Invitation for seminar on “Global Economic Crisis and the Resistible Rise of Fascism and Right-wing Politics”

Seminar on “Global Economic Crisis and the Resistible Rise of Fascism and Right-wing Politics”

Friends,

Recently, the gruesome murder of Govind Pansare and before that the assassination of Narendra Dobhalkar in Maharashtra, the attempts to harrass Teesta Settelwad who has been fighting for the rights of the victims of Gujarat communal fascist genocide of 2002, the planned attempts to fan communal tensions through vicious campaigns of “Love Jihad” and “Ghar Wapsi” have once again put this question on the agenda of history: What has led to the rise of communal Fascist politics and other brands of extreme right-wing fundamentalist politics? Is this rise irresistible? If not, what are the ways to fight it? These are cardinal questions that time has presented before us. And we can safely assume that the future of our society rests on the answers that we are going to give.

The rise of Fascism and other myriad brands of extreme right-wing fundamentalist politics is not a phenomenon particular to our country. The rise of National Front in France, the Golden Dawn in Greece, Svoboda in Ukraine and similar smaller political parties in a number of European countries, the election of Tony Abbott in Australia on the one hand; and the rise of religious fundamentalist outfits like ISIS and Boko Haram on the other, are not isolated ruptures in the meta-narrative of global capital and liberal bourgeois democracy; these events as well as the developments in our country are characteristic of a global trend. Once again, the rise of Fascist and other forms of extreme Right-wing politics coincides with the structural crisis of world capitalist system. It would now be tautological to contend that the global economic crisis that has gripped the world capitalist system since 2007 has proved to be much more structural than the Great Depression of 1930s and it is very much different from all previous cycles of capitalist crises. This crisis is too stubborn and unlike previous ones, there is negligible hope of a period of real boom following the worst phase of the crisis. 

History bears testimony to the fact that everytime there is a crisis in the capitalist system, Fascism raises its head in every nook and corner. However, history also shows that the same crisis has the potential to give impetus to revolutionary workers movements. The economic crises have given rise to wars, which in turn have led to revolutions. As history shows, the rise of Fascism or other forms of extreme Right-wing politics on the one hand as well as people’s and workers’ revolutions on the other, had been the fall out of the same structural crisis of the system in the Twentieth century. Evidently, the revolutionary Left movement has fell short of understanding the changes in the modus operandi of Capital in the age of Globalization; it has been barely successful in comprehending the particularity of the latest crisis of capital and also the latest surge of the Fascist Right; consequently, it has not yet devised the new ways and strategies of the working class movement in this age of Globalization. 

As a result, the revolutionary communist and progressive movement has also failed to work out strategies to counter the offensive of the Fascist Right in India, and elsewhere. The court battles, ceremonial protests at Jantar-Mantar or Dadar Station, investigative and journalistic expose of the Fascists, the reactive activism of the civil rights and democratic rights movements do not suffice! Is it not self-evident from the history of Mumbai of last three and a half decades, following the assassination Krishna Desai and the destruction of working class movement here? Is that not clear from the history of India since Independence? The defensive reactive activism has wrecked havoc on the revolutionary Left/progressive movement as well as the workers’ movement and has allowed the Fascists to effect systematic destruction of the workers’ movement in Mumbai and elsewhere. The parliamentary Left in India is equally responsible for making the resistible rise of Fascism an irresistible rise. The history of Mumbai exemplifies this in the best possible way.

The need of the hour is to ‘begin from the beginning’; the question that we need to answer today is this: What is Fascism and how to fight it? What can be the strategies of the revolutionary Left as well as the workers’ movement to fight the resistible rise of Fascism? The answers of these questions cannot be intuitive or axiomatic, as some of us might presume. We must subject them to close critical scruitiny. We must also undertake a self-criticism of the revolutionary Left movement as far as the fight against Fascism is concerned. We must perform these urgent tasks to prevent the political and social catastrophe that is hovering above us.

‘Polemic’ has invited Abhinav Sinha, a political activist, independent research scholar and editor of a workers’ monthly ‘Mazdoor Bigul’, Rajan Padwal, lecturer of economics in Maharishi Dayanand College, Parel, Prof. Murzban Jal, director, Centre for Educational Studies, Pune to speak on these issues. We extend our heartfelt invitation to all of you. The talk will be followed by a interactive session with the speakers.

With Revolutionary Greetings,

Polemic