Workers' Liberty

Just before xmas, the US retail monopolist Wal-Mart, that also owns ASDA in the UK, did a deal with India's leading telecoms company Bharti Enterprises Ltd.to open hundreds of stores in India over the next several years. According to Investor.com, "Under the deal, Wal-Mart and Bharti Enterprises will set up a joint venture to manage procurement, inventories and logistics, while stores will be set up under a franchise agreement, said Sunil Bharti Mittal, the chief executive of the Indian company."

India's retail market is worth about $200 billion and growing
about 30% a year. Until recently major retailers like Wal-Mart have not been allowed to exploit this huge potential for profits. India's government has tried protect the small domestic retail owners that make up nearly India's entire retail sector.

This development reflects the growing domestic market in India following from the huge economic development in production of the last few years. In many ways it is reminiscent of the process described by Lenin in his "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", and goes alongside the same kind of differentiation of India's huge peasant population. A similar process has been taking place in China. As Lenin pointed out in relation to Russia at the end of the 19th century the country not only suffered from capitalism, but from not enough capitalism, from the restrictions that Tsarism placed upon its rapid development. The removal of restrictions in India to open up the retail sector should be welcomed in the same terms that Lenin supported the moves to speed up the process of capitalist development in Russia.

That is to say as socialists we have no truck with policies designed to slow down such development, however, we do within that process argue at all times for the interests of the working class. A rapid development of capitalism means a more rapid development of the working class, a higher emand for labour and better conditions in which labour can ifhgt for its interests. In the case of Wal-Mart that is particularly significant. In the US it is well known as an anti-union employer. The GMB had to take it on in Britain, and had some success, so it can be beaten. In India Wal_mart will no doubt try to strong arm the workforce. Socialists here should offer what support they can to Indian workers, and in particular the GMB should make contact with Indian workers and their unions to plan a campaign to ensure that the Indian workforce is unionised from the beginning.

But more than that. This development by Wal-Mart is no doubt just the beginning of similar developments reflecting the growth of the Indian domestic market, as more and more of the population become wage workers rather than peasants. It will involve some huge economic developments. Stores will have to be built, and for each roads will need often to be built as stores spring up on greenfield sites as they have done in the UK, and elsewhere. Huge amounts of infrastructure will go along with this process. The laying of water, gas and electrictiy supplies, drainage etc. In short in addition to these retail developments and jobs for retail workers will go further jobs in construction, engineering jobs at utility companies etc., and the same kinds of problems and opportunities will open up. The International Trade Union movement has a duty and resposibility to give whatever assistance it can in this process to Indian workers and their Trade Unions.

India, China and other parts of Asia are undergoing the same kind of process that occurred in Western Europe towards the end of the 19th century. It comes similarly at a time when the world has entered a conjunctural long wave upturn. That presents huge opportunities for Marxists to educate and develop a brand new working class, and workers movement.