR converge.The nuclear non-proliferation treaty isan example. The newly emergingStates of Asia and Africa looked tothe UN for aid under internationalauspices for economic development.By now they have been disillusioned.

K. SANTAM

16

NON- VIOLENCE ANDAGGRESSION-A study of Gandhi'smoral equivalent of warBy H. J. N. Horsburgh.Oxford University Press. Rs. 27.50.

GANDHI, poor soul, will soon besmothered under cartloads of pla-

titudes and beauties. Preparations arealready under way for celebrating hisbirth centenary on a grand scale. SethGovind Das has promised to teachthe world nothing less than the cosmicsigni'ficance of Gandhism. Moscow isexpected to offer co-existential tributesto the Gandhian gospel of capitalisttrusteeship. The Rajmata of Gwalior'sdarling, Acharya Kripalani, and vete-rans like Dr p. C. Ghosh will notsurely miss the occasion to prove howright and proper it is in true Gandhianform to bash the heads of their non-Gandhian opponents. All this in good

FRONTIER

17

"Aid From China"

The Kerala Chief Minister, Mr E.M.S. Namboodiripad, is reported to havestated in the State Assembly on March26 that "it has come to the attentionof this Government that a publishinghouse in Calicut belonging to Kunnik-kal Narayanan, an expelLed memberof the Marxist Communist Party, hasbeen receiving financial aid from theChinese Embassy and that it is for theCentral Government to carry out fur-ther investigations into the matter".(Deshabhimani daily, Calicut, 27-3-1968. Translation ours).

The facts o,f the case are as f.ollows:Towards tbe end of January, 1968,Rebel Publications of Calicut receivedfram the Chinese Embassy a postalmoney order for Rs. 100. This wastowards the cost of books supplied byparcel post to the Chinese Embassyagainst their order for copies of thede luxe edition in Malayalam of

leave no stone unturned to ensure thedefeat of Naxalbari, to stap the Naxal-bari flame from spreading and thenthey rejo.ice with malicious glee be-cause Naxalbari did not spread anddid not lead to victory. In and throughNaxalbari the proletariat both in thecity and in the town is learningthe great importance of revolu-tionary theory. It is no.w learning by heart Lenin's dictum- parliamentary democracy is anout and out fraud. It is learning thatself-less devotion to the revolutianand revolutionary pro.'Jaganda amongthe people are not wasted even iflong decades divide the sowing fromthe harvest. In and through Naxal-bari it is learning the role ofvarious classes in the Indian revolu-tion. Enriched by)l8ese lessons, theproletariat will 'Ijgl1t its way to victory.In this comp.licated situation all ~e.who are an the sidelines casr atieasttry to, understand sympathetically theweaknesses and difficulties that willinevitably arise in the course of thestruggle and to persuade us not to takethe temptin~ r.ole of a preceptor.

A ReaderDankuni, Hooghly.

JULY 13) 1968

~plits. At times this was undoubtedly pondent' is silent on it. All the animo-lat' t " the case. But it will be easily under- sities inside the ruling governmentth IS 0 sa

dy f' stood that the Bolshevik Party would and outside were forgotten in the face

Ie rec~'[ d °d not have attained its characteristic of N axalbari. Congress and Swatan-ongwm e· d h h d . 'd' If S d p/i"l'p J S h d

t hvigour an strengt a It not n Itse tra, SPan, t"~, ana ang an

as 0 ow f' 1 k d d'ff 'e ., II .. d h dd t d

o lOterna wea nesses an 1 useness, ommullists, a lome an sa e 0 stan h d . 11 d I'" Ii - d dId .'dl I Af a It not eJepe e non-pro etanan agamst t e mur erous an p un enng~ e. f tel' opportunist elements. The wide spread peasant hordes". In the light of Naxal-~tg tPerdorm- of the commu!J.ist movement in India bad, comrades, loyal, unsuspectingo s an any- . db' . d II d' h) . d D ' wasacc mpallIe ya certam watenng an not so we verse III t eory,

Ihv~n as s downof the theoretical level which was found out the parties and policies.Ian COsmo- 1 d I T k f' . (E fl'a rea yow. 0 as or mstant actIon very step 0 rea movement IS mOore

andinstant result in a period of theore- important than a dozen programmesraj Acharya )tical chaos is like wishing mourners at -as Marx very correctly put it.

a funeral "many happy returns of the They found that there was nothingday"-to use a picturesque descrip- much to distinguish the Left CPI lea-tion by Lenin. dershi-p from the Right CPI. To be

The Indian communist movement is sure, among those who brokeat present in a state of mental waver- with the CPI (R) in 1964 there areing. Whoever declares himself to be a people who substitute for Dange'sCommunist, to be a friend of the Com- straightforward opportunism the dip-munists must precisely define his atti- lomatic tactics of beating about thetude to questions which are by no bush when dealing with the most im-means agitating the Chinese Commu- portant and fundamental questions ofnists alone. working class movement. In the course

Not only for the Communists but of the Naxalbari struggle the so-calledalso for the masses of people, especial- Communists, the Left CPI leadershiply in India, it is essential to understand in [particular, left the h,eroically fight-the neo-colonialist role of the Soviet ing peasants isolated from the broadUnion which, jointly with America masses and doomed the peasantry toandwe Indian reactionaries, is pfot- defeat-this paving the ground for theting encirclement of revolutionary Congress to triumph. The peasantsChina and in the process making saw in power a number of left govern-tndia, politically, economically and ments which in their eyes were anmilitarily still more dependent on the embodiment of power, but not one ofBig Two. One of the most important them put an end to peasant want,reasons why this should be understood none of them gave land to the peasan-is precisely that it and the illusion it try. In West Bengal the Leftists didcreates inevitably weaken and devita- not touch the big hoarders and profit-lize our struggle against opportunism. cers, they combated the strike of theAnd as Lenin said-a struggle against electricity workers with the resultImperialism that is not closely linked that the masses in general have againlip with the struggle against opportu- become receptive to Congress dema-nism is an idle phrase or a fraud. gogy. The progressive mea-Once we grasp the meaning of this sures, they claim to have adoptedstatement, we shall be able to appre- cannot in the least ameliorate theciate the lfierce controversy that is condition of the masses. They areraging on the question of a united totally incapable of Marxist under-front with the Soviet Union or o.n the standing that "the relatio.ns of produc-question of Soviet aid to Vietnam. To tion being what they are, the onlyunderstand the nature and ro.le of the effect such progressive measures canState is another essential po.int be- have is to. proletarianize the massescause, for the revolution to succeed, the still more."question of allies is a very important But Naxalbari is already defeatedone. Yet it is not these controversies and not succeeding-is another objec-but the domestic issue, the very Indian tio.n advanced by the opponents ofreality that Naxalbari is, which brou- the Naxalbari lineJ Strange is theght the division. Strangely, 'A corres- logic of these gentlemen! First, they

.. ,' ,~.'

ing to read)Iit' by a

are some;t place theloquacious

~arjng fromundertonepassion in

gard it and; friends oflought, that1e workingderstandingey write totalents and:ts.one to thethose am-

ght shy of~ Cammu-~ but futileutile. No-::ommunistnar could

II at once,made, like~d hair ofsm is the'uggle, the

opportu-but his

lin of be-Iversy and

Commenta-;tatesman indelightful to;omments in~ft Debacle'

13, 1968

Jadavpur

In addition to what a student hasalready said June 8), one who has a

tisement charges were received by"China" by postal money order. Isit justifiable to say that this is "finan-cial aid" given by the Chinese Embas-sy to a non-expelled member of theMarxist Communist Party, by nameMr Chathunny, who happens to beits editor?

Large numbers of books from theSoviet Union, the USA and other fore-ign countries are published in Malaya-lam regularly. The embassies andconsulates of these countries payhandsome amounts to various gentle-men for translating their books intoMalayalam. They even take on theirstaff on very handsome salaries a num-ber of Malayalam writers and trans-lators. How can it be said that allth is is "financial aid"?

Marxist Publictaions, CalicutRebel Publications, Calicut

GAUTAM SARM

Calcutta

close contact with the Jadavpur University for quite a long time may ask

What liaison does the Student WeIfare Officer maintain between the University and the local U.S. Consulatand the Information Services, amwhat are his real activities in and 0of the campus?

How are the Special Officer, Information Officer, a Teacher of International Relations and another 0:Mechanical Engineering connectc(with the recent witch hunting of severastudents and members of non-teachin!staff for their progressive and demo-cratic views? How are the authoritielof the University being influenced bjthem?

Why is a post-graduate student 01Geology of dubious character beinutilised as a constant trouble makagainst the progressive clements whoat present control the student uniomof the Science and Engineering Faeul·ties?

61, MOTT LANE, CALCUTTA-13

* Cheques should be drawn in favour of Frontier.

JULY 13, 1968

FRONTIER

Please supply the FRONTIER for

Six Months/One year/Five Years/Seven Years

I am sending Rs .by cheque/money order*

Address. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .

Name .

Signature

Subscription Rates

Long-term subscriptions will

help the new weekly

IN LAN D

FRONTIER

By Surface Mail

All countries : Rs 40 or 5 dollars

Foreign AIR MAIL Rates (One Year)

Europe: Rs 120 or 15 dollars

Asia: Rs 88 or 11 dollars

America: Rs 168 or 21 dollars

One year: Rs 16.50 Six Months: Rs 8.25

Five Years: Rs 75.00 Seven Years: Rs 100.00

18

PLACE A REGULAR ORDER FOR YOUR

Quotations from Chairman. Mao Tse-tung, each priced Rs. 5. In June,1967, Marxist Publications of Calicutreceived from the Chinese Embassytwo 'postal money orders of Rs. 500each. This was the charge for transla-ting into Malayalam the book men-tioned above. As in the case of RebelPublications, Marxist Publicationsalso did not belong to Mr KunnikkalNarayanan.

Apart from these two occasions,we have also received small amountsby YPp from the Chinese Embassyfor books supplied by post. If doingthings this way is contravention of theexisting laws in the country, the Cen-tral or State Government could verywell have proceeded against us accord-ing to law. Certain questions comeup in our min~n this connection."Chinta", a weekly~nted and publi-

._~ at the Deshabh'iinani Press atCali~ controlled by 'Mr Nam-boodiripad received a few mohtbs agofrom the Chinese Embassy advertise-ments for Peking Radio. The adver-

1917 to Vietnam

Containment and Revolution

Western Policy towards Social Revolution

/',.F

"

Contents

Preface by Bertrand Russell. Introduction: David H o.rb'witz..'1\1yths of the Cold War: Isaac Deittscher. American~ Interven-tion in Russia: 1917-20: WiUzam Appleman Williams. The\Vorld War and the Cold '\!\Tar: John Bagguley. A ConservativeCritique of Containment: Senator Taft on the Early Cold WarProgramme: Henry H. Berger. Counter-Insurgency: 1\fyth andReality in Greece: Todd Gitlin. The Origins of China's ForeignPolicy: John Gittings. Revolution and Jntervention in Viet-nam : Richard Morrock.

Edited ..by DAVID HOROWITZ

adavpur Uniime may askStudent WeI/ieen the Uni.S. ConsulatServices, an~s in and out

)fficer, Infor-r of Intcrna·another of

~ connecteding of severalnon-teaching

and demo-Ie authoritiesnfiuenced by

~ student ofIracter beinguble makerlements whoIdent unionscring Facul-

-13

TAM SARMA

Calcutta.

~for

ven YearsThis volume is the first in a new series called Studies in

Imperialism and the Cold War edited by David Horowitz, whois the author of one of the earliest systematic statements of theNew Left position (Student) 1962) and a formidable critiqueof recent American foreign policy (From Yalta to Vietnam)revised edition 1967).

Published in association with the Bertrand Russell Centre for SocialResearch, London.

.............. . ANTHONY BLOND LTD .

Frontier.

13, 1968

'"•••

YOUR GUARANTEE

;

..THE GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY OF INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED.CALCUTTA' GAUHATI· BHUBANESHWAR • PATNA' KANPUR . NEW DELHICHANDIGARH . JAIPUR . BOMBAY . AHMEDABAD' NAGPUR . MADRAS

COIMBATORE . BANGALORE . SECUNDERABAD . ERNAKULAM.

India's poverty is paradoxical. Here, too many people toil to wrest a living from the earth, but the earthyields far too little. Embarrassed by the richness of resources and the poverty of means to exploit them,India produces not enough food to feed all of its population.Only large-scale mechanized farming coupled with intensive rural electrification can get the country perma-nently out of this rut. Rural electrification on a wide scale can bring power to our farmers and help themgrow more food, and attain a new prosperity.GEC have been playing a key role in making the country's rural electrification programme a success. GEC'svast reservoir of technical know-how and resources are directed to improve continually all GEC equipmentthat are essential to cope with the increasing problems of power distribution and utilisation in rural areas.During these years, GEC have been called, many times, to participate in the vital nation-I?uilding projects thatare helping to change the face of rural India-projects that include the Bhakra Nangal and the Hirakud Dams,GEC have also played a leading role in successfully implementing the programme of village electrification.GEC have ~pplied a large number of transformers, motors, switchgear and pumpsets .~o help make the'Grow More~od' campaign a success.'In all these dev;ropments one factor remains unchanged-the GEC quality. Installed at India's farms, GEC

uality products are helping to bring the country closer to agricultural self-sufficiency and farm prosperity.No nder, they have become the most trusted weapons in the country's fight against hunger .

fRALl MARKI..rcP£RMITTfO USfR-TIlP OENI'RI. ELECTRICCCII'1/fT II IIClIAPRIVATIlIWllm