MAY Day, the traditional day for working class solidarity, is being celebrated around the world by workers, trade unions and political parties linked to the working class.

It is an appropriate occasion to assess the worldwide political currents and how they relate to and affect the working class movement and Left politics.  The past year has seen a further shift to the right in most of the advanced capitalist countries.  The election of Trump as President in the United States came in the wake of the growing popularity of  extreme right and xenophobic parties in Europe.  The increase in the support for the National Front headed by Marine Le Pen in France, the Freedom Party in Netherlands, the Alternative for Germany in Germany were all indicative of this trend.

There is also the rightist counter offensive in Latin America against the Left.  After the right came to power in Brazil and Argentina, the rightwing backed by US imperialism is aggressively trying to destabilize the situation in Venezuela. 

One factor in this shift to the right in Europe has been the bankrupt politics of the mainstream social democratic parties.  These parties which had traditional ties to the workers became complicit in the neo-liberal policies adopted in Europe in the last three to four decades.  When in government, they have pushed austerity measures which have badly hit the working class and other sections of the working people.  In the past few years, the relentless attacks on jobs and social welfare benefits have pushed the working class away from these social democratic parties.  In many places, in the absence of a credible Left alternative,  this anger and alienation against the prevailing system  has seen support for the rightwing nationalist parties grow.  The success of Trump and the rising graph of the rightwing nationalist parties which oppose the European Union are partly a result of this phenomenon.

However, the past year has also seen a change with the much needed reaction against the compromised and collaborationist politics of the social democratic parties. Left politics has begun to assert itself.  In Britain, the Labour Party, which has been tainted by disgraceful record of Blairism, has sought to break away from this past after the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader. In the United States, the last year’s presidential election campaign saw Bernie Sanders with his “democratic socialist” platform garner significant support from the working class, students and educated younger people.  This was also a revolt against the neo-liberal economic outlook of the Democratic Party

In the recently concluded first round of the French presidential election, Jean Luc Melenchon stood on a Left platform La Insoumise (France Defiant) and emerged with the strong vote of 19.62 per cent.  The social democratic Socialist Party candidate got a poor 6.35 per cent of the vote. 

In all these instances, leaders or candidates with a Left platform have been able to  muster support and put up a fight by breaking with the rightwing social democratic and centrist positions.  The support they gathered showed the vacuum that exists that  needs to be filled up by a strong Left alternative. 

While trade unions and the workers have been putting up resistance to the austerity measures and neo-liberal policies, there has been a disconnect in the sense that there is no political force which has emerged to utilize this resistance to present a credible political alternative. The emergence of Left platforms untainted by the sell out of the social democrats and “socialists” makes the next step imperative of linking up the trade union struggles and all other movements opposed to neo-liberal capitalism to a clear-cut Left platform which alone has the potential of becoming a political alternative.

In India, there has been an upswing in workers’ struggles in the last few months since the general strike on September 2016.  There has been a series of strike actions and other working class protests.  Among the major strike actions were the strike by bank employees and officers on February 28, 2017; the strike by one lakh medical and sales representatives at the call of the FMRAI on February 3; and the strike by thirteen lakh employees of the Central Government on March 16.

Steel workers of Salem, Durgapur and Bhadravati plants went on a strike on April 11 against privatization.  There has been a one-day strike of Anganwadi, Asha, Mid-Day Meal workers and Sarva Siksha Abhiyan employees on   January 20,  2017 at the call of the CITU. Other important protest actions have been the Road Transport Corporation workers’ strike action in Haryana and the solidarity action by workers of the Maruti units in support of  those workers who were sentenced to life in the Maruti Suzuki incident.

A notable struggle has been the militant action of 20,000 Anganwadi women workers in Karnataka who sat on dharna and blocked the road for four days in Bengaluru in March this year, which finally led to the government of Karnataka having  to announce an increase of Rs. 1,000 for the workers and Rs. 500 for the helpers over and above the increase announced in the budget of a similar amount.

These working class actions are mainly in the realm of defence of workers’ rights and opposition to economic policies which affect their livelihood and incomes.  They are in the nature of organized struggles by the trade unions.  However, the rightwing offensive unfolding  in the country is yet to meet with political opposition from the working class.  An integral part of rightwing politics is the Hindutva communal offensive.  The recent assembly election in Uttar Pradesh has shown, once again, that substantial sections of the working class in the industrial centres voted for the BJP.

It is worth repeating the Leninist dictum that economic struggles along cannot create political consciousness amongst the working class.  To believe so would mean practicing economism which, in turn, breeds reformist illusions about the status quo.  Along with developing militant struggles of the workers on their trade union demands, what is urgently required and should be a priority is consistent political campaign against Hindutva communalism amongst the working class.  This cannot be done by the trade unions alone and requires an ideological and political struggle by the Communist Party among the working class – in their work places, their residential areas and amongst their families.

There is across the land, violence unleashed against the Muslims and dalits, in the name of cow protection.  The Hindutva gangs are out to suppress free speech and dissent.  As Lenin had observed in his famous “What is to be Done”, the working class has to trained to respond to all forms of oppression and tyranny, if it is to be imbued with socialist consciousness and be capable of leading the struggle for social transformation.  In India today, this translates to the working class taking the lead in fighting Hindutva communalism.

Communists must develop the political consciousness of the working class so that it is equipped to take up the twin tasks of fighting neo-liberal capitalism and communalism.