The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-12-28

struggle, although it would be truer to say
that it can be only method of rejecting the
struggle for peasant interests.
The officials of British imperialism also
realize quite clearly the danger for them of the
influence of the proetariat being carried into
the countryside. "The Communist movement
is still not very widespread outside the town
proetariat, but it may prove allurlng to the
Indian peasant If the British strong hand be
removed the Indian Royt will kill his land
owner, just as did the Russian peasant" (Sir
Basil Blackett in Foreign Affairs, October,
1929 That is not only an expression of Brit
ish imperialism's fear of the rising revolu-
tionary wave, but reminder to the Indian
bourgeoisie of the unity of their interests with
those of British capital in the work of defend
ing landed property against the peasants.
The nearer the Indian bourgeoisie gets to
decisive capitulation to British Imperialism the
more it endeavours to extend the basis of its
influence with the masses, and not only the
petty bourgeois masses of the city population,
but even among the workers and peasants. 1t
is with this endeavour that we have to connect
the attempts of the leaders of the Indian Ma
tional Congress to transform that congress into
a strictly centralized organization, with wide
ly ramified network of nuclei in the villages
and with a firmly established discipline. In
Young India Ghandi has already complained
that the congress organization embraces only
two thirds of the $50 districts of British India.
The Indian bourgeoisie needs centralism of
is political influence over the masses just in
order to block the path of the revolutionary
wave, and also to get it's hands on the machin-
cry Of administration, which it could after
wards blend with the British bureaucracy's
machinery of administration.
British Imperialism is trying to help the
national reformist bourgeosie to paralyse the
revolutionary rise, overwhelming the working
class and all the radical elements of the ma
tional emancipation movement with ruthless
persecution. Thus it is trying to ensure
monopoly of legality, and with it monopoly
of the representation Of the masses, to the
Indian bourgeoisie In the struggle with the
Bombay textile workers the Indian bourgeoisie
completely unmasked itself, acting not only as
the direct agent of the British police system,
but as the chief organiser of strike-breaking
in the enterprises. From time to time the
Indian bourgeose may play with strikes, in SO
far as those strikes occur at British enterprises,
but as soon as the working-class strike move
ment acquires a genuinely national scale the
Indian bourgeoisie openly declares ruthless war
on it.
At the December congress the Indian bour-
geoise will feel no conjunction in hiding its
treachery beneath a copious flood of cleft
wing" phrases and "left wing" gestures. And
for that very reason the working class must at
set itself the task of concentrating the
political activity Of the masses. 1t must pull
off the glove of the Indian bourgeosie, by
summoning the masses to resolute struggle
against any kind of negotiations with British
imperialism, and by permeating these masses
with the idea of the systematic and direct
preparation Of a mass strike. 1t must oppose
the bourgeois methods of national reformist
treachery with its own revolutionary methods
of .mobilising the masses; to the bourgeois
methods of extension Of the political and or
sensational basis of compromise and deception
of the masses it must oppose its own methods
of extending the basis of the revolutionary
movement among the masses. The working
class must formulate it's political advance
guard, it must find organisational formulation
in left wing trade unions, discardng the
treacherous leadership of JOSH and Co., and
finally, the representatives of the working
class must proclaim the programme of the
peasant revolution and make it the touch
stone of all the further struggle.
A revolutionary class has already been born
in India which will smash through the bour-
geois betrayal. The question of midas free
dom will be decided, not at a round table in
London, but at the weaving looms Of Bombay
and Calcutta y