Economic Demands take on Political Form in Mauritius

Lalit, a political party in Mauritius, has been conducting a campaign for “an alternative economy”. As Lalit’s Alain Ah-Vee, Lindsey Collen and Ram Seegobin explain, its just not acceptable that those who own land refuse to produce food for people to eat, while people who want to produce food to eat have no land.

Since 2004, Lalit, the political party we are members of in Mauritius, has been accentuating its campaign for what we call “an alternative economy”. This involves looking at questions like: “What are the demands that working people and the unemployed today see as eminently reasonable and that, at the same time, put into question the entire economic system? And, how do we identify these demands collectively? What is the process?”

Stated differently, “What is the content of the political program (and by what processes is it developed?) that would bring us, as socialists, off the defensive on economic issues, and on to the counter-offensive? What political demands, in these times, simultaneously pose questions of ownership and economic control?”

This paper is a brief outline of what our campaign means, both as an idea, and in practice, focusing on two of our demands as examples.

Politics in the economy

At certain times in history, the economy moves to the centre of the political stage all by itself. In the press, the “economy” is on separate pages; in the universities, economics and politics are in different departments; and during elections, newspapers and radios avoid any genuine debate on control over the economy. Bourgeois ideologues believe in the two following contradictory statements: that the economy is not linked to politics, and that it ought not to be. The truth is that it is linked, and it ought to be consciously linked to every human being’s political opinions and interests.

Today, sugar and free zone textiles, two of the major sectors of the Mauritian economy, have both become politically hot issues. The price of petroleum products is also being discussed politically. All this is on the agenda because of contradictions within capitalism, exposing very clearly the international realities of the Mauritian economy.

The open-ended political agreement between African, Caribbean, Pacific countries and Europe, known as the Lome Convention, included a sugar protocol. Earlier this year, the sugar quotas and guaranteed prices under the convention’s Sugar Protocol came to an abrupt end. A World Trade Organization Disputes Settlement Unit judgment, provoked by sugar producers in Australia, Thailand and Brazil, ruled that European subsidies on sugar are illegal. So, all the Mauritian Ministers are running around looking for political palliatives to the immense price drop that has ensued, but they are looking within a very narrow choice of economic alternatives.

The first of January saw the demise of the Multi-Fibre Agreement, another political treaty that gave privileged access to European markets to countries like Mauritius for their industrialists’ textiles. So, these two economic sectors, together with oil prices, have leapt out into the political arena. And this is where our Lalit campaign comes in.

Past political debates, strategies, positions and activities help. Lalit, from its earliest beginnings as the Lalit de Klas monthly political magazine from 1974, was well known for constant criticism of the short-term limited form of “development” that could be expected from sugar and textiles. These stands were accompanied by thorough arguments around the need for diversification of the agricultural and agro-industrial sector, for both local consumption and for export, and the need for developing renewable non-polluting energy. One of our early campaigns, in 1984, was called “What future is there in sugar?” It was famous partly because the Government banned our popular slide show on beet sugar and Brazilian workers’ struggles. So, when these two sectors, sugar and textiles, are in crisis, people look to us.

What is the Lalit campaign for an alternative economy, and who is in it? Our aim is to have ongoing economic and political analyses that are sufficient to put us one or two steps ahead of the next moves of the different sections of the ruling class, of the State, the press, and of the political parties in power, so that we are often predicting what will happen next.

At the same time, we involve working class people, union members, women and young people in active research. We publicise this through leaflets, neighbourhood informal meetings, slide shows and public meetings on street corners with PA systems. We use the press, whenever they are not in practice banning us. We make our perspectives known through participation in electoral campaigns, often putting up candidates for parliament or municipalities, through poster campaigns, sometimes hand-painted, sometimes printed, even through court cases, for example challenging the constitutionality of the Privatization Fund Act.

This all involves a two-way movement of ideas not just within our party, from its centre to its branches and districts, but within the women’s movement, the homeless peoples’ movement, education organizations, language promotion organizations, and through working with the trade unions, preferably at delegate or grass roots level. It also involves us being on the political arena during elections, sometimes by putting up candidates, other times by defining the agenda through other means.

By working this way, we come up with demands that workers and unemployed people, whatever their political affiliations for the moment, consider reasonable right now. At the same time, even while we all find these demands eminently reasonable, it is also evident that, as we push for them, we will increasingly find that the present way society is organized will prevent us winning our demands, or winning in full. Thus, there develops a conscious awareness that the demands also involve putting into question the social organization of the economy.

The first effect of both the cuts in sugar prices and the end of the Multi-Fibre Agreement is that bosses and government have only one type of solution. They cut production costs by sacking people, cut losses by closing down factories and make profits by exporting capital to where labour is cheaper (in Madagascar, other parts of Africa, China) or by bringing in cheaper labour on a contract basis. In overall terms, the solution of the bosses and government means making a large percentage of human beings redundant, and as many as possible as poor as possible. They say so themselves.

Let us take the example of the sugar sector, to explain our campaign. Our aim is this: “To build up enough popular support for our demands so that the government is obliged to force the sugar estates bosses to implement them. Or else, how can the sugar estate bosses justify their monopoly control over land and capital?”

Everyone’s political consciousness permits the idea that the people can influence the Government. This is where people’s ideas are at. Everyone also knows that it is difficult to force the sugar estates to do anything they don’t want to. Thus the importance of the “or else”, which opens up the possibility of questioning their ownership and control of the means of production.

If, by contrast, we just said: “Nationalize the Land!”, people would not think the demand reasonable. And they would be right in a way, because it implies that the present government and its state would run agricultural production, whereas our demand does not. Ours implies that the people will mobilize behind a government, which forces the bourgeoisie to act in favour of the people or else risk sacrificing its monopoly control over production. That’s the program.

So, to get down to the nitty-gritty, we have developed, amongst others, the following two related demands:

* That the government obliges the sugar estates to arrange the way they plant their rows of sugar cane so that they can plant other useful crops in between the rows. This inter-line-cropping, as it is called, has already been successfully used, and this is known by all workers, but the sugar estates have limited its use to only once every seven years, when the cane is pulled up. We are proposing a wider spacing, either between all the rows or between half of them, allowing inter-line-cropping every year, before the cane gets too high. This way they will need to take on more workers, instead of destroying jobs. It also means that, instead of burying their heads in the ground ostrich-like over the price of sugar, they would, as we already are, be facing the reality. And it means, with exchange rates making imported things more costly, we could get cheaper potatoes, onions, vegetables, canned and freeze-dried vegetables and cooking oil, as well as food crops for export earnings. It also means that the economy would be more flexible: if it was necessary to pull up some cane altogether, this could be done. The alternatives will already be in the process of taking over. Seeds, know-how, fertilizers, markets, will all already have been acquired, tried and tested. It means, in broader terms, that people are consciously putting political pressure to an economic end.

* That the sugar estates not be given the government permit that they already require by law to close down a sugar factory. Instead, they should be granted a permit to convert their factory into some other agro-industry, such as processing tomatoes, making oil or freeze-drying. Again, this means workers would be taken on instead of being fired, and the economy would be developing. The form of development would be related to what the land produces.

Both demands immediately involve a new fluidity of certain capitalist categories. The concept that the owners have total control over “their” factories and expanses of land stands questioned. The idea that peoples’ labour is just like any other commodity that can be demanded or supplied stands challenged. The idea gets born that some crops are more useful than others.

We also point out the collusion of the State with sugar, by reminding people of the massive subsidies that could be shifted from sugar to whatever people think more useful. All we have to do at a meeting is call on people to list the actions and institutions that support sugar, over time. Many are often entirely government funded. From 1853 to 2005, the State has supported the sugar industry in various ways, including the building of dams and irrigation systems, the opening of tertiary education institutions for agriculture and the establishment of the Mauritius Sugar Industry Research Institute, Bulk Sugar Terminal and Sugar Authority. It has introduced insurance and related funds, devalued the rupee, given concessions on and finally removed the export tax on sugar, granted tax concessions for land conversion and allowed factory closures and job destruction.

This makes us all realize that to change the direction of the economy is not so difficult. Governments that we all elect can and do support parts of the economy.

Now, where do the demands take us? If you win your demands (which is possible), then the victories give everyone who has participated in the campaign confidence, a very particular kind of confidence: that political action can change the way the economy runs. This in turn creates possibilities that working people think up further common demands that will make humans more human, and life more liveable. These can then be put forward, and worked on. And, the more people there are in jobs, means the more people free to participate in political life, and the higher their hopes for a fulfilling life become.

If you lose, then time is immediately ripe for political activists and for Lalit, as a party, to put into question how it is that the bosses can control the means of livelihood, in this way, to the exclusion of other human beings on the planet.

But of course, the winning and losing, because we are thinking beings, are discussed all the time, on the way. Some discussions are around the most theoretical of questions. In particular, Lalit has held dozens of sessions on “What is labour?” based on Karl Marx’s writing, which we have made available in Kreol. We have also initiated debate on the Marx and Engels Manifesto and have developed CD-audio and booklet versions in Kreol.

Other discussions are around practical issues. Here are some further demands that have come out of the campaign:

* The government must use any “European Compensation” money (for which negotiations are taking place) for the conversion from cane to food production, for local use and export.
* Work conditions in the agricultural diversification sector must be improved to the level of the (better) conditions already won in the cane and sugar sector.
* Government must prevent the estates from continuing making people redundant and give them targets for job creation.
* Government must convert the existing “Sugar Authority” into an “Optimal Land Utilisation Authority”. Similarly, it must convert all the institutions that support sugar into institutions that support food production.
* The Cyclone and Drought Fund must be extended to vegetable planters and animal keepers.
* Government must give advances (“fezans”), which are currently only given to cane planters, to all small vegetable planters and animal rearers.
* There must be a stop the destruction of traditional agriculture. Scientific knowledge must be built on to the existing knowledge and experience of the people.
* Profit-based GMO production must be stopped at once. The government must amend the law on bio-technology so that it is based on the precautionary principle.
* Government must compel the private sector to invest in fishing on a large scale, enforcing rights over the Economic Zones around all the islands of our Republic. This includes Chagos and Diego Garcia, now housing the US military base, and Tromelin, occupied illegally by France. The US military base must be closed. A big, nature-friendly fishing industry would be a source of new employment, and would replace the pillage that goes on at the moment.
* Government must itself invest in Barachois, marine farms, and the transformation and preservation of marine products, not just the “Sea-Food Hub” they now have that is like a fisheries “free-zone”.
* Energy production should not be privatised. This process must be reversed, and the CEB Bureaucracy replaced by a “CEB under democratic control”. There should be a massive development of ‘clean’ and ‘renewable’ energy, like solar energy, wind energy, tidal and wave energy. Thus, Mauritius (with a well-organised CEB) can situate itself as a country at the avant-garde of clean, durable and cheap energy production.
* The process of privatization where it has started and the privatization of any further sectors must be stopped.
* Government must oppose any new WTO “round”, and put all existing agreements on hold till a “World-Wide Audit” of the effects of liberalization exposes its crimes.

Our conclusion is that it is just not acceptable that the people who have the land and capital refuse to produce food, while people who want to produce food do not have land and capital. It is not acceptable that people who possess capital don’t create employment while people who need work do not have control over the capital that they themselves produced.

It is not just in Mauritius that capitalist rule is exposing itself as bankrupt. Its rot is showing up all over the place, perhaps most clearly at its centre. The US economy is in double-debt (balance of payments and budget), it is resorting to criminal military activity to exert its influence and it is unable to look after its own people after the cyclone in New Orleans.

Its allies are weakened. Blair has 40 of his own backbenchers not prepared to vote for 90 days’ detention without trial. Howard has had to face 600,000 striking Australian workers. In France, 300 cities were recently taken over by rioting youths, unhappy with unemployment, burning cars by the thousand. In Latin America, challenges to US capitalism grow apace.

Eventually, this destructive capitalist system must be overthrown and replaced by a socialist system where people organise collectively in association with one other. Already, especially in the case of women, we run much of our lives this way. This change will need to happen world-wide, so that, wherever we are, we are part of this future. This will need very clear political demands for the economy, as part of its program, every step of the way.

NOTES: LALIT is a political movement born out of the mass workers’ movements of the 1970s, out of the women’s movement and students rebellion of the same epoch. Its name means “struggle” in Mauritian Kreol and “beautiful” in Hindi.

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