P SUNDARAYYA MEMORIAL LECTURE

‘Resist Us Imperialist Hegemony To Save Humanity’

                                                                                     M Venugopala Rao

DELIVERING the memorial lecture on “Globalisation and War” on the 18th death anniversary of Comrade P Sundarayya, former general secretary of  Communist Party of India (Marxist), at Sundarayya Vignana Kendram in Hyderabad on May 19,  Professor Amiya Kumar Bagchi, director, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata,  warned the government of India not to have any strategic understanding with the imperialist USA  and underlined the need for resisting the process of globalisation and the US imperialist hegemony to save humanity of the world from militarist onslaught of the US.

Comrade Sundarayya was a symbol of the oppressed people’s struggle against oppression all over India, Professor Bagchi said, recollecting how his name was well known to them even before they came to know about how much Sundaraayya did, dedicating his life for their cause. That this day was being celebrated as a festival, with young people gathering here, all the time connected to the memory of Comrade Sundarayya, was one of the most encouraging things for the future of India, he said.

GLOBALISATION: HORRENDOUS PAST

Dwelling on the theme of his lecture, Professor Bagchi explained that  globalisation of the world, in the sense of linking all regions of the world in a web of commercial, financial and political relations, started in earnest from the late 15th century, with the voyages of Columbus to the Caribbean and the circumnavigation of the African coast by Vasco da Gama who landed at the cost of Kerala and Karnataka in India. The logic of capitalism was to unleash competition in the search for profit and put the instrument of coercion, the state, at the beck and call of those capitalists for victory in that competition.  The ideology informing the conquering drive of European capitalists was that of a free market and the pretence of 'civilising' or 'Christianising’ the uncivilised, non-European peoples of the world. That pretence could not be maintained for long, Professor Bagchi said. Capitalism unleashed violence on an unprecedented scale on the European promontory as well as on the rest of the world.  It wiped out virtually the whole native American population in the USA and Canada as well as enslaved and killed millions of Africans, he explained.

The globalising drive reached one peak around 1900, by which year the partition of Africa and the rest of the world among the various imperialist powers, either as direct colonies or as spheres of influence, had been completed. Then started the struggle among the imperialist powers for what Lenin called “a re-division of the world,” leading to two world wars. The first world war was the direct outcome of that wrangle. That war did not settle the inter-imperialist squabble for spoils, but gave rise to Hitler’s Third Reich, the most ferocious fascist state in the history of capitalism till then. The second world war grew directly out of Hitler’s anti-communist crusade against Russia and the Nazis’ determination to enslave or exterminate all the ‘subhuman’ species in the shape of man.  The major difference after the second world war was that  the Soviet Union emerged as a real challenger to the USA, which became the most powerful capitalist nation by the end of the first world war, Professor Bagchi explained.

It was, however, one of the paradoxes of capitalism that this period of heightened competition with the socialist system and liberation of a major part of the non-white colonies from European rule witnessed the flowering of the golden age of capitilism, Professor Bagchi commented. Yet, it also led to struggles by, and an increase in the bargaining power of, the working class in Europe and a squeeze on the profits of capital. Moreover, the advanced capitlist countries also faced challenges from the new liberated countries of the third world. The capitalist states then began a counter-attack that took two major forms. One was the unleashing of finance from earlier restraints, and the other was to progressively withdraw state support from welfare schemes, public utilities and other facilities that had led to a betterment of the condition of the workers in the advanced capitalist countries, Professor Bagchi explained.  

BY THE RICH, OF THE RICH, FOR THE RICH

Human beings have been global species from the beginning, spread to all parts of the world, and in the process spread language, technology, culture, etc. In that sense, globalisation has been there for a long time. What then is new about the globalisation which the World Bank preached and most of our politicians in the government of India and mercenary economists spoke about? Professor Bagchi answered that it was globalisation by the rich, of the rich and for the rich, to enrich the rich further. Globalisation was given a new push since the 1970s and it reached a new peak in the 1990s after the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union, all in order to take away income and wealth from the peoples all over the world. Under globalisation the gap between the rich and the poor increased and people sleep on footpaths even in cities like New York and Washington. Financial liberalisation was a major factor behind the increased inequality in the global economy. That increase, in turn, along with the repeated financial crises, precipitated by increasingly integrated and deregulated capital markets, has been a major factor behind the recession plaguing the global economy for most of the 1990s, Professor Bagchi explained.

After the collapse of the Soviet bloc there was really no major power restraining the US military machine, and the attacks on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were waiting to happen. The US military machine and administration are allied with some of the biggest corporations of the world. Neither they nor the top politicians had any compunction in using naked force when mere markets or manipulation of finances were not sufficient to gain their ends, Professor Bagchi said. The USA has been using collaborators and exerting pressures on reluctant regimes in the third world to train and plant its own soldiers and mercenary thugs all across the world.  At the last count, the USA had based military forces in 130 countries of the world. The US is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The corruption prevailing among the controllers of capital in the USA was made public on a huge scale when from the end of 2000, Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom and several other corporations were sued for bankruptcy, and many accounts firms led by Arthur Andersen were found to be guilty of cooking up the books for their clients,  Professor Bagchi reminded.

With all the good news about the heightened preparedness for war under the presidency of Bush, when the ultimate corporate politician failed to lift the gloom in the US economy, an actual war had to be planned. There was documentary evidence to the effect that even without the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre on the  September 11, 2001, the US military machinery and corporate capital would have waged a war against Iraq while Afghanistan was just an interlude, Professor Bagchi  asserted.  Just as the Reichstag fire on February 28, 1933, was used by Hitler to arrest and kill communists, socialists and all other dissenters and enslave the German people, the terrorist attack on the WTC  was used by the USA to carry out unlimited aggression against anybody seen to be in the way of monopoly control of global resources. There was no capitalism without violence behind it, he asserted. The US, which had already grabbed some oil resources in West Asia, wanted to grab more resources. The overthrow of  the Shah of Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini came as a rude shock to the US. Saddam Hussein was put up by the US against Iran and war between Iraq and Iran went on for several years. The US gave technology for biological and chemical weapons to Saddam at that time. Throughout West Asia, Osama bin Laden,  terrorism and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan were financed by the USA against the regimes which were secular and stood against America, Professor Bagchi explained.

US ECONOMY IN BAD SHAPE

The dollars of Arab sheikhs were kept in the US banks and the funds were used to give loans to Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, all of which fell into a debt trap. The US, the IMF and World Bank imposed structural adjustment conditionalities on the third world countries, thereby weakening the bargaining power of the working class and peasantry in these countries. In the 1990s, more and more money was sent to the US. The US has become the biggest debtor nation in the world, owing more debt than all the developing nations put together, because most of its expenditure on war came from the savings of other countries. Its current account deficit in 2002 was 505 billion dollars, which was higher than the national income of India, a country of 110 crore people.  Even the military budget of the US was higher than that of the next 9 nations put together. The US economy was doing very badly and so also were its manufacturing exports. The stock exchange of the US, booming till 2001, collapsed and its economy was in recession. For the last 50 years oil was being traded primarily in dollars. Iran and Iraq wanted to trade in Euro. Why did the Americans go on totally a violent path, asked Professor Bagchi, and answered that opportunity and greed pulled  them to do so.

One difference between the current series of wars and the earlier ones was that the economy failed to get stimulated by them, he said.  The technologies are too capaital-intensive to lead to much new employment. Apart from the fact that capitalism  respected civil freedom only when workers had sufficient bargaining strength, the move of the US government towards fascism at home as well as abroad is motivated by its fear that ordinary people, despite the craven propaganda of the established media, will not accept this permanent state of war for very long. Capital had often used fascist methods in the past, but now  fascism has gone global in a way it had never done before. Hitler’s dream of a world ruled by fascism was now sought to be realised by Bush and his cronies, Professor Bagchi explained. He recollected Bush’s  statement that the US could attack any country if it was in its interest; one of his aides said the US would conduct a total war to convert the whole population to the American way of thinking.  Professor Bagchi pointedly asked, “Will the rich of the world continue to pay for American megamurders, knowing that their kith and kin will be the targets of those murderous attacks in a few years’ time, and that they may be debarred from entering their Mecca or Varanasi by then?”

The US adopted the strategy of getting one country fight against another. In this connection, Professor Bagchi cautioned that the US wanted to have strategic understanding with India and that it might use India as a strategic base against China.  The Indian army conducted joint exercises with the US military in Agra. Professor Bagchi explained that there was evidence to show that the US wanted to cause civilian deaths by destroying all the civic amenities like water lines, hospitals, etc, as it did deliberately in Iraq. He cautioned the government of India not to have any strategic understanding with the US in the hope of getting some temporary benefits, and warned that the US could do to India what it  did to Iraq.  

A NOTE OF OPTIMISM

Striking a note of optimism, Professor Bagchi explained that three different major forces were coming forward to stop the US assault against the whole planet.  Firstly, the people of America are against war which is not going to benefit the ordinary people in that country. Thousands of American people, mostly the unemployed, are in jails in that country, even without trial. Being elected by a minority, the American rulers are greatly afraid of their people, who are facing unemployment and low wages. Secondly, there is rivalry between the top capitalist powers themselves. As the resistance of France and Germany, not to speak of that of Russia, shows, inter-imperialist rivalries will stand in the way of the realisation of the US dream even in a unipolar world. They oppose the US plan, because they will be totally dependent on the US  for oil, if the oil resources in West Asia and Caspian Sea are acquired by the US. There is going to be a major source of friction between those countries. Karl Kautsky’s proposition that imperialist countries could join hands and share the world market among themselves has proved wrong. Thirdly, opposition to the US is coming from the developing countries in the third world. In Latin America, there is strong opposition to the US in Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador. And then there is China, which will not toe the American line in the long run. The more the US goes on war path, more terrorist attacks will be there, as the ones from September 11, 2001 to 2003 have shown.

These major forces blocking the American dream of becoming the world force must come together, Professor Bagchi said. Stressing the need for building united and strong mass movements, irrespective of ideological and political differences, to fight against the US military might and safeguard the future of humanity, he referred to the Asian Socian Forum held in Hyderabad early this year and the World Social Forum that is going to take place in Mumbai next year as moves in that direction. Lastly, Professor Bagchi said peasantry of the whole world were under threat, with the prices of agricultural products crashing. Thousands of farmers committed suicides in Andhra  Pradesh and Karnataka. In the 1930s, in a similar situation, nationalist movements and communist movements developed in the world. Professor Bagchi said imbibing the spirit of Comrade Sundarayya, we should have the determination to build such movements and analyse what we could do to bring about social change and reverse the process of globalisation.  Otherwise, violence would engulf mankind, he warned.

Earlier, Professor Bagchi and Dr J Sesha Reddy, member of the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram Trust, who presided over the meeting, garlanded the portrait of Comrade Sundarayya amidst resounding slogans paying homage to him. C Sambi Reddy, secretary of the SVK  Trust, moved  a resolution condoling the death of Comrade L B Gangadhara Rao, who was the managing trustee till his death. He narrated the unique role played by Comrade LBG for the development of the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram to its present position. The audience observed one minute silence paying homage to Comrade LBG. Presenting the secretary’s report Sambi Reddy explained how the prestigious library of SVK, which was damaged in floods two years back, was restored and gained international acclaim, and what steps were being taken to further develop the Kendram. Earlier, before the commencement of the meeting,  Koratala Satyanarayana, member of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau, hoisted the red flag in front of Comrade Sundarayya’s statue at Sundarayya Park facing the SVK and placed a wreath at the statue of Sundarayya, followed by others paying floral tributes.