It is strange what material the socialist finds to his hand in his investigations into the phenomena of society. A book picked up casually, as was the case with the writer, may well throw light upon yet another aspect of that great struggle that is continually with us; through world wars and the uneasy peace periods in between: the class struggle.
The book that is the subject of this article is one by
Rumer Godden, and has the strange title, "
Rungli-Rungliot.” This means in Paharia "thus far and no further,” a description one might apply to the authoress's socialist knowledge. She is, without a doubt, a fine descriptive writer. One has only to shut one's eyes after reading this sentence in her picture of the house on the slopes of the Himalayas. "The lawn ends in clouds that are sweeping below it,” and one is there both in spirit and imagination. The socialist, however, whilst taking pleasure in looking at the scenery through her eyes, finds most interest in that part of the book that deals with the lives and toilings of the coolies.
That this particular section of the working-class; the coolies of North Bengal, India, live very unhappy lives, is evident from even Rumer Godden’s unseeing pen. Some of the chapters take one back to Marx’s description of the conditions in English factories of the nineteenth-century period. No wonder that even the unenlightened masses of India are beginning to take notice of the results emanating from the rule of the British section of the capitalist class.
The scene of this book is set in a tea garden on the slopes of the Himalayas, and is surrounded on all sides by similar tea gardens—this being excellent tea growing country. This particular tea garden, according to the authoress, consists of two thousand five hundred acres managed by one white man. To quote her words about the manager and his wife: "Their prestige on the estate is enormous. He is king and she is queen and their power among the people is absolute. A less nice man would have become complicated, but W. is genuinely popular and full of a lordly happiness, all the happier and good to see because it is so lordly.” (Page 16.)
We get another view of this "king of the tea garden” when it had been raining heavily, persistently for six days. The authoress says the rain was not so depressing because "The constant drumming noise on the tin roof had something steady and soothing about it.” "Twice W.,” she goes on, "has had to ring the gong at midday to call them in, it was too saturating even for them." (Our italics.)
The manager may have appeared to the ignorant coolies (and the authoress!) to possess the powers of a king, but he was under no illusions himself. He knew well that to that particular section of the capitalist class who deal in the commodity tea he was just another manager, to be replaced if the output of tea declined, whether it be due to rain, drought, snow, earthquake), or any visitation of nature. This may explain why he was straining every nerve and muscle (of his coolies?) to increase the output from four hundred and fifty pounds of tea last year to half a million this (1942).
That the manager of this particular tea garden may or may not have been a shade better in his attitude towards the Indian working class is a point that need not bother us unduly. We have an account of earth-works being built in this and neighbouring gardens. In the gardens, it appears, children carry baskets of earth upon their hacks. The big difference between W. and other garden managers, in the eyes of the authoress, is that he does not employ children under a certain age for this heavy work. One might just as well say, that the capitalist of the nineteenth century who did not employ children under the age of, say, seven, was more humane than hie fellow capitalists. It is only a question of degree; the principle remains the same.
To the members of the reformist parties of this country who urge the putting in order of our own "house” before attempting that of others we reply: Put this "house” in order by all means, and by that we mean not a new layer of paint, but the demolition of the structure so that the new can be built. In other words: we have constantly stressed the fact that reforming the capitalist system will not remove the causes of society's inequality that are the foundation of that system. Only the replacement of the capitalist system by socialism will do that, and it is for that reason we seek to throw light upon the activities of the capitalist class in other countries; and for the same reason that there are five political parties throughout the world bolding to the same object and principles, though independenty.
Socialism, of its very conception, must be international. That is the reason why the workers in Australia. New Zealand. U.S. of America, Canada, and Great Britain, who have formed political parties striving for socialism are the vanguard of the working class in their struggle for emancipation. We ask those people who are attempting to alleviate the lot of the workers of India to examine the S.P.G.B.'s case, and agree that the next step must be the formation in India a political party whose object is not to reform the capitalist system, but to establish a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of society as a whole
L. Young.
Blogger's Note:
There's a strong chance that 'L.Young' was
Len Young, who was a member of the Birmingham Branch of the SPGB.
