ANTI-WAR CONGRESS. PRAGUE, 24 to 26 May 2024 / References from Faridabad Majdoor Samachar

From 20 to 26 May 2024, groups and individuals from different parts of the world will meet in Prague to coordinate anti-war activities as part of the Week of Action. The series of events will also include an anti-war congress, which will take place from Friday 24 to Sunday 26 May 2024. Campaigns, direct actions, projects, publications and analyses related to the issue of war will be presented at the congress. Among other things, this internationalist event will serve as an open assembly that will try to combine theoretical background with practical activities.

We consider it necessary, in the process of resistance to war, to develop an anti-capitalist practice which seeks to preserve political autonomy. In concrete terms, this means that we want to organize outside the political parties, outside the structures of the states, and against all states. We are particularly interested in the ways how we can oppose all the harsh conditions to which we have been exposed and subjected during interstate wars and capitalist peace. We are interested in ways to sabotage wars, how to deprive our enemies of resources, how to undermine the ability of states and their armies to continue wars.

Which way to go and what is to be done? How to join forces and get organized? We will look for answers based on class, not national differentiation; answers that take into account the sheer contradiction between rank-and-file soldiers and officers, between wage laborers and bosses, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. We will look for ways to make soldiers in uniform of any state army identify themselves with the social struggle of their brothers and sisters on the other side of the front line, and not in the murderous orders of their officers. We will also look for ways to oppose false friends, all those who seek to transform the class struggle into a national or religious struggle for a new state, a new capitalist space, better adapted to their needs.

We support the internationalist community affirming the struggle against the bourgeoisie of all warring sides, against the armies of all states, against the capitalists of each country. Current manifestations of resistance, however contradictory and fragmented they are, undoubtedly contain the seeds of a social polarization that can turn wars between states into class confrontation.

What is meant is the confrontation between the defenders of the nation, the states and capitalism on the one hand, and the social class on the other, which is beginning to realize that defending the nation to which it is bound in chains only serves the interests of those who exploit it.

Direct action against wars now takes various forms, more or less targeted, more or less organized. Let’s strive for a qualitative shift whereby individual acts of resistance break out of their isolation through interconnection and coordination. The common enemy in every epoch is, first of all, capitalism, and therefore every state that structures it, the army that defends it, the bourgeoisie that embodies it. The only way out of the nightmare of capitalist wars and capitalist peace is a collective awakening: we must see and sabotage the whole machinery of war, overthrow its representatives and reclaim our power as creators of the world.

We call on groups and individuals interested in participating in the anti-war congress in Prague to contact us well in advance with proposals for the program.

Together against capitalist wars and capitalist peace!

ANTI-WAR CONGRESS / PRAGUE / 24 to 26 May 2024 /

FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/1133087654354988/?ref=newsfeed

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Faridabad Majdoor Samachar’s assessments, estimates, readings are very different, could be said to be almost opposite to those of these friends.

➢ From 1982 to 2020, Faridabad Majdoor Samachar has been immersed in activities of factory workers in Delhi’s Okhla Industrial Area, Udyog Vihar industrial area in Gurgaon, Industrial Model Town Manesar, NOIDA industrial conglomerate, and Faridabad industrial city.

In Faridabad Majdoor Samachar before 1996, besides factory reports there used to be material like ‘Wage workers and Country’, ‘Wage workers and War’, ‘Glimpse of phony communists’, ‘Marxism’, ‘Imperialism’, ‘Constitution’, ‘Parliament’, ‘Laws’, ‘Government Budget’. There were positions regarding these subjects.

It was factory workers activities that by 1996 forced Faridabad Majdoor Samachar to discard its very premise of “Preach-Teach”. It was not a sudden change. In hindsight, glimpses of change can be seen in each monthly issue of the paper. In this context, our English publications can be seen as a preliminary sum-up.

1. ‘a ballad against work’ (1996)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OGIJVVSCGvCsX5Vq5OjUD44eLSrcwk2Z/view?usp=drivesdk

2. ‘Reflections on Marx’s Critique of Political Economy’ (1997)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fF0NOd82NStjlTG2TFUXM__mdC6lDwI7/view?usp=drivesdk

3. ‘Self-Activity of Wage Workers: Towards A Critique of Representation & Delegation’ (1998)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MWjsA6GDMHmq46loRPIcvi1dvGaMCIuo/view?usp=drivesdk

★ It took more than a decade to overcome the habit of “injecting revolutionary consciousness in factory workers”.

After the 1996-7-8 publications in English, it was “No preach-teach” but a bunch of knotty questions remained. Be they workers of GEDORE Hand Tools Company or workers of Escorts Group factories or for that matter 1500 workers of Bata Shoe Faridabad in 1983-85 dealing with the management-union-government… How do workers do this in tandem? During Hitler’s time, with the atmosphere of nationalism and war, how did millions of factory workers in thousands of factories in Germany in tandem reduce production by thirty percent?

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar November 2015 issue:

Globe Capacitors factory worker: “That day we had not held any meeting. We had not discussed amongst ourselves. No calling by anyone to say something. All were quiet. Everyone came to wash their hands before 12:30.”

“Was it magic?”

“No magic. It happens in a month or so….”

It is wage workers’ being, their very being which is expressed in such in tandem activities. In English: Morphic Resonance. It was only then that factory workers’ activities in tandem became visible to Faridabad Majdoor Samachar and began constituting its content. In this regard, November 2021 publication, Fragments & Pathways For Imagining a Near Future seems to be appropriate.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CuDUgZ8OWvDtvug8eA-AXUmXTDByE986/view?usp=drivesdk

➢ Conversational interactions during December 2022 – March 2023 and November 2023 – March 2014 journeys seem to be relevant here.

Some of them in English:

1. An exemplary engineered strike: The Great Bombay Textile Strike (Mumbai, December 2022)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WTGWSLX8x8DBAWIGG9yv9GxebJcndnMP/view?usp=drivesdk

2. Temporary Workers and Unions (Mumbai, December 2022)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16CO2GIGbdPC6iCvjNfP_Gz8jNcipp0Xb/view?usp=drivesdk

3. Sri Lanka: July-August 2022 upsurge And a young American’s social travels

(December 2022 Interactions in Mumbai)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oB_DQwGhxobKxao1xberiJTGNs950Sc3/view?usp=drivesdk

4. Kerala: A Social Factory For the Production of Global Wage Workers (March 2024, Chennai)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mWhIGrgY-YyzPNmSw2W1sY0dt_XCEBAh/view?usp=drivesdk

5. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

A friend in Bengaluru gave me a 700 page book published in 2019. The book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” is by Shoshana Zuboff. She is a Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School and a Faculty Associate at Harvard Law School.

After a long time, I have started reading a book. During the journey from Bengaluru to Trivandrum, I have read the Introduction, “Home Or Exile in the Digital Future”.

Professor Shoshana Zuboff’s extensive research seems to be sketching the contemporary market relations. The information is relevant, very relevant. Internalised desire for democracy, the democratic state can be said to be the limiting factor.

— 22.02.2024, Trivandrum

6. A Brief Interaction With MRF Tyres workers in Chennai + (10 March 2024)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TKorl6zGWkLkoUdNz0Zc4wWn95vHWAB0/view?usp=drivesdk

➢ Faridabad Majdoor Samachar’s readings of the current scenario:

Vibrant times. Pregnant times.

Work in general and wage work in particular are rapidly approaching their end.

The possibilities, the probabilities, the densities of overcoming hierarchies in all spheres seem to be significantly increasing at a rapid pace.

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