Friday, August 31, 2007
My Indian Dream - Finally!
Thanks to Yahoo! $1.99 webhosting, I have registered for my dream - www.MyIndianDream.com - Here I come
Monday, May 14, 2007
My Indian Dream
Other than politics which to me means the medium revealing the intricacies of society, I take a great deal of interest in cosmology where the universe unfolds itself in infinite space and time; where galaxies fast recede into the ever-disappearing frontiers of universe away from each other; where stars emerge, glow and explode to death; and where, quite apparently, motion is the mode of existence of matter.
Motion, i.e., change and transformation - always from a lower to a higher order - also, incidentally, forms the mode of existence of human society. No idea is absolute, no society is perfect. Whenever a society has been conceived as the embodiment of the absolute idea, shock waves emerging from deep within have shaken its very foundations. And then amidst the despair all around new dreams arise. Some dreams never come true as they are wild fantasies of the human mind, the "mind-in-itself". The few which are realized are essentially abstract creations of the human mind, the "mind-for-itself". Nonetheless, dreams, whether wild or plausible, have remained the source of human endeavour since perhaps the origin of humanity itself.
India of my dreams is essentially an integral India where a Pakistani Muslim won't have to procure a visa in search of the roots of his evolution; where, likewise, for an Indian the great Indus Valley Civilisation does not fall in a foreign country; and where a Bengali Hindu refugee will finally shed the bitter memories of Dacca and a Bangladeshi Muslim will not be hounded as a foreign national in India.
Sounds like BJP? But then the BJP has only thrived upon the great division of the country - between a Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, albeit not so "pure". As BJP continues to stretch this division to extremes with all the disastrous consequences, great thinkers will surely arise in all the three countries and remould the public opinion for a brotherly reunion. And, be sure, that will be the doomsday for the forces like BJP.
In the India of my dreams, a Ganga and a Cauvery, and a Sindhu and a Brahmaputra, will freely flow into each other and the morning shall dawn to the jugalbandi of great musical tunes of India. Some statesman will then compile his notes into a "Re-Discovery of India".
India of my dreams shall rise in the community of nations as a country which the weakest of neighbours shall not fear and which the most powerful country in the world shall not be able to threaten or blackmail. This India will rank among the first five countries of the world in economic prowess as well as in Olympic tallies.
India of my dreams shall have a secular state which shall rest upon the principle of "Sarva Dharma Varjite" rather than "Sarva Dharma Sambhav". While not interfering with an individual's faith, the state shall actively cultivate the scientific and rational world outlook.
Religion, as has rightly been said, is the expression of man's powerlessness towards his environment. Its abolition therefore demands a thoroughgoing change in the material and spiritual conditions of life where man can stand up to acquire mastery over his environment. Whenever the conservative philosophical systems have burdened the people as deadweights, there have always come up in India great reformation movements. And thus I dream of a great resurgence of rational ideas where the human essence alienated in the form of God shall retrieve itself. This great reformation of human minds shall accompany a social revolution where the producers of wealth shall also be the masters of their produce.
In India of my dreams, glorification of pariahs as dalits will end and dalits will cease to be a category. Castes shall dissolve into classes with each of their members having individualized expression.
In India of my dreams, women shall constitute 50% of representative assemblies. Love marriages will be the rule and the divorce easier to obtain. Children will not know any misery and looking after them will be more the responsibility of the state than parents.
In India of my dreams, every town will have its cafeterias where intellectuals shall have hot discussions over cups of cold coffee! There, some anguished souls can gaze through the plumes of rising smoke conjuring up images of their heart-throbs while many insatiable hearts can be captivated by the interpretations of varied works of art and literature. While no work of art and literature will be subjected to state censorship, smoking shall be strictly prohibited everywhere, except, of course, the coffee houses!
To return to the original theme, in India of my dreams, an Indian spaceship will wade through the deep space while Indian scientists and mathematicians will be working out equations integrating into a whole the fundamental forces of nature.
Finally, for me the mother of all dreams is a motherland where political liberty of each of its citizens will be valued most; where dissent will be considered legitimate and where Tiananmens of the system will be handled by the morally strong statesmen and unarmed forces of people's militia.
India of my dreams is built upon the fundamental processes at work within the Indian society and for whose realization many like me are committed to the last drop of their blood.
Source: Vinod Mishra
Motion, i.e., change and transformation - always from a lower to a higher order - also, incidentally, forms the mode of existence of human society. No idea is absolute, no society is perfect. Whenever a society has been conceived as the embodiment of the absolute idea, shock waves emerging from deep within have shaken its very foundations. And then amidst the despair all around new dreams arise. Some dreams never come true as they are wild fantasies of the human mind, the "mind-in-itself". The few which are realized are essentially abstract creations of the human mind, the "mind-for-itself". Nonetheless, dreams, whether wild or plausible, have remained the source of human endeavour since perhaps the origin of humanity itself.
India of my dreams is essentially an integral India where a Pakistani Muslim won't have to procure a visa in search of the roots of his evolution; where, likewise, for an Indian the great Indus Valley Civilisation does not fall in a foreign country; and where a Bengali Hindu refugee will finally shed the bitter memories of Dacca and a Bangladeshi Muslim will not be hounded as a foreign national in India.
Sounds like BJP? But then the BJP has only thrived upon the great division of the country - between a Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, albeit not so "pure". As BJP continues to stretch this division to extremes with all the disastrous consequences, great thinkers will surely arise in all the three countries and remould the public opinion for a brotherly reunion. And, be sure, that will be the doomsday for the forces like BJP.
In the India of my dreams, a Ganga and a Cauvery, and a Sindhu and a Brahmaputra, will freely flow into each other and the morning shall dawn to the jugalbandi of great musical tunes of India. Some statesman will then compile his notes into a "Re-Discovery of India".
India of my dreams shall rise in the community of nations as a country which the weakest of neighbours shall not fear and which the most powerful country in the world shall not be able to threaten or blackmail. This India will rank among the first five countries of the world in economic prowess as well as in Olympic tallies.
India of my dreams shall have a secular state which shall rest upon the principle of "Sarva Dharma Varjite" rather than "Sarva Dharma Sambhav". While not interfering with an individual's faith, the state shall actively cultivate the scientific and rational world outlook.
Religion, as has rightly been said, is the expression of man's powerlessness towards his environment. Its abolition therefore demands a thoroughgoing change in the material and spiritual conditions of life where man can stand up to acquire mastery over his environment. Whenever the conservative philosophical systems have burdened the people as deadweights, there have always come up in India great reformation movements. And thus I dream of a great resurgence of rational ideas where the human essence alienated in the form of God shall retrieve itself. This great reformation of human minds shall accompany a social revolution where the producers of wealth shall also be the masters of their produce.
In India of my dreams, glorification of pariahs as dalits will end and dalits will cease to be a category. Castes shall dissolve into classes with each of their members having individualized expression.
In India of my dreams, women shall constitute 50% of representative assemblies. Love marriages will be the rule and the divorce easier to obtain. Children will not know any misery and looking after them will be more the responsibility of the state than parents.
In India of my dreams, every town will have its cafeterias where intellectuals shall have hot discussions over cups of cold coffee! There, some anguished souls can gaze through the plumes of rising smoke conjuring up images of their heart-throbs while many insatiable hearts can be captivated by the interpretations of varied works of art and literature. While no work of art and literature will be subjected to state censorship, smoking shall be strictly prohibited everywhere, except, of course, the coffee houses!
To return to the original theme, in India of my dreams, an Indian spaceship will wade through the deep space while Indian scientists and mathematicians will be working out equations integrating into a whole the fundamental forces of nature.
Finally, for me the mother of all dreams is a motherland where political liberty of each of its citizens will be valued most; where dissent will be considered legitimate and where Tiananmens of the system will be handled by the morally strong statesmen and unarmed forces of people's militia.
India of my dreams is built upon the fundamental processes at work within the Indian society and for whose realization many like me are committed to the last drop of their blood.
Source: Vinod Mishra
Monday, March 19, 2007
Revolutionary Socialism - Source: AWL
Read it - and join AWL
The working class will rise again
Socialism is possible only from the self-organised working class realising its power as an alternative to that of its masters, the capitalist ruling class. The Paris Commune was the fruit of the first working class revolution; a first brief experience of working class power. It was democratic and egalitarian, forming the basis for Marx of his views on the need for workers' power to smash the capitalist state.
Repeatedly working-class movements have begun to form themselves into soviets or councils, as potential alternative regimes:
Russia in 1905 and 1917
Germany in 1918-19
Barcelona 1936
Hungary 1956
Chile 1971
Portugal 1975
Poland 1980-1
In the Russian revolution of 1917, the workers took power, but were overwhelmed in the 1920s by a bureaucratic counter-revolution. Elsewhere the possibilities of socialism and working-class freedom were crushed. But those possibilities existed. And they will exist again!
Socialism means a society restructured according to the working-class principle of solidarity. It means an economy of democratic planning, based on common ownership of the means of production, a high level of technology, education, culture and leisure, economic equality, no material privileges for officials, and accountability. Beyond the work necessary to ensure secure material comfort for all, it means the maximum of individual liberty and autonomy.
Working-class socialism - counterposed by Marx and Engels to all forms of "reactionary" or "bourgeois" socialism - builds on the best of what capitalism has achieved, in technology, economic coordination, communications, education, democracy and individual liberty. Revolutionary socialism can be far freer and more democratic than capitalism could conceivably be - through integrating economic and political power in democratic structures, through accountability and provisions for political participation, and through extensive political and individual liberties. At the same time a socialist regime would have the power and the will to allocate sufficient resources for all human needs, so that no individuals or groups would be cast off and cast out as dregs, as they are under capitalism.
Socialism is only possible as the result of direct action by the working class. When the current ruling class, the capitalists, took power from the feudal kings and lords, they did so gradually, using wealth they already owned under feudalism, and creating institutions (such as the Universities) to develop their own class so that the actual revolutions were accomplished without much difficulty. The working class has fewer advantages. We own no property in advance of a successful revolution, while our enemies control all wealth. The working class has only its strength in numbers, and the added strength it gains when it acts in solidarity. We will have to forge our own tools; build our own organisations.
To an extent the working class in many countries has already started this process. The trade unions were the product of long struggles by the working class for the right to build their own organisations to protect them from the arrogant power of the bosses. The unions represent the working class - but incompletely, unsatisfactorily, binding the class to capitalism. But the unions still remain the major organisations of the working class, the major vehicles of class struggle. There is no short-term prospect of them being replaced by new organisations. Socialists who recognise socialism as the act of the working class must focus on the trade union movement, rather than on "radical" movements without a working-class or socialist perspective. But we must develop the unions, transform them, reinvigorate them with socialism.
To accomplish all this the working class needs a party - an organisation which fights against the ruling class on all fronts of the class struggle: the industrial front (the workplace, the trade unions), the ideological front (the realm of ideas, publications and theories) and the political front (challenging the right of the ruling class to control our lives). Such an organisation would be large in number, democratic in decision making, and effective in action.
The AWL is not that party - we are small in number, grouped mostly in only one country (the UK) and limited in our impact. But no-one on the left today can claim to yet have the numbers necessary. And the first stage of building a revolutionary party is to have clear ideas which the working class can test out in practice. The AWL has those ideas - Marxist ideas - we apply them as best we can, and invite all socialists and workers to test them out: if they work for you, then join the AWL.
The working class will rise again
Socialism is possible only from the self-organised working class realising its power as an alternative to that of its masters, the capitalist ruling class. The Paris Commune was the fruit of the first working class revolution; a first brief experience of working class power. It was democratic and egalitarian, forming the basis for Marx of his views on the need for workers' power to smash the capitalist state.
Repeatedly working-class movements have begun to form themselves into soviets or councils, as potential alternative regimes:
Russia in 1905 and 1917
Germany in 1918-19
Barcelona 1936
Hungary 1956
Chile 1971
Portugal 1975
Poland 1980-1
In the Russian revolution of 1917, the workers took power, but were overwhelmed in the 1920s by a bureaucratic counter-revolution. Elsewhere the possibilities of socialism and working-class freedom were crushed. But those possibilities existed. And they will exist again!
Socialism means a society restructured according to the working-class principle of solidarity. It means an economy of democratic planning, based on common ownership of the means of production, a high level of technology, education, culture and leisure, economic equality, no material privileges for officials, and accountability. Beyond the work necessary to ensure secure material comfort for all, it means the maximum of individual liberty and autonomy.
Working-class socialism - counterposed by Marx and Engels to all forms of "reactionary" or "bourgeois" socialism - builds on the best of what capitalism has achieved, in technology, economic coordination, communications, education, democracy and individual liberty. Revolutionary socialism can be far freer and more democratic than capitalism could conceivably be - through integrating economic and political power in democratic structures, through accountability and provisions for political participation, and through extensive political and individual liberties. At the same time a socialist regime would have the power and the will to allocate sufficient resources for all human needs, so that no individuals or groups would be cast off and cast out as dregs, as they are under capitalism.
Socialism is only possible as the result of direct action by the working class. When the current ruling class, the capitalists, took power from the feudal kings and lords, they did so gradually, using wealth they already owned under feudalism, and creating institutions (such as the Universities) to develop their own class so that the actual revolutions were accomplished without much difficulty. The working class has fewer advantages. We own no property in advance of a successful revolution, while our enemies control all wealth. The working class has only its strength in numbers, and the added strength it gains when it acts in solidarity. We will have to forge our own tools; build our own organisations.
To an extent the working class in many countries has already started this process. The trade unions were the product of long struggles by the working class for the right to build their own organisations to protect them from the arrogant power of the bosses. The unions represent the working class - but incompletely, unsatisfactorily, binding the class to capitalism. But the unions still remain the major organisations of the working class, the major vehicles of class struggle. There is no short-term prospect of them being replaced by new organisations. Socialists who recognise socialism as the act of the working class must focus on the trade union movement, rather than on "radical" movements without a working-class or socialist perspective. But we must develop the unions, transform them, reinvigorate them with socialism.
To accomplish all this the working class needs a party - an organisation which fights against the ruling class on all fronts of the class struggle: the industrial front (the workplace, the trade unions), the ideological front (the realm of ideas, publications and theories) and the political front (challenging the right of the ruling class to control our lives). Such an organisation would be large in number, democratic in decision making, and effective in action.
The AWL is not that party - we are small in number, grouped mostly in only one country (the UK) and limited in our impact. But no-one on the left today can claim to yet have the numbers necessary. And the first stage of building a revolutionary party is to have clear ideas which the working class can test out in practice. The AWL has those ideas - Marxist ideas - we apply them as best we can, and invite all socialists and workers to test them out: if they work for you, then join the AWL.
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