Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Draft Manifesto of New Socialist Initiative [Part - III]

Socialism of the 20th Century
Socialism is bound to carry some birthmarks. Its shape and trajectory are necessarily influenced by the conditions in which it is born. Conditions are largely a product of the reining system in the society, but they are also produced by the struggles against that system. How did the revolutionary agency, in past examples of successful revolutions, gauge the conditions in which it had to operate and how did its interventions shape those conditions are matters of great interest for revolutionaries today. The shape of future socialism would depend on the conditions created by contemporary capitalism, but it would also depend on how the revolutionary agency intervenes in those conditions. Such interventions, in turn, would also depend on what lessons revolutionaries have drawn from the experience of the twentieth century socialism. Re-envisioning socialism would, therefore, require a correct approach towards the vision and practice of socialism in the twentieth century.


Adversaries of socialism gloat over the fact that the system, which burst upon the world scene with a promise to put an end to capitalism, has itself collapsed. If some of its variants survive, they do so only by imitating capitalism. They also strive to create an impression that those who still believe in a future for socialism would like to turn the history back and would pray for a reincarnation of socialism as it was in the twentieth century. Such exertions of socialism’s adversaries are understandable. But many of the upholders and defenders of socialism too adhere to a similar picture. They consider twentieth century socialism almost as the canonical model for future socialism. Actual conditions may impose variations on the outer form but the basic structure must conform to that model.

Such approaches are mistaken because they do not give proper weight to the conditions in which twentieth century socialism was born and do not correctly assess the impact of the emergencies under which it had to survive.

Socialism of the twentieth century was a product of the conditions of that century. Even the vision and the theoretical-ideological understanding underlying it had an imprint of those conditions. It was a socialism that was built in pre-capitalist or backward capitalist societies existing under varieties of feudalisms and colonialisms. It was also built under emergency conditions of wars, encirclements, acute hardships and other disasters. Its ultimate fate notwithstanding, it was highly successful in getting those societies out of deep crises and in putting them on a course of tremendous progress. As a result those societies became more prosperous, egalitarian, just and modern than they had ever been in their entire histories. In a nutshell, it was a backward socialism and it was a socialism of emergency conditions. Given the circumstances in which it was born and raised, it was nevertheless successful.


Conditions determine the type of revolution and the path it must follow. They also determine the requirements for the subjective forces—what the leaders of the revolution must be good at. Revolutions of the twentieth century took place under conditions where one or two simple slogans—land, peace, democracy or national independence—were enough to mobilize the masses and galvanize them into revolutionary action. Revolutionaries did not need to engage in prolonged struggle with the masses to wean them away from the influence and hegemony of the ruling classes. The masses were ready to join the revolutionary armies and fight to death for the victory of the revolutionary cause expressed in those simple slogans. Those were the revolutions in which the “wretched of the earth” had risen with all their fury to run the heavens over.
Correspondingly, revolutions of the twentieth century required parties and leaders who would be good at waging wars and dealing with emergencies. Needs for ideological struggles, for charting out a course for post-revolutionary societies and for presenting a vision for humanity’s future were there, but the efforts to meet such needs were confined to leaders, intelligentsia and other advanced sections. It did not become a live concern of the entire society. The masses were not yet engaged with the task of envisioning a socialist future. They were convinced that once the age-old oppressors of their own societies and the new oppressors from foreign lands were taken off their backs, a new world would come into existence. They did not need the details. Whatever its nature, its structure, its institutions, designs and processes, the new system will be their own system under which they will be able to live with dignity—free from deprivations and oppressions of the past. Whether this world will continue on the desired course, whether it will be able to compete or coexist with other worlds in other countries, whether it will not give rise to new kinds of exploiters and oppressors—these were not yet live concerns.
But the initial stage of the post-revolutionary societies was not going to last for ever. As the conditions of wars, emergencies and acute deprivations gave way to more ‘normal’ times, new issues came on agenda. The “wretched of the earth” had now become owners of land, members of cooperatives, workers in factories, farms, and collectives. They were in transition towards becoming “workers of the world”. They were living in a different world and their expectations were very different from what they had been in earlier times. Now, the issue at stake was whether they would truly become masters of their own destiny and march onto a road leading to ever-higher levels of productivity, creativity, prosperity, democracy, choice and freedom. The issue of competition with capitalism also came on agenda. It is at this ‘normal’ stage that revolutions floundered. Parties and leaders, who had succeeded admirably in extra-ordinary conditions, failed in the normal conditions. Glorious revolutions of yesteryears ended in stagnant economies, uncreative and mechanical producers, politically inert workers, undemocratic polities, passive societies and dogmatic world-views. In the end, twentieth century socialism could not overcome the limitations stemming from the conditions of its birth. Instead of delivering a decisive and world historic defeat to capitalism, it became a detour leading back to capitalism.
Workers of the world, who are rightfully the proud inheritors of the achievements of twentieth century socialism, also have the responsibility and the task to draw necessary lessons from its defeat.
End of capitalist exploitation is the central component of a socialist programme, but this objective has to be achieved in a way that elevates societies to ever-higher levels of productivity, prosperity, democracy and freedom. Capitalism is an unethical and exploitative system that inflicts miseries on a large part of the society, but its mechanisms and processes also result in taking the social productive forces to higher levels. A system that ends capitalist exploitation but fails to surpass capitalism in developing productive forces would, in the end, fail to defeat capitalism. Furthermore, socialism cannot solely depend on the higher consciousness of the working class for its survival. It must devise mechanisms and processes that are organically integrated into the society and, at any given time, are consonant with the interests and aspirations of the working class.
The ownership structure of means of production is a key determinant of mechanisms for surplus appropriation. Under capitalism private ownership of means of production dominates this structure, although modern capitalism has learned to incorporate state ownership into its structure in a significant manner. Fundamentally, the contradiction between socialized production and private appropriation remains the basic contradiction of capitalism.
Socialism in the twentieth century, although having collective ownership and small-scale private ownership in varying degrees, was based on the primacy of state ownership of means of production. This was seen as the only way to realize the ideal of ownership by the whole people and to resolve the contradiction between socialized production and private appropriation. State, therefore, became the fountainhead and, in many ways, the sole arena of all economic and political processes, and party became, practically speaking, the sole constituter of state. In the given conditions of those times and those societies, a number of unintended but harmful consequences flowed from this kind of understanding of socialism.
First, state ownership could not develop into a form of ownership by the whole people. Instead it gave rise to bureaucratic control over the means of production. This was the main reason why twentieth century socialisms turned into various forms of state capitalism. A new class appeared that effectively became the appropriator of surplus. This class determined how this surplus was to be deployed. Primacy of state ownership required purity of the proletarian character of state. Given the stage of development of those societies this requirement came in conflict with the goal of establishing a genuine socialist democracy. Constituting and running of the state while preserving its proletarian character became increasingly dependent on the communist party and on a small section of the working class. In the prevailing conditions of those societies it was highly difficult to prevent emergence of state capitalism. The fate of various attempts to safeguard the proletarian character of state by stirring up class struggles in state, party and society is symptomatic of the fact that the material basis for emergence of state capitalism cannot be eliminated by political struggles alone. Structures and mechanisms of the socialist economy will have to be designed in such a way that the ideal of collective producers becoming collective appropriators becomes progressively and actually realized with the maturing of socialism.
Second, the primacy of state ownership, in the given conditions, led to harmful consequences for the development of productive forces. The relationship between planning and market, for example, fell victim to a dogmatic understanding that equated planning with socialism and market with capitalism. While in theory it was recognized that the “law of value” would cease to operate only in the very long run when socialism will be approaching communism, in practice mechanical and idealistic means were adopted to liberate the economy at an earliest from this law. Apart from playing havoc with a suitable deployment of surplus for future growth of productivity and prosperity, this also made the working class as alienated as ever from decision-making in the processes of production, distribution and allocation of surplus. There was no objective and material mechanism for developing productive and creative powers of the worker except a hope that a higher consciousness emerging out of political education and class struggle will make moral incentives the driving force for development of productive forces. Material incentives were narrowly conceived in terms of better salaries, benefits and working conditions. Workers effectively remained suppliers of labour-power. They never learned to control, decide, manage, innovate, compete and take responsibilities for their enterprises. They never even learned to safeguard their own interests and build their own futures. All that was left to the party and the state.
Third, such an understanding of socialism led to erecting of an economic structure that had no flexibility. It worked like giant clockwork in which there was little scope for organic growth. This was one important reason why socialism could not become an autonomous and organic socio-economic process. There was no inherent mechanism or process that could on its own lead to emergence of new needs, new products, new sectors, and new technologies. Capitalism cannot survive without its state, but it does not depend on it on an everyday basis, so to speak, for its regular workings and processes. It becomes ‘natural’ even for those whom it exploits and rules over. Every individual is made responsible for taking care of her or his interest, and in the process the interest of capitalism gets served. The logic of capital gets imbibed into the ways of life and becomes an integral part of the socio-economic processes. Socialism too cannot survive without its state. But, even more than capitalism, it will also have to take root as a process flowing through the inner workings of the economy. It will have to become an organic and self-reproducing process of the society. It cannot expect to survive by hiding behind the state or by becoming a rigid structure operating like clockwork.
Fourth, this kind of economic structure also had damaging consequences for socialist democracy. The problem of democracy was not only a problem of political institutions and processes important as they all are. At a deeper level it was a problem of whether there was room in this economic structure for various class, sectional and other social interests to get articulated and whether there were organic as well as institutional mechanisms for resolution of all such contradictions. A rigid economic structure was correlated with a rigid political structure and this was at the root of the problem of socialist democracy.
Fifth, there were problems also at the level of political institutions and processes. Undoubtedly, the conditions in which twentieth century socialism had to survive were not conducive for a satisfactory resolution of the problem of socialist democracy. But the consequences were nevertheless tragic. State was in control of the entire economy and to a large extent even of the society, and party was in control of the state. This led to a situation wherein all contradictions and all struggles of the entire society that should have been worked out in the larger arena of the society itself, even if with the help of the party and the state, instead found ways to become concentrated in the top echelons of the party and the state. This gave rise to political passivity and inertness of the working class and of the whole society and often led to bizarre forms of ‘class struggle’ inside the party and the state with tragic consequences for revolution and socialism.
Apart from such problems that arose from the economic and political structure, there were other problems too, which, in the final analysis, had their origin in the shortcomings of the theoretical-ideological understanding underlying the twentieth century socialism. If the historic project of emancipation of labour could make only faltering progress, the equally historic project of social equality and justice did not fare much better. Women made tremendous progress in the public spheres, but their conditions did not improve much in the private sphere. The problems of exclusions and inequalities based on social identities continued in various other forms. In general, processes of social and ideological transformations did not take place to the desired extent. All these shortcomings came into glaring light in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of major examples of twentieth century socialism when age-old maladies such as religious bigotry, racism, genocides and ethnic cleansing, nostalgia for czars, prostitution, social acceptance of extreme poverty and degradation, and many such long forgotten ailments made a sudden reappearance. They had managed to survive hiding in the social soil just below the surface and burst forth on the scene as soon as the socialist system collapsed.
Dreams turn into reality through revolutions, but the flow of reality often lags behind the dreams. Socialism was a dream that became reality through the proletarian revolutions of the twentieth century. It had glorious successes. It ended the oppressive old order of monarchy, feudalism, and colonialism and challenged the new order of capitalism in Russia, China and many other revolutionary societies. But, in the end, the twentieth century socialism could not escape the limitations of the times and the societies in which it was born. The ‘wretched of the earth’ did storm the heavens successfully, they did succeed in liberating themselves from colonialism and feudalism, and they did challenge capitalism by starting on the epoch-making project of building socialism. But this socialism turned out to be a socialism of backward societies and of emergency conditions. It was successful in rescuing these societies from the deep crises of the old order and it was victorious in the difficult conditions of wars and civil wars. But it could not inflict a final, world historic defeat on capitalism. It could not become such a model of creativity, prosperity, democracy, equality and freedom that would inspire the workers of the entire capitalist world to overthrow capitalism and build socialism.
It is an inalienable right of the working class to feel proud of the achievements of the twentieth century socialism, and it is its cardinal duty to analyze scientifically and dispassionately the causes of its defeat. The task of re-envisioning socialism and preparing for the revolution that will usher it depends crucially on adopting such an approach.
Visions of a Future Socialism
The key objective of socialism is to ensure that collective producers become collective appropriators of surplus. This includes provisions for collectively deciding how to deploy or expend the appropriated surplus. This objective does not uniquely determine the form of ownership of means of production. Depending on the prevailing conditions a wide range of ownership structures can be possible.
The most appropriate form of ownership of means of production to achieve this goal is collective ownership. But this cannot be the only form. If this were to be the case, the worker-owners of such means of production where productivity of labour is relatively low, such as an agricultural farm or a small-scale and low-tech enterprise, will be at a great disadvantage as compared to the worker-owners of large, high-tech industries with high productivity of labour. State ownership, therefore, will be an important component of the economy. But the state will be required to lease out its means of production to the collectives of workers in those industries or enterprises. Like any other collective enterprise here too they will be the collective appropriators of surplus they would have themselves produced. Of course, they will have to give a portion of it to the state in accordance with the lease contract. As owner of the enterprise the state will be a recipient of a part of the surplus created in that enterprise but not a direct appropriator. Taxation will be another mechanism through which part of the surplus created in all kinds of enterprises, whether state owned or collectively owned, will be transferred to the state and to the local governing and municipal bodies. Private ownership can also be allowed but such owners of means of production will not be allowed to hire workers. They must work with their own labour. In general, the principle will be: whoever works with a given means of production has an equal share in the ownership of the same and participates in the collective decision of appropriating and deploying the surplus created there.
This does not rule out professional management of enterprises. It will not be feasible, especially in large enterprises, to decide everything by floor level democracy. Furthermore, it will take generations if not centuries before all workers become capable of handling all sorts of jobs, so that all responsibilities can be rotated and all vestiges of hierarchical divisions of labour can be done away with. Until such a time the economic structure of socialism will necessarily depend on a division of labor based on skill and capacity—a division that may appear relatively fixed in the short run, but in the long run it will be flexible, dynamic and changing. This does create problems in the sphere of social equality, but there will be ways to deal with them progressively. In any case, ideal forms of egalitarianism are approachable only in the very long run.
Socialism will succeed only if it ushers humanity out of the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom. Undoubtedly this will be a long struggle and a long process. It will crucially depend on how the new system makes a sustained progress, on a daily basis so to speak, towards prosperity and abundance. This, in turn, will depend on a rapid and sustained development of productive forces. Socialism must be a system that unleashes the productive and creative powers of all the people and provides them with opportunities and choices for a rich diversity of professions and ways of life. Such a progress will provide material basis for higher levels of culture and consciousness.
If socialism makes such a progress on a sustained basis and becomes a securely established way of life, it will eventually lead societies and entire humanity into the realm of freedom—a condition in which high levels of prosperity and consciousness will make the “law of value” wither away. Work as a forced condition for obtaining basic necessities of life will give way to work as a free choice for realizing the human potential.
Until such a stage arrives, the objective of sustained development of productive forces and continuous progress towards prosperity and abundance imposes certain constraints on the structures and practices of socialism. For example, “law of value”, even as its area of operation shrinks in many domains of life, will continue to operate, especially in the frontier areas of economy connected with further advancement of prosperity and standard of life. It is obvious that market and competition will remain in such a system, although they will be increasingly regulated and their areas of operation will progressively shrink.
Markets are not a creation of capitalism, although it takes them to a qualitatively higher and all-encompassing scale. They existed long before capitalism and they will stay until long after. Important point is that they have kept on changing and evolving. Capitalist markets are much evolved, but they are also heavily regulated by the capitalist state and by the rules of capitalism. Socialist markets will be further evolved and they will be even more regulated. Furthermore, markets are not the place where surplus, at least most of it, is produced and appropriated. Undoubtedly they are integrated and articulated into the capitalist system of exploitation and accumulation. Capitalist production is necessarily commodity production—production, first and foremost, for exchange. But this does not mean that all socialist production will immediately cease to be commodity production. It will be a long process before socialism can reach a stage where commodities would have withered away and all production would directly be for meeting social needs. One thing that will immediately lose its commodity character under socialism is labour power. Labour market will be abolished as soon as a socialist economy begins to properly function in the immediate aftermath of overthrowing capitalism.
There will, for sure, be large sectors that, from the outset, will not be a part of the market under socialism. Health, education, basic amenities are obvious examples. All such sectors will be responsibility of the state. Large parts of the surplus that state would receive as rent, interest or taxes will be deployed in these sectors. In such sectors too structures and mechanisms will be designed and put in place for management and control of the institutions by the workers of those institutions.
There will be many sectors of material production that cannot withstand full onslaught of the “law of value” and will be unable survive in the market on their own. This is the case with many sectors under capitalism, and this will also be the case with many sectors under socialism. State will have to provide subsidies and other forms of protection to such sectors.
Just as market, competition too is not a creation of capitalism, although it takes it to a qualitatively higher level and turns it into the central mechanism for development of productive forces. The key problem with competition under capitalism is that it gets harnessed into the mechanism of maximizing profits and accelerating accumulation. The threat of competition hangs over the head of every capitalist, but its actual burden is transmitted to the workers. Either it results in intensifying their exploitation or in pushing large numbers of them into the reserve army of labour. Besides, competition also gives rise to a perpetual state of turbulence in the capitalist economy. Recurrent recessions and depressions and the phenomenon of the so-called “creative destruction” are all part of the capitalist dynamics in which competition plays a key role. Most of the negative consequences of this dynamics come in the share of working people.
But competition cannot be done away with in the immediate aftermath of capitalism. The world-historic project of building socialism will start under the conditions bequeathed by capitalism and men and women themselves produced by capitalism will carry it out. Just as the case with market, competition too will be a necessity in the initial stages of socialism. Only in the long run moral incentive will become the principal driver of development of productive forces. Furthermore, the nature of competition undergoes a fundamental change as soon as collective producers become collective appropriators of surplus. It does not feed into the accumulation of capital owned by an exploiting class and its negative consequences no longer translate into deprivation of the basic necessities of life and an absolute insecurity for those who may not have fared well in a given round of competition.
Socialist economy will be a modern economy progressively climbing to higher levels of productivity and prosperity. This will necessitate continuous sectoral restructurings as productivity in different sectors will grow at different rates and new sectors too will come into existence. There will be large-scale movements of people and resources across sectors and to the newly emergent sectors. State will play an important regulating role in the restructuring process making sure that disruptions do not arise and the interests of the socialist system are secure.
However, the historic task of building socialism cannot be completed only by building a socialist economy. Indeed real socialism cannot be conceptualized, let alone realized, without a comprehensive programme of a radical reconstitution of social life. If oppressions, discriminations, exclusions and exploitations based on various social identities—gender, caste, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion and so on—are not eliminated, socialism will lose its meaning. It will not herald the liberation of entire humanity. In fact, even the objective of turning collective producers into collective appropriators of surplus cannot be realized without putting an end to inequalities and oppressions based on social identities. The achievements of class struggle leading to elimination of class-based exploitation will come undone if exploitations and oppressions based on social identities are allowed to continue.
Defeat of capital will provide a solid foundation and an effective launching platform for such a radical reconstitution of social life, but it cannot by itself ensure it. It will have to be taken up as a positive programme running through the entire stage of building a socialist society. Furthermore, it is not a task to be achieved only by the socialist state, although, just as in other aspects of building socialism, state will play an important role in it. A radical reconstitution of social life will require a continuous churning of the social structure that cannot be accomplished only by laws and state policies. Such a churning is necessarily the domain of social struggles and movements. Socialism must be re-envisioned in such a way that not only there is room in it for such struggles and movements, they are in fact deemed as an integral part of it. This will have deep implications and far-reaching consequences for political and social structures of future socialism.
Similarly, socialism has to be re-envisioned to incorporate the requirements of ecological sustainability. This too will have to be an integral part of its positive programme. Capital has played havoc with the planet and its defeat will arrest humanity’s descent into disaster. But to establish and secure a way of life that is prosperous as well as sustainable will need a fundamental change in humanity’s approach to Nature. Human civilization cannot be conceived without human intervention in Nature, but this intervention must be guided by and designed according to the requirements of long term sustainability. Such an awareness and wisdom must be an integral part of the structure and processes of future socialism.
Populist tendencies to blame modernity itself for the ills and excesses of capitalism are widespread but mistaken. It is utopian and romantic to expect that humanity needs to turn back to the life-styles and consumption levels of pre-modern civilizations. The new social movements that question modern life and its pattern of compulsive consumption are legitimate and necessary critiques of devastations brought forth by capitalism, but they do not need to go over to a fundamentalist-romantic ideology. If there are physical limits to sustaining the levels and forms of consumption fostered by modern life, they will be recognized as such under socialism because it is not a system driven by the blind profit-seeking forces. A modern 21st century socialist system will be better equipped to deal with such limits and make necessary adjustments. Any expectation, therefore, of establishing something like an agrarian-communitarian socialism restricting modern industries and shunning modern and prosperous life is neither desirable nor sustainable.
Socialism is not possible without socialist democracy. The aim of the socialist vision and programme is to make the worker not only the appropriator of her or his own surplus, thus eliminating systemic exploitation, but also to make her or him truly a member of the new ruling class. Workers will be active and sovereign agents running the economy and the polity. Political processes, institutions and structures will have to be designed to achieve the objectives of socialist democracy.
Creating a socialist polity will be one of the central challenges of future socialism. Due to historical reasons this challenge could not be met by the twentieth century socialism. State will continue to exist during socialism but it will be a fundamentally different kind of state. It will be constituted and operated through an active and progressively direct participation of all citizens under the leadership of the working class. Progressively the polity will begin to overlap with the entire society and the separation of state from the people so characteristic of the bourgeois as well as all pre-capitalist societies will be eliminated with the progress of socialism. The conditions that facilitate the progressive elimination of the state-people separateness are actually the conditions for withering away of state. Socialist state will, therefore, create conditions for its own withering away. Of course, such a withering away will depend on other factors such as elimination of class contradictions, eventual abolition of classes and the withering away of the ‘law of value’, but the political structure and processes too will have to be geared towards achieving this goal.
The party that will lead the new revolution will continue to exist during socialism, but it will have no claim to monopoly over the state, nor will it have any special legal status within the state structure. It will be a party of a different kind. It will lead the working class which in turn will lead the socialist economy and polity. This leadership over the working class will be exercised through wisdom, science, ideological authority and revolutionary credibility and not through a direct access to political power. It will be a party different from the other political parties of the working class—the political parties that will be direct functionaries of the socialist democracy. It will also be a party where the class struggles of the socialist society will appear on the ideological plane and will be fought over in the ideological domain. It will exercise ideological leadership over the working class in the political class struggle that will be take place in the domain of the socialist state and the socialist polity and will be fought over according to the rules, laws and processes of this polity. In a way it will be a party that will always be in the making—that will continuously reconstitute itself. And it will itself wither away with the abolition of classes and with the withering away of the state.
Aims and Objectives of NSI
● We believe that only socialism can liberate humanity from the exploitation, misery, oppression and subjugation it suffers under the capitalist system and under the pre-capitalist structures that continue under the overall rule of capital.
● We believe that socialism must be re-envisioned in the light of the lessons learnt from the rise and the fall of the twentieth century socialism and in the light of the changes in the structure and modus operandi of capital during the previous century.
● We believe that socialism is defined by the following aims:
◘ Elimination of capitalist exploitation by making the collective producer the collective appropriator of surplus
◘ Elimination of all forms of oppression, exploitation and injustice based on social identities of gender, caste, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion and so on
◘ Establishment of a mode of production and a way of life that brings prosperity and freedom to all and that is ecologically sustainable
◘ Establishment of a socialist democracy in which state is constituted and run according to the socialist constitution though an active polity consisting of all citizens under the leadership of the working class
◘ Prevalence of a culture that is based on scientific approach to reality, engenders creativity in all spheres of life, ensures human dignity, promotes cultural diversity, enlarges the arena of human freedom in the personal as well as social domains including the domain of personal beliefs
● We believe that socialism can be established only by putting an end to the rule of capital and the final victory of socialism can be ensured only after the defeat of capital on the global level. Such a socialist revolution, however, must start with the political revolutions against bourgeois rules within the nation-states and it must continue through building socialism within the countries of revolution till final victory is achieved at the global scale.
● We believe that the political revolution against the bourgeois state will require altogether new strategies when compared with the strategies of the twentieth century revolutions. The coming revolutions will succeed only when the working class and the people in general can be weaned away from bourgeois hegemony, when popular legitimacy of the bourgeois rule will be severely eroded, and finally, when the workers and all the toilers and the oppressed will arise together to overwhelm the bourgeois rule through a revolutionary mass upsurge.
Our Aims and Objectives follow from the understanding summarized in these points and elaborated in this manifesto.
Aims of NSI:
1. To create conditions for and to make preparations for a political revolution against the rule of capital
2. To help create a new kind of revolutionary party that will lead this revolution
3. To prepare forces and create conditions that will facilitate building of a socialist society
Objectives of NSI:
1. To organize and to participate in movements of workers and other toilers to stake claim to all productive assets, including land, and to improve their working and life conditions
2. To organize and to participate in movements for the emancipation of women, dalits, oppressed and subjugated nationalities and all other oppressed communities
3. To organize and to participate in movements against despoiling of Environment and against unsustainable exploitation of Nature
4. To organize and to participate in movements that oppose laws and policies of the state that favour the interests of capital and go against the interest of working people
5. To organize and to participate in movements that oppose imperialist domination of the people in the third world countries
6. To organize and to participate in movements demanding state provision of education, health and basic amenities of a civilized life for all, and exclusion of such aspects of life from the realm profit and market
7. To organize and to participate in movements for protection of democratic and human rights of all people, for protection of groups and communities of people from violence by the state and for protection of oppressed minorities from violence of oppressor majorities
8. To organize and to participate in the movements of students, intelligentsia and other aware sections of the society for creating socialist and democratic consciousness in the society and for creating an active political culture of mass initiative and participation
9. To organize and to participate in cultural movements aimed at creating and strengthening a culture of equality, emancipation, dignity, reason, creativity and freedom
10. To organize and to participate in experiments and practices that prepare workers and other toilers to collectively manage their productive assets paving the way for collective producers to become collective appropriators of their own surplus
11. To organize and to participate in experiments and practices that promote ecological sustainability
12. To organize and to participate in experiments and practices that promote socialist values and ways of life
November 28, 2008

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