Resolution No. 3

Building National Resistance to Imperialist Globalisation

The labour movement in the present phase of its defensive battle against capital has to evolve mechanisms for an engagement with, and the shaping and moulding of emerging trends in the economy as a result of globalisation, from the vantage point of our constitutional values and our understanding of universal labour rights. The actions of the NTUI in the present phase shall be guided by this understanding for achieving policy changes and collective bargaining rights.

Capitals offensive against labour in India, over the last decade and a half, has gained ground through the penetration of forces of fascism and bigotry in every part of political, economic and social life. These forces have been further strengthened by the neo-liberal ideology of the imperialist centres and their strategy of coercion and war.

The policy of government is premised on the assumption that the country is only constituted by capital, and that labour can only adapt and respond to the needs of capital. Legislation and public policy remained incapable of comprehending the difference between labour and capital, and failed to mediate the interest within the framework of constitutional values.

India’s workers and peasants have been forced to contribute more than any other class in society for national development by working under low wage conditions, un-remunerative prices for primary commodities, low prices for public sector goods and most importantly enabling savings by compulsory deferment of consumption. But capital, fed and fattened by subsidies, tax cuts and state support has indulged in a loot of the exchequer, in theft and in malfeasance, and has not reflected either productive capabilities or the national spirit. We reject the form of government that relies on such capital for national development.

The accumulated experience of this offensive by different classes, sections and groups of Indian people during the NDA regime led to a convergence that resulted in an electoral defeat of the NDA and opened up a political space for building a counteroffensive to imperialist capital.

Not withstanding the political space created by the defeat of the NDA regime, the present government’s strategy is to accommodate and adjust within the framework of imperialist globalisation, without questioning it’s underlining assumptions and orientations. The NTUI acknowledges the need in the present political context to sustain the opening of this democratic space, and is equally aware of the historic need to breach the assumptions and orientations of the Indian state.

This political space needs to be defended and expanded. A disunited trade union movement cannot achieve this. Occasional action and declaratory intent cannot overcome the ideological and organisational strength of capital as manifested in the existing political balance of force. The left and democratic opposition in parliament is important. But this parliamentary opposition is increasingly loosing its strength in the face of capital’s capacity and tenacity to exhaust this opposition through a prolonged engagement of attrition and accommodation.

The focus and gravity of labour’s opposition has to shift away from being limited to a parliamentary engagement with government. Asserting rights in a democracy requires that not just representatives of people, but people themselves in direct relationship to the forces of capital have to build a sustained and in-depth opposition, in every factory and every field, in every industry and in every sector, and at the national level.

We resolve to build grassroots resistance against imperialist globalisation and forge these struggles in solidarity with all other progressive forces into a national struggle.

6 March 2006
Delhi

Resolution No. 3 was last edited by ntui, on Saturday, the 12 of December, 2009.