दुनीयाको मज्दुर एक हौ

खटिखाने जनता एक हौ

गोर्खाल्याण्ड गोर्खाहरुको  आत्मा निर्ण्यको अधीकार हो, यसैर्थ हरेक मार्क्सवादिहरुले गोर्खाल्याण्ड्को समर्थन गर्न पर्छ्,

 

सुन साथि,

सुन साथि,

मरेर म गएपछि,

निस्प्राण मेरो लासमाथि,

आशु नझार्नु तिमीले,

निस्तब्ध मेरो चिहानमाथि,

फुल पनि नर्छनु तिमीले,

बरु!सम्भवत्, सामर्थ्री भए

यी तीन शब्द कोरी देउ,

मेरो समाधी माथि,

क्रान्ति, क्रन्ति, क्रन्ति,

Revolution aand Revisionism

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION

  Make the People's Democratic Revolution Successful by Fighting Against  Revisionism
  

As revisionist thinking nestled in the Indian party for a long time, we couldnot build up a correct revolutionary party. Our primary task today is tobuild up a correct revolutionary party fighting uncompromisingly againstthis revisionist thinking.
(1) The first among revisionist thought is to regard 'Krishak Sabha'(peasants' organisation) and trade unions as the only Party activity.Party comrades often confuse the work of peasants' organisation and tradeunion with the political work of the Party. They do not realise that thepolitical tasks of the Party cannot be carried out through the peasants'organisation and trade union. But it should be remembered at the same timethat the trade union and the peasants' organisation are one of the many weaponsfor serving our purpose. On the other hand, to regard peasants' organisationand trade union work as the only work of the Party, can only mean plungingthe Party in the mire of economism. The proletarian revolution cannot bemade successful without an uncompromising struggle against this economism.This is the lesson that com. Lenin has given us.
(2) Some comrades think and are still thinking today that our political taskends with the launching of a few movements on demands, and they regard asingle victory through these movements as a political victory of the Party.Not only that, these comrades seek to confine the responsibility of carryingout the political tasks of the Party within the limits of these movementsonly. But we, the true Marxists know that carrying out the Party's politicalresponsibility means that the final aim of all propaganda, all movementsand all organisations of the Party is to establish firmly the political powerof the proletariat. It should be remembered always that if the words "Seizureof Political Power" are left out, the Party no longer remains a revolutionaryParty. Although it will remain a revolutionary Party in name then, it willbe actually reduced to a reformist party of the bourgeoisie.
When speaking of seizure of political power, some mean the Centre. They thinkthat with the gradual expansion of the limits of the movement, our only aimwill be to capture power centrally. This thinking is not only wrong; thisthinking destroys the correct revolutionary thinking within the party andreduces it to a reformist party. At the World Trade Union Congress in 1953,the well-tested and well-established Marxist leader of China, member of theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of China, asserted firmly that inthe coming days the tactics and strategy of the unfinished revolution ofAsia, Africa and Latin America will follow the footsteps of China. In otherwords, the strategy and tactics of these struggles will be area-wise seizureof power. It was not only that comrade and member of the Central Committeeof the Chinese Party, but Com. Lenin also mentioned area-wise seizure ofpower in his writings. Above all, the working class in Russia gave a concreteproof of Lenin's conclusion when they kept the town of Kronstad under seizurefor three days. In the era of socialism, all the elements of area-wise seizureof power are present in our framework.
A burning instance of the fact that this is possible is the Naga rebellion.The main condition of this area-wise seizure of power is weapons in the handsof the revolutionary forces. To think of seizing power without arms, is nothingbut an idle dream. Our Party has a very long history of struggles. We gavethe leadership to the peasants' and workers' movements in the extensivecountryside of North Bengal. Naturally, we shall have to examine and analysethe movements of the past and draw lessons from them and we shall have tomove forward anew in the present revolutionary era.
Analysis of the concrete events and experiences of the Tebhaga Movementin 1946 and 1947
The participant peasants in this movement numbered about six million. Itshould be remembered that in the entire peasant movement this was a goldenera. In the massiveness of the movement, in the intensity of emotions, inthe expression of class hatred, this movement was the highest stage of classstruggle. To help understand that stage, I am citing a few moving instancesof that movement.


A day's event:--


I was then living underground in the interest of the movement. I have personallywitnessed the tide of the revolutionary movement. I have seen how a singlelittle note made a man ten miles away come running like a mad man. On theother hand, I have also seen standing beside the husband, a newly wed youngMuslim woman who was subjected to demoniac barbarous assault by the classenemy. I have heard the pathetic appeal of that unarmed husband--Comrade,can't you take revenge? The very next moment, I have seen the intense hatredof the exploited against the exploiter, have seen that aweful spectacle ofkilling a living man in cold blood by twisting his throat.
Comrades, the above mentioned incidents demand from us some analysis.
Firstly, what was the historical reason as a result of which this massiveform of that movement in those days could create intense hatred against theclass enemy ?
Secondly, what again were the causes which turned that vast movement intoa failure ?
First, it was the slogan of seizure of political power that created the massiveform of that movement of those days, created the intense hatred against theclass enemy. On the opposite side, it was this slogan that made the classenemy adopt his class role. It is the expression of this that we find inthe barbaric rape of the young peasant woman and the beastly violent attackto smash the movement. On the other hand the peasants also did not hesitateto attack the class enemy. This raises the question: Why couldn't power beseized even after this ? It couldn't be seized for one reason only--it wasbecause the fighting people of those days looked to the centre for arms;we then lost faith in the path indicated by Lenin. We hesitated in thosedays to accept that bold declaration of Lenin to carry forward the revolutionby collecting arms locally and seizing power area-wise. As a result, theunarmed peasants could not stand up and resist in the face of arms. Eventhose who fought defying death had also to retreat finally. The lesson thathas to be drawn from the mistakes of those days is that the responsibilityof collecting arms lies with the local organisation, not with the centre.So the question of collecting arms will have to be put up before every ActivistGroup from now on. 'Dao', knives, sticks--all these are weapons, and withtheir help at opportune moments, firearms will have to be snatched. The eventsdescribed above are manifestations of revisionist thinking in its theoreticalaspect. Now, from the organisational point of view, those mistakes will haveto be found out which were hurdles in the way of a correct leadership ofthe vast movements of those days, so that they may not find a nest afreshin the revolutionary Party. To smash all those mistakes in the Party, theParty will today first have to establish its leadership over the massorganisations. For, a review of the history of the party over a long periodwould reveal that as a result of the revisionist thinking of regarding leadersof trade unions and peasant organisations (krishak sabha) as thereal representatives of the people, the party was reduced to a party of afew individuals. Because of this thinking, the party's political activitiesbecame inert, and the proletariat also became deprived of a correct revolutionaryleadership. All movements became confined within the bonds of movements ondemands. As a result Party members became enthusiastic over a single victoryand despondent over a single defeat. Secondly, as a result of overestimatingthe importance of this organisation, another type of localism is born. Comradesthink that the Party will suffer a serious loss if any comrade is shiftedfrom his area and they take this as a loss to personal leadership. From thislocalism another type of opportunism develops. Comrades think that theirarea is the most revolutionary; naturally nothing should be done here sothat there is police persecution. Because of this viewpoint they do not analysethe political situation of the entire country. As a result, commandism developsand organisational and daily propaganda work suffers. As a result, when thereis a call for a struggle, they assert that they will not do any small workand commit adventurism. Naturally the question arises--what are the methodswhich help to get out of these deviations ? What are those Marxist directiveswhich become essential tasks for building up a revolutionary party ?
Firstly, all works of organisation of the future will have to be done ascomplementary to the Party. In other words, the mass organisations will haveto be used as a part of serving one main purpose of the Party. For this reason,naturally, Party leadership will have to be established over the organisations.
Secondly, immediately from now the entire effort of the Party will have tobe spent on recruiting newer and newer cadres and on forming countless ActivistGroups consisting of them. It should be remembered that in the coming eraof struggles, the masses will have to be educated through the illegal machinery.So every Party member from now on will have to be made habituated to illegalwork. To get used to illegal work, it is an essential task for every ActivistGroup to paste illegal posters. It is only through this process that theywill be able to act as the bold core in leading struggles in the era ofstruggles. Otherwise, the revolution will be reduced to a petty bourgeoisidle dream.
Thirdly, it is through these active organisations that the Party will beable to establish its leadership over the mass organisations. So from nowon we shall have to help the members of the Activist Groups so that theycan fearlessly criticize the leaders of the mass organisations, and theirwork.
Fourthly, the work of the mass organisations will have to be discussed anddecided upon in the Party before it is implemented in the mass organisations.It should be remembered here that the policies of the mass organisationshave been wrongly practiced so long in the Party. To hold discussions onParty decisions is not called democratic centralism. This thinking is notin accordance with Marxism. And from all this thinking the conclusion hasto be drawn that the Party's programme will be adopted from below. But ifit is adopted from the lower level, then the correct Marxist way is notimplemented; in all these activities there inevitably is bourgeois deviations.The Marxist truth of democratic centralism is that the Party directive comingfrom higher leadership must be carried out. Because the Party's highest leaderis he who has firmly established himself as a Marxist through a long periodof movements and theoretical debates. We have the right to criticise Partydecisions; but once a decision has been taken, if any one criticizes it withoutimplementing it, or obstructs work, or hesitates to implement it, he willbe guilty of the serious offence of violating Party discipline.
As a result of having this idea of Party democracy as that of a debatingsociety, the road for espionage inside the Party is thrown open. Naturally,the revolutionary leadership of the Party then becomes bankrupt and the workingclass is deprived of a correct revolutionary leadership. This petty-bourgeoissort of thinking inside the Party leads the Party on to the verge of destruction.And this is the manifestation of petty-bourgeois thinking inside the Party.Their comfortable living and attitude of indisciplined criticism reducesthe Party to a mere debating society. This thinking becomes a hurdle in thepath of building up a Party of the proletariat--strong as iron.
Fifthly, the indisciplined life of the petty-bourgeoisie draws them towardsindisciplined criticism; that is, they do not want to criticize within thelimits of the organisation. To get rid of this deviation, we should remainconscious of the Marxist viewpoint regarding criticism. The characteristicsof Marxist criticism are: (1) Criticisms must be made within the Partyorganisation, that is, at the Party meeting. (2) The aim of criticism shouldbe constructive. That is, the aim of criticism is to advance the party fromthe point of view of principles and organisation, and we must always be vigilantthat there is no unprincipled criticism within the Party.
Come, comrades, in the present revolutionary era, let us complete the People'sDemocratic Revolution by fighting uncompromisingly against revisionism.


Revolution and revisionism

Revolution aand Revisionism

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION

  Make the People's Democratic Revolution Successful by Fighting Against  Revisionism
  

As revisionist thinking nestled in the Indian party for a long time, we couldnot build up a correct revolutionary party. Our primary task today is tobuild up a correct revolutionary party fighting uncompromisingly againstthis revisionist thinking.
(1) The first among revisionist thought is to regard 'Krishak Sabha'(peasants' organisation) and trade unions as the only Party activity.Party comrades often confuse the work of peasants' organisation and tradeunion with the political work of the Party. They do not realise that thepolitical tasks of the Party cannot be carried out through the peasants'organisation and trade union. But it should be remembered at the same timethat the trade union and the peasants' organisation are one of the many weaponsfor serving our purpose. On the other hand, to regard peasants' organisationand trade union work as the only work of the Party, can only mean plungingthe Party in the mire of economism. The proletarian revolution cannot bemade successful without an uncompromising struggle against this economism.This is the lesson that com. Lenin has given us.
(2) Some comrades think and are still thinking today that our political taskends with the launching of a few movements on demands, and they regard asingle victory through these movements as a political victory of the Party.Not only that, these comrades seek to confine the responsibility of carryingout the political tasks of the Party within the limits of these movementsonly. But we, the true Marxists know that carrying out the Party's politicalresponsibility means that the final aim of all propaganda, all movementsand all organisations of the Party is to establish firmly the political powerof the proletariat. It should be remembered always that if the words "Seizureof Political Power" are left out, the Party no longer remains a revolutionaryParty. Although it will remain a revolutionary Party in name then, it willbe actually reduced to a reformist party of the bourgeoisie.
When speaking of seizure of political power, some mean the Centre. They thinkthat with the gradual expansion of the limits of the movement, our only aimwill be to capture power centrally. This thinking is not only wrong; thisthinking destroys the correct revolutionary thinking within the party andreduces it to a reformist party. At the World Trade Union Congress in 1953,the well-tested and well-established Marxist leader of China, member of theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of China, asserted firmly that inthe coming days the tactics and strategy of the unfinished revolution ofAsia, Africa and Latin America will follow the footsteps of China. In otherwords, the strategy and tactics of these struggles will be area-wise seizureof power. It was not only that comrade and member of the Central Committeeof the Chinese Party, but Com. Lenin also mentioned area-wise seizure ofpower in his writings. Above all, the working class in Russia gave a concreteproof of Lenin's conclusion when they kept the town of Kronstad under seizurefor three days. In the era of socialism, all the elements of area-wise seizureof power are present in our framework.
A burning instance of the fact that this is possible is the Naga rebellion.The main condition of this area-wise seizure of power is weapons in the handsof the revolutionary forces. To think of seizing power without arms, is nothingbut an idle dream. Our Party has a very long history of struggles. We gavethe leadership to the peasants' and workers' movements in the extensivecountryside of North Bengal. Naturally, we shall have to examine and analysethe movements of the past and draw lessons from them and we shall have tomove forward anew in the present revolutionary era.
Analysis of the concrete events and experiences of the Tebhaga Movementin 1946 and 1947
The participant peasants in this movement numbered about six million. Itshould be remembered that in the entire peasant movement this was a goldenera. In the massiveness of the movement, in the intensity of emotions, inthe expression of class hatred, this movement was the highest stage of classstruggle. To help understand that stage, I am citing a few moving instancesof that movement.


A day's event:--


I was then living underground in the interest of the movement. I have personallywitnessed the tide of the revolutionary movement. I have seen how a singlelittle note made a man ten miles away come running like a mad man. On theother hand, I have also seen standing beside the husband, a newly wed youngMuslim woman who was subjected to demoniac barbarous assault by the classenemy. I have heard the pathetic appeal of that unarmed husband--Comrade,can't you take revenge? The very next moment, I have seen the intense hatredof the exploited against the exploiter, have seen that aweful spectacle ofkilling a living man in cold blood by twisting his throat.
Comrades, the above mentioned incidents demand from us some analysis.
Firstly, what was the historical reason as a result of which this massiveform of that movement in those days could create intense hatred against theclass enemy ?
Secondly, what again were the causes which turned that vast movement intoa failure ?
First, it was the slogan of seizure of political power that created the massiveform of that movement of those days, created the intense hatred against theclass enemy. On the opposite side, it was this slogan that made the classenemy adopt his class role. It is the expression of this that we find inthe barbaric rape of the young peasant woman and the beastly violent attackto smash the movement. On the other hand the peasants also did not hesitateto attack the class enemy. This raises the question: Why couldn't power beseized even after this ? It couldn't be seized for one reason only--it wasbecause the fighting people of those days looked to the centre for arms;we then lost faith in the path indicated by Lenin. We hesitated in thosedays to accept that bold declaration of Lenin to carry forward the revolutionby collecting arms locally and seizing power area-wise. As a result, theunarmed peasants could not stand up and resist in the face of arms. Eventhose who fought defying death had also to retreat finally. The lesson thathas to be drawn from the mistakes of those days is that the responsibilityof collecting arms lies with the local organisation, not with the centre.So the question of collecting arms will have to be put up before every ActivistGroup from now on. 'Dao', knives, sticks--all these are weapons, and withtheir help at opportune moments, firearms will have to be snatched. The eventsdescribed above are manifestations of revisionist thinking in its theoreticalaspect. Now, from the organisational point of view, those mistakes will haveto be found out which were hurdles in the way of a correct leadership ofthe vast movements of those days, so that they may not find a nest afreshin the revolutionary Party. To smash all those mistakes in the Party, theParty will today first have to establish its leadership over the massorganisations. For, a review of the history of the party over a long periodwould reveal that as a result of the revisionist thinking of regarding leadersof trade unions and peasant organisations (krishak sabha) as thereal representatives of the people, the party was reduced to a party of afew individuals. Because of this thinking, the party's political activitiesbecame inert, and the proletariat also became deprived of a correct revolutionaryleadership. All movements became confined within the bonds of movements ondemands. As a result Party members became enthusiastic over a single victoryand despondent over a single defeat. Secondly, as a result of overestimatingthe importance of this organisation, another type of localism is born. Comradesthink that the Party will suffer a serious loss if any comrade is shiftedfrom his area and they take this as a loss to personal leadership. From thislocalism another type of opportunism develops. Comrades think that theirarea is the most revolutionary; naturally nothing should be done here sothat there is police persecution. Because of this viewpoint they do not analysethe political situation of the entire country. As a result, commandism developsand organisational and daily propaganda work suffers. As a result, when thereis a call for a struggle, they assert that they will not do any small workand commit adventurism. Naturally the question arises--what are the methodswhich help to get out of these deviations ? What are those Marxist directiveswhich become essential tasks for building up a revolutionary party ?
Firstly, all works of organisation of the future will have to be done ascomplementary to the Party. In other words, the mass organisations will haveto be used as a part of serving one main purpose of the Party. For this reason,naturally, Party leadership will have to be established over the organisations.
Secondly, immediately from now the entire effort of the Party will have tobe spent on recruiting newer and newer cadres and on forming countless ActivistGroups consisting of them. It should be remembered that in the coming eraof struggles, the masses will have to be educated through the illegal machinery.So every Party member from now on will have to be made habituated to illegalwork. To get used to illegal work, it is an essential task for every ActivistGroup to paste illegal posters. It is only through this process that theywill be able to act as the bold core in leading struggles in the era ofstruggles. Otherwise, the revolution will be reduced to a petty bourgeoisidle dream.
Thirdly, it is through these active organisations that the Party will beable to establish its leadership over the mass organisations. So from nowon we shall have to help the members of the Activist Groups so that theycan fearlessly criticize the leaders of the mass organisations, and theirwork.
Fourthly, the work of the mass organisations will have to be discussed anddecided upon in the Party before it is implemented in the mass organisations.It should be remembered here that the policies of the mass organisationshave been wrongly practiced so long in the Party. To hold discussions onParty decisions is not called democratic centralism. This thinking is notin accordance with Marxism. And from all this thinking the conclusion hasto be drawn that the Party's programme will be adopted from below. But ifit is adopted from the lower level, then the correct Marxist way is notimplemented; in all these activities there inevitably is bourgeois deviations.The Marxist truth of democratic centralism is that the Party directive comingfrom higher leadership must be carried out. Because the Party's highest leaderis he who has firmly established himself as a Marxist through a long periodof movements and theoretical debates. We have the right to criticise Partydecisions; but once a decision has been taken, if any one criticizes it withoutimplementing it, or obstructs work, or hesitates to implement it, he willbe guilty of the serious offence of violating Party discipline.
As a result of having this idea of Party democracy as that of a debatingsociety, the road for espionage inside the Party is thrown open. Naturally,the revolutionary leadership of the Party then becomes bankrupt and the workingclass is deprived of a correct revolutionary leadership. This petty-bourgeoissort of thinking inside the Party leads the Party on to the verge of destruction.And this is the manifestation of petty-bourgeois thinking inside the Party.Their comfortable living and attitude of indisciplined criticism reducesthe Party to a mere debating society. This thinking becomes a hurdle in thepath of building up a Party of the proletariat--strong as iron.
Fifthly, the indisciplined life of the petty-bourgeoisie draws them towardsindisciplined criticism; that is, they do not want to criticize within thelimits of the organisation. To get rid of this deviation, we should remainconscious of the Marxist viewpoint regarding criticism. The characteristicsof Marxist criticism are: (1) Criticisms must be made within the Partyorganisation, that is, at the Party meeting. (2) The aim of criticism shouldbe constructive. That is, the aim of criticism is to advance the party fromthe point of view of principles and organisation, and we must always be vigilantthat there is no unprincipled criticism within the Party.
Come, comrades, in the present revolutionary era, let us complete the People'sDemocratic Revolution by fighting uncompromisingly against revisionism.

T I M E

OF ARTIFICIAL GOLD,
OR PURE THE RING?
A JEWELLER WILL NOT WASTE TIME,
GUESSING VAINLY,
BUT ACID FIRMLY DROPS
ON METAL SMOOTH,
AND IN A TRICE,
THE TRUTH APPEARS QUITE PLAINLY,
SO TIME LIKE ACID,
PROVES BEYOND ALL DOUBT,
AND ANSWER GIVES,
ITS HANDS RLENTLESS TURNING,
OUR WORDS WERE TRUE
OR SIMPLY EMPTY SOUND,
SINCERE OR FALSE,
OUR PROMISES AND YEARNING?
HOW WONDERFUL THE WORLD,
ITS GARMENTS EVER CHANGING,
WITH SUNSHINE'S GOLDEN STRANDS,
TOSSED UP ON BULL'S HORNS HIGH,
HOW WONDERFUL IS LIFE:
WITH LOVE AND HOPE STRUGGLE,
AND ONLY LIFE'S SHORT SPAN,
EVOKES A BITTER SIGH.

CAPITALISM AND ENVIRONMENT

Capitalism and the Environment

Written by Mick Brooks

Monday, 21 August 2006 

Global warming and other environmental issues are always in the news. The Green Party in the UK claims to be neither right wing nor left wing as, they say, environmental issues transcend the traditional issues of class and the division between rich and poor that define conventional political discussions and divisions. This is poppycock. The environmental problems, and the potential environmental catastrophe, we face are creations of the capitalist system.

Global warming – the ‘population time bomb’ – nuclear energy – pollution – environmental issues are always in the news. There is even a party – the Green Party – that claims to put the environment at the centre of its concerns. The Green Party claims to be neither right wing nor left wing as, they say, environmental issues transcend the traditional issues of class and the division between rich and poor that define conventional political discussions and divisions.

This is poppycock. Environmental issues are vitally important to us inhabitants of the planet earth. But the environmental problems, and the potential environmental catastrophe, we face are creations of the capitalist system.

Anyone who has read a standard account of the problem of global warming, for instance, will realise that it is possible, apparently through carelessness, to wipe out human life on earth. Hold on, and take a deep breath! Don’t capitalists also live on the planet? Is it in their interests that human life, including not just their profits but even their very existence, should be extinguished?

Of course it’s not in their interests. But things that happen under capitalism don’t just reflect the interests of the individual capitalist. Events follow the logic of the system.

This is how Marxism explains environmental degradation, “As individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken into account…What cared the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down the forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertiliser for one generation of highly profitable coffee trees – what cared they that heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of soil, leaving behind only bare rock! In relation to nature, as to society, the present mode of production is predominantly concerned only about the immediate, most tangible result, and then surprise is expressed that the more remote effects of actions directed to this end turn out to be quite different, are mostly quite opposite in character.” (Engels – Part played by labour in the transition from ape to man).

We know the Greek islands supported a much bigger population in antiquity than they do know. We know they were once covered in trees that prevented soil erosion. “We have seen how the goats prevented the regeneration of forests in Greece” (Engels op. cit.) The people who cut down the trees and introduced grazing animals were not stupid. They cut the trees down to make ships or just burned them to clear the land. They introduced goats because that was an easier way to make a living on their thin soils than ploughing the land. Short-term ‘rational’ decisions produced environmental disaster in the longer term.

We have seen that environmental degradation is not confined to capitalism. Marx explained why. In a letter to Engels discussing a book by Fraas, he observes, “The whole conclusion is that cultivation … when it progresses in a primitive way and is not consciously controlled (as a bourgeois of course he does not arrive at this) leaves deserts behind it – Persia, Mesopotamia, etc., Greece. Here again another socialist tendency!” (Marx letter to Engels 25th March 1868) The problem is that there is no planning on and no concern for environmental issues in an unplanned economy. The difference is that now capitalist anarchy produces environmental disaster on a much bigger scale than that of antiquity.

Environmental problems are usually presented as a clash between humans and nature. The greens argue that growth is bad because it always harms the environment, and the basic problem is to stop people from plundering the environment that they ultimately depend upon. Actually growth isn’t always ‘dirty’, it doesn’t always use up more resources. For instance over ten years Japan increased its output by 46%, but used 6% less energy to do so. (Boyd and Ardill – The greenhouse effect, New English Library, 1989)

The greens have actually missed a vital link in the chain of causation. The problem is not people versus the environment as if we are all isolated Robinson Crusoes. People interact with the environment by way of a specific mode of production, the way they organise themselves to get their daily bread. The capitalist mode of production is unplanned. Environmental degradation is quite simply off the balance sheet for the individual capitalist. Yet the sum total of individual ‘rational’ calculations can threaten human life on earth with environmental disaster.

“Man can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step is conditioned by their physical organisation.” (i.e. the mode of production – MB) “By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their material life.” (Marx and Engels, German Ideology, Collected Works Vol. 5 pp. 31-32) By progressively mastering nature in the labour process rather than passively adapting to it humans can alter nature and therefore harm the earth in doing so. But this is the only home we shall ever have! Economists talk about externalities. Externalities are things that don’t affect the balance sheet and therefore firms don’t worry about. The firm produces iron and steel. It gets paid for these outputs. It also produces smoke. It’s a nuisance, but the firm is not charged, so it doesn’t bother how much smoke it belches out. Who pays? We pay. We pay through lung and chest diseases. The National Health Service pays in treating us, so we pay twice. But the firm doesn’t pay.That is why the idea that the market treats the environment ‘efficiently’ is ridiculous. Firms minimise costs because that is the best way to make money. But they don’t minimise costs that others have to pay – externalities. Why bother? But these are real costs, just like pig iron and coking coal. They are just costs that have to be born by the rest of us.

So what if human life on earth expires in a welter of its own waste products? That would be quite an ‘externality’!

Global warming

Let’s get specific. Probably the biggest danger facing the world today is global warming This is better called climate change since, according to the predictions, not all parts of the globe will become universally warmer. There is a consensus among scientists that climate change is happening. This consensus is overwhelming.

It is true that if you google in “global warming” you may get a contrary impression. Prominent among the hits is www.globalwarming.org, which rubbishes the notion of climate change. It is promoted by the Cooler Heads Coalition and updated by the Competitive Enterprises Institute. We know where they’re coming from! The carbon fuel industries are spending vast sums of money to muddy the water on this issue. They just buy scientists like you might buy a KitKat. And their influence extends to the White House, inhabited by a man who made his fortune from oil and who instructs his understrappers to ignore or falsify the scientific evidence.

Back to the facts. First the earth as a whole is getting warmer. Secondly, this is partly because of human action – we don’t know how much. OK, the earth has always gone through hotter and colder periods (ice ages), but more and more greenhouse gases (the most important of which is CO2 (carbon dioxide) are being pumped out into the upper atmosphere. These operate like a greenhouse or blanket in that they let warmth from the sun in, but then trap it in the atmosphere. So the earth gets hotter. The science is complex. As the critics say, if all the warmth escaped from the earth no life would be possible. But, particularly since the 1980s, the earth has been warming up at a faster rate than ever before. And emissions from us, in the form of burning fossil fuels that give off greenhouse gases, are to blame.

The US National Academy of Sciences has issued a report, ‘Climate change science: an analysis of some key questions’ which concludes, “the changes observed over the last several decades are most likely due to human activities.” The earth as a whole is now warmer than it has been for the past 400,000 years. It is an observable fact that glaciers and polar ice are melting. This has a knock-on effect in that the ‘dark water’ of the ice caps is melted and no longer traps heat. The permafrost on the tundra melts and no longer locks in CO2.

Other human activity makes the situation worse. At present capitalists are gnawing away at the Amazon rain forest, burning it away just like the Spanish planters in Cuba but on a much larger scale. The aim once again is short-term gain in the form of soya crops, logging or cattle ranching. Already some of the denuded land has become exhausted. The Amazon rain forest is home to an estimated half of the world’s species. And biodiversity is a good thing in itself. How many unknown medicinal plants have we already exterminated? On top of that the forest is a ‘sink’, as the trees hold CO2. As they are cut down or burned off that CO2 adds to climate change.

The statistics don’t seem so extreme – an overall increase in temperature of 0.6-7% in the twentieth century. But over half of this increase has happened in the past thirty years and is in part attributable to human activity. Already it has led to droughts, extinctions of species and rising sea levels leading to localised flooding. It’s going to get worse.

Overfishing

“Imagine what people would say if a band of hunters strung a mile of net between immense all-terrain vehicles and dragged it at speed across the plains of Africa. This fantastical assemblage, like something from a Mad Max movie, would scoop up everything in its way: predators, such as lions and cheetahs, lumbering endangered herbivores, such as rhinos and elephants, herds of impala and wildebeest, family groups of warthog and wild dog. Pregnant females would be swept up and carried along, with only the smallest juveniles able to wriggle through the mesh….There are no markets for about a third of the animals they have caught because they don’t taste too good, or because they are simply too small or too squashed. The pile of corpses is dumped on the plain to be consumed by carrion. This efficient but highly unselective way of killing animals is known as trawling.” (Charles Clover – The end of the line: how overfishing is changing the world and what we eat, Ebury Press, 2005).

It shouldn’t be allowed, but it’s happening. When the Grand Banks fishery off Newfoundland was discovered it was said (with just a little exaggeration) that you could walk across the water on the backs of the fish without getting your feet wet. Now the Grand Banks are closed and Atlantic cod is an endangered species. It’s happened to the blue marlin. It’s happening to the bluefish tuna. And dragnets destroy the whole food chain at the bottom of the sea. So the Grand Banks, closed in 1992, have never recovered as a fishery. Overfishing is a prime example of how capitalist greed confronts us with environmental disaster.

Clover is a journalist for the Daily Telegraph, so don’t expect a socialist analysis. But he’s spot on when he tells how European countries subsidise the building of trawlers to make the overfishing worse; how the fishing industry begs for handouts because of the crisis in fish stocks which is of its own making; and how, having raped our own fisheries these trawlers sail to the coast of Africa to repeat the whole sorry business of overfishing. In the process they destroy the livelihood of local fishermen who have fished sustainably off their coasts for generations.

Where do we go from here?

Does the green analysis and programme help us to deal with environmental issues? Though the greens don’t have a unified body of ideas, (some would regard themselves as socialists) two common threads in their propaganda come up over and over:

"There are too many people on the planet."

"There are not enough resources."

These ideas come from a reactionary economist called Thomas Malthus who wrote at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He wrote of nature providing us a feast, which was spoiled when too many people turned up to ruin the party. Malthus thought that Britain was overpopulated. At the time he was writing there were probably less than ten million people living in this country. Half of those were engaged in agriculture and related activities. Now the island supports sixty million and less than 5% are needed to grow our food. OK, we don’t actually grow all our own food. But we export manufactured goods and, increasingly, financial and other services to pay for food, and other countries do the reverse as part of an international division of labour. The basic variable Malthus was missing out was productivity. That means the earth can support a growing population of humans over time. Malthus’ ideas were widely discredited with the steady improvement in working class living standards in the second half of the nineteenth century (which his theory suggested was impossible). Productivity rose and, through class struggle, the working class gained some benefit form the increased wealth they were producing.

Malthus’ basic theory on population still gets wheeled out again by doomsayers every so often.

Note what else Malthus was doing. As a representative of the landlord class, he was deliberately ignoring the fact that society is divided into classes and some people get a much bigger share of resources than others. He was blaming the poor for their poverty.

But isn’t it true that resources are finite? Of course it is. But we don’t know what they are. Take the case of oil. It’s not even clear what the reserves owned by the big oil companies are. BP ‘wrote down’ a large chunk of its reserves a while back. In other words it declared that oil, which people thought had been in the ground for the last 300 million years, did not really exist! Did this mean the world’s potential supply of crude had really shrunk? BP shareholders regarded the write down as just financial shenanigans. Certainly share prices were hit. But assessing global resources, whether owned or just lying in the ground waiting to be tapped, is much harder than adding up oil companies’ guesses at reserves. Nobody can agree a figure as to what the world’s resources are.

Here’s the reason. If the price of oil doubles to $77 a barrel (which it is at the time of writing), a whole lot of oil reserves suddenly become economically viable – profitable – to exploit. At half the price (oil was $35 a barrel not so long ago) they are not reserves at all. That’s capitalism for you! For decades scientists have known how to extract oil from bituminous shale. But under capitalism it’s not economic to extract it.

Even if we accept the argument that we are up against limited resources now, what should be our response? Malthus, as an apologist for the rich, cleverly eliminated the inequalities in our society from his analysis. Surely the first thing we should do is to eliminate the luxury spending of the rich, which gobbles up a disproportionate amount of earth’s resources? The second thing we should do is run a worldwide inventory to establish exactly how much we have of all these resources.

Then we should look into producing and adopting alternatives. We need to sit down and think very hard about the alternatives to burning fossil fuels as an energy source. We can’t do this under capitalism, partly because of the vested interests, such as the hydrocarbon capitalist in the White House, that dominate decision-making in most capitalist states. Dominant sections of the capitalist class are actually CO2-burning junkies. The other problem is that wind and wave power and other sustainable energy sources are not taken seriously by capitalists who can’t find a way of making money out of them. Therefore not enough research has been done on their viability. Finally, if absolutely necessary, we should implement a fair system of rationing until the alternatives come on stream.

How can we do this under capitalism? We can’t. The price mechanism praised by economists is essentially reactive. When the price of petrol goes up, people will buy more fuel-efficient cars. But the fact that oil prices have gone up is actually a signal that capitalism has been squandering the earth’s resources. Our action plan on the environment is really a plan for world socialism.

Won’t world capitalism do something about the mess it has created in the meantime? Even the imperialists under siege in Mafeking introduced rationing (communism in consumption) for the duration in order to survive.

They might. But the example of overfishing shows the problems. The capitalist state is captive to capitalist vested interests: the shipbuilding industry and the fishing industry cry out for subsidies. Competition, which involves the weakest going to the wall, is fine in the textbooks, but it’s not for the likes of them. Capitalist countries fight each other more viciously as resources become more difficult to grab. African countries have little muscle against the European Union’s trawling fleet.

Outside the flat-earthers in the White House, there is a consensus that global warming is a big problem – actually the biggest environmental problem the world faces by far. The capitalist powers met at Kyoto and came to an agreement. The USA opted out. But America, with less than 5% of the world’s population, is responsible for a quarter of all carbon emissions. So that makes the Accord pretty much meaningless. But a lot of those countries that agreed to the Kyoto targets to cut the increase in emissions (not cut emissions) have failed to meet them. It is actually quite difficult for a capitalist state to control the activities of tens of thousands of capitalist firms who are responsible for giving off CO2. And everybody agrees that Kyoto will not solve the problem. It is usually described as a ‘first step’, and that first step has never really been taken.

So world socialism really is the only way we can protect the environment, in other words our home, the planet earth

Death of Kishenjee, who had been one of the legend communist fighter, is unfortunate to the proletarians of India, it is highly and hearty tribute to him.

Anna Hazarey and puiblic

I respect to Anna hazarey , I appreciate with  his though, principle, I support his issue that fight against the corruption, to be implement strong Lokpal Bill. It is remeberable thing  to all people that whoever want to corruption free society, should have make clear and free corruption themselves. Wanting changes is good idea, but do we have try to change to ourselves? We the middle class people are always in illegal way, to be occupy slum area, to make home illegally on the roadside, to be park vehicle wherever, throwing wastage on the path, etc.  we do better for only selfness but not for society, we are the enemy for ourselves, whatever going on in India, are not only the resposnsible of leaders and other beurocrasts, we are also little participeint .  Nothing will changes and bring better if we will not change to ourselves, even lokpal bill passed.  This is the way of reform but we need revolution, not in quality but in quantity.

Storm has begun

AN Interview With Arundhati Roy,

This article redirected from frontline revolution, I think this appreciatable.

Arundhati Roy, transcript of Q and A at CUNY Graduate Center, New York, 11/9/2011

By Sarahana, Impose Magazine

arundhati roy speaking at CUNY graduate center[Arundhati Roy at CUNY Graduate Center. All photos by Sarahana]

14 years ago, Indian author Arundhati Roy made her debut with The God of Small Things, a novel that won the Booker prize and went on to sell more than 6 million copies worldwide. But the world of fiction was quickly abandoned when she turned to full time activism, churning out fiery political essays, and generally getting into trouble with the Indian government and religious fundamentalists.

Most recently, she spent time with Indian Maoist insurgents — at their invitation — in the jungles from which they operate. The essay she’s brought back has been published as Walking with the Comrades, from which she read a few excerpts at an event hosted at City University of New York’s Graduate Center (despite the center’s further slashed, and quickly depleting, funds).

This is a transcript of the Q&A that followed the reading.

Some redundancies have been removed and friendly titles have been added.

—– TRANSCRIPT OF Q&A —–

(Love Makes Our Battle Ferocious)

Ruth Gilmore (CUNY): Thank you Arundhati for that amazing reading and the thoughts that you brought to my mind and all of our minds as you described this war against the forest people. One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot having read some of your work over the years and listening to you read now is how much beauty you put into a story [..?] and I think all the time about how you help people to think about the worst things that are happening in the world so that we can do something about it. And I wonder if you would talk, if you’d be interested in talking, a little bit about the sort of political project and the aesthetic project and finding all of the beauty in moments of the greatest hurt[?].

Arundhati Roy: Well I don’t actively look for it because it’s there. You know if you read the rest of the essay that I read from, actually we spent so much of our time just laughing, you know, inside [the forest], because I always sense that when you’re outside the immediate area of resistance, it’s much easier to feel despair because you have that choice. You can always say, “Okay, doesn’t matter, I won’t study politics, I’ll do interior design” or something whereas people who are in there, they don’t have a choice, you know. Even despair is not a choice because whether you’re a pessimist or whether you’re an optimist, no one is asking you, like you have to fight that battle some way or the other and there’s a sort of clarity there. And a lot of beauty, and a lot of hope.

I think for me it’s not a strategy, the way I write. It’s just the way I write. Or it’s just the way I think. I mean 10, 20, 30 years ago when I began to write about these things, this was at a time when the elite of India was so optimistic about the project of free market and they would say “this woman needs to be sent to have her head examined”, you know, “she’s crazy” and so on. Whether we win or lose or whatever it is, this is the side we’re on. And the truth is if you live in India, or in Kashmir, you will know that there’s so much to be said, there’s so much wilderness, there’s so much imagination that hasn’t been enclosed, and that I think is what makes our battle so ferocious; because there is so much that we love. It’s not that we have to retrieve it, we have it. And it hasn’t been destroyed yet, though the project is on. It hasn’t been destroyed yet. And so I think we only fight if there’s something we love that we have to save, otherwise what’s the point.

(Not the Voice of the Voiceless, Or Any Nonsense Like That)

Peter Hitchcock (CUNY): One of the things we do at the center  is we have a year-long seminar with faculty fellows and graduate student fellows and coincidentally today we were discussing your work. One of the questions was about audience because I think it surprised many of us reading this work just how little of the state of affairs is actually being discussed within the transnational media conglomerates. And so I guess my question is about whether you see your primary role as bringing these stories, this reporting, as it were, to the world. Or do you see the primary apex of your activism actually within what is extant in the Indian state?

Arundhati Roy: Well, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my role in that I think a lot of what I do is not necessarily aimed at trying to persuade people to my point of view or anything. It’s more about… how can I say it. For example, about 2 or 3 months ago, I got a message from the forest. And it said, “Didi, aap ke likhne ke baad, jungle mey khushi ki laher pheilithi,” which means, “After you wrote, a wave of happiness went through the forest.” And for me, that’s why I write, to be part of the resistance because I don’t necessarily see the transnational media or the idea of having to build bridges of solidarity — I did, at one time; I used to say that India’s best export is dissent. But now I feel very much that people really have to fight their own battles. You know, we can’t spend all our energy trying to build transnational solidarities because those are very fragile. If they come, it’s great, but I never… I mean, let’s say when I wrote Walking with the Comrades, a 20,000-word piece, I had no idea who the hell would want to publish it. But you just have to write it. I wrote it, and then it was published in a big magazine, and it really did in some ways change the nature of the discourse because otherwise these were just faceless terrorists and so on.

But I think I always see it as an act of solidarity with the people whose struggle I’m a part of. I never see myself as representing somebody or being the voice of the voiceless or any nonsense like that, you know. I am very much part of the whole thing. I’m just doing my part in it.

(The Paradox of China)

Peter Hitchcock (CUNY): Speaking of solidarity, you mentioned in the piece that you read about the export of ore to China. It must be one of the paradoxes of history, right, that as part of the operation against Maoists in India, ore is going to the Maoists in China.

Arundhati Roy:  I was in China some time ago and at some meeting, we were talking about the three gorgeous dams, and I said, you know, if you object to a dam or [?] project in China, then what do you do? They said you write a letter to the Letters & Petitions department, after when you get arrested. I said, “Well clearly you need some Indian Maoists now”.

But China’s interesting isn’t it? That in some ways it’s becoming like a capitalistic economy run by a Communist state. So in India they look to China with a great deal of envy, thinking, you know, “Why are we sagging with this democracy, however tattered it is?”; because you can’t, in India, actually you cannot push through this free market project without militarizing. And yet in order to be the favored finance destination, you have to pretend to be a democracy. So all that is going on.

But, just, since you mentioned China, I recently read Kissinger’s book on China, and there’s a delightful part in it, where he talks about how after Tiananmen Square, the Chinese couldn’t understand the cooling off of the relations with the United States. They couldn’t understand how a country could place human rights at the center of its foreign policy [laughs]. That’s Kissinger’s idea of U.S. foreign policy: human rights at the center.

(Anna Harazre and the Middle Class’ War Against the Poor)

Peter Hitchcock (CUNY): On that question of how this situation appears in the foreign press, recently, somebody like Anna Hazare has seen a lot more press than the economic and political crisis in Central India. Do you have an explanation for that?

Arundhati Roy: Anna Hazare [laughs]. I suppose the closest explanation to that movement is the Tea Party here. It’s really very interesting what happened in India. Basically, just before that movement sort of bubbled up to the surface, the government and the corporations and the media were reeling under a scandal, which was known as 2G, which was basically the selling of spectrum for mobile phones, and basically corporations, media lobbyists, the Information Minister, and all the way up to the Prime Minister, people were involved in selling billions of dollars worth of this spectrum to private corporations at very cheap rates, and then they resold them and made huge profits; and a whole lot of phone conversations had been taped; and big media journalists, the major corporations in India, and all these people were involved.

Suddenly, for the first time, the whole gloss of, “Corporates are honest and efficient” fell apart; it was shattered. And suddenly this anti-corruption movement came up, supported by the — surreptitiously supported by the — extreme right, by the fascists, by the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or National Patriotic Organization]; but not really showing their hand. And they only spoke about government corruption and their movement was supported by the corporate media, 24/7. There was not one, single, minor slogan against any corporation. It was all just about… not just even government, but just about the ruling party, which is the Congress, because, you know, there was so much of the right wing behind it.

And this bill itself, which they are trying to pass, very few people have read it, but I have, and it’s crazy; because it basically suggests that there should be a panel of people who are pure and virtuous and picked in quite complicated ways, but they should run a kind of super cop, where there are 40,000 policemen overseeing corruption; how these 40,000 people are not going to be corrupt themselves you don’t know.

And actually eventually what happens in India is that we have a country where it isn’t possible for people to be legal. You have hundreds of thousands, millions of people living in slums, you have roadside vendors, you have everybody who’s just being preyed upon by the state because they are illegal; I mean they are living in illegal places, they are pavement dwellers; and you suddenly have the middle class turning on them and saying “It’s corrupt politicians that are allowing these dirty slums there and these filthy people selling samosas on carts, and everybody should be moved into the malls or moved out of the cities.” Any anti-corruption movement has to be nailed to an accepted legality, and that accepted legality is going to belong to the middle class, and there’s a huge support of the middle class for this anti-corruption movement for this reason.

So you have exactly the opposite of Occupy Wall Street, you know? So you have a huge middle class support of people who are saying that it’s corruption that’s preventing us from becoming a super power, you know? It’s the poor that are getting in the way.

(Gandhi, Get Your Gun!)

Ruth Gilmore (CUNY): I have a follow-up question to something you said earlier that gets to a question folks here in the audience have put to you. You said earlier in response to what I asked you about that you were maybe skeptical about building bridges and solidarity. And yet the notion of what their [?] means [?] all these different qualities to it, so in some ways they’re going to be a battle of that people in that particular forest [?]. But there’s of course a raid against the hugest global forces imaginable; and while I certainly don’t think that we should put on our green fatigues and run there since there are all these battles to fight here, I’m just curious about how you hope things might turn out in the end if all the battles are [?]. So let me follow with a question here: “Dear Arundhati,” writes one of your admirers, “There was a part in Walking with the Comrades where you cite Gandhi’s ideas on stewardship, which is basically a defense of private property. How does or should the Indian public square away the moral imperatives of non-violence and property when there’s so much violence and dispossession waged in the very name of ‘security’ and ‘development’?” — our writer likes the quotation marks.

Arundhati Roy: Well, I actually got into quite a lot of trouble and quite a few arguments because there’s a part in the essay where I talk about the fact that, just in terms of consumption, the guerilla army is more Gandhian than any Gandhian. And, that one day I should write a play called “Gandhi, get your gun” because, as you can imagine, non-violence, or the idea of non-violence has been co-opted by the elite in ways that suit them. So my question is, to people who — you know, if it’s Anna Hazare who’s on a fast supported by the corporate media and supported by the middle class, that’s fine; but non-violence is a form of political theatre that can be extremely effective provided you have a sympathetic audience; but if you’re deep in the forest, surrounded by 1,000 policemen who are burning your village, I mean you can hardly go on a hunger strike, right?

And, I ask: Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Can people who have no money boycott goods when they don’t have any goods or any money at all? And Gandhi believed in this idea of trusteeship that rich people should be allowed to hold on to what they have and be persuaded to be nice about it, you know? And obviously I don’t believe in that.

I… to come back to the question you were asking about solidarity: see, what I meant was, I didn’t mean that there shouldn’t be solidarity, but I think that those solidarities will happen when people understand what are these battles, what is the connection between Wall St. occupation and the people fighting in the jungle? Right now that might be a little muddled because are we really clear about what we’re asking for, what we’re fighting for? You know, even in the last essay in this book, which I’ll read a part out at the end; the last essay is called “The Trickle-Down Revolution”, in which I say, yes, right now the Maoists are fighting against the corporate takeover, but will they leave the bauxite in the mountain? Do they have a different way of looking at the world? A different development model; because the western world, and particularly the United States, has managed to brainwash everyone into believing that this is progress, this is civilization, this is paradise, you know?; whereas what I’m saying is that really what we’re asking for, and what this battle in the forest is about, is a different idea of happiness, a different idea of fulfillment, a different idea of civilization; and we mustn’t be frightened to articulate our demands, our dreams, our need for change very clearly.

(Capists & Liddites)

The time really has come for that, and if you think of a society in which 400 people own more than half of all of Americans, clearly, you don’t have to be a philosopher or a huge intellectual to say this has to stop, and that today I think that we have to say that no individual, no corporation can have unlimited amounts of money. There has to be a cap on it, there has to be a lid on it; so we call ourselves capists and liddites, if you like.

But, like for example, in India, there’s a mining company that owns steel plants, it does iron ore mining, it makes millions from it, called the Jindals. And there’s a resistance to their projects all over the place; so when you’re mining iron ore, you just pay a small royalty to the government, and you make all those millions. With all those millions, all these mining companies, they can buy judges, they can buy journalists, they can buy TV stations, they can buy everything. The CEO is a member of the parliament, he’s won the right to fly the national flag on his house with the Chairman of the Flag Foundation. They have a law school — like this beautiful campus in the heart of some kind of squalor outside Delhi — where the faculty comes from all over the world because they are paid so well, and they teach environment law, all kinds of other kindnesses. And, they recently even ran a protest workshop. They had all the activists and poets and singers coming and talking about protest and music. So these guys own everything. They own universities, they own protests, they fund activists, they have the mines, they are in parliament, they have the flag; they have everything. The Tata’s [Indian multinational conglomerate] have mines, they have foundations, they fund filmmakers, they make salt, they make trucks, they make internet cables. You can’t get away from them, and they’re not accountable. So, other than being capists and liddites, we demand that no corporation can have this sort of cross ownership. If you have a mine, stick with the mine, you can’t own a television company and the flag and be in parliament and run the universities, you can’t, you know? So, we need regulations like this, otherwise you end up like Italy where Berlusconi owns 99% of the TV outlets.

Someone in audience: In New York, Mayor Bloomberg.

Arundhati Roy: So there are some pretty simple things. Frankly, I also believe that children shouldn’t inherit their parents’ wealth. There has to be a way of limiting what people can have because we can’t depend on people’s saintliness. [?] Nice people, and eat organic vegetables. It doesn’t work.

(When Animals Begin to Lose Their Mind)

Peter Hitchcock (CUNY): I’ll try to follow that up by combining two questions. Given, again, the situation that you just described, is it possible for this insurgency to win without some form of transformation at the level of government in India as a whole? In other words, can there be a compromise of some sort, or can they only win with a different government?

Arundhati Roy: No, first of all, I think it would be foolhardy to believe that anybody can actually win a military victory against the Indian army. At the same time, we remember that in Kashmir there are 700,000 soldiers who’ve been posted there to deal with what they [?] something like 300 militias. Once a whole population is against you, you can’t hold down, so if 12 million people in Kashmir need 700,000 soldiers, then what do, you know, 600 million need? The math doesn’t work out. In fact, nobody can win that, then there’s just devastation.

I think that is not a question of the government transforming. I think it’s a question of other movements and people in India realizing that it is for their own good that they better stand up for this battle; because, eventually, even in the terms of the free market, even in their own terms, earning a 5% royalty and selling of your mountains, rivers and forests; you’re really paying for other people’s economies with your ecology; it’s only when animals begin to lose their mind do they soil their own nests. So, there is no logic to say that this is good for the country; not even the logic of the free market.

(Trading in Every Feeling for a Silver Coin)

Peter Hitchcock (CUNY): One of the questions that you’ve filled in many times obviously is that The God of Small Things sold 6 million copies around the world. And then you embark upon a non fiction career of criticizing the government that can imprison you. So, the question basically — I know that you’re not into that kind of careerism which says you must write for the dollar — but do you ever feel that pull, that you could write fiction again? Are you writing fiction?

Arundhati Roy: First you have to rephrase your question, and remove and separate the talk about money from the talk about literature.

Peter Hitchcock (CUNY): I’m a professor at CUNY, I have to.

Arundhati Roy: No, to be honest, I really… I’m even speaking for myself when I say people should not have unlimited amounts of money. I so often have said that it took me 4 years to write The God of Small Things and by the time I finished writing it, I had no idea what I had done; you know, whether it would make any sense to anybody or whatever; and suddenly it became this big success, and I used to feel like every feeling in The God of Small Things had been traded in for a silver coin. It was, you know there’s something ugly about being rewarded in that way. I mean a little bit was okay but it was really too much.

To answer your question about fiction, yes, today I really do feel now that I’ve said, in some urgent sense — there was a sense of urgency about my non fiction; and there’s absolutely no sense of urgency when I write fiction; I just like to really take my time over it. And I feel that I’ve said all I’ve needed to say directly. So I do feel like returning to that other place where I can tell it as a story, you know? But because I’m not a careerist and I’m not particularly ambitious and I’m not going anywhere, I find it difficult, especially if you live in India now, there’s such a lot of horrendous things happening all the time, and I just keep getting sort of dragged into it; and as I’ve said before, fiction is such a delicate thing, such a ambiguous thing; and to do that, to kind of build a sort of steel wall around a very ambiguous thing, is difficult. But I hope it happens.

.