PARTISAN!

Anthony Furia ruminates on the future of the workers and students movement in Bangladesh after toppling the corrupt Sheikh Hasina regime.

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The situation in Bangladesh is horrendous. A government of bourgeois autocrats has been toppled, only for a militarised interim government to take its place. How did this occur? It has happened similarly to every other time political discontent has reached breaking point without a valve to release the pressure, nor a mass party to channel it. In what began as student protests over public service job quotas reserved for independence war veterans and their families, an overcorrective retaliation by a repressive state apparatus swiftly spun things into greater and more ambitious political demands. One of these demands emerged front and centre; the replacement of the entire government, of the Sheikh Hasina regime.

The bourgeois press would have you believe this was achieved in its entirety – the repressive state is gone! All that now exists is a free democratic state, unencumbered by those singularly responsible corrupt individuals who so poisoned the apparatus itself. Hasina is certainly gone – likely never to return to Bangladeshi politics again – but the apparatus remains. The interim government, headed by Muhammad Yunus – an 84 year old economist whose greatest societal ‘contribution’ was the use of microcredit to help impoverished women – is a laughable farce of a governing body, and one that seems to have unfortunately satiated a bloody, beaten political movement.

The direction for this government? Unclear. Perhaps in fact even to those within it. The direction for the movement? Total dissolution. Indeed, students involved have already expressed support for the idea of a new political party, founded upon the politically vague principles of secularism and freedom. A wonderful end to a social movement; co-optation into the very state which sought your eradication, given the first change of face or false flag of peace.

The simple truth of the matter, and what the political movement of Bangladesh cannot accept without radically altering itself, is that this state in of itself cannot represent them. It does not desire to represent them – indeed, it looks upon those who disturb the sacred social harmony with utter contempt, and wishes for nothing but their utter destruction, their utter pacification, the clipping of their political wings. No matter how many nobel-peace prize winners are placed in control of a bourgeois state, it remains a bourgeois state all the same. It remains a state whose goal, first and foremost, is the self-preservation and management of capital. In killing 300+ protestors in a dispute on quotas, this state panicked. It adjusted itself not through concessions, nor through attempts at ideological appeasement, but an immediate and violent crackdown – what should be a method of final resort for state power became the only method. The success of this political movement was based not on its organisation, nor the clarity of principles, nor even the passion and commitment of its members (which was, make no mistake, certainly high). Its success was based, primarily, on the failure of its opponent – the state itself.

What does this tell us, communists across the world (and particularly in Bangladesh!) about strategy and tactics? The very same thing that has been hammered into the minds of all those with the brains to understand it; we need a mass party. Communists need a mass party. The proletariat needs a mass party, and students, as a proletarianised layer, need this party also. Without revolutionary discipline, without militant opposition to the state, a defined road to power, and mass-organisation, the result is a million more Bangladeshes. A million more BLMs. A million more Occupy protests. Only through the organisation of the class for itself – through the sincere battle for a communist party – can the struggle be won.

What to do in the meantime then – for those of us trapped here in 2024, without a mass party? Well, aside from consciously struggling for one, communists should participate in these movements when and where they can – in an organised and effective fashion. Not for the widening of the struggle into revolution (that won’t happen, and without a party we would be utterly unprepared), but for the demonstration of disciplined action. For the demonstration of communist politics in all spheres of life. For the very political experiences that will be crucial in the active, concerted effort to build the party. Only then, through class struggle, through political organisation, through the unity of the socialist movement, will we reach the first step on the road to power – the party.