Man and Environment – A Working Class Perspective.

Anoop Varghese Kuriappuram

I am writing this when there is increasing bonhomie about western ghats  and  Kasthuri Rangan/ Madhav Gadgil Report. Kasthuri Rangan report as every one understands is a mere technical report and it compromises the scientific base in which Madhav Gadgil report is built. It is not within the scope of this document to compare these. Discussion point that we raise here is what the working class approach should be towards nature.

Industrial revolution and free market theory always aims at exploiting natural resources to extract profits and it does not have adequate care towards replenishing the same. Barren lands which is left after mineral explorations are just one example of what consumerism will lead to. Species started vanishing from planet, biodiversity taking a hit and man’s quality of living is coming down in terms of basic livelihood parameters such as water, air and food. Increasingly, water is becoming polluted with portable drinking water sources getting scarce. Air’s quality is worsening with industrial and vehicular pollution hitting a new high. Ozone layer is getting depleted in rapid pace with CFC’s  emissions unbridled. Temperature of earth is getting warmer as rightly pointed out by IPCC of United Nations. Food is getting contaminated by pesticides, chemical fertilisers and unhealthy processing practices.

Interestingly some corporates are thriving  in the business of capitalising on this decline of quality of life.

·       For Polluted water,  corporates offer purifiers, mega desalinisers and water   supply schemes.

·         For Increase Temperature, they offer air conditioners and air coolers

·         For Contaminated food, offer is organic food

·         For Medical Ailments, offer is 5 star treatment

·         For Huge waste generated, it has proposal of big processing plants and incirators.

Workers organisations, industrial bodies and governments tend to bring the angle of economic parameters such as  gross domestic product and employment into these critical issues. Arguments are being put forward such as for employment , exploiting the nature is Marxist view .In this, trade unions are sadly taking a view which is protective of capitalist enterprise and  is working  some time as apostles for them.

Let us come back and examine this critical issue from a Marxist perspective.

Employment by itself is not a right or a must  in a classless society. Employment should be directed towards welfare of society and replenishment of the natural resources. The historical perspective which we should ingrain is “natural resources are finite”. Then comes the word called sustainability. When a corporate speaks about sustainable theme, it will be always directed at maintaining it’s bottom line by a set of activities. Working class should be seeking “Sustainable Employment” than “Destructive Employment” from its higher class consciousness.

Now what approach should working class take in this?

Points to be kept in mind while examining this holistically are the livelihood of human beings and the famous idiom that “without wall there can be no wall painting”. Technological and scientific advances should be evaluated exhaustively before putting them into use. Market forces tend to go ahead with new advances and government system is doing a catch up later. Working class in return of the employment received ,tend to be protective of the environment destructing attitude of capitalists. It is a historically wrong perspective and contrary to the commitment working class should be showing to the society.

Working class holistically should drive struggle and correct environmental issues that it’s operating concern is producing. There should be a pledge from working class that “Boycott employers who does not adhere to environmental standards”. A “Zero Emission Industrial Enterprise” should be the slogan, we should be supporting. This is the short term solution.

It is not enough to do the above, but we need to push for an alternate economy. An economy which is driven by plan and not by demand-supply theory.  We should understand that supply of natural resources are limited. We should recognise  that reckless market mechanism  is producing waste and causing environmental impacts and is making life in Planet Earth Miserable.

Government should be in control of all natural resources and services and private ownership should be limited. Production required in the economy should be forecast by the government and suitable mechanism should strive to produce the same. For Industrial goods and services also same should apply.

An Imaginative working class government for example

1) will construct an extensive railway network, where people can carry their private cars across countries than a 6 lane highway where people need to drive, put fuel and make pollution to reach destination. 

2) Housing will be recognised as a right and not as an investment, government shall provide space or flats for each of citizen rather than allowing builders/land mafia to take advantage of working class.

Imaginative measures which will increase quality of life should be the agenda of the government than any figures such as GDP. Individual freedom should not be curtailed but options should be provided to achieve the same with minimum ecological impact.

Right to Housing, Employment, Food, Quality Air and Water should be made fundamental right of each citizen and working class government should be in charge of achieving the same. Jobs should be created to conserve and replenish the natural resources than exploiting the same. All market driven practices which are harmful to nature should be banned (such as pesticides use will be banned). 

A Social audit mechanism will be there to examine and allow use of all technologies or advances before their use.

Ultimate aim will be to topple the capitalist regime, which is driving this anti environment policies and establish a working class governing structure.

Marx's Struggles

Karl Marx's life was a continuous struggle against the bourgeoisie, the idealists, state repression, the Utopian socialists and vulgar materialists on the one hand and against never ending poverty, debts, ill health and personal losses on the other. After finishing his studies and realising that it was impossible to get a university position because of his radical views in philosophy and politics, he decided to try his hand in journalism. His fiery works in journalism and his involvement in radical politics got him expelled first from Belgium and then from Prussia. Thus he landed in London where he spent the rest of his life amidst poverty and recurring ill health. He lost 3 of his children mainly because his financial constraints did not allow him to provide adequate medical care. The Marx family lived on bare essentials most of the time and was besieged by creditors from all directions. On top of this he was constantly under attack from the idealist bourgeois camp and from the socialist one. His books were greeted with complete silence and ignored by the mainstream media and intellectuals. It is truly amazing how Marx kept working and unearthing deep truths about the capitalist fabric in spite of these demoralising circumstances and defeats. The world have two people to thank for this: Engels and Jenny. They sacrificed everything to support Karl because of their love for him and their absolute belief in his genius. The following letter by Jenny Marx to Karl's intimate friend Weydemeyer, written as they were starting their life in London, clearly shows us the extent of the difficulties that they faced. We believe that it is essential reading for every comrade. As Jenny wrote after the muted response that Marx's 'Capital', Volume 1 received: “...you can believe me when I tell you there can be few books that have been written in more difficult circumstances, and I am sure I could write a secret history of it which would tell many, extremely many unspoken troubles and anxieties and torments. If the workers had an inkling of the sacrifices that were necessary for this work, which was written only for them and for their sakes to be completed they would perhaps show a little more interest.”  In spite of all this, as Bernard Shaw said, "He did the greatest literary feat a man can do. Marx changed the mind of the world."

From Jenny Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer

May 20, 1850, London

(Source: Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 38)

Dear Mr Weydemeyer,

Almost a year has gone by since I was accorded such a kind and cordial reception by you and your dear wife, since I felt so happy and at home in your house, and throughout that long time I have sent you no word; I remained silent when your wife wrote to me so kindly, I even remained mute when news reached us of the birth of your child. I have myself often felt oppressed by this silence, but for much of the time I have been incapable of writing, and even today find it difficult, very difficult.

Circumstances, however, compel me to take up my pen—I beg you to send us as soon as possible any money that has come in or comes in from the Revue. We are in dire need of it. No one, I am sure, could reproach us with having made much ado about what we have been obliged to renounce and put up with for years; the public has never, or hardly ever, been importuned with our private affairs, for my husband is very sensitive about such matters and would sooner sacrifice all he has left rather than demean himself by passing round the democratic begging-bowl, as is done by the official great men. But what he was entitled to expect of his friends, especially in Cologne, was active and energetic concern for his Revue. He was above all entitled to expect such concern from those who were aware of the sacrifices he had made for the Rh. Ztg. Instead, the business has been utterly ruined by the negligent, slovenly way in which it was run, nor can one really say which did most harm—the bookseller's procrastination, or that of acquaintances and those managing the business in Cologne, or again the whole attitude of the democrats generally.

Over here my husband has been all but crushed by the most trivial worries of bourgeois existence, and so exasperating a form have these taken that it required all the energy, all the calm, lucid, quiet self-confidence he was able to muster to keep him going during these daily, hourly struggles. You, dear Mr Weydemeyer, are aware of the sacrifices made by my husband for the sake of the paper; he put thousands in cash into it, he took over the paper's property, talked into doing so by democratic worthies who otherwise must themselves have assumed responsibility for the debts, at a time when there was already small prospect of being able to carry on. To save the paper's political honour and the bourgeois honour of his Cologne acquaintances, he shouldered every burden, he gave up his machinery, he gave up the entire proceeds and, on his departure, even borrowed 300 Reichstalers so as to pay the rent for newly hired premises, the editors' arrears of salary, etc.—and he was forcibly expelled.

As you know, we saved nothing out of all this for ourselves, for I came to Frankfurt to pawn my silver—all that we had left, I sold my furniture in Cologne because I was in danger of seeing my linen and everything else placed under distraint. As the unhappy era of counter-revolution dawned, my husband went to Paris where I followed him with my three children. Hardly had we settled down in Paris than he was expelled, I and my children being refused permission to stay for any length of time. Again I followed him across the sea. A month later our 4th child was born. You would have to know London and what conditions are like here to realise what that means—3 children and the birth of a 4th. We had to pay 42 talers a month in rent alone. All this we were in a position to defray with our own realised assets. But our slender resources ran out with the appearance of the Revue. Agreements or no agreements, the money failed to come in, or only by dribs and drabs, so that we found ourselves faced with the most frightful situations here.

Let me describe for you, as it really was, just one day in our lives, and you will realise that few refugees are likely to have gone through a similar experience. Since wet-nurses here are exorbitantly expensive, I was determined to feed my child myself, however frightful the pain in my breast and back. But the poor little angel absorbed with my milk so many anxieties and unspoken sorrows that he was always ailing and in severe pain by day and by night. Since coming into the world, he has never slept a whole night through—at most two or three hours. Latterly, too, there have been violent convulsions, so that the child has been hovering constantly between death and a miserable life. In his pain he sucked so hard that I got a sore on my breast—an open sore; often blood would spurt into his little, trembling mouth. I was sitting thus one day when suddenly in came our landlady, to whom we had paid over 250 Reichstalers in the course of the winter, and with whom we had contractually agreed that we should subsequently pay, not her, but her landlord by whom she had formerly been placed under distraint; she now denied the existence of, the contract, demanded the £5 we still owed her and, since this was not ready to hand (Naut's letter arrived too late), two bailiffs entered the house and placed under distraint what little I possessed—beds, linen, clothes, everything, even my poor infant's cradle, and the best of the toys belonging to the girls, who burst into tears. They threatened to take everything away within 2 hours—leaving me lying on the bare boards with my shivering children and my sore breast. Our friend Schramm left hurriedly for town in search of help. He climbed into a cab, the horses took fright, he jumped out of the vehicle and was brought bleeding back to the house where I was lamenting in company with my poor, trembling children.

The following day we had to leave the house, it was cold, wet and overcast, my husband went to look for lodgings, on his mentioning 4 children no one wanted to take us in. At last a friend came to our aid, we paid and I hurriedly sold all my beds so as to settle with the apothecaries, bakers, butchers, and milkman who, their fears aroused by the scandal of the bailiffs, had suddenly besieged me with their bills. The beds I had sold were brought out on to the pavement and loaded on to a barrow—and then what happens? It was long after sunset, English law prohibits this, the landlord bears down on us with constables in attendance, declares we might have included some of his stuff with our own, that we are doing a flit and going abroad. In less than five minutes a crowd of two or three hundred people stands gaping outside our door, all the riff-raff of Chelsea. In go the beds again; they cannot be handed over to the purchaser until tomorrow morning after sunrise; having thus been enabled, by the sale of everything we possessed, to pay every farthing, I removed with my little darlings into the two little rooms we now occupy in the German Hotel, 1 Leicester Street, Leicester Square, where we were given a humane reception in return for £5/10 a week.

You will forgive me, dear friend, for describing to you so exhaustively and at such length just one day in our lives over here. It is, I know, immodest, but this evening my heart has flowed over into my trembling hands and for once I must pour out that heart to one of our oldest, best and most faithful friends. Do not suppose that I am bowed down by these petty sufferings, for I know only too well that our struggle is not an isolated one and that, furthermore, I am among the happiest and most favoured few in that my beloved husband, the mainstay of my life, is still at my side. But what really shatters me to the very core of my being, and makes my heart bleed is that my husband has to endure so much pettiness, that so little would have been needed to help him and that he, who gladly and joyously helped so many, has been so bereft of help over here. But as I have said, do not suppose, dear Mr Weydemeyer, that we are making demands on anyone; if money is advanced to us by anyone, my husband is still in a position to repay it out of his assets. The only thing, perhaps, my husband was entitled to ask of those who owe him many an idea, many a preferment, and much support was that they should evince more commercial zeal, greater concern for his Revue. That modicum, I am proud and bold enough to maintain, that modicum was his due. Nor do I even know whether my husband ever earned by his labours 10 silver groschen to which he was not fully entitled. And I don't believe that anyone was the worse off for it. That grieves me. But my husband is of a different mind. Never, even in the most frightful moments, has he lost his confidence in the future, nor yet a mite of his good humour, being perfectly content to see me cheerful, and our dear children affectionately caressing their dear mama. He is unaware, dear Mr Weydemeyer, that I have written to you at such length about our situation, so do not make any use of this letter. All he knows is that I have asked you on his behalf to expedite as best you can the collection and remittance of the money. I know that the use you make of this letter will be wholly dictated by the tact and discretion of your friendship for us.

Farewell, dear friend. Convey my most sincere affection to your wife and give your little angel a kiss from a mother who has shed many a tear upon the infant at her breast. Should your wife be suckling her child herself, do not tell her anything of this letter. I know what ravages are made by any kind of upset and how bad it is for the little mites. Our three eldest children are doing wonderfully well, for all that and for all that. The girls are pretty, blooming, cheerful and in good spirits, and our fat boy is a paragon of comical humour and full of the drollest ideas. All day the little imp sings funny songs with tremendous feeling and at the top of his voice, and when he sings the verse from Freiligrath's Marseillaise.

Come, O June, and bring us deeds,

Fresh deeds for which our hearts do yearn

in a deafening voice, the whole house reverberates. Like its two unfortunate precursors, that month may be destined by world history to see the opening of the gigantic struggle during which we shall all clasp one another's hands again.

Fare well.

Atrocities against women: A class reading of the reactions

Abhimanyu

Repeated cases of gruesome physical attacks on women have send shock waves across the whole of society and has elicited varied responses from different spheres. The mass media, both print and visual, has been working overtime to present 'facts, analysis and solutions'; they have taken up the mantle of the mourners and the judges and are telling the public, in a suggestive way of course, what is to be done to arrest this rising trend of violence. Public figures and political leaders are also doing their bit in terms of 'analysis and solutions'. What I want to do here is something very old fashioned. I want to take a look at some of these typical reactions from a 'class' perspective and to see whether something is hidden inside this veil of emotional outbursts and moral indignations; whether the various 'plans' put forward by public figures, intelligentsia and mass media, beaming of good intent as they are, are as innocent as they want us to believe they are. Any such effort should be backed by the study of a broad spectrum of reactions to events which were highlighted by the media and the silences which marked those which the mainstream media deemed unimportant to follow consistently (This 'selective highlighting' being in itself a political act). As a first step, let me take three reactions, which I think are representative, and try to uncover the class interests which they represent.

1

The first one is the reaction from the fundamental religious elements [1] which is the most straight forward and sincere among the three; in it there is no conscious effort to mask the real interests behind the stand. It says as much as it means. The argument here is simple. The blame is squarely on women who have dared to step outside their 'given and proper' realm of action which is the dark corridors of their home and on the liberal social environment which make this 'sin' possible and desirable. The solution has a simplicity which often characterises profoundly wrong stands. Women should go back to their God given caves, should stop giving ears to all talks of 'liberation' and such nonsense and should try to do well in their 'proper' job – to keep their husband (the religiously endorsed one) happy, to bear and to rear his children. In trying to liberate themselves and flaunting their body, they arouse the desire of men which is the root cause of all the trouble. This has to be accompanied by social changes aimed to restore the long forgotten moral and ethical life, the basis of which is being destroyed everyday. In spite of these changes, if any woman is still in any danger of being ill-treated, she can give a live counselling session to the men trying to do so about she being their sister and can beg for mercy which will surely persuade them to drop their vile plans. Thus shall the problem be solved. Our well bred liberals and their friends in arms, the media pundits and the columnist intellectuals, laugh at and ridicule these pronouncements and rightly so. But they never analyse them because any worthy analysis will instantly reveal truths which they will not enjoy, namely, the striking similarity of it to their own pronouncements and solutions once we strip away fancy words. We shall come to that later.

This reaction clearly identifies the central cause of all the trouble as capitalism, with all the cultural and social changes that it brings which breaks the 'calm, serene, self-dependent' nature of the traditional life forms. But we have known right from 'Communist Manifesto' itself that all that is anti-capitalist is not progressive. This type of analysis and solutions come from the adherents of a social phenomenon (institutionalised religion) which has as its base patriarchy and feudalism. It is out and out reactionary because of its affinity to feudalism and its refusal to accept the revolutionary potential of bourgeoisie and in its attempt to reverse the march of history. Marx and Engels talks about the reactionary nature of such feudalist attacks on capitalism and the support afforded for this by religious elements in the 'Manifesto':

“In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history..... In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits..... As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism. Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat”.

The same reasons compel our religious ideologists to campaign for feudal state of affairs and 'traditional' morality in family and society, to sound the war cry against the culture of the bourgeoisie while at the same time to side with capital in political and economic spheres for squashing revolutionary activity [2]. Such ultra conservative trends are easy to detect when they reveal themselves as they did after the Delhi tragedy by blaming women and their dressing. But there are more trickier versions of this movement which are more subtle and veiled; the feudal nature of their anti-capitalism is hidden behind a heavy layer of seemingly socialist rhetoric which makes them very dangerous corruptors. All such attacks against capitalism from the point of view of feudalism and with the aim of reversing history has to be dismissed as utopian and reactionary. Engels states this case very clearly in 'The Principles of Communism':

“(they are) adherents of a feudal and patriarchal society which has already been destroyed, and is still daily being destroyed, by big industry and world trade and their creation, bourgeois society. This category concludes, from the evils of existing society, that feudal and patriarchal society must be restored because it was free of such evils. In one way or another, all their proposals are directed to this end. This category of reactionary socialists, for all their seeming partisanship and their scalding tears for the misery of the proletariat, is nevertheless energetically opposed by the communists..... As soon as the proletariat becomes revolutionary and communist, these reactionary socialists show their true colours by immediately making common cause with the bourgeoisie against the proletarians”.

The Marxist lesson of the revolutionary nature of capitalism has to be fully assimilated to defend these types of movements; capitalism has helped man outgrow feudalism and its state form, the monarchy, and has released the productive capacities of humans and in the process have given rise to its own nemesis – the proletariat. It has also shattered the conditions which fostered patriarchy and has released women from their home bound misery. In depicting this release and the freedom that it gave women as the reason for the current problem, the feudalists are trying vainly to pull back time and to mystify the whole issue. The root cause of this issue is, of course, to be sort in the interstices of capitalist decay; but it can be uncovered only by a proletarian critique using revolutionary Marxism.

2

Another typical reaction is that of the media, both print and visual; not the opinions voiced by others through media, but its official reaction given through editorials or editorial programmes. As an example, a representative one I think, we shall look at the Mathrubhumi editorial on the attack on the malayali medical student in Mangalore. The highlights of this editorial are:

1. that this is an administrative/policing issue. A lion share of the article talks about the insufficiency of the efforts of the administration and the police in providing adequate security to women, about the need to catch the culprits and to make sure they get maximum sentence, the need not only for reforms in law but also improvements in the performance of the police and the prosecutors to make sure that new laws are utilised. It declares that such heinous acts will be eliminated 'to an extent' if it turns out that these crimes shall invite severe punishments. So, the essential point that the editorial wants to make is that this is primarily a policing/ law and order issue which can be reduced and eliminated by planned and severe policing measures and humane treatment towards victims.
2. Apart from the role of the police and the law, the edit also wants to highlight the role that 'women liberation groups and other social movements' can play in this. It also puts forward the 'revolutionary' idea that active social intervention is needed to force those in power to give prominent importance to womens' security and well being and remind us that it was strong public pressure that forced the government into action following the Delhi episode.
3. Then it fires a salvo at the type of reactions emanating from the groups mentioned in 1 above by saying that the attitude of some sections of Indian society are actually dangerous and social movements should be on their guard against them.

Is there anything wrong with these points?, can any sane person be against the measures that they propose?, isn't it important to make the policing more efficient, to beef up security and to make the law more stringent?. Shouldn't there be social intervention?, shouldn't the chauvinistic reactions be exposed and dismissed?. The answer for all these questions is YES; the problem is not in saying that all these things should be done, but in maintaining that only these need to be done. The official media reaction is that these deeds are done by 'bad' men which essentially makes this a policing issue which can be tackled by ensuring strict rule of the law, tightening security and vigilance from social movements. In doing so they consciously blot out the social, political and economic aspects of this worrying trend. They do not want us to look at this issue in its totality; they would like us to divorce these crimes from its social and economic context and to view them just as particular 'events' brought about by the madness of 'vile men'. It is not surprising that the media is advertising such a course of analysis and these type of editorials give us clear indications of the class affiliations of modern media. The dread of totality and the enthusiasm shown to break down reality into small chunks before analysing each chunk as if they had nothing to do with the rest is the speciality of a class: the bourgeoisie. It has nothing to do with the lack of ability of the individual bourgeois to comprehend totality; it springs from the fact that such radical analysis will unravel truths which will put the existence of this class itself in jeopardy. Any analysis based on totality will have to, sooner or later, consider the fact that we are living in a capitalist society and will have to pose the question whether these trends points towards structural flaws in capitalist edifice. Even such a question about the structural basis of capitalism is in itself anathema to the bourgeoisie.

But objection may be raised against my contention that the unwillingness shown by the media to place these atrocities in their social context and to analyse it in its totality lays bare the crass bourgeois affiliation of the media contrary to their 'democratic' and 'for the common man' rhetoric. One may pose the question whether it is 'really necessary' to invoke complicated concepts like 'totality' to analyse such 'straight forward and evident' things like attack on women, whether this will not 'complicate' matters and make decisive action impossible, maybe the media think tank views an analysis based on capitalist totality to be unnecessary here. Let me deal with the 'totality-as-unnecessary' view first before going on.

Let us look at a hypothetical situation: let us for a moment assume that what is now happening in our country, repeated attacks on women in public places, alarmingly rising cases of sexual violence on even small girls, daily occurrence of sexual scandals of one form or the other, a situation of sexual paranoia in general, occurs in a communist country like the erstwhile Soviet Union or Cuba or North Korea or in an Islamic country like Iran, the corporate media would be the first to proclaim that this rising trend has definite roots in the nature of the society. They would surely run a series of articles 'studying' the causes of this trend and would link it to the various types of 'draconian repressions' that the ruling regime is following without any consideration to 'human rights' and the emotional needs of the population. They would proclaim that these attacks are the reactions of a repressed population and the only way out will be for the ruling ideology to be replaced. Whenever such things happen in societies which are ruled by ideologically motivated movements, either conservative or revolutionary, the bourgeoisie is always eager to connect particular instances to the social totality and to try and expose the systemic problems, but when the bourgeoisie is the one who rules, this is never done. They would like us to believe that the bourgeois rule is not 'ideologically' motivated nor is it 'repressive'; it is based on total freedom and healthy competition. This myth of 'freedom' that the capitalist ideological apparatus creates and propagates gives them the luxury of passing off worrying trends in the society as mere particular instances and to create a sensation of 'non-necessity' of seeing them in their totality. So, it is evident that, the dread of an analysis leading to the systemic roots of the matter which is so evident in the editorial quoted above comes from the fear that it will unearth the contradictions of capitalism and threaten the bourgeois rule and not from any naive sense of 'simplicity' of the issue. The corporate media is being true to its class origins here by adhering to the 'isolating' and 'fragmenting' method in the guise of neutrality which is the essence of every bourgeois and revisionist analysis. Revolutionary Marxism's primary duty is to counter this vulgarity with a proper dialectical analysis based on totality.

3

Now, lets take a look at the article written by N. E. Sudheer in Mathrubhumi. The title of the article is promising as it seems to acknowledge the role of social reality in explaining and curbing these attacks and thus to go beyond the bourgeois paradigms set by the corporate media. He begins by asserting that in spite of the fact that repeated attacks against women in public spaces have initiated discussions and investigations on various dimensions of this problem and have gained huge media coverage, there seems to be no visible lull in this worrying trend. And this is because these investigations have not been able to 'go to the root of the matter', according to Sudheer. Very promising indeed; the author seems to be following Marx himself who asserted that “To be a radical is to go to the root of the matter....”. Let us proceed to see how he intend to go to the 'root' of this matter. The first step in this is, according to Sudheer, to understand the social reality in which we are living which is characterised by gross inequalities in distribution of wealth and opportunities. He bemoans the state of affairs which produces the Ambanis and the slum dwellers and the gulf that separates them; the very fact that they live in the same city in plain view of each other produces anger and frustration among the poor. The situation is worsened with the growth of a corporate culture based on sexual anarchy which is accessible to the rich and to a certain extent to the middle class too; the poor majority is left out here too and is forced to be mere onlookers. A culture of 'animal desire' that corporate capitalism fosters and which perforates every pore of modern cities produces immense sexual desires in an average Indian which he/she finds non-realisable due to their economic condition. It is this culture of sexual anarchy and unrealised desires that is the prime cause for the worrying situation now, according to Sudheer, and this is why the perpetrators of such crimes are almost always the urban poor. He reminds us that the real accused in all these crimes is the society itself which carries within it such colossal inequalities.

It seems that Sudheer is indeed leading us to the 'root of the matter'. He has completely demolished the corporate bourgeois myth that this is a mere policing issue which can be solved by strict rule of the law and with some assistance from NGO counsellors. He has located 'social reality' as the prime cause with its inequalities and its culture of desire inaugurated by the capitalist mode of growth. A good start indeed, let us hope he will take us further down the interstices of the capitalist edifice to try and locate the root of the problem in the capitalist mode of production. Let us also hope that he will, based on his 'root' analysis, put forward a revolutionary solution. But no, his analysis suddenly breaks off at this point and he abruptly closes the article with his 'revolutionary' solution in three sentences which runs as follows. As we know from our analysis that it is the society which produces the prey and the predator in this issue, we should be careful in avoiding these pitfalls and should guard against them. Parents should bring up their children 'properly' so that they are shielded from such effects; they should see to it that they don't turn into either preys or predators. We have to first understand, with our 'eyes, ears and brains' the peculiarities of the society in which we live and have to organise our lives accordingly. And then comes the closing salvo : “Nilavilulla samoohathil jeevikkanayi nammude kuttikale paakappeduthanam. Ee shikshanatheyanu rakshakarthruthvam ennathu kondu udheshikkunnathu” (we have to train our children to live in the social reality that we have today, this is the real meaning of parenting). So that is the 'revolutionary' solution given by his 'root of the matter' analysis; train your children to adapt and live safely in whatever society they find themselves in; the world shall be saved by “Proper Parenting”.

Now let us apply this revolutionary solution to the to the 'root of the problem' that Sudheer himself presented in the article by forgetting, for the moment, the glaring deficiencies of his analysis and see whether his 'proper parenting' solution can solve the problem. Let us test it on the predators as he prescribes 'parenting' as the solution to eliminate predators and preys. Sudheer himself tells us, as we have seen, that the predators are drawn from the poor and impoverished sections of the society rotting in slums and it is economic and sexual inequality that is the main cause. So does Sudheer have in mind a solution where men and women working for close to 20 hours a day to earn their livelihood counsels their children to 'understand the society' and to 'respect the barriers' and gives them moral lessons about the inappropriateness of trying to satisfy their sexual urge by force? Even if some parent in the slums hears Sudheer's great ideas and tries to follow them, will the young boys and girls rotting in the slums hear them and decide to cast off all their personal frustrations and rage to become 'model' citizens? The author who began his article with hyperbolic claims about identifying the root of the problem and proposing a solution has come up with one which will make even the manorama weekly authors cringe with shame. What prevents this 'root of the matter' analyst from coming up with the obvious solution; if the problem lies in inequality in various forms, lets eliminate inequality. Instead of this obvious and humane solution, he comes up with an idea to preserve these inequalities and to ensure that our children are not effected by it. So, should we dismiss the solution as ridiculous and close the matter, no. We shall investigate the class affiliation behind this article which begins to unravel the social dimension behind the problem, touches on the periphery and suddenly closes it with an ad-hoc solution giving us the impression that it is afraid to go deeper. This is not a bourgeois reaction as it acknowledges the need for an analysis based on total social structure but is not proletarian either since it restricts such an analysis to the periphery and draws the worst possible reactionary lessons from them. This is a near perfect example of petty bourgeois reaction.

We shall again refer back to the 'Manifesto' to make sense of this interesting reaction.

“This school of Socialism [the petty bourgeois] dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.

In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.”

Now, we are in a position to see through Sudheer's reaction. Petty bourgeois criticism is capable of pointing out the systemic deficiencies and contradictions inherent in the capitalist edifice (even though in a peripheral manner when compared to the Marxist analysis of the capitalist mode of production) but draws reactionary and utopian conclusions from it. It aims at the restoration of the 'good old times'. Sudheer shows us his petty bourgeois affiliations when he presents the problem in terms of social reality and as a by-product of capitalist excesses and then by asserting that the solution is to equip our children to adapt rather than to find ways of changing that reality. And in this context it is very important to note than his solution encapsulates a return to the family. This is not a coincidence as the 'Manifesto' so clearly notes:

“Its [petty bourgeoisie's] last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.”

To the petty bourgeoisie, patriarchal family relations are sacred and a return to them is one of its main aims. There are other places in the article where the author laments the role of capitalist culture of desires in making cracks in the Indian family structure. So Sudheer wants to smuggle in the idea of patriarchal family which he expertly hides inside high sounding phrases and moral indignations on inequality, capitalist production of desires and the like. Such petty bourgeois reactions are more dangerous than the other two mentioned above as it comes fully covered in peripheral anti-capitalist rhetoric. Revolutionary Marxists and proletarians should be on their guard, armed with Marxian theory, to spot, attack and dismiss such reactionary trends and analysis.

A rather technical objection may be raised at this point. In the first two cases, we knew the author(s) of the reactions that we were considering and had clear indications about their material interests which made the location of their class affiliations easier. But in this case, the present author does not know N. E. Sudheer; he may be a feudal sympathiser or an out and out bourgeoisie or even a worker or an office holder of a worker's organisation. In that case, is it legitimate to arrive at the conclusion that he is petty bourgeois based on the article alone and without any further knowledge about the man? First, let me state that my contention is that the article is a petty bourgeois reaction as it puts forward a petty bourgeois ideology. Regarding the need to know the background of the author, let me quote Marx himself, this time from “The 18^th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”:

“Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent”.

This, I think, explains the idea clear enough. It has great practical relevance at certain real political situations a demonstration of which can be found in Lenin's “Two tactics of social democracy in the democratic revolution”.

4

We have seen the reactions of the feudal sympathisers, the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie with regard to the problem under consideration. So now the question is: what should be the proletarian reaction?, what should be the reaction of a vanguard party based on Marxism-Leninism? It is an important Leninist idea that the vanguard party and its propaganda should trace back the local manifestations of capitalism's failures to the systemic contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production [3]. This is the only way to bring to the fore, in the eyes of the proletarians, the inhumane nature of the bourgeois rule and to augment their class consciousness. From the previous discussions, it is very clear that these repeated attacks on women are not just a policing issue, it has its roots on the very structure of capitalistic growth model. It has also to be stressed that the way out is not to go back to feudal antiquity or to accept the bourgeois rule and to train our children to live in it. The prime duty of a revolutionary Marxist or a vanguard party now is to make this analysis which traces back the culture of sadistic attacks to the roots of capitalist mode of production more deeper and concrete. Millions of men and women around the country have come forward spontaneously to express their rage over these attacks and the ruling class' indifference towards them. Even when these protests poured out into the streets, the corporate media kept celebrating them as they knew that these naive and emotional outbursts never pose any challenge to the corporate bourgeois rule. They can be 'accommodated' easily within the liberal framework so much so that even Bollywood idiots found it safe to shout some slogans.  Revolutionary Marxian analysis should be used to impress upon this spontaneous and naive mob the fact that these attacks are the consequence of the excesses and inequalities which capitalism breeds within it and the bourgeois rulers, whoever they are and however sincere they are, are incapable of solving this problem because they refuse to step out of the coordinates of capitalist economy. The fact that Marxists and the vanguard party are involved in bourgeois politics including the liberal parliamentary apparatus should not deter us from exposing the real face of liberal democracy which is only the logical political expression of corporate capitalism [4]. The only permanent solution for this problem and many like it is, to quote Lenin, “to smash the capitalist state apparatus”. Marxist revolutionaries and the vanguard party propaganda should bring this point home to the people, especially the proletarians, and harness the revolutionary potential of the spontaneous  and pointless anger among the population.

Notes:

[1] This expression has always stricken me as queer. It is misleading to talk about religious fundamentalism as a special case; religion is structurally fundamental, there can be no 'liberal' or 'progressive' religion. If there are religious groups and movements posing to be so, it is just a camouflage. The situation is similar to Antonio Negri's take of there being no idealism other than the one prone to mysticism.

[2] It is clear why they want to politically align with the bourgeoisie, they see the proletariat as a much more dangerous enemy; one which they are powerless to fight against alone. But it is interesting why the bourgeoisie is willing to accommodate these elements in spite of their differing class affinities. Is it just to bolster their numbers? No. There is a very clever tactic at work here, the bourgeoisie's reluctance to take the democratic revolution to its conclusion. It would be interesting to study the bourgeois-feudal alliance in the Indian context now following Marx's and Lenin's leads.

[3] In doing this we should always bear in mind Engels' warning: “According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form..... We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one”. (Engels' Letter to J. Bloch, September 21, 1890).

[4] An excellent and crucially important work in this regard is Lenin's “Two Tactics...”. It details the mode of operation of a revolutionary party in a bourgeois democracy and demonstrates how even the bourgeois representative institutions can be used to stress the point that we have to go beyond the liberal façade of democracy to solve the problems emanating from capitalism's inherent flaws.