First, an axiomatic assertion: the communist conception of the United Front is by no means meant to enable the politics of liberal consensus to come into its own. If anything, it is meant to extinguish the condition of possibility for such politics. The United Front – at least in the realm of revolutionary communist theory – has always been envisaged as a programmatic concept of advance-through-generalisation for the capital-unraveling politics of the proletariat, even as it steers clear of the trap of substituting overgeneralised sectarianism for real, essential unity among concretely varied working-class locations.
This essence of the communist concept and practice of the United Front is most at stake in the ongoing polemical exchanges between the New Socialist Initiative-led University Community for Democracy (UCD) and the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS). Yet, unfortunately, it is precisely this politico-theoretical essence that has been lost in the fog of those polemics. The NSI, which has to all intents and purposes been the key organising and driving force behind the UCD, clearly envisages socialist United Front politics, discernible in its defence of the current shape and directionality of the UCD, as one of consensus between various social blocs and classes in their ostensibly common struggle against the manoeuvres of dominant politico-economic and socio-political forms of capitalism in the specific location of the university and its neighbourhood. On the other hand, the KYS has, its intentions to the contrary notwithstanding, failed to free the revolutionary impulse – which underpins its otherwise absolutely valid criticism of the UCD as a material embodiment of the politics and ideology of liberal consensus (essentially integral to the hegemony of capitalism) – from the fetish of the historical specificity of its own experience. As a consequence, its otherwise legitimate polemic against the UCD and the NSI has failed to overcome its sectarian tenor and ignite a substantive debate.
Delhi State Committee,
Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS)
…THE INTELLECTUALS WILL ACCOMPLISH NOTHING IF
THEY FAIL TO INTEGRATE THEMSELVES
WITH THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS…
Mao Tse-tung
NOTE: This is a review and summation of the proceedings of the forum, University Community for Democracy (UCD). UCD is constituted of different individuals who may or may not belong to organizations. Apart from some dominant tendencies which we have criticized below, the forum has some well-intentioned individuals who have increasingly become discontent with UCD’s functioning. We have prepared this piece for internal discussion within our organization, but due to requests from certain friends in UCD, we are going public with it. It encompasses many points of criticism which we often raised in UCD meetings.
Recently, some University teachers and students in the north campus of Delhi University have been running a campaign under the banner of the UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY FOR DEMOCRACY (UCD). To use the words of the campaign’s founding members, the campaign is committed to fighting against “shrinking democratic space in the University”. The focus of the campaign has particularly been on the eviction of college students from university hostels, in the wake of the Commonwealth Games. A section of “left” intellectuals and “progressive” activists can be seen allying themselves with this forum. It has become fashionable for some to be seen in its meetings and, for those who navigate more in the realms of virtual reality, to trail the forum’s activities in cyberspace.
However, in the very beginning in UCD meetings there have been activists and organizations that have questioned the constituting logic of the forum. Most of such criticism was swept under the carpet as mere issues of modus operandi or as divisive tactics. The validity of the criticism raised was often lost to many of the forum’s participants who were hostile to organization structure, and hence, to criticisms coming from organizations. Even when some of our points of criticism were noted they were hardly addressed in a manner that reassured us of UCD’s commitment to the issues raised. The following pages are a delineation of this unfortunate fact.
At a time when the Commonwealth Games (CWG) are the focus of the media, many activities of the UCD come across more as publicity gimmicks than anything else. It is important for many of the forum’s participants to be seen resisting the Games but to do that they have to mobilize people on issues close to them. With little understanding on the issues concerning different people, UCD raises them in an opportunistic vein, just so as to galvanize different issues and use them. In reality CWG is the starting point and be all and end all of their resistance. And no matter how earnestly UCD denies it, this has been their strategy because right now the Games are the highlight of the season. Even before the University opened and the campaign could take proper shape; there were overt attempts to reach the media for coverage (such as forming media coordination teams and releasing press statements).
Even the “relay hunger strike”, or rather “skip one’s lunch” strike was no exception (it is interesting to note that UCD members sat on “hunger strike” from 9am to 9pm, which basically means they did not sacrifice their breakfast and dinner—In reality a relay hunger strike is continuous, and, thereby, includes people sitting on hunger strike twenty four hours—the term relay refers to somebody ending their hunger strike and another person taking their place). Since a “hunger strike” by University students and teachers is an eye-catching story for the media, it was more important to be seen in this act of drama even if the demands of those on “hunger strike” stood thoroughly misplaced. Sadly, so as to project a significant gathering at the venue of the “hunger strike”, students were actually subjected to authoritarian tactics by teachers supportive of UCD. These teachers, acting as pied-pipers and humming the threatening tune of internal assessment, drew their hapless students to the venue by taking their classes there. Students (the majority of whom were oblivious to the issues raised), were obviously not taken into confidence when they were made to come to the “hunger strike” site.
The fact that the demands of those on “hunger strike” were misplaced reflects nothing but a sheer lack of seriousness and understanding on the issues raised. It was the form in which the “relay hunger strike” raised certain demands that was highly problematic for it reeked of sheer opportunism and sectarianism. Let us take the example of rent regulation raised during the “hunger strike”. Firstly, UCD began its campaign with absolutely no concrete demand of rent regulation. The forum was forced to pick up the issue of rent regulation in addition to the issue of hostel eviction because it was constantly accosted by the majority of students who had never even lived in college hostels, and had for a long time been faced with the problem of escalating rents. There was also urgency in making rent regulation an active demand of the UCD campaign because some other organizations had already launched a full-fledged campaign on rent regulation in the city. Hence, it was more in a competitive spirit than with any serious commitment and understanding on the issue that rent regulation became part of UCD’s charter of demands.
To further delineate the opportunism with which the issue of rent was finally raised by UCD, we would like to bring the reader’s attention to the fact that although they are now talking of rent control; escalating rents are actually being conceptualized as a University neighbourhood problem rather than a general problem for migrants coming to the city (for further illustration of this point please see CSW and KYS’s paper). This is precisely why UCD’s “hunger strike” targeted the audience in Arts Faculty (a transit point for the student/teaching community), and not any tangible authority (which in this case should really have been the Government of Delhi). And this is why the best that UCD can do on the issue of rent is to demand rent regulation from the Dean of Colleges! Quite rightly, their delegation was informed by the Dean of her incapability to regulate rents since this was way beyond the University authorities’ jurisdiction and responsibility. We return to the fundamental question— why does the University remain the centre of UCD’s resistance when authorities beyond the Vice Chancellor are to blame, and when there are many people apart from students/teachers who are adversely affected by unregulated rents? To the reader who might still believe that raising the issue of rent regulation at the University level is perhaps what is immediately feasible for UCD, we have one question—has the life of the minority ever drastically changed without a transformation in the life of the majority? For example, can an individual educated woman today feel hundred percent secure and confident in a work space when the majority of women in society are still perceived as objects of sexual consumption and undeserving of career opportunities? Friends, the answer is no and experience has taught us that.
The question of the sectarian political approach of UCD was raised several times in the meetings. As argued by us in such meetings, issues and demands should really be raised in a way that they appeal to a larger section of people affected by the state’s inaction and its collusion with private business interests. In this way we connect concerns, struggles and militancy of different sections of people who are often segregated from each other due to the functioning of the system in place. For example, the student community and workers find themselves separated by work schedules, their class backgrounds, spatial settings/norms (in terms of workers being restricted to the space of factories/work sites and students to the space of their classrooms), etc. As a result we need a politics that paves the way for a combined struggle by the different oppressed sections of society. And it is only a combined struggle that can create an effective front of resistance to the onslaught of oppression and exploitation we are witness to. However, more than a generalized struggle against recent developments in the city, UCD’s initiatives are more sectarian than anything else. In fact, their particularized (University-CWG-centric) struggle is nothing but the substitution of the generalized working class struggle by ‘middle’ class intellectualism.
Mobilization of workers and strengthening of the working class movement is essential because in our society it is the working class that is in the majority. Its labour creates profit, rent and basically all the resources in society. Understandably then, if the working class fights back the whole system is paralyzed. Apart from the fact that it is the direct object of the most fundamental and determinative form of oppression and exploitation in capitalist society, the working class is the revolutionary class also because its interests do not rest on the oppression of other classes. In fact, precisely because its objective interest for its own emancipation is the destruction of class, it can create conditions for the liberation of all human beings in the struggle to liberate itself.
Thus, contrary to the middle class intellectual’s popular perception of the working class as just another identity asserted along with numerous other identities, the working class is actually a social positioning and not an identity. It is a position which is spread over different kinds of identities, and determines how and when the different identities will assert themselves. It is ultimately through the position of the working class that different identities can be united and radicalized into a wider anti-systemic struggle that goes beyond the form in which society exists. Realizing this, ‘old’ socialism has maintained the working class as its base and has constantly assessed the dynamics of the process of class in order to pursue its politics. ‘New’ socialism on the other hand, has made students/intellectuals their constituting base. In reality, however, students/intellectuals are divided amongst different class trajectories. To put it more accurately, students abstracted from their class position have come to be envisaged as agents of ‘new’ socialism. Indeed, ‘student radicalism’ which is actively promoted by ‘new’ socialism is a by-product of making students an identity devoid of class.
It is a fact that students who join universities like Delhi University (DU), are from different classes. The trend in DU is that students from working class backgrounds generally join the peripheral and evening colleges of DU. They are mostly youth who: a) have studied in government schools, b) come from the Hindi medium background, c) who do not usually get admission to college hostels considering their 12th class schooling, d) are those who really struggle to cope with rising college fees and English medium teaching/coursework. Students from petty bourgeois backgrounds are quite the opposite—a significant number of them have studied in respectable public schools, get admission to the best north and south campus colleges of DU, and are generally the first to get admission to the limited college hostels of DU.
As a result of this abstraction of students’ class backgrounds, forums such as UCD end up raising issues of students in a manner which isolates them from the issues of the working class. This reduces the possibilities of unity between the student community and the working class. To delineate this fact it is best to highlight the issue of rent regulation again. Rather than identifying rent as a problem affecting the student/teaching community as well as workers (most of whom live on rent near industrial belts in Delhi), UCD chose to raise the problem of rent only within the ambit of the University area, and demanded rent regulation from University authorities alone. By refusing to raise rent as a generalized concern of migrants in the city, UCD has simply encouraged the student community to see this as a problem specific to them. Having effaced the issue of class struggle in the immediate locality (the immediate locality being issues of working class youth/students/construction workers, etc. in the University), UCD now seeks to locate the working class and its struggle in a far off resettlement colony called Bhalaswa. Unfortunately, judging by recent email correspondences between UCD and students of the Women’s Development Cell (WDC) in Miranda House, the trips to Bhalaswa are being envisaged by the students more as extra-curricular activities. This indicates that UCD’s form of politics is really incapable of building a long-standing and formidable unity between the student community and working class. Its politics, in fact, inculcates within students a PHILANTHROPIC approach to working class issues, and little or no realization of the significance of class struggle for the transformation of our society. Instead of unity and combined struggle, UCD’s form of politics inculcates a perception/political tendency in the student movement to i) see the working class as a “mass of laboring poor” and not as a class which embodies itself even in the student constituency, ii) to perceive the issues of the working class as markedly different from those of students, and at most, only momentarily connected/’aligned’ with issues of students.
It is not only that the ‘new’ socialists deny the class background of the student community. They also, by denying students their varied class position, end up trying to mobilize only those who come from petty bourgeois backgrounds. As a result, organizations in UCD, such as New Socialist Initiative (NSI) are never seen raising issues of Dalit students who struggle to get admission in DU, of working class students who struggle to pay escalating college fees, or basically, any problem faced by students coming from government schools. In reality, for them, issues of those studying in peripheral/evening colleges or of those studying through correspondence/non-collegiate board are supposedly beyond the concerns of student activism. It is the issues of students studying in the big north campus colleges that are the central concerns of such organizations. For example, such organizations strictly function according to the University calendar. They will be active only during the actual academic session (i.e. between July and March when classes are on), and, will be mostly seen organizing seminars—these being a hot favorite of students from petty bourgeois backgrounds, who enjoy debating theories thrown at them in class. Furthermore, their campaigns in the University are centered on certain pet issues of students studying in a select few north campus colleges. These include protests against college hostel rules; night vigils/candle-marches to ‘take back the night’ or presumably to establish a ‘safe’ university campus somehow; etc. One wonders, how such campaigns actually address the concerns of the majority of students—many of whom do not stay on campus and are denied hostel admission due to the ‘lack of merit’.
Of course, when we as participants in UCD argued how necessary it was to mobilize the working class which is in the majority of those exploited in the name of development, grand events like CWG, etc., our point was noted. UCD posters soon began to carry slogans highlighting exploitation of workers, and as a gesture workers are now talked about in some of the UCD meetings. But the form in which workers’ issues are being raised by them is fundamentally paternalistic and patronizing. In a sympathetic mode the forum speaks of workers and other vulnerable sections of society, but no workers are part of the joint forum. Neither does the forum do anything to promote workers’ self-organization, nor does it participate in workers’ struggles. Making patronizing trips to resettlement colonies in the city, just so as to “investigate” and “report” the plight of slum dwellers, are more measures to appease angry activists in UCD and clear one’s conscience than to draw a formidable, active and organic link between the University community and the working class.
In fact, the recent trip to Bhalaswa was merely a gesture—a move to forge, in haste, some semblance of an alliance with the working class. No way does such a gesture promote self-organization by workers. In the case of Bhalaswa, UCD immediately began promoting a group working in the area, of whose politics they have little knowledge. In fact, in the interest of ‘alliance making’ they have refused to interrogate whether the group really represents the voice of the oppressed in Bhalaswa or is just another bourgeois oppositional group. Similarly, UCD has not taken on the responsibility of assessing, themselves, the actual class dynamics working in Bhalaswa. It is simply assumed that all those residing in resettlement colonies/slums like Bhalaswa belong to the same class composition, whereas the ground reality is more complex. Clearly, UCD’s form of politics, i.e. ‘alliance-making’ is highly problematic. This is because it simply absolves the forum of questioning the constitutive logic and politics of the organizations/groups it is allying with. It also absolves the forum of the responsibility of organizing those constituencies of people themselves. Thirdly, such form of politics leaves ample space for a lot of opportunistic maneuvering. In other words, the forum can move in and out of such alliances, depending on their own calculated interests. An important question arises here, what will happen to these alliances once the CWG are over? Well, expectedly, they will dissipate as quickly as they emerged. The analogy of a cinema hall is perhaps apt to explain this inevitability—just like everyone comes to watch a film in the theatre, cry/laugh together and then go their separate ways, most UCD groups/individuals will move on from the momentary ‘alliances’/joint initiatives they have made during the drama of CWG. A few of them, of course, will leave with plum NGO jobs in hand, and an ‘activist’ image that they can thrive on.
Hence, the point that we are trying to drive home is, that UCD can talk about workers and claim to be radical right through, whereas students/teachers continue to run the show while workers are merely expected to follow and indulge in experience-sharing. Workers’ issues then become just another ingredient to be added to cooking pot of resistance. Friends, the fact is that the forum’s form of intervention is limited to the university community responding on workers’ issues but doing nothing otherwise to help build workers’ self-organizations. Is it not true then that the University democrats finds workers’ issues “good” when they are OBJECTS of reform and concern but not when they are SUBJECTS of the struggle against the system? Here it is perhaps best to highlight the recent struggle of construction workers at the Miranda House CWG work site and UCD’s response—or rather lack of response to it. Friends, since the beginning of August construction workers and their trade union have been protesting against the Miranda House officials for non-payment of the workers’ long-standing dues and the violation of several labour laws. The same day that UCD began its “relay hunger strike”, workers down the road were protesting against their severe exploitation under various CWG construction projects. UCD failed to respond and join the struggle. The message, therefore, sent out was clear enough—we will participate only when we are in charge and not workers, and we will raise workers’ issues only as an addition to our never-ending list of “democratic” demands. Considering this, are not the issues of workers’ rights being raised in tokenism, i.e. only when it suits them?
Interestingly, some participants in the University Community for Democracy, who openly claim their “left” leanings, have unhesitatingly claimed in meetings that there is nothing wrong in particularizing the struggle since the University is their ambit of movement and sense of being. What we perhaps need to add here is the fact that when they are particularizing the struggle to the University, they particularize it even further by only raising issues of a select section of the University community. Such an approach defers the need to generalize issues of struggle, which is why people end up raising struggles in isolation. Such campaigns lose steam, credibility and relevance since they do not tap on certain organic links between their concerns and those of other affected sections in society. Of course, the aforementioned approach is nothing but opportunistic. By keeping the campaign University specific such participants aim for greater projection of themselves in the student community and media (which prefers to highlight University issues any day). By investing all their energy at the University level such participants seek a radical projection of themselves during DUSU elections, etc. This, beyond doubt, is a calculated move by many so called left intellectuals and groups in UCD. It is reflected in the larger party politics of such groups, and also in the double standards maintained vis-à-vis the entry of NGOs in the forum’s programs.
CPI(ML) Liberation, the parent party of AISA (a “left” student organization), in the interest of electoral victories has been allying with the RJD and sometimes with the JD(U). One moment it can be seen opposing the traitor Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) in Bengal, and the next moment it can be seen allying with the CPM in the Bihar Assembly elections! The same kind of double standards was replicated when we opposed the entry of NGOs in the protest meeting held on 30th July and AISA supported us, but then went on to invite the same NGO person to their own program against the Commonwealth Games on August 2, 2010! Needless to say, with elections round the corner crowd pulling tactics become more important. We know for a fact that there are reservations within AISA’s own cadre about participating in UCD, yet it continues in the forum for electoral gains.
It is very disturbing that NGOs which are bodies hugely funded by exploitative governments or by multinational corporations, are provided space on platforms of resistance against exploitation. The history of NGOs tells us that they are compromised bodies which sway on issues depending on the terms and conditions of the funding they receive. They have become a big employment recruitment network and that’s about it, for their work amongst people is channeled more towards ‘welfare’ than towards transformation of society. Instead of using its own agencies to provide for people, the state has been retreating from the social sector, leaving the space open for NGOs. NGOs simply use the limited funding released by governments and non-government organizations so as to absolve the state of its larger responsibilities. And to do this they unhesitatingly exploit a cheap labour force. For example, NGO workers (‘activists’) on the ground receive a meager salary compared to NGO employees in the higher echelons.
Interestingly, by arguing that NGO people are “well-versed” in issues/“are radical”, and by promoting them as speakers, UCD is actually creating a hierarchy of knowledge. And this hierarchy is nothing but a replication of capitalist division of labour in which intellect takes precedence over action/organization building, and the suave, Oxfam funded NGO spokesperson replaces the ‘not so articulate’ trade unionist/ political activist.
There are two more disturbing things to note about UCD’s campaign. One pertains to its search for an alternative accommodation for evicted students, and the other to its “free left” image. In its initial meetings, some UCD members pushed forward the search for an alternative accommodation. The first pamphlet printed by the UCD spoke of the need to build communes in places off campus. In fact, a team met with the management of a Gandhian trust (funded by Ministry of Social Justice) which ran a hostel near Kingsway Camp, called Gandhi Ashram. The place soon began to be promoted via e-mails etc. almost like any other private accommodation; the purpose being to provide a space for those still desperately looking for affordable accommodations and also to provide a space for regrouping when things got rough during the campaign. Ironically, the Gandhi Ashram hostel is meant for poor Dalit school students who were obviously going to be displaced if college students moved into the dormitories. No one seemed to reckon with this inevitability while the plan was still being hatched.
What we also found disturbing about the Gandhi Ashram plan was the desire of creating an isolated “democratic” space. The message being sent out was nothing but we can create our own isolated commune-like space in this big bad world. This approach stems from the sectarian University-centric politics of the UCD highlighted above, and also from a non-revolutionary conceptualization of commune life. For many participants in UCD, the commune with its base in Gandhi Ashram was an apparent ‘pre-figuration’ of a new society, whereas it was far from that. Commune was being envisaged as a centre of ‘counter-culture’—an oasis in capitalist wilderness. Interestingly, this is a very familiar trope—it is based, both at once, on a vision of a transformed society without real hope for a process of transformation. This is because it is based on the vision that the lives of a minority can magically change without transforming the whole. This is, after all, how (phantom) revolution itself, is envisaged according to the pipe-dreams (joint-dreams?) of petty bourgeois students/intellectuals who enjoy the comforts/security of generous remittances from home—‘let us, at least, as a small privileged community enjoy revolution making’.
Of course, as pointed out by us in the meetings, it was nothing but ridiculous that UCD spoke of building a commune in a place which was actually going to be charging the students Rs. 1500 per bed and where 6 to 8 women students would have to live per room. How can a commune work within a market structure, and how can a place which gives you no control on the rules and regulations to be implemented, become a progressive, commune-like accommodation?! Despite these criticisms, UCD went ahead and would have signed a MoU with the Gandhi Ashram management, if it wasn’t for the sheer lack of students interested in the place. In fact, just so as to get students to join the bandwagon, emails were sent out exaggerating the facilities available at Gandhi Ashram. In the interest of pulling a crowd, the green lawns of the Ashram were highlighted. Meanwhile, it was downplayed that no fooding would be available at the place and that this was going to be a dormitory system. Indeed, such concealment amounts to lying.
Lastly, as we would like to point out, it is a shame that the University Community for Democracy prides itself for its “Free Left” image. It is typical for such a forum to claim its steadfast commitment to ‘democratic issues’. However, in reality, their idea of democracy is based on the empty notion of dialogue and communication. Democracy is, unfortunately, abstracted from its link with socio-economic forces which is why it becomes more difficult to build a consistent anti-systemic movement. We see this problematic notion of democracy manifested in the very first pamphlet released by UCD. What was repeatedly highlighted in it, as a problem, was the fact that recent developments in the city as well as at the level of the University were not discussed before implementation.
Ironically, despite all their claims, most UCD participants stand for a façade of democracy and democratic functioning. For example, many emails and curt replies to questions raised in the meetings reflect the emerging dogma that only “pragmatic” things should be discussed in meetings (pragmatic issues being those that will help UCD attract more people). Thereby, it was constantly demanded that the ideological issues be shunned, and in a very undemocratic way, that is precisely what happened in meetings. The question is, what is it that UCD will do with the people who are immediately attracted to its campaign. Aren’t they supposed to work on these people and ideologically bring them closer to progressive politics? What does one read into this persistent impatience with ideological issues? Why do they behave as if the campaign is running against time? One can only presume that they want their whole show to be unfolded before CWG! In that case there is really no long term commitment to the issues being raised, and those that join the UCD campaign are just being perceived as faces/numbers to be posited against the Games, rather than thinking human beings who have the potential to link their immediate concerns with long term politics.
Furthermore, due to its “free left” image, we find that most UCD participants enjoy asserting their “individual” form of participation vis-à-vis an organizational one. As a result, UCD has succeeded in joining a lineage of platform and forum hopping so common to bodies that are dominated by individuals. The simple fact is platforms will be unsteady as long as “radical” individuals refuse to put their “radical-ness” to the test and bring themselves under the discipline and responsibility of organization/party structure. Left fronts and left organizations cannot make individuals their fighting force and leave untouched/un-mobilized the majority of those exploited, i.e. working class. After all, what is the best form of protesting against the Commonwealth Games? Is it not by organizing the large number of workers employed under CWG projects and mobilizing them to stop work at the numerous construction sites? Indeed, this is the most effective way of exposing the Games for what they are, and certain organizations and trade unions have been doing this since the very beginning of CWG construction work.
Having said this, it must begin to seem obvious somewhere to the reader why UCD has raised the issue of workers’ rights more in the spirit of opportunism. What else can be expected when there are group’s dominating UCD, such as New Socialist Initiative (NSI), that have no work amongst workers, i.e. no trade union to speak of, and basically do nothing to promote workers’ self-organization. In their book of strategy workers issues will always be raised so as to appear radical/cool in front of impressionable students than to actually organize workers. Their politics will, in fact, promote workers’ rights and NGOs in the same breath. It is a fact, that NSI has more presence in the NGO network than in the existing workers’ movement. This is because most of their members work for NGOs, and hence, have an objective interest in promoting them. This is why on the day of the protest meeting on 30th July NSI took additional effort to put together a program in Ramjas College, inviting a now well known NGO person. Of course, we didn’t see that kind of effort put in when it came to extending solidarity to the construction workers’ struggle in Miranda House College. The fact is that groups such as NSI have work only in the University and are inactive in any other constituencies of people, especially the working class. At a time when there is an uproar regarding the Commonwealth Games, their attempt to oppose the Commonwealth Games is doomed to be student-centric and University specific. And even when they do raise the issues of the university community it will be done so opportunistically, and the issues raised will be those that cater to a select section of the university community.
Friends, ask yourself—would you rather stand by opportunistic and sectarian politics that takes for granted the issues/concerns of the majority, or would you rather stand by the combined struggle of workers and students? Friends, it is high time we recognize that NGO-ised, petty-bourgeois dominated campaigns are more enemies than friends in the struggle for emancipation. It is time to stop doing the fashionable and to be seen doing the productive. It is time to play the role of the harsh critic and to organize a formidable combined struggle against the oppression and exploitation prevalent in our society.
JOIN THE STRUGGLE TO KEEP THE SPIRIT OF EQUALITY AND JUSTICE ALIVE! LONG LIVE REVOLUTION !!
CAMPAIGN FOR RENT REGULATION & MORE HOSTELS
A Joint Campaign of Centre For Struggling Women (CSW) and Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS)
Over many years Delhi has become a city of migrants. Students in search of a decent education and unemployed people in the desperate search for work have poured into the city in large numbers. The Government conveniently attributes the city’s growing crime rate, stress on resources, its ‘landscape degradation’, etc. to this movement of people. It adamantly refuses to acknowledge the fact that the condition city-dwellers find themselves in today is actually the creation of its own anti-people policies and the protection it provides to the landlord/rentier class in the city. To elaborate, the Government’s account of the challenges before the city clearly conceals the fact that the major crisis for city-dwellers, i.e. lack of housing and the need to pay high rents, is the result of landlords owning properties in excess and overcharging those who cannot afford their own housing. Precious little is done by the Government to check the excesses of these property owners in the city. Initiatives to collect property taxes are taken back almost as soon as they are launched and, pro-tenant clauses in the Delhi Rent Act are openly flouted.
The state’s collusion with landlords and the builder mafia is apparent in many ways. This is best reflected in a policy approach supportive of slum demolition, the lack of rent regulation, selling of government land at throw away prices to builders, little or no investment in the building of students’ hostels, highly priced government housing schemes (such as those introduced by the Delhi Development Authority), and in fact, the sheer lack of sufficient housing projects being launched by the government. Due to this undeniable nexus between the interests of the state and that of landlords, it is students and workers who suffer. Migrant labourers who come to the city are forced to live in sub-human conditions in slums or, to crowd into small rented rooms, paying most of their earnings as rents. Students coming from afar are also compelled to live on rent since most colleges in the city provide little or no hostel facilities. They too cut rent costs by sharing small rooms with each other—an atmosphere hardly conducive for study. In other words, the majority of students’ and workers’ monetary subsistence (money received from home and wages, respectively) is appropriated by landlords in the city.
It is important to note that the number of workers and students living on rent is no small number and that, it in fact, constitutes the majority of city dwellers. The magnitude of exploitation in this regard is hence, far from insignificant, and is extremely disturbing. Is this really what a city should be like—a place where most are either homeless or, are slum dwellers living in the constant fear of being ‘relocated’ (displaced), or are those forced to reside in private lodgings for high rents? It is time we locate the root cause behind the pathetic living conditions of students and workers in the city. This piece aims at providing a perspective that shows how things are connected and work to exclude the majority of people from resources and opportunities, and the right to a good healthy life. It is being circulated in the context of our launching a city-wide campaign for rent regulation and the provision of more hostel facility for students who come to study in the city. This Campaign, in fact, is part of ongoing struggles that CSW and KYS have been organizing in the past. These struggles have focused on the concerns of tenants, and basically, the most oppressed section of people working and living in the city. As a youth organization Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS) has extensive work in working class colonies across Delhi. It has collectivized women and youth of these working class areas on issues such as lack of water and electricity supply, the poor condition of government schools in these neighbourhoods, and the apathy of the local administration/police with respect to heinous crimes committed in such colonies. Similarly, Centre For Struggling Women (CSW) has been in the forefront in organizing militant struggles in the University of Delhi for basic infrastructure like hostels. Due to struggles launched by CSW in the recent past, prestigious colleges like St. Stephen’s have had to provide hostel facility to their women students. It is to be noted here that colleges like St. Stephen’s provided the hostel facility only to men students—something which encouraged many women students to give up taking admission in the college. Of course, with the extension of this facility to women students, the age-old chauvinistic culture that prevailed in the college was put to the challenge—in 2005 CSW’s member, Maya John, became the first woman President of the college. The current Campaign For Rent Regulation & More Hostels derives inspiration from CSW’s struggle to provide hostel for all and their earlier Campaign For More Girls’ Hostels, Safe Neighbourhoods And A Safe City.
We hope that what is argued below convinces all who read it, of the need for collective struggle. Indeed, it is only through collective struggle that we can actually expose and challenge the system in place.
WHY PEOPLE MIGRATE TO DELHI:
Why Students: The reason why students migrate to Delhi in large numbers is that there is an acute shortage of government funded universities in India. Those that exist are in a poor condition and fail to accommodate the ever growing number of students aspiring for higher education. The reason behind this shortage of government universities and the poor condition of those that do exist is the paucity of government funding. Investment in education is less than 3% of the GDP! Furthermore, educational policies of the Indian state have been geared towards commercialization and privatization of education. Successive central and state governments have, for example, unhesitatingly recognized private colleges/universities. As a result, private educational institutions have spread everywhere, outnumbering affordable government-run colleges/universities. By strengthening the presence of private colleges/universities vis-à-vis government ones, governments have made education so costly that it has become inaccessible to the majority of Indian people. As a result students flock to the handful of government colleges/universities located in cities like Delhi.
The poor investment in education by successive governments has also led to the deterioration of regional universities, and hence, encouraged the creation of centres of excellence like Delhi University, Jamia Milia Islamia and Jawaharlal Nehru University. It is only with balanced and inclusive development of different regions, that students will have well-established regional universities to study in. For this, of course, our governments need to spend more on education and the social sector as a whole.
A large number of educated youth also flock to Delhi in the hope of securing government jobs. The city is now “home” to many who crowd into small rooms just so that they can receive “coaching” for various competitive examinations. However, most of these youths are forced to go back empty handed after 5 to 6 years of such preparation, simply because there just aren’t enough government jobs to be had.
Why Workers: Unbalanced and non-inclusive development of different regions in the country has also affected employment opportunities of people drastically. In regions across India (Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Bengal, Maharashtra, etc.) the Indian state rules in the interests of Indian and multinational companies that seek to plunder natural resources and to raise a cheap supply of labour from the ranks of displaced tribals, agrarian labourers and poor peasants. Government after government, in its collusion with private business interests has snatched agricultural land, forests and other resources from poor peasants and tribals. Half hearted attempts at land reform and the withdrawal of various agrarian subsidies have brought ruin upon poor peasants, pushing them to commit suicide or to join the ever increasing rank of agrarian labourers. Even in “well developed and rich” states like Gujarat, Delhi and Punjab, exploitation is rampant and, industrialization and corporate farming (the usual indices used to calculate such states’ development record) are based on the ruination of the most vulnerable sections of rural society.
On being denied their lands, rivers and forests, those displaced are compelled to turn to cities like Delhi where employment at construction sites, factories and sweatshops, restaurants/bars, etc. can be found. Needless to say, the wages earned are abominably low and are a cause of much distress.
HOW THE MAJORITY OF TENANTS LIVE IN THE CITY:
With their limited monetary resources, both students and workers compromise with their health and well being when taking up lodgings in Delhi. So as to pay the escalating rents students crowd into small rooms just so that they can share the rent with others. This uncomfortable living is complemented by poor fooding since most students try and survive the day on one or two meals alone. In such living conditions students find it difficult to concentrate and study properly—something which impacts their class performance greatly. One has only to visit places like Nehru Vihar, Gandhi Vihar, Christian Colony, Sangam Park, Gurmandi, Munirka, etc. to come face to face with students living like this. Of course, there are some students who take better places on rent but there too students face problems such as harassment by landlords/neighbours. Rents are arbitrarily increased and landlords get students to vacate suddenly on the pretext of something or the other.
For women students such private accommodations are even more precarious since landlords and male neighbours feel free to sexually harass them. This is why almost every woman student staying on rent has a horror story to narrate and feels vulnerable in such places. Some students, like those from the Northeast, are deliberately charged higher rents by landlords and, women northeast students are made victims of the worst incidents of sexual harassment. A very large number of students and youth in search of work come from places like the northeast. This migration clearly indicates the sheer lack of investment by the Indian state in these regions. Due to lopsided development in states like the Northeast, students are compelled to come to metropolitan cities like Delhi to study. Similarly, the paucity of jobs in these regions compels many to migrate in search of employment. For example, a large number of nurses who work in hospitals across Delhi come from the northeast states. Once here they earn a limited amount as salaries, most of which then goes to pay off rents.
The fact that a large number of students are compelled to live in off-campus housing is not only because a large number of them come to Delhi to study, but also because most colleges of Delhi University (D.U.) do not provide hostel facility. Shockingly, out of D.U.’s 76 colleges, only 11 provide hostels for outstation students! Considering this, most students who come to study in institutions like this can be found living in private accommodations. Affordable and comfortable hostel facility rather than being a fundamental right has become a privilege for which only a select few are eligible. It is worse for women students since they are denied hostel facility in many co-educational colleges which only provide this essential facility to their men students.
Just like students, workers who migrate to the city desperately search for affordable housing. Most end up living in slums where basic amenities like water and electricity are scarce. Safety and hygiene are a distant dream in such settlements since most of them have come up along the slopes of open drains and empty land beside the Municipality’s garbage dump-sites. These slums are either being pulled down by builders who want cheap land for their real estate business or, are burnt to ashes since fire fighting authorities take their own sweet time in reaching places where the poor reside.
Many workers also live in cramped accommodations in colonies near industrial belts of the city. Earning only between Rs. 2500 and Rs. 5000, they are forced to part with a large amount of their meager earnings as rent. What they pay for is a small room in which they and their five to six member family, resides. Needless to say, in these cramped conditions, discomfort breeds, tempers fly and unhappiness grows. Here too as tenants, workers and their families are devoid of basic facilities like water and electricity. It is a fact that in many such colonies, people are forced to queue up for water and the electricity supply is cut for nothing less than 6 to 10 hours a day. Undeniably, private power distributors in Delhi practice very selective load shedding, often choosing working class colonies over other posher areas. In working class colonies like Baljit Nagar where KYS has been extensively working, water reaches many houses every third day! In this regard KYS has spearheaded a militant struggle against the Delhi Jal Board Authorities as well as the water (tanker) mafia that operates in the locality. Similarly, in the same locality women’s lives were reduced to hell when rumour of a serial killer, i.e. Hammer-man, made its way into the public domain. Realizing the discontent and fear prevalent in the youth and women in the locality KYS carried out an investigative inquiry, following which it organized a huge protest outside the Delhi Police Headquarters. Through its inquiry the organization proved that rather than a serial killer on the loose, who attacked women and miraculously escaped the notice of other family members crowded into the small rooms/houses in Baljit Nagar, the assaults (and in two cases, murder) were actually incidents of domestic violence. As a result of the pressure applied on the Delhi Police, arrests of guilty family members began to be made shortly after.
Apart from high rents, workers and students’ problems are compounded by the poor condition in which the public transport system exists. With the acute shortage of Delhi Transport buses most of the time commuters are travelling in crowded buses, endlessly waiting for buses at stands/depots, etc. As a result, the travel to and fro from their workplaces/institutions to their homes is nothing short of a nightmare.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS THAT HAVE MADE IT WORSE FOR TENANTS:
Recently, over the past two years as Delhi’s authorities have hurriedly prepared for the Commonwealth Games, conditions for tenants in the city have worsened. The preparation for the Games has, indeed, allowed the state to crack down on the most vulnerable sections of society. Construction workers, most of whom are migrants, are being overworked and underpaid at the various Commonwealth sites. The homeless, labourers, hawkers, and now students have had to pay the brunt for the massive construction work and subsequent redirecting of funds. Slums have been demolished and ‘relocated’ overnight, street vendors have been denied their rights, and now students too have been recently evicted from their college hostels in the wake of the Commonwealth Games!
The face of the Commonwealth Games is really less about the games, and more about the herding of poor people into ill-equipped resettlement colonies (in the hope of concealing the city’s poverty), cracking down on rickshaw-pullers and street vendors, evicting students from college hostels, and the brutal exploitation of cheap labour for the massive construction projects. It is time for introspection—when this country has little to boast of in terms of a mass sports culture, why should we sacrifice and celebrate these Games?! It is a fact that the same Indian state that is pouring funds into the Commonwealth Games’ fund, does little for its sporting community. So far governments have done little to build new stadiums and have invested precious little in the upkeep of existing sports infrastructure. New stadiums are built, old ones are renovated and Indian sportsmen are provided world class training only around certain “spectacular” events like the Asian Games some years ago and now on the occasion of the Commonwealth Games. In other words, a consistent and dedicated investment in sports is missing.
It is also a fact that till today sporting facilities are missing from the majority of government-run schools, killing the potential of so many young people to learn and specialize in sports. We find no sports centres in most colonies built by the government, especially JJ (Jhuggi-Jhopdi) colonies. The result of this is that only a select few (those who happen to study in good private schools or, live in posh localities that run sports clubs), indulge in sports. The majority of Indian youth learn to play in dry drains and the narrow streets of working class colonies. They cannot even dream of being professional sportsmen.
Of course, under the garb of the Commonwealth Games, landlords have hiked rents considerably. They had done so earlier too, when the Delhi Metro reached certain areas of the city. As expected, nothing was done then and nothing is being done now to control the fleecing of tenants. In its hurry to meet the deadlines of the Commonwealth Games, both the central and Delhi government have turned a blind eye to the growing problems of tenants. In fact, they have added massively themselves to the problems of workers and students by, consistently increasing the prices of essential commodities (pulses, vegetables, milk, petrol, diesel, electricity and even water) and taxes like V.A.T. By conveniently quoting the rising prices of water and electricity, landlords in the city have further dug into the pockets of workers and students living as tenants. They have also come up with disgusting practices like compelling their tenants to buy provisions from provision stores run by them in the locality!
On average rents have gone up two to three times this past few months. For students paying a rent of Rs. 3000, are now being charged an extra two to three thousand rupees. If they resist they are asked to vacate the accommodation. Realizing that students from colleges affiliated to D.U. have vacated their hostels temporarily, landlords have hiked rents, knowing there will be plenty of takers for their lodgings. Needless to say, these events are going to have long term repercussions for students even when the Commonwealth Games are over. The escalated rents are here to stay, as no PG is going to come down from a hiked rent of say Rs.8000 to Rs.5000, post the Games.
OUR APPEAL:
Since the problem of high rents, eviction, displacement etc. is a general one and affects not just one group of people in the city, it is important to address not a particular set of persons but the majority of city dwellers. Issues and demands should be raised in a way that they appeal to a larger section of people affected by the state’s inaction and its collusion with private business interests. In this way we connect concerns, struggles and militancy of different sections of people who are often segregated from each other due to the functioning of the system in place. For example, the student community and workers find themselves separated by work schedules, their class backgrounds, spatial settings/norms (in terms of workers being restricted to the space of factories and students to the space of their classrooms), etc. Of course, groups that can and should unite also find themselves segregated by wrong kinds of politics. By following initiatives that seek to particularize and defer the need to generalize issues of struggle, people come to raise struggles in isolation. Their militant campaigns lose steam, credibility and relevance since they did not tap on certain organic links between their concerns and those of other affected sections in society.
Hence, rather than particularizing the struggle against recent developments in the city, we must link up with connected concerns so as to expose how the “particular” (be it in terms of experiences, mobilization, etc.) is a false or exaggerated projection of the reality. The demand for rent regulation and affordable subsidized housing for all is a call that addresses all those living as tenants in the city. It is a potent cementing force in this regard. Of course, apart from raising common general demands, we must actively and consistently reach out to all those who are affected. Our action plans should include concrete mass mobilization of the different affected parties rather than mere information-gathering exercises, occasional meetings with them, etc. The latter is more patronizing in its approach to groups being reached out to. It cannot be our strategy to connect with the larger audience of people affected. Hence, the Campaign for Rent Regulation and More Hostels is working towards raising common concerns actively amongst different sections of people living as tenants in the city. We seek to encourage the student community in universities like D.U., not to raise the issue of rent, eviction, etc. within the limited sphere of the university alone, but also to become active participants in ongoing struggles raised by others faced with the same problem. We also aim at encouraging the student community to connect problems they face with larger questions of poor resource allocation, denial of opportunities by the system, etc. This is why we believe that demands such as provision of more hostels for students, housing for all, the removal of draconian economic policies like privatization of education and Special Economic Zones Act (2005), etc. are crucial for the Campaign. By raising these issues students are fighting the actual source of their exploitation and are strengthening the working class movement. Indeed, by supporting long standing demands/concerns arising from the working class movement, initiatives taken by students no longer remain sectarian (particularistic) in nature.
Friends, it is time we object and fight against people’s labour becoming someone else’s profit. By raising the issue of escalating rents we should realize that we are tapping on widespread social discontent. As tenants in the city, we, workers and students, cannot continue to watch our hard earned wages and limited monetary resources, line the pockets of greedy landlords in the city. It is time for collective struggle against landlords. We must realize that no longer can our individual battles with landlords bring us relief. We must step forward to give our individual struggles a collective form. It is only through collective struggle that we can pressurize the local government to administer its duties and regulate rents in the city as well as provide subsidized housing.
THE WAY AHEAD:
Indeed, our struggle against the rentier economy must not limit itself (in terms of ideas, visions and action) to certain immediate goals that are set. Our collective struggle must see this popular discontent and despair as stemming from the inequalities that capitalism breeds. Our fight is, hence, against a system that allows private business interests to control the economy and social life. The Campaign For Rent Regulation and More Hostels is just one of the forms our struggle against the system shall take. Through this particular struggle we must realize the significance and need for other larger struggles.
Of course, to fight a system we need a road map, and it is here we believe that the movement for socialism, both in the past and the present, will be our best guide and source of inspiration. This collective struggle by students and workers can draw much inspiration from socialist societies that built cities where homes were provided to all and where living spaces were redesigned so as to emancipate womankind from the burden of domestic chores (responsibilities that were earlier considered solely those of women). Socialist societies, despite several failures, have constantly endeavoured to provide the majority a home to live in and have developed community life in ways never imagined. In countries such as Cuba, the now dissolved USSR, etc. properties held in excess were confiscated and distributed to those who had lived as tenants for years as well as those who were homeless. Furthermore, socialist states invested heavily in construction of housing complexes, community/sporting/recreational centres, schools, colleges, hospitals, and entire cities—the driving force being the desire to accommodate the needs of all, as well as the desire to provide the majority the best of opportunities. It was in these very housing complexes built in socialist societies that individual kitchens (where women slaved away at back-breaking housework), were removed and community dining halls were created for each such housing complex. For certain segments of the society, such as students, endeavours were made to inculcate commune living and lifestyle.
We cannot create these progressive changes in our immediate social world but we can aspire for them and pave the way for their development and acceptance. For this we must begin to desire holistic and systemic change. We must realize that the actual resolution of the housing question lies within the struggle for and creation of a new socio-economic structure. In this light the Campaign For Rent Regulation and More Hostels is one step in that direction.
We Demand
• Rent Regulation by Delhi’s Rent Controller
• Provision of Hostel facility for students in every Delhi University college
• Funds allocated for renovation of existing hostels, be used for building larger capacity hostels.
• Construction of more working women’s hostels
• Provision of subsidized housing for all
• Institution of a judicial commission to inquire into the condition of tenants in Delhi
• Provision of more affordable public transport (U-specials, L-Specials, etc.)
• Public audit of the Commonwealth Games’ accounts
We Condemn
• Slum demolitions
• Hike in rents by landlords across the Delhi
• Eviction of current hostellers from college hostels
• Promotion of private accommodations
• The plunder of collective resources by private business houses.
• The anti-people policies of the Indian state
Since the beginning of August, the Delhi Nirman Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti has been mobilizing workers employed in Miranda House College against their exploitation. The trade union has been mobilizing workers since the commencement of construction work at the various Commonwealth Games work sites. It is, in fact, the only trade union of construction workers in the city. Despite the difficulties in mobilizing an unorganized work force like construction workers, the union has constantly made successful interventions. The struggle of workers at Miranda House marked its fifth successful intervention in Commonwealth Games construction sites. The details of the Miranda House struggle follow.
On August 6, 2010 the workers sat on a dharna outside the college, following which they took out a rally around the University campus. The latter was aimed at reaching out to construction workers employed at other work sites in Delhi University. On not receiving a response from the Miranda House authorities on their demands, the workers decided to sit on dharna outside the college office on August 12. They were supported in their struggle by the college students and members of the Miranda House Staff Association such as the Secretary, Ms. Nandini Dutta. The struggle was also supported by women and youth organizations like Centre For Struggling Women (CSW) and Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS).
The workers and students/teachers, under the banner of the Delhi Nirman Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti, were protesting the non-payment of wages due to the workers. They were also protesting several other violations of labour laws such as those pertaining to payment for overtime, mandatory weekly rest, etc. The workers at Miranda House had not been paid for the entire one month and four days for which they worked at the college. Furthermore, the rate of payment fixed by the contractor, Ms. Payal was well below the legal minimum wage rate. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the contractor defaulted in paying the workers and continuously violated several labour laws, the principal employer, i.e. the college Principal, Ms. Pratibha Jolly refused to step in and release the workers’ arrears. She, in fact, tried to act as a negotiator between the contractor and the union, something which the union vehemently opposed. Under the pressure applied by the union, on August 4, a small part of the workers’ dues was released with no further surety provided by the college administration to look into the other key demands of the workers. The protest held by workers on August 6, fell on deaf years.
Finally, after waiting till August 12, for a formal response from the Principal, the workers and the union decided to sit in protest, once again, against this high-handed and insensitive behavior on the part of the principal employer. As a backlash the college administration called in the Delhi Police who immediately started intimidating and manhandling the workers and students sitting on protest. Meanwhile, inside the college committee room, the Principal, the contractor, etc. refused to negotiate a written agreement. After much deliberation it was agreed to get the accounts together, for which the union sat down. Exact calculations of the payments due to the workers, and that too at Delhi’s daily minimum wage rate, were made and submitted for negotiation by the Delhi Nirman Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti.
While the negotiation proceeded, students and workers addressed Miranda House students who had congregated. In the discussion that took place it was pointed out by the Union as well as others present that it was shameful the way Miranda House hostellers were evicted from the hostel last moment (i.e. just two weeks before college reopened), followed then by this blatant and heartless exploitation of labourers employed at the hostel renovation site. The assembly of students and workers present was also formally addressed by Sri Narendarji, executive member of Indian Council of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the Secretary of Delhi Nirman Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti. Alok Kumar, Secretary of the Delhi Nirman Mazdoor Sangharsh Samiti, in his address, congratulated the workers for their endeavours and stated that the union’s initiative would now be to bring together workers from all the different work sites in the area. He spoke of intensifying the struggle and speculated that if the workers demands were not met by Miranda House Principal and the contractor, then the workers would not hesitate in striking work in the college.
It is clear from this instance that workers are willing to mobilize and use the strength of their organizations to fight back against their brutal exploitation. As members of the construction workers’ organization, we seek support of other democratic and progressive sections in this fight for justice.
Addendum
LIST OF LABOUR LAWS VIOLATED BY CHIEF EMPLOYER i.e., PRINCIPAL OF MIRANDA HOUSE & THE CONTRACTOR, Ms PAYAL
Principal of Miranda House, Ms. Pratibha Jolly, is the principal employer and she is the one who is the key violator of set labour law norms.
• According to section 21 (2) of The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, every principal employer shall nominate a representative duly authorized by him to be present at the time of disbursement of wages by the contractor and it shall be the duty of the representative to certify the amounts paid as wages. In section 21 (3) it is further emphasized that it is the duty of the contractor to ensure the disbursement of wages in the presence of the authorized representative of the principal employer. As delineated in Section 21 (4), in case the contractor fails to make the payment of wages within the prescribed period or make short payment, then the principal employer shall be liable to make payment of wages in full or the unpaid balance due. [See Cominco Benani Zinc ltd. v. Pappachan, 1989 LLR 123 (Kerela).
• The Building and other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996. Section 45 specifies that if the contractor fails to make payment of wages then the employer/principal employer is liable to make all the payments. Also see The Payment of Wages Act, 1936, section 3 (2).
• Section 30 of the Building and other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 prescribes proper norms for maintenance of registers and records. For liability of principal employer in this regard also see Minimum Wages Act, 1948, section 18 (1) and section 21 (1), (2) of The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970
Other Norms violated by both principal employer and contractor:
• Section 28 (1) (b) of The Building and other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 prescribes a day of rest in every period of 7 days with payment for the day of rest.
• Section 28 (1) (c) this Act of states that if work is carried on the day of rest, a worker is to be given the overtime rate specified in section 29.
• Section 29 (1) prescribes that any work above the normal work day should be given twice the ordinary rate of wages.
• The Minimum Wages Act, 1948, Section 17 prescribes that when an employee is employed on piece rate, the amount of wages paid cannot be less than that paid for minimum time rate. Also see Section 3 (2) (d).
• Section 25 prescribes that when a contract or agreement is being made between employer and employee whereby the employee relinquishes or reduces his right to a minimum rate of wages or any privilege or concession accruing to him under this act, then such a contract/agreement shall be null and void, and employees have to be paid according to the legally prescribed minimum wage.
• Section 12 (2), Comments (ii) states clearly that where a person provides labour or service to another for remuneration which is less than the minimum wages, such labour is “forced labour” within the meaning of article 23 of the Constitution and thereby entitles the person to invoke article 32 or article 226 of the Constitution of India.
• Moreover, there was a violation of many other norms mentioned in Building and other Construction Workers Act. There are no provisions made for facilities like crèches, canteen, latrines/urinals, accommodation, drinking water, etc. Prescribed safety and health measures are also being violated.
• The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 in Section 29 (2) prescribes that every principal employer and every contractor has to exhibit notices of particulars like the hours of work, wages, nature of duty, etc.
• According to The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, women workers are liable to be paid equal wages.
• Supreme Court Guidelines (in Vishaka Judgement 1996) prescribe the constitution of anti-sexual harassment complaints committees in every workplace. The construction site in Miranda does not have such a committee in place for the women workers employed.
Amitava Bhattacharya
General Secretary
Mazdoor Kranti Parishad
Following the Singur-Nandigram movement, the most important movement in West Bengal is that of Jangalmahal including Lalgarh, where an unprecedented mass upsurge rocked the entire nation. The terrible mass-agitation of the tribal population against the police repression unfolded the history of the prolonged deprivation of these people. Not only the state of West Bengal, but the whole of the country solidly stood by this movement.
The most important feature of this movement was that it surged forward on its own, defying any interference by the established parliamentary parties. This movement was born as a continuity of the people’s protest against the SEZ project of the Jindals at Shalbani, a project nurtured by the support of CPI (M), Congress and Trinamool Congress. When the Left Front government led by CPI (M) came to power for the seventh consecutive term, it became all the more rabid to make West Bengal a hunting ground for the native and foreign big capital. It started the forcible land acquisition. To achieve this aim, notorious gangs of hoodlums were formed by CPI(M) everywhere. All this started happening during the rule of UPA-1 and the Congress shamelessly abetted these activities.
The other party of the ruling class, the Trinamool Congress fully utilized Singur-Nandigram movement for the purpose of its political upheaval. This party was absolutely in favour of the ‘SEZ Act, 2005’ while it was a partner of BJP led NDA alliance. During the rule of the UPA-2 also this party played the most ‘suitable’ role as the partner of the congress government. This party never opposed the nefarious “Operation Greenhunt”, nor did it play a proper role against unprecedented price rise that has been making the life of the common people unbearable. Opposing the forcible land acquisition in Singur for TATAs, Mamata Banerjee took the centre stage anew in 2006. She fully made use of this movement to promote her parliamentary gains only to betray it later on. She used the spontaneous movement of Nandigram in the same manner. With the help of the Congress, Ms Banerjee and her party TMC once again tasted the ministerial power during the rule of UPA-2.Now the aim is to capture power in West Bengal in 2011, when the State Assembly election will be due.
Against the unscrupulous scramble for power of the parliamentary political parties safeguarding the interest of the big capital, both Indian and foreign, the struggle of the Jangalmahal has instilled new life into the revolutionary movement. The revolutionary prospects of the left once again became an object of serious discussion. The CPI(Maoist),the main political force behind the movement on the other hand, took initiative to convert this mass upheaval into armed war against The State, which is, in fact, their declared political position. In course of time various guerrilla actions, small or big, became the principal form of this movement. By sending the joint forces on 18th june,2009, both Central and State government tried to suppress this people’s movement. The armed hoodlums of CPI(M) also joined hands in this campaign of torture and mayhem on the oppressed people.
The largest partner of UPA 2 government Trinamool Congress demanded that the entire area be declared a “disturbed area” and the Indian Army be deployed, in the pretext of the presence of the CPI(M) hoodlums. And now while taking the full protection of the Joint Forces to organize her meeting, she very hypocritically demands their withdrawal.
This movement has incurred heavy losses by the pincer attack of The Joint Forces and the CPI(M)’s own armed gangs. The CPI(Maoist) has been regularly carrying annihilation of persons suspected to be police spies. Under the circumstances, Ms Mamata Banerjee on 21st July has given the call “Lalgarh chalo”. At the outset it was decided that meeting of Lalgarh would be held in the name of TMC alone. Later on she declared that the meeting would be held in the name of “Santrasbirodhi Manch” (Anti Terror Platform).She invited The Congress Party to this congregation. She invited the intellectuals also who desire a “change” of power. A section of them declared their wish to join the meeting. To add to the significance of this meeting, the PCPA, opposing it at the outset, later on decided to join it. This organization subsequently went whole hog to make this meeting a success. To cap it all ,The top-ranking Maoist leader Kishenji gave statement to make “Didi’s rally” a success.
It is known to us that at times a movement has to temporarily retreat. But for a movement which is declared to be a decisive battle against the state, a movement which is considered a high level movement for the transformation of the society by its leaders, is it not a dangerous “tactics” for it? We do not think it proper for the highest leadership of The Maoist Party to support a section of the ruling parties of the state, against which the war has been already declared.
We think the role that the sham leftist CPI(M) has been playing as the representative of the ruling and exploiting classes is leading the countless toiling people to the loss of faith in the red flag. They are being compelled to have recourse to the rightist force. Such a juncture in our contemporary history is really very agonizing. At such a critical hour, to plunge into the lap of the rightist forces for a momentary gain is not only a mistake, but extremely harmful so far as the building of a revolutionary alternative is concerned. Taking historical lessons from the mass movements of Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh , let us resurrect the revolutionary tradition of the left movement and forge ahead towards greater people’s movement.
The following text is devalued with increasing speed: the global crisis and subsequent struggles shake the global wage scale. In June 2010 the Indian government ‘free-floated’ the petrol and diesel prices, fueling the already double-digit inflation. In the UK the government increased the VAT by 20 per cent and cut wage-subsidising benefits. The collapsing Euro inflates the Rupee. The struggles in China and Bangladesh put pressure on wages in the global low-income zones. We will see whether class struggle and crisis will re-shape the global wage-division, old concepts like ‘workers’ aristocracy’ and most of the concepts of ‘integrated’ working-classes ‘in the imperialist nations’ will help little to understand. We need global proletarian debates.
The following ‘relative’ comparison of Delhi and London minimum wages and their respective purchasing power would be a rather tedious endeavor if seen as a purely statistical enterprise or poverty competition. It would result in the usual ‘statistical findings’, e.g. that if you are inclined to become a well-groomed truck-driver with a passion for cheap daily newspapers and road-side cups of tea you should move to Delhi; whereas for any other reasons you should make it to or stay in London – if you can – because you will earn roughly four and a half times as much in terms of purchasing power. If you were a textile company manager looking for low wage zones your perspective might be a little more blunt. You would compare the absolute wage difference between a potential minimum wage worker in London’s East End (around 1,200 GBP per month) and those of a worker in Delhi’s Okhla industrial zone (around 76 GBP per month). The fact that in absolute terms the London wages are about sixteen times higher will make investment decisions a fair bit easier.
We compare the workers’ wages to consumer goods and services. This in itself will tell us little about the actual social position we find ourselves in once we depend on this wage and have to sell our labour power for it. How does our wage compare to the income of people in the city around us? Will we feel ‘excluded’ from wider social life and life-styles? How does the wage compare to the general ‘productive social wealth’, the material power to set in motion bodies and minds for profitable purposes or mass destruction? We compare wages which are set by two different states, wages which are defined as ‘minimum’ in terms of the local, moral, historic minimum level of reproduction for a worker. One local context is the capital of an ‘ex-colony’, the capital of a developing country, the regional centre of an emerging global industrial cluster. The other local context is the capital of an ‘ex-empire’, the centre of historical Industrial Revolution, with 250 years of industrial working class history. The centre of world finance, real estate bubbles and a declining manufacturing base. This also means that Delhi area is dominated by a work-force which – in general sense – knows how many acres of wheat you can reap in a certain amount of time or how many shirts or metal parts a worker can produce per day. Productive workers from mainly rural backgrounds have a rough notion how their productivity relates to wages they receive and prices they have to pay. London is characterised by mainly ‘unproductive labour’: a cleaner might know how much money their company charge the client, they know about exploitation on an immediate level, but less on a social scale.
Workers’ wages and their consumption level tell us something about the ‘stage of capitalist development’, if we agree that one of the characteristic outcomes of industrial working class struggle is that after the class wars of mining, railway building and machine and weapon manufacturing workers a following generation of workers is able to buy ‘industrial goods’ in form of long-lived consumption goods like radios, fridges or washing machines. We also have to mention the ‘sources’ of our consumer products. In Delhi we refer to the most common trade-form for basic food items, vegetables or durable consumer goods: small traders. The prices in London are based on prices of large super-market chains for daily goods and internet price comparisons for durables – because this is how proletarians shop in general. We leave it to a different research to find out whether the demise of small traders and the consequent drop of general wage level due to increased competition will be compensated by ‘cheaper’ large-scale and ‘more direct’ trading.
When we compare London-Delhi wages relative to food items, the London wages are about five to six times higher, if we compare them in relation to the mentioned ‘durable consumer articles’, London wages are fifteen times higher. The astonishing fact is the relative ‘expensiveness’ of agricultural goods’ in India, compared to ‘basic manufactured items’: While I can buy five times as much rice of my London minimum wage, I can ‘only’ buy three times as many shirts or shoes. This is only partly due to higher relative petrol prices in India, which form a decent chunk of food prices. Apart from room rents – which are a peculiar issue – it is personal services such as cooked food or hair cuts where a minimum wage in Delhi can command as much personal service labour as the wage in London. This tells something about the low levels of service proletarian wages in the Indian metropolis! Out of good attitude we put ‘global goods’ into the equation, e.g. Nescafe, Mc Chicken, Nokia mobile phones or IPods. We can see that the ‘wage division’ widens when it comes to these ‘global goods’ – which doesn’t mean that the Delhi young proletarian would not have access to the ‘use value’ of these goods. Let’s not argue about the use value of a McChicken, but of Chinese Fake-Brand MP3-Players or Handy-Cams. Apart from the ‘old school’ consumer durables like fans, gas-cookers and bicycles, the modern proletarian in Delhi owns a mobile phone with gadgets. We suggest the thorough article on Sanhati: “Do 600 Million Cellphones Make India a Rich Country”
But let’s stick to the basics: the level of minimum wage as means of reproduction for a worker. Behind this phrase a political field of question opens up. In London the nominal/direct wage does not cover reproduction, in the sense that in case of illness, unemployment, old age the state has to guarantee an additional part of income. The London minimum wage is hardly a ‘family wage’: the state has to top up in terms of child benefits etc. In Delhi these ‘welfare provisions’ only exist on paper, in 90 per cent of cases workers won’t get unemployment or pension money, neither health care. For most workers in Delhi the minimum wage has to cover parts of these future or ‘accidental’ costs. In a purely economical sense we would have to add these monetary benefits or service costs to the London minimum wage. On the other hand a London worker is very likely to be ‘fully proletarianised’ in the sense that s/he hasn’t got a ‘second home’ in a village and no access to – however small – a piece of land and wider family network which could act as a basic security net. We can argue whether it is not the other way around – that the urban wage has to finance the maintenance of the small piece of land and the rural family members. Fact is that many workers in Delhi industrial areas try to save money – first of all on rent – in order to be able to ‘save money for the home’. Ideally a ‘single worker’ – who is either unmarried or whose family lives in the vilage’ will try to save half of his or her monthly wage. The most common life perspective – or illusion – is that the urban industrial wage work is a temporary stage and that there is a future as semi-peasant / shop-keeper etc. in the village.
When it comes to rent and living arrangements the ‘village’ plays a role. In London only ‘migrants’ would stay five people to a room, no separate kitchen – which is the norm in Delhi, not only for families, but also for unrelated young workers. In this way they can drop the rent share of their total wage to under 10 per cent. In London you might rent a room in a shared flat, giving you access to a kitchen and a toilet, which will cost you around 50 per cent of your wage. In the relative wage comparison we took all three different scenarios into account: comparing the most common set-up; comparing ‘a single worker’ to ‘a single room’ according to the respective local ‘workers’ housing standards’; comparing ‘a single worker’ to ‘a single room’ according to London housing standards. The main obvious result is that compared to other ‘goods’ rent in London is relatively high and the main reason for why the relative wage levels are ‘only’ four to five times higher. Who would have thought?! At this point the quantitative state of mind leaves us clueless: Is it expression of a higher living standard to live in a London Stratford bed-sit, while your two-weeks dead neighbour starts to send his whiffs through the mortar?
What about the ability of workers in Delhi and London not only to be a categorial part of global working class formation, but to take part in it in a physical and communicative way. We can compare costs for flights Delhi-London and costs for an hour spent on the internet and we can see that a flight belongs to the ‘fridge/washing machine’-category out of reach for most Delhi workers, while the internet is closer to home. Here again, we reach other forms of exclusion. Even if a worker in Delhi would be able to save money for the flight, that does not mean that s/he will get a visa. Even if a worker in Delhi can surf on the net, the fact that the Hindi sites are still rather insular compared to the ‘global electronic village’ of the the English speaking Indian upper-class is not an ‘economical’ problem. Which does not mean that the worker in Delhi would not have the means for ‘political mass-expressions’, see prices for printing a small newspaper or for sending it by post. On a similar relative price level range the products of ‘knowledge circulation cum mental domestication’ such as daily newspapers or cinema. In terms of access to career paths to leave the minimum wage misery it looks rather bleak for proletarians on both sides of the globe. A truck driving license might be within reach, but won’t solve the initial problem. The worker in Delhi would have to save around 833 years in order to afford the two years fees for a MBA (management degree), while the worker in London might make it in 20 years. Great.
How do these wages relate to themselves in the historical dimension, does the gap close or widen over time? Difficult question. We can assume that since it’s introduction in 1997 the relative minimum wage in the UK fell – which was 3.60 GBP at the time. But did it increase in Delhi? Minimum wage in Delhi 1990 was around 900 Rs. The early 1990s were turbulent times in terms of inflation, up to 18 per cent annual consumer price increase in 1994 to 1996. If we assume an average annual inflation of around 8 per cent for 1990 to 2010 period, the wage of 900 Rs would have had to increase to 4,177 Rs by 2010 to compensate. Here the fundaments of statistics become drift-sand. Since 1990 the share of temporary and casual jobs, the amount of jobs through contractors increased rapidly, while more and more permanent workers lost their jobs. May be the minimum wage has increased in real terms, the general conditions of industrial workers in Delhi have hardly improved. In what kind of ‘working class position’ would a London minimum wage be situated in Delhi? If we take a common commodity basket (rent, food, clothes, transport, consumer goods – according to average share of total wage), we come to a medium wage ratio of 4.5 times higher wages in London. This would mean that the ‘equivalent’ to the London wage in terms of purchasing power would be around 23,400 Rs per month in Delhi. What kind of wage workers in Delhi would earn this kind of wage – which would place them into widely hailed ‘emerging Indian middle-class’? Some call centre workers earn that kind of money. Permanent workers in the automobile industry earn this much, partly more. We can see that major wage differences run within the industrial areas of Delhi as much as within the global working class. We can also see that the ‘wage question’ is everything but an ‘economical question’, but – in the end – a question of social-historical power, of class power. Let’s stop calculating!
But whoever wants to know how we calculated things: We could see a rather shaky exchange rate between Rupee and British Pound during 2009 – 2010. At the end of November 2009 the rate was 1 GBP / 78 Rs. Since then the British Pound steadily declined in value – or rather, the Rupee got appreciated. On 3rd of May 2010 the rate was 1 GBP / 68 Rs. For the total wage calculation we take the minimum wage for industrial helpers in Delhi May 2010 of 5,200 Rs per month based on an 8-hours day and a 6-days working week. We have to emphasise that only a fraction of workers actually get this wage, most workers earn less or have to work considerably longer hours for it. We base the London hourly minimum wage of 5,80 Pounds on the same monthly working times.
Item [Kilo Rice]: Price Rs in Delhi [22 Rs] / Price GBP in London [1.10] – Amount of Items I can buy with monthly wage in Delhi [236] / London [1091] (London Wage this times higher/lower than Delhi Wage [4.6])
The author is a supporter of Socialist Resistance and was the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition parliamentary candidate for Brighton Kemptown in the June 2010 British general election. He offered his alternative to the market driven education “reforms” of the other parties.
I have spent my lifetime as a teacher in `challenging’ primary and secondary schools and in teacher `training’ and in universities trying to tackle inequalities in schooling- inequalities that result in millions of working class children having far less educational opportunities- and subsequently, usually lower paid jobs- than the children of richer parents, especially the 7% who go to private schools- and snap up most of the highest paid, elite, jobs.
The very choice of what and how it should be taught, how and what schooling should be organised, how any whom it should be funded, and where and how the funding should be targeted, and a consideration of `who wins and who loses’ through all of the above, are all intensely political. And we want that politics to be in the interests of the millions not the millionaires!
I come from a working class family brought up in some poverty, for example on Free School Meals (like a million others!) in St. Martins’ St., off the Lewes Rd., Brighton. I went to Westlain Grammar School, my brothers to underfunded secondary modern schools, such as Queens Park and Moulscoomb. Three times as much was spent on the education of grammar school students (which educated 20% of state schooled children) than on Secondary Modern students (which educated nearly all the other state school children under the then selective school system)! My children went to local state schools. The inequalities I have witnessed- and lived- as a child, and as a teacher and socialist political activist, have led me to spending my life fighting for greater equality in education and society, and against racism, sexism and against homophobia.
What an indictment of our divisive education system that students from private schools are 25 times more likely to get to one of the top British universities than those who come from a lower social class or live in a poor area. And that (in 2008), only 35% of pupils eligible for free school meals obtained five or more A* to C GCSE grades, compared with 63% of pupils from wealthier backgrounds. This stark education inequality mirrors that in our grossly unequal society.
It is incredible, actually it is only too believable, that in Britain today, the richest section of society have 17 years of healthy life more than the least well-off in society. The minimum wage should be raised by 50%. How can people- decent hard working people like some in my own family, live on take-home pay of less than £200 a week! And there should be a maximum wage, too! Nobody, banker, boss, or buy-out bully, should be on more than £250,000 a year- (and this figure should reduce progressively so that within 10 years no-one is taking more than four times the average wage, nobody should be creaming off £27 million or £90 million a year for example! Certainly not when there are 4 million children living in poverty! I was once one of them. I was helped by the welfare state. We need our public services. We need to improve them, not cut them, not attack them.
All three parties, New Labour, LibDem, Tory, dance to the music of big business. All are promising cuts. Whatever they say, those cuts will hit schools, children, and the quality of education in our state schools. Already we are seeing staff cuts and course closures in universities up and down the country. In Brighton, for example, both Brighton and Sussex Universities are promising to cut out the nurseries, and Sussex to chop over 100 jobs. Brighton University is proposing to cut its Adult Ed art courses. Vandalism! Cutting popular and widely used public services!’
And don’t believe cuts are necessary. They’re not! Cutting the Trident nuclear submarine replacement programme, bringing troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, stopping the Identity Card programme, and collecting even some even of the £120 billion in taxes unpaid by the rich… yes, £120 billion! And raising taxes high earners…would mean cuts are not necessary at all!
But you won’t hear that from the other parties, just from Socialists, like the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, and from Respect.
A socialist manifesto is:
1. Cut class sizes (they are currently some of the largest in the rich world- much larger than in private schools for example). According to OECD research Britain is 23rd out of 30 developed countries in terms of large class size. Other countries such as Finland have a maximum class size of 20. Finland is widely seen as providing an extremely high quality of education. For a maximum class size of 20 by 2020 in both primary and secondary schools!’
2. Abolish league tables and abolish SATS (some external testing is necessary, but SATS so very often restricts teaching to `teaching to the test’, and results in undue stress (and an increase in bedwetting, compared to the pre-SATS era, for example).
3. Restore local democratic control of `Academies’. They should be run by the democratically elected local councils, and keep to national pay and conditions agreements. Why should rich businessmen and women take control of any of our schools? Let’s keep the added investment- but it’s the government that pays for that added investment anyhow! Let’s keep and enhance the added investment, but distribute it fairly between all schools. Our schools and the children in them are not for sale! Nor, through uneven funding for different types of school (e.g. academies) should some schools be set up for success at the expense of others being set up (and underfunded) for relative failure.
4. Private profiteering out of our schools! Bring the education services hived off to private profiteers back into either national or local private ownership! These include Ofsted, Student grants, school meals, cleaning and caretaking.
5. Free, nutritious, balanced school meals for every child to combat poor diets, obesity, and… yes… for some children… hunger!
6. Restore free adult education classes in pastime and leisure studies as well as in vocational training/ studies
7. Restore free funded residential centres and Youth Centres/ Youth clubs for our children so they can widen their experiences of life in safe circumstances and enhance their education beyond the confines of the home or city.
8. For a fully Comprehensive Secondary School system, so that each school has a broad social class mix and mix of ability and attainment levels.
9. For the integration of Private schools into the state education system- so that the goodies of the private school system are shared amongst all pupils/ students. All schools to be under democratic locally elected local council control. No to Private Schools. No to religious groups running schools. No to big business / private capital running our schools and children!
10. Free up the curriculum so there can be more creativity and cross-subject/ disciplinary work.
11. Get Ofsted and their flawed tick-box system off the back of teachers. The results of Ofsted are to penalise even the best schools (outstanding in every aspect- other than in SATS attainments) in the poorest areas.
12. Encourage Critical Thinking across the curriculum. Teach children not `what to think’, but also `how to think’. Including how to think critically about the media and politicians.
13. Teach in schools for ecological literacy and a readiness to act for environmental justice as well as economic and social justice Encourage children to `reach for the stars- and to work for a society that lets that happen- a fairer society with much more equal chances, pay packets and power, and about environmental and sustainability issues.
14. Proper recognition of all school workers, and no compulsory redundancies. For teachers, secretarial and support staff, teaching assistants, school meals supervisory assistants, caretaking staff, there should be workplace democratic regular school forums in every school. Regarding jobs (for example the threatened job cuts at Sussex University- and the `inevitable’ job cuts in every? school after the election- no compulsory redundancies- any restructuring to be conditional on agreement with the unions.
15. Setting up of school councils – to encourage democratic understanding, citizenship, social responsibility, and a welcoming and valuing of `student/ pupil voice’.
16. Ensuring that schools are anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic- making sure schools encourage equality, welcome different home and group cultures.. As part of this, anti-bullying practices in every school must be fully implemented, to combat bullying of all sorts, including racism, sexism, homophobia, and bullying based on disabilities. And this should be not just in anti-bullying policies, but also be part of the curriculum too!
17. An honest sex education curriculum in schools that teaches children not just `when to say no’, but also when to say `yes’, a programme that is focuses on positives and pleasure and personal worth, not on stigmatising sex and sexualities.
18. No to `Faith Schools’ and Get organised religion out of schools. If Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians, or whichever religion wishes to teach religion, let them do it in their own time, places of worship (Saturday/ Sunday schools) or in their supplementary or complementary schools. Teach ethics and spirituality by all means, and teach about religions. But no brainwashing. Teach a critical approach to religions.
19. Broaden teacher education and training so that the negative effects of the `technicisation and detheorising’ of teacher training (that were the result of the 1992/1993 Conservative re-organisation of what was then called teacher education- subsequently retitled teacher training). Bring back the study and awareness of the social and political and psychological contexts of teaching, including an understanding of and commitment to challenge and overturn racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of under-expectation and discrimination- such as discrimination against working class pupils.
20. A good, local school for every child. No school closures! “Surplus places” should actually mean lower class sizes! And increased community use of school facilities.
21. A completely fully funded, publicly owned and democratic education system from pre-school right through to university. Education is a right not a commodity to be bought and sold. So, no fees, like in Scandinavia, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, where education up to PhD level is free. No university of further education/ vocational training fees, and a living grant for students from less well-off backgrounds/ income.
In my jobs, firstly as a teacher, and now as a Professor of Education (and writer/ editor of 17 books on education and equality) I have been round hundreds of schools. Many of them are brilliant. Schools in the poorest areas, schools in better off areas! Brilliant. But, with better funding, smaller class sizes, an end to the destructive competition between schools (if every school is a good local school) and with more professional judgement being allowed for teachers- then I look forward to a time when all state schools match the class sizes and results of the currently more lavishly funded private schools’. And working class kids – black, brown, white- get the fair deal currently trumpeted- but in actuality denied- by all three major parties.
Prof. Dave Hill, The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) parliamentary candidate for Brighton Kemptown. He teaches at Middlesex University and is Visiting Professor of Critical Education Policy and Equality Studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland. This article appeared in Socialist Resistance on 15 April 2010.
While I was walking around the Shanghai World Expo on a weekday a couple of weeks ago I met a group of workers from a nearby clothing sweat shop. Their company had sent them to the Expo for the day (for which they had to trade their only day off, Sunday). They were too tired to enjoy the Expo as they worked 14 hours a day, six days a week. While this may seem like a nice gesture on the part of the company, the workers also explained that the company was moving much of their production to another building that week, because a worker burned much of the factory down after not being paid on time. I heard this story just as the news of the Foxconn suicides began to break into the media and shortly after that the Honda strike began.
Within public discussion, the Honda wildcat strike has transformed the meaning of the Foxconn suicides. Early interpretations of the Foxconn suicides tended to argue that the suicides should either be understood as individual psychological issues and as copycat suicides, on the one hand, or a result of the particularly brutal and alienating conditions at Foxconn, on the other. Some marshaled statistics to show that there were no more suicides at Foxconn than the social average when one considers the size of Foxconn (for example, see Tom Holland “Why there’s less to the suicides at Foxconn than meets the eye” and Michael R. Phillips “Foxconn and China’s Suicide Puzzle Workers: may not be taking their own lives for the reasons everyone thinks”). Statistics average out, in other words, the social difference of the militarized factory space; Foxconn was treated as a normal social space, a city. (For a discussion of suicide rates and Foxconn, see EastSouthWestNorth #19. Notable also is that the Chinese rate of suicide for people 15 to 34 is quite high. See Suicide main cause of death in 15 to 34-year-olds.)
Analysis of the social and work conditions at Foxconn also appeared. The particularly militarized and alienating work environment at Foxconn is a result of capital’s relentless drive to lower assembly costs and the Asian subcontracting regime; reform-era China and the CCP have been a willing partner in that effort. Activists and scholars have argued that Foxconn is one of the worst factories in terms of it labor regime, with a very long (usually about 70 hours) work week (since the pay structure means that workers must work a lot of overtime) and a very rapid assembly line. Foxconn was able to become the world’s largest assembly company exactly because of its harsh Taylorist production process, which cuts up the process into highly regimented movements, its ability to intensify labor exploitation and its repressive management style (See this article by Andy Xie for some analysis and background on the Taiwanese management style). There are reports that Foxconn initially responded to the suicides by pushing workers to sign contracts that they would not commit suicide, and stating that their families would not receive compensation if they did. It went so far as to state that suicide harmed Foxconn’s reputation.
But the successful Honda wildcat has changed the discussion. The suicides and the strike are being put into the context of changing labor relations in China, with many now arguing that Chinese labor is at a turning point.
For example, NPR’s Marketplace (Honda, Foxconn workers demand more power) argues that a “labor shortage in China is empowering workers to demand better wages and treatment at their workplaces….” In a discussion of the Honda strike, Reuters notes that “[s]ome other foreign companies have begun to address workers’ discontent over pay and working conditions. Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd for instance plans to raise salaries by about a fifth at its Foxconn International unit, maker of Apple Inc’s iPhone, as it struggles to stop a spate of suicides and quell public anger.” Foxconn has said that it will raise base salaries by 30% now with more raises to come in the near future. Clearly this wasn’t only caused by the suicides, however. Foxconn was planning a salary increase earlier in the year in response to the difficulty hiring workers due to labor shortages.
The Honda strike (workers’ demands included wage increases from about 1,500 yuan (less than $220 US) to about 2,300 yuan ($337 US) for higher paid workers) is likewise getting more press than any other worker action in recent years.
China’s economic stimulus has given large subsidies for car sales, and car manufactures are attempting to rapidly increase production in China. Honda plans to add a third to its Chinese production by 2012. But its integrated production process is vulnerable to strike activity. This is particularly true of transmission plants, which are highly automated and expense to construct. Thus they are usually put in the most stable regions, notes the New York Times. But the stability of the Chinese working class is now in doubt. According to the Wall Street Journal:
“The strike has exposed unexpected vulnerabilities in Honda’s China supply chain. Because of the relative absence of labor unrest in China, Honda makes do with only one source of transmissions there, the Foshan factory that supplies roughly 80% of demand, according to Mr. Fujii. The rest are brought in from Japan. Typically, Honda insists on at least two suppliers of parts, partly to protect against any industrial action that might cripple production.”
While quick to tamp down any political interpretation of the workers’ activity, the New York Times argues that in the beginning the state allowed media coverage of the strike because it wants to push up internal demand. On the other hand, the China Daily (in an article now taken off their website) used the strike to editorialize that the Chinese state needs to do more to raise the wages of workers. Since the end of the strike, Chinese media coverage has continued while broadening its analysis. At the same time, the government seems to be increasing its efforts at raising the wages and internal consumption. This follows several years of increased investment for rural China, which means there is less pressure for peasants to migrate out for work.
Broader Implications: First question looking forward:
What does this mean in terms of the changing Chinese political economy? A few points: Increasing wages in China could help rebalance the global economy. As their wages increase Chinese workers will be able to spend more (the wage share of GDP fell from 56.5 percent in 1983 to 36.7 percent in 2005). A rise in internal demand will mean a drop in the savings rate in turn forcing a rise in the savings rate in the US. This will likely also mean inflation, which is already a problem with the huge Chinese stimulus, yet inflation is also another way–other than a direct change in the exchange rate–for the Chinese state to rebalance its trade relationship with the US. The power of the export manufacturers in China seems to have been able to keep the state from changing the exchange rate to any great extent, but inflation might help take care of this for the state. Of course inflation will eat into wage increases and possibly lead to more social unrest. Meanwhile, the Beijing government announced on June 3rd that it was raising the minimum wage by 20% in response to inflation–the past few years it was raised about 10% per year. Other regions are following suit.
The June 7th issue of The Economic Observer (Jingji guancha bao) has articles on the labor situation noting that both the Honda strike and the situation at Foxconn are symptoms of a broader change going on in the Chinese labor market. One article argues that China has reached the “Lewisian turning point”. Arthur Lewis argued in 1954 that, for a period of time, developing countries could rely on rural surplus labor to keep wages from rising. This would allow them to industrialize without wage inflation. But once rural surplus labor is absorbed by the industrial economy and the labor market unifies wages will begin to increase more rapidly. The influential economist Cai Fang has been predicting this shift for some time, and in 2007 edited a volume on the turning point called “The Coming Lewisian Turning Point and its Policy Implications.”
Arthur Kroeber argued in the March issue of China Economic Quarterly that China’s cheap labor regime was coming to an end and that wage inflation will drive up the consumption share of GDP. In the planning for the 12th Five Year Plan, the CCP itself emphasizes this rebalancing and the important role that raising the wage share of GDP should plays in the process. At the same time, some commentators seem to be taking this argument a bit too far. Andrew Peaple states that “the dynamics of China’s economic development are moving inexorably in favor of the country’s workers.” While this will change the shape of the Chinese economy, its effect on capital will be mixed. Higher wages will mean more consumption, helping many companies as much as it hurts. But the assembly and clothing industry in the Southeast will be hit hard, as those plants are both more easily moved to other, cheaper-wage countries and have thinner profit margins. It is too early to say what this transition (of the Chinese economy and of the Chinese labor process) might mean more globally.
A second question looking forward:
Does the Honda strike indicate increasing self-activity of the working class in China? Certainly the example of the success of workers in the Honda strike in winning some wage increases (initially about 24% but in the end much more) might spread to other workers in China. Also, the strike itself was very highly organized, leading to the participation of about 1,900 workers (including a large number of low-paid interns). The workers seemed split, however, when gave in to a lower wage increase than initially demanded. The People’s Daily reports that the hold out group was involved in a confrontation with representatives of the state union, the ACFTU. (The local ACFTU seems to be playing a more conservative role–by protecting Honda–than even the state-run media.) The World Socialist Website details the attempts by the company to split the workers by putting pressure on the interns to sign no-strike pledges in return for smaller wage increases. According to The China Daily, the strikers also demanded changes in work conditions, more transparency in company finances (this seems like a reflection of the history of worker democratic involvement in enterprise management in China), and a change in union representatives. The New York Times points out that workers complained that Japanese employees at the Honda plant make about 50 times that of Chinese workers. It is likely that nationalism has also played a role in how this strike has been reported in China. Most of the workers held out, however, and the agreement reached will lead to high wage increases. Kroeber talking Reuters stated that “Foreign investors have been lulled into a false sense of security that China has a docile work force. There’s nothing intrinsically docile about the Chinese labor force. There was a period when everything was kind of fine; now we are entering a period of more constraint.” Following the Honda strike, workers at a Hyundai factory near Beijing went on strike, but returned to work after they were immediately promised wage increases. Over 5,000 textile workers in Pingdingshan, Henan have been out on strike since May 14th at a factory privatized in 2006.
The strike is a sign of sharpening class tensions in China amid the worsening global economic crisis. While China’s economic growth rate continues to be high, propped up by huge stimulus spending, the gulf between rich and poor is widening. Last year there were 98,568 labour disputes filed in Chinese courts, up 59 percent on the previous year. Most disputes, however, were not reported.
It remains to be seen, however, how successful the CCP’s attempt at economic transition will be. We need to know how much of China’s growth and job creation is due to the stimulus and how sustainable it is. The unsustainable property market is creating an investment bubble. Just as likely as transition to a consumer-based economy, inflation could lead to stagflation once the property bubble bursts and the initial affects of the stimulus wear off. The real question is what then for the activity of the Chinese workers. They are clearly learning important lessons now. The fundamental question is whether their new found strength will lead to a break from the domination of capitalist accumulation or not.
Gurgaon in Haryana is presented as the shining India, a symbol of capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade, behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young middle class people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers uprooted by the agrarian crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh or Vietnam. And the rat-race will not stop; on the outskirts of Gurgaon, Asia’s biggest Special Economic Zone is in the making. The following newsletter documents some of the developments in and around this miserable boom region. If you want to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute to this project, please do so via:
1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers’ perspective
*** Three Communists in Gurgaon -
The industrial development and proletarian unrest in Gurgaon did not remain unnoticed. We talked to three communists who decided to focus their political activity on the vast landscape of working class formation. The comrades are part of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist left, belonging to three different political organisations.
2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area
*** Inflationary Proletarian Struggles -
While opposition parties arrange token protests against the price hikes, workers on the ground battle for higher wages. In March 2010 Delhi government announced 33 per cent increase of minimum wages, but this hike hardly ever reaches shop-floor reality. In the aftermaths of the minimum wage increase we observe various spontaneous proletarian actions in Gurgaon and Okhla industrial areas. The combination of an interlinked (automobile) industry and organisational efforts like Faridabad Majdoor Talmel can become future lines of coordination and generalisation of the unrest.
*** Update on Struggles of Permanent Automobile Workers at Sanden Vikas and Exide -
The first-tier supplying industry of the automobile industry is heating up under the double pressure of increasing demand of the assembly plants on one side and the more confident claims of the workforce on the other. The recent struggles at Denso, Sanden Vikas and Exide express the difficult position of a young permanent work-force: they appeal to the classical union form of struggle hoping to secure an increasingly precarious position. These classical forms detach them from the wider casual and temporary workforce and therefore from the true ‘material’ power-base.
*** Waterwars, Energy Crunch and Revolting Villages -
Groundwater levels in Gurgaon drop dramatically, gobbled up by industry and upper-middle class life-style. Water and energy flows are diverted away from workers’ and peasants’ spheres. We document some struggles of ‘villagers’ against the lack of resources and oil-pipe-line projects crossing their fields.
3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain company policies
*** The Social Tsunami Impact / Snap-Shots against Capital-Class-Crisis -
This is an attempt to introduce a regular update on general tendencies of crisis development in Indian – motivated by Greek shock-waves, naked shorts and potential spillovers. Apart from short glimpses on the macro-level of things we focus on general trends in agriculture and automobile sector: the current demise of the past and the toxicity of the future.
4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News
*** Glossary -
Updated version of the Glossary: things that you always wanted to know, but could never be bothered to google. Now even in alphabetical order.
Gurgaon, a satellite town in the south of Delhi has become a symbol of the ‘Shining India’. People are dazzled by the glass-fronts of shopping-malls and corporate towers and fail to see the development of a massive industrial working-class that lies behind this ‘post-Fordist’ display of consumerism. Together with other industrial centres like the Pearl River Delta in China and the Maquiladoras in Northern Mexico the Delhi industrial belt has become a focal point of the formation of the global working class.
A local form of the global working class
The industrial areas of Gurgaon have seen the emergence of a specific form of class composition – hundreds of thousands of (migrant) garment workers work side by side with similar numbers of automobile workers (working in the assembly lines of India’s biggest automobile hub) and young call-centre workers, sweating under head-sets. We are forced to re-think our traditional understandings of who ‘workers’ are, how they struggle and how this struggle can become a process of self-empowerment, moving towards self-emancipation.
Specific structures of industries and the nature of the composition of work-force push us, first of all, beyond regional and national frameworks. At the most obvious level this happens because of the global market. In the spring of 2008 the Rupee reached its peak value in relation to the US-Dollar, and caused bad export conditions. The garment industry in Gurgaon dismissed thousands of workers and shifted orders to ‘low currency’ countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh. In autumn, the same year the Rupee plummeted; with it crashed American and European markets, sending shock-waves into the industrial areas of Gurgaon: credit crunch for real estate, cutting down of garment orders, slump in US-banking services. Workers belonging to certain locations, who might have otherwise thought that they had little in common with chai stall owners, faced a situation very similar to these owners – cut in bonuses and piece-rates, end of free company meals and transport and threat of job cuts. The potential for a socially explosive tea-party of English-speaking youth working night-shifts at call centres, migrant garment and construction workers and young skilled workers in car-part plants emerged in the Industrial Model Town – a mass base for an actual ‘internal threat’.
There is a second level at which the ‘collective work-force’ needs to be understood beyond the boundaries of factory walls or and units. This level is shaped by local, regional and global divisions of labour. Maruti Suzuki connects its assembly lines and welding-robots with production units of hundreds of outsourced suppliers via transport chains, these networks reach the work-shop slum-villages of Faridabad and the green-field industrial areas along the National Highway. Assembly plants around the globe depend on parts manufactured in Gurgaon by companies like Rico and Delphi. IT and BPO offices cooperate closely with branches overseas, while production in the huge garment factories is supplied via supervisor middlemen with piece-work from working (wo)men stitching ‘at home’.
At a third level, the nature of the work-force cannot be grasped in localized forms. The majority of workers migrate into the area, moving back and forth between urban industrial life and the village. Wages are too low to reproduce a nuclear family in Gurgaon and most workers leave their families in the villages. Similarly it is almost impossible to survive a long period of unemployment, or for that matter, a long period of strike in Gurgaon. Though disintegrating, the village still functions as the main backup in times of unemployment. The introduction of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) or the general development of the agricultural market reverberates in the working conditions in Gurgaon. Workers arrive in Gurgaon with hopes, which in most cases are dead soon. They survive 16-hours shifts by keeping in mind village misery and paradoxically, also by glorifying it. Their hope of ‘not having to be a worker anymore’ expresses itself in plans to open a shop back home. Reality forces us to find a collective and social expression of this urge to abolish our existence as ‘workers’.
A major element of this ‘worker’ existence is the casualisation of work-force. In winter 2000/2001 Maruti Suzuki used a minor labour dispute to lock-out the permanent work-force, and replaced it through compulsory ‘Voluntary Retirement Schemes’ with temporary workers. This has also happened in other companies, to the point that 70 to 80 per cent of the average factory work-force is nowadays hired through contractors. Due to their mobility (or lack of stability) these workers are less interested in struggles for long running wage agreements and company pension schemes. They have ‘short-term’ desires and their anger too is directed at the immediate. The remaining casual and permanent workers are often young workers trained in various ITI-campuses all over India, employed with much less job security and at lower wages than the old permanent work-force. In the garment factories the skilled tailors working at piece-rate, producing ‘full-piece’ garments are increasingly being put under pressure by chain-systems employing 20 less ‘skilled’ workers to produce the same garment using a greater division of labour based on CNC-cutting and embroidery machines. In Kapashera, a workers’ dormitory ‘village’ where about 200,000 textile workers and families live close to the main industrial area, dozens of ‘CNC-courses’ and six week basic tailoring courses are offered by small-scale informal schools.
In this complex scenario the majority of workers do not face a single ‘company boss’ in a formal way; they face a multiplicity of bosses. Due to the real estate boom which catapulted local farmers out of their fields into landlordism and business, a specific coalition of the local political class, landlords, labour contractors, police and company-hired goons became a repressive front ready to quell expressions of workers’ unrest. This local front of the ruling class is complemented by a faceless front of multi-national investment and central government policies.
Old Type of Struggles: Locked-Out in Dead-Ends
Under these general conditions, struggles which remain within the boundaries of the classical company/trade-union structure normally end in defeats and/or institutionalisation. There have been many ‘union’ struggles in Gurgaon in the last few years and they seem to follow a certain pattern.(1)
There is discontent among permanent workers as well as workers hired through contractors. In most cases some ‘under-the-surface’ struggles pre-date the ‘official conflict.’ For instance, at Honda HMSI ‘spontaneous’ canteen occupations took place before the ‘official’ struggle for union recognition began. In this phase certain sections of workers get in touch with union officials hoping that registration of a union will strengthen their position. Representatives emerge; member-lists are required for the application. The company tries to put pressure on the emerging ‘leadership’ and in many cases provokes a situation where suspension of ‘outstanding’ workers can be declared. In many cases companies ask the remaining work-force to sign individual letters of ‘good conduct’, trying to single out the supporters of the struggle. Unions, interested only in their self-propagation ask the workers not to sign: a struggle within the classical framework is easier to organise once workers are victimised, although their actual power might be greater once they are back inside the factory. An unofficial lock-out takes place; often workers hired through contractors, who expect little gains from a company union, either enter the factory or additional workers are hired to keep up production. Often these new workers are hired from the local population of the surrounding villages – another division between them and the mainly migrant, original work-force. Companies are usually prepared for the lock-out and subsequent problems in production, either by piling-up extra-stock or by getting parts from other suppliers. ‘Unofficial unrests’ get structured into classical forms, often managed by the main union advisors; protests in front of the factory gate, demonstrations, meetings with political leaders – the martyrdom of workers becomes an opportunity for leaders to stage themselves. In most cases the conflict gets limited to a single company, and attempts to connect to the wider struggle are not made. The state and companies are easily able to deal with these ritualistic forms of struggle, either through repression or through entangling it in a long legal dispute. The results of these disputes usually exclude the workers hired through contractors who were also part of the initial struggle. Furthermore, the cases for re-instatement of victimised workers often run for years. The recognition of a company union is followed by silence.(2)
Once in the trap of a lock-out workers can do little more than wait for the next symbolic show of solidarity. In the case of the recent lock-out at the Maruti fuel-pump supplier Denso, in Manesar, thirty-six union members were suspended on 17th February 2010 and about 500 workers refused to sign papers of ‘good conduct’. Since mid-February they have been sitting outside the factory while newly hired workers are kept inside around the clock. Even before the lock-out Denso had already ordered additional parts from its Thailand plant; they were prepared. In nearby Faridabad, workers of another Maruti supplier, AC manufacturer Sanden Vikas, were ‘locked-out’ at the same time. The union did not facilitate direct links between these two work-forces. The suggestion came up to write a common letter to the Maruti Suzuki management – admittedly only symbolic of workers’ coordination, which could nonetheless have had some impact. Another idea which came up was to go in small numbers and stand with placards in front of Maruti or other local factories. Denso runs factories around the globe and some effort to let workers and managements in these factories know about the situation in Manesar could have been made (3); small steps which could help spread the word and perhaps create direct links between workers of the supply-chain. This did not happen; instead we saw one or two union demonstrations and bored young workers sitting and playing cards. According to a Denso worker, on 22nd March 2010, the company took back 23 of the 36 suspended union representatives and sent all Denso workers for a one week training to a local ‘World Spiritual University’ ashram, to find mental peace. When they returned to the factory most of the workers were shifted to new jobs in different departments, at new machines, with new work-mates.
A New Generation of Workers and their Struggles
There is a need to discuss with workers the shortcomings of traditional forms of waging struggles, and need to consider the possibility of the emergence of a new form in the light of the actual experiences of wildcat strikes and factory occupations in Gurgaon in the last few years. These struggles have largely remained unknown to the ‘wider public’. Unfortunately, left activists usually get to know of workers’ struggles only when they have gained a sort of ‘official’ status, which generally means when they are repressed. The lathi-charge at the Honda factory in 2005 mobilised the left, as did the murder of a worker at Rico; by and large the left took a ‘civil rights’ position on these incidents and no attempt to analyse the basis of workers’ power and self-activity was made. The struggles of a new generation of workers already provide some answers and ask many questions relevant for the future; for instance they raise questions about how struggles are to be extended from the factory base, avoiding ‘unnecessary’ direct confrontation with the state forces, and show us the pitfalls of formal representation.
In April 2006 more than 4,500 temporary workers occupied Hero Honda’s Gurgaon plant for several days, demanding higher wages and better conditions. The company cut water and electricity, but asked the police not to enter the factory. No support came from outside the plant. The workers sent a small delegation to negotiate, and the delegation was bought off. The delegates returned promising fulfilment of all major demands once production is restarted and they then disappeared. Only some demands were actually met by the management. When the factory occupation ended, workers at the Hero Honda supplier, Shivam Autotech, occupied their plant which was close by and raised similar demands. Workers at the KDR press-shop in Faridabad, who supply Shivam Autotech with metal parts, worked reduced hours during these days.
In September 2006, after temporary workers at Honda HMSI, Manesar were not included in a union deal, they occupied the canteen of the plant, supported from the outside by the next arriving shift. The company reacted by cutting water supply. The company and the union asked them to go back to work.
In January 2007 2,500 temporary workers working at the car-parts manufacturer Delphi, in Gurgaon, went on a wildcat strike, blockading the main gate. The company threatened to shut-down and relocate the factory and asked the union of the 250 permanent workers to get the temps back to work. After two days the blockade was lifted. In August 2007 the temps at Delphi struck again, this time for few hours and without prior notice, demanding the payment of the increased minimum wage and succeeded. Many of the workers live together in back-yards of nearby villages, sharing food, mobile phones and information about jobs.
In August 2007, after the Haryana government had increased the minimum wage, over a dozen companies in Faridabad and Gurgaon faced spontaneous short strikes mainly by casual workers, demanding the payment of the new wage. In most cases these actions were successful (4).
(1) The list of examples is way too long. Just to mention a few in Gurgaon: Maruti lock-out in 2000, Honda HMSI in 2005, Amtek in 2006, Automax in 2008, Mushashi and Rico in 2009, Denso and Sanden Vikas in 2010.
(2) After recognition of the union at Honda HMSI the number of workers hired through contractors and the general productivity increased.
(3) It is difficult to rely on the classical union structure for these kinds of international links. When the dispute at Rico stopped GM and Ford assembly lines in the US and Canada due to missing parts the comment of a United Automobile Workers official in Michigan was: “We are experiencing the effects of outsourced suppliers, and we hope they would be able to resume production as quickly as possible so we can in turn resume production” Interestingly enough this comment was made after the UAW had signed an agreement to lower wages to ‘save jobs’, which were being disputed by many workers on the shop-floor. While Denso workers in Manesar were locked-out, Denso workers in Tychy, Poland, organised protests for wage hikes matching the wage increases for FIAT workers.
(4) Today the situation seems even more explosive, given that the April 2010 ‘minimum wage hike’ of 30 per cent for Delhi workers does not compensate for the enormous inflation in food and transport prices.
(5) Comrades of Faridabad Majdoor Talmel are about to open some physical spaces for workers’ meetings in Faridabad, Okhla, Gurgaon and Manesar. For more information, visit Gurgaon Workers News and Faridabad Majdoor Samachar.
We should not ask for the university to be destroyed, nor for it to be preserved. We should not ask for anything. We should ask ourselves and each other to take control of these universities, collectively, so that education can begin.
- From a flyer found in the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, originally written in the University of California
Since the massive student revolt in France, in 2006, against the Contrat Première Embauche (CPE), and the ‘anomalous wave’ in Italy in 2008, student protest has mounted in almost every part of the world, suggesting a reprise of the heady days of 1968. It reached a crescendo in the Fall and Winter of 2009 when campus strikes and occupations proliferated from California to Austria, Germany, Croatia, Switzerland and later the UK. The website Tinyurl.com/squatted-universities counted 168 universities (mostly in Europe) where actions took place between 20 October and the end of December 2009. And the surge is far from over. On 4 March, 2010 in the US, on the occasion of a nationwide day of action (the first since May 1970) called in defense of public education, one of the coordinating organisations listed 64 different campuses that saw some form of protest. (Defendeducation.org). On the same day, the South African Students’ Congress (SASCO) tried to close down nine universities calling for free university education. The protest at the University of Johannesburg proved to be the most contentious, with the police driving students away with water cannons from a burning barricade.
At the root of the most recent mobilisations are the budget cuts that governments and academic institutions have implemented in the wake of the Wall Street meltdown and the tuition hikes that have followed from them, up to 32 percent in the University of California system, and similar increases in some British universities. In this sense, the new student movement can be seen as the main organised response to the global financial crisis. Indeed, ‘We won’t pay for your crisis’ – the slogan of striking Italian students – has become an international battle cry. But the economic crisis has exacerbated a general dissatisfaction that has deeper sources, stemming from the neoliberal reform of education and the restructuring of production that have taken place over the last three decades, which have affected every aspect of student life throughout the world.(1)
The End of the Edu-Deal
The most outstanding elements of this restructuring have been the corporatisation of the university systems, and the commercialisation of education. ‘For profit’ universities are still a minority on the academic scene but the ‘becoming business’ of academe is well advanced especially in the US, where it dates back to the passing of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, that enabled universities to apply for patents for ‘discoveries’ made in their labs that companies would have to pay to use. Since then, the restructuring of academe as a money-making venture has proceeded unabated. The opening of university labs to private enterprise, the selling of knowledge on the world market (through online education and off-shore teaching), the precarisation of academic labour and introduction of constantly rising tuition fees forcing students to plunge ever further into debt, have become standard features of the US academic life, and with regional differences the same trends can now be registered worldwide.
In Europe, the struggle epitomising the new student movement has been against the ‘Bologna Process’, an EU project that institutes a European Higher Education Area, and promotes the circulation of labour within its territory through the homogenisation and standardisation of schooling programs and degrees. The Bologna Process unabashedly places the university at the service of business. It redefines education as the production of mobile and flexible workers, possessing the skills employers require; it centralises the creation of pedagogical standards, removes control from local actors, and devalues local knowledge and local concerns. Similar developments have been taking place in many university systems in Africa and Asia (like Taiwan, Singapore, Japan) that also are being ‘Americanized’ and standardised (for example, in Taiwan through the imposition of the Social Science Citation Index to evaluate professors) – so that global corporations can use Indian, Russian, South African or Brazilian, instead of US or EU ‘knowledge workers’, with the confidence that they are fit for the job.(2)
It is generally recognised that the commercialisation of the university system has partly been a response to the student struggles and social movements of the ’60s and ’70s, which marked the end of the education policy that had prevailed in the Keynesian era. As campus after campus, from Berkeley to Berlin, became the hotbed of an anti-authoritarian revolt, dispelling the Keynesian illusion that investment in college education would pay down the line in the form of an increase in the general productivity of work, the ideology of education as preparation to civic life and a public good had to be discarded.(3)
But the new neoliberal regime also represented the end of a class deal. With the elimination of stipends, allowances, and free tuition, the cost of ‘education’, i.e. the cost of preparing oneself for work, has been imposed squarely on the work-force, in what amounts to a massive wage-cut, that is particularly onerous considering that precarity has become the dominant work relation, and that, like any other commodity, the knowledge ‘bought’ is quickly devalued by technological innovation. It is also the end of the role of the state as mediator. In the corporatised university students now confront capital directly, in the crowded classrooms where teachers can hardly match names on the rosters with faces, in the expansion of adjunct teaching and, above all, in the mounting student debt which, by turning students into indentured servants to the banks and/or state, acts as a disciplinary mechanism on student life, also casting a long shadow on their future.
Still, through the 1990s, student enrollment continued to grow across the world under the pressure of an economic restructuring making education a condition for employment. It became a mantra, during the last two decades, from New York to Paris to Nairobi, to claim that with the rise of the ‘knowledge society’ and information revolution, cost what it may, college education is a ‘must’ (World Bank 2002). Statistics seemed to confirm the wisdom of climbing the education ladder, pointing to an 83 percent differential in the US between the wages of college graduates and those of workers with high school degrees. But the increase in enrollment and indebtedness must also be read as a form of struggle, a rejection of the restrictions imposed by the subjection of education to the logic of the market, a hidden form of appropriation, manifesting itself in time through the increase in the numbers of those defaulting on their loan repayments.
There is not doubt, in this context, that the global financial crisis of 2008 targets this strategy of resistance, removing, through budget cut backs, layoffs, and the massification of unemployment, the last remaining guarantees. Certainly the ‘edu-deal’, that promised higher wages and work satisfaction in exchange for workers and their families taking on the cost for higher education, is dissolving as well. In the crisis capital is reneging on this ‘deal’, certainly because of the proliferation of defaults and because capitalism today refuses any guarantees, such as the promise of high wages to future knowledge workers.
The university financial crisis (the tuition fee increases, budget cut backs, furloughs and lay-offs) is directly aimed at eliminating the wage guarantee that formal higher education was supposed to bring and at taming the ‘cognitariat’. As in the case of immigrant workers, the attack on the students does not signify that knowledge workers are not needed, but rather that they need to be further disciplined and proletarianised, through an attack on the power they have begun to claim partly because of their position in the process of accumulation.
Student rebellion is therefore deep-seated, with the prospect of debt slavery being compounded by a future of insecurity and a sense of alienation from an institution perceived to be mercenary and bureaucratic that, in the bargain, produces a commodity subject to rapid devaluation.
Demands or Occupations?
The student movement, however, faces a political problem, most evident in the US and, to a lesser extent, in Europe. The movement has two souls. On the one side, it demands free university education, reviving the dream of publicly financed ‘mass scholarity’, ostensibly proposing to return to the model of the Keynesian era. On the other, it is in revolt against the university itself, calling for a mass exit from it or aiming to transform the campus into a base for alternative knowledge production that is accessible to those outside its ‘walls’.(4)
This dichotomy, which some characterise as a return to the ‘reform versus revolution’ disputes of the past, has become most visible in the debate sparked off during the University of California strikes last year, over ‘demands’ versus ‘occupations’, which at times has taken an acrimonious tone, as these terms have become complex signifiers for hierarchies and identities, differential power relations, and consequences for risk taking.
The contrast is not purely ideological. It is rooted in the contradictions facing every antagonistic movement today. Economic restructuring has fragmented the workforce, deepened divisions and, not last, it has increased the effort and time required for daily reproduction. A student population holding two or three jobs is less prone to organise than its more affluent peers in the ’6os.
At the same time there is a sense, among many, that there is nothing more to negotiate, that demands have become superfluous since, for the majority of students, acquiring a certificate is no guarantee for the future which promises simply more precarity and constant self-recycling. Many students realise that capitalism has nothing to offer this generation, that no ‘new deal’ is possible, even in the metropolitan areas of the world, where most wealth is accumulated. Though there is a widespread temptation to revive it, the Keynesian interest group politics of making demands and ‘dealing’ is long dead.
Thus the slogan ‘occupy everything’ – building occupation being seen as a means of self-empowerment, the creation of spaces that students can control, a break in the flow of work and value through which the university expands its reach, and the production of a ‘counter-power’ prefigurative of the communalising relations students today want to construct.
It is hard to know how the ‘demands/occupation’ conflict within the student movement will be resolved. What is certain is that this is a major challenge the movement must overcome in order to increase in its power and its capacity to connect with other struggles. This will be a necessary step if the movement is to gain the power to reclaim education from the hands of the academic authorities and the state. As a next step there is presently much discussion about creating ‘knowledge commons’, in the sense of creating forms of autonomous knowledge production, not finalised or conditioned by the market and open to those outside the campus walls.
Meanwhile, as Edu-Notes has recognised,
already the student movement is creating a common of its own in the very process of the struggle. At the speed of light, news of the strikes, rallies, and occupations, have circulated around the world prompting a global electronic tam-tam of exchanged communiqués, slogans, messages of solidarity and support, resulting in an exceptional volume of images, documents, stories.(5)
Yet, the main ‘common’ the movement will have to construct is the extension of its mobilisation to other workers in the crisis. Key to this construction will be the issue of the debt that is the arch ‘anti-common’, since it is the transformation of collective surplus that could be used for the liberation of workers into a tool of their enslavement. Abolition of the student debt can be the connective tissue between the movement and the others struggling against foreclosures in the US and the larger movement against sovereign debt internationally.
George Caffentzis is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective. Together with the collective, he has co-edited two books, Midnight Oil: Work Energy War 1973-1992 and Auroras of the Zapatistas: Local and Global Struggles in the Fourth World War. Both were published by Autonomedia Press.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank the students and faculty I recently interviewed from the University of California, the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Rhodes University in South Africa for sharing their knowledge. I also want to thank my comrades in the Edu-Notes group for their insights and inspiration.
Footnotes
(1) Edu-factory Collective, Towards a Global Autonomous University, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2009
(2) See, Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, Alidou, Ousseina, A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000, Richard Pithouse, Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006 and Arthur Hou-ming Huang, ‘Science as Ideology: SSCI, TSSCI and the Evaluation System of Social Sciences in Taiwan’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 10 2009, Number 2, pp. 282-291.
(3) George Caffentzis, ‘Throwing Away the Ladder: The Universities in the Crisis’, Zerowork I, 1975, pp. 128-142.
(4) After the Fall: Communiqués from Occupied California, 2010, Accessed at www.afterthefallcommuniques.info.
(5) Edu-Notes, ‘Introduction to Edu-Notes’, unpublished manuscript.
Date: Saturday, April 17, 2010
Time: 1:30pm – 5:30pm
Location: Indian Social Institute (ISI) 10, Institutional Area, Lodi Road, New Delhi (India)
We will screen two short documentaries about workers’ occupation of Visteon car parts factory in London in April 2009 and the occupation of Hero Honda plant near Gurgaon in May 2008. Marco, who has been involved in the Visteon occupation, will share his experience. We want to debate about the potentials and difficulties of workers’ struggles in Delhi’s industrial belt and about what kind of practice a revolutionary left can develop in support.
Enfield, England
“Visteon Occupation – they fight for us all” (20min)
After the crisis blow of autumn 2008 the global car industry started an attack on its work-force. The Ford subsidiary Visteon decided to shut down three plants in the UK – the workers responded by spontaneous occupation. The documentary shows the self-activity of workers and the role of state and unions. We will have the possibility to discuss with a comrade who was actively involved in the occupation.
In the last years there have been several ‘wild’ occupations of factories in Gurgaon. The occupations were organised mainly by workers hired through contractors and they remained largely unknown to the wider public: five days occupation at Hero Honda and Delphi in Gurgaon in 2006, at Medikit and Honda HMSI in 2007, at Hero Honda in Dharuhera in 2008. These struggles ask us – a revolutionary left – about our potentials of practical support. Comrades of Faridabad Majdoor Talmel will present some ideas.
Pothik Ghosh: There is no doubt the Indian Maoist movement – which has erupted in the sense of pure socio-occupational and physical geography in the agrarian-tribal location – has rendered the externalised imposition of a given Marxological/communistological historiography to define (in discourse) and articulate (in the materiality of lived practice) its struggle uniquely determinate to the specificity of its historico-geographic location redundant. But to assert that it has done so by claiming something that is purely autonomous tribal aspiration and struggle would be equally fallacious. For, tribal identities as they exist and pose themselves in and through struggles – both in areas of Maoist influence as also in sangh parivar-infested tribal areas of especially Orissa and Madhya Pradesh – are formed by being inscribed within the determinate, if not discursive, mode of capital. Those identities and their movements are thus either articulated by the specific configuration of dualised and hierarchised capitalist power, or are responses to the respective historico-geographic specifications of such a general configuration of power.
In such a situation, one must speak of rupture, not in terms of romantically reified forms, but in terms of what is yielded through the posing of a continuous critique. The empirically discernible form of the Indian Maoist movement in emergence is clearly a rupture with both the capitalist continuum of history (and thus its historiographic sense) and the established Marxological narrative (an analytic really) of the history of capitalism. But then the subsequent affirmative emphasis on this Indian Maoist form as form, both for its original physical geographic location and outside it, marks a return of the logic of duality via the return of the tendency of representation and the discursive structure of capitalism. This form, therefore, can continue to be the horizon of rupture, which it has been in its emergence, only when it posits its own negation as a form qua form for other specific temporal, spatial, spatio-temporal and socio-occupational moments.
The repeated failure of the Indian Maoist/Naxal movement to not only expand beyond the specific historico-geographic boundaries within which it has emerged, but, therefore, as a result face imminent defeat, if not cooption (the experience of the constituents of Communist Party of India (Maoist) in Jharkhand and Liberation in Bihar would be telling on that score), in its purported historico-geographic and socio-occupational bastions is, if one were to talk in terms of effects, precisely due to this problem of reifying one moment of the process, which is meant to unfold by constituting itself through critique of its reified/abstracted moments, and thus obstruct its critically constitutive unfolding.
The point is, the Indian Maoist movement can be defended or saved as the specific embodiment of the general revolutionary logic of event or rupture that it is, only if that logic unfolds through its critical re-enactment, or reconstitution if you will, for other historical locations through the emergence of forms idiomatically specific to the diverse historicalness of those locations. To that extent, socialism ceases to be a systemic horizon in a teleological sense and becomes a horizon of continuous motion that is not serial but dialectical having to be constantly constituted through critical opposition and rupture. It was not for nothing that Marx in his ‘The Class Struggles in France’ came up with the idea of “revolution in permanence”.
Thus, socialism, as a mobile and open ‘epistemological discourse’, can be aphoristically called a multiplicity of singularities. That is also the epistemological context of Benjamin’s ‘Theses on Philosophy of History’, and his injunction therein to “blast open the continuum of history” must be seen as a critical struggle against the distortionary conflation of labour’s life-world and its history with the textual abstraction of a centred historiography and/or analytic. It’s a struggle to reclaim life and its history from such abstraction and domination and in the same movement pose the idea of life-world in critical opposition to the discourse of textuality, even as we show that the life we live empirically, before its reclamation through critique, is an analytic abstraction or text. This idea of the life-world, which was formulated by Marx as a conceptualisation of the horizon of constantly self-constituting and thus dialectical motion, is something that is constitutively posed in our continuous Benjaminian struggle to disrupt the analytic continuum of history that constantly forms following every successful move to blast it open. The counter-discursive horizon that this continuous critical struggle to overcome the horizon of discursivness or reason in history, which is history as a continuum, poses is what Benjamin called montage and Trotsky narrative in the context of formulating a revolutionary discourse of history. It’s really a narrative (Trotsky) or montage (Benjamin) of singularities, where the constitutive narrative/montage link among them is the fact of them being singularities or events. It’s this horizon of revolutionary history, which is a horizon of constant ruptures, that Foucault posed as “genealogy” against the horizon of conservative and reactionary history, which is canonically called History and is a serial continuum. Foucault’s term for singularities and their repeated self-constituting evental emergence is respectively fragments and archaeology, something that was his active critical-political-methodological engagement, as opposed to a detached discursive-methodological engagement, with history both as it is lived and is formulated as discourse. The generalised horizon that is posited by him for his event-constituting archaeological manoeuvre is termed by him, in a quasi-structuralist kind of way, as the “history of problematics”. My subjective preference is, however, for the Benjamanian concept of gestus over Foucauldian fragment, which as a word still has the whiff of the old whole-fragment (universal-particular) dualised and discursive discourse.
However, to the extent that genealogy, montage or narrative are all discourses of history, they appear as a serialised continuum in much the same way as the analytic-centric form of conservative History. But we must remember that the former is a discourse of life-world, which makes it a discourse of counter-discourse, even as the latter is a discourse of lived life, which in not being critical and in being established, is really an abstraction and thus a textual discourse. Thus in the material operation of empirical living, the former posits continuous critical opposition and rupture with abstract schemas that seek to prevent life from constantly constituting itself critically and thus autonomously; even as the latter seeks to transform lived life into a non-critical piece of the abstract schema of history as it is given in the positive materiality of empirical human lives. Thus motion in the latter is really the continuance of the abstract schema through time. The former is a discourse, as you also seem to be pointing out, of living history while constituting it, while the latter is a discourse of living history as the a priori abstraction in which it is given.
To return, through this theoretical excursus, to the immediate question at hand, is to once again focus on the need to generalise the logic of event or rupture enacted by the Maoist movement and the failure on that count. It is in this context that Arundhati Roy’s Outlook article poses a problematic. The article is a problem, not per se, but in that it enacts a modality of radical politics at the urban location that obstructs the recognition of this need to constantly generalise the evental logic that has found its specific expression for the agrarian-tribal location in the form of the Maoist movement. It is, in fact, more of a problem because this modality of radical politics is fast becoming a dominant modality among urban radicals. The failure to recognise this need for generalisation of the logic encapsulated by the Maoist movement for all other locations beyond the agrarian-tribal geography conveniently enables urban radicals like us to displace the identity crisis and anxiety we experience as denizens of our specific urban ground on to some other ground – in this case the ground of insurgent tribals and peasants – and live our own class rage, without recognising it as such, cathartically and vicariously. That enables such urban radicals to exempt themselves from taking up the more difficult struggle of engaging with and critically opposing the configurations of capitalist class power – which in its myriad ideological forms of culture, economy, society is the real cause of anxiety and crisis that urban creatures face – on their own specific ground to overcome the crisis they experience as city inhabitants.
That, of course, is not the failure of Roy or the Maoists, much less their tribal-peasant base, alone. It’s the failure of all working-class forces, which includes me and my comrades as well, in all other locations. The point is to begin, as Zizek says citing Lenin, from the beginning by recognising this failure.
Pratyush Chandra: One point that interests me in Jairus Banaji’s post in Kafila and the subsequent debate on the post is his focus on labour as the centre of the movement. I think this focus is fundamental in order to ground various local/localised struggles in political economy (or rather in its critique) and to understand the underlying interconnections between them (whether the leadership of these struggles understand them in this manner is immaterial – did not Marx appreciate Paris Commune even when Blanquists were in hegemony?).
Marx’s conceptualisation of labour and of capital-labour relations is rich enough to provide tools for comprehending various struggles against capitalist accumulation (both primitive and normal). He understood subsumption of labour by capital as a process (not some particular fixed states), which starts from being formal to real – from a stage where labour is subsumed through non-capitalist “forms” of exploitation to the actual subsumption in “pure” wage-labour form. Between these two poles, subsumption can take a plethora of forms. Who knows better than Jairus that unwaged labour (reproductive or otherwise) is also part of the capitalist subsumption of labour.
So how do we understand tribals and “peasants” struggles against land and resource alienation within this framework? They are essentially fighting against capitalist efforts to alienate them from their resources, which create (or, better, reproduce) conditions for the subsumption of their labour by capital. Whether they will become wage labourers is not at all essential; if they are not employed, or even employable, they still remain labourers as part of the reserve army of proletarians or surplus population (stagnant, latent and floating) reproducing themselves on their small pieces of land, or by food gathering (in forests or trash cans). Their struggle, in a Marxist sense, can be understood as part of the anti-systemic working class struggle to control the conditions of production and, I stress, reproduction too.
Now coming to the forms of struggle (armed, unarmed, etc), I think we as Marxists (of all hues and colours) cannot act as idealists, by considering only those movements as working class movements or anti-capitalist movements, which are projected in our idioms, and are developing according to our framework of strategic-building. The working class can throw diverse forms of struggles according to its internal constituents or class composition. However, one must critique forms in order to show the limitations and problems of those forms, in order to avoid the problem of overgeneralisation of particular forms, and also in order to undertake the revolutionary task of generalisation seriously, which essentially means to see a revolutionary building up against capitalism within and through all forms of working-class struggles.
In this interview Leo Panitch deals with the problems of working class politics and organisation – of trade unions, parties, bureaucratisation and social democracy. There is a very interesting discussion of the Soviet experience and on the international left’s attitude towards various transformatory praxes and experiments throughout the world, including the Latin American.
Is the semester system good or bad? If we say it is bad then why do we say so? I would say, and many might concur that privatization of the educational sector is also bad. Why do we say that? In the final session, we will discuss ‘politics in the university;’ why do we need a politics at all here? To begin to answer any such questions a more fundamental question needs to be addressed. What is the university and what do we do here?
The university is a workplace, where students, teachers and the karmcharis work. What is work about? It is about production – human beings are creative, and we create in our workplace. As creative beings we find fulfilment in what we create; what we create is an extension of ourselves, through which we reach out to others who are also part of society. In the university knowledge is produced; we study, teach, research and discuss. As creative beings involved in the production/creation of knowledge it is through the knowledge we produce that we put forth ourselves, our identities to the world. To truly find fulfilment, to be happy in other words, we would like to determine what we create, how we create and with what we create; this holds equally for teaching, learning, researching and by extension discussing. Although some could argue that the work place, in this case the university is not that important a site in our lives, home is more important. But honestly, we spend so much of our time and energy here, that it would be foolish to argue that it has no bearing on our happiness; some amount of thinking should make this seem self-evident. So then assuming that for happiness it is necessary for this space in its capacity as a workplace be fulfilling, we can contend that: it is important for us to have a say in the decisions that determine its running. So if new changes are being imposed into its structure, we as the people who work here, and to whom by extension this place belongs, have the right to not accept these changes, and even to remodel older structures. What determines our likes and dislikes is the ability or inability of these structures to gives us space for the fulfilment of our creativity.
In this framework of ‘those who work’ in the university, students are an uncomfortable fit. When the teachers view them, or the administration, the students are either consumers or products. They are paying for a commodity, education, which they should get – so if teachers go on strike, they break the producer-consumer pact. Or it is the task of the teachers to prepare students for the market, so if they go on strike, they are hindering production. When individuals situated in the university, as subjects, look at the university, they see that while for those who “work” here it is the permanent site of labour, for the majority of the students, it fails to have any connotations of finality. Studenthood is a temporary state, a purgatorial interlude that precedes entry into the heaven of work and salaries. When one tries to “politicize” this space, one of the main problems one faces is that students do not feel that they have much to gain by its improvement – “I’m here only for one more year.”
A substantial number of professors have been cribbing about the semester system, but there is not much they can do. They are afraid to go on strike, because they themselves feel that by hindering production and by breaking the consumer pact they will be ‘harming careers’ and might bring the wrath of the ministry on them. On there own, they cannot stop these developments. They need to communicate with the students, establish a bond altogether different from the pedagogic one that exists right now. They need to be able to think about students differently, students as part of the same continuum as they, working in the university, desiring fulfilment, affected by what affects the teachers. In a system where value is eternally deferred, the formal manifestation being exchange value, even when they start getting salaries they don’t get fulfilment. What is common to the time when they will get salaries and now, is that in both realms they labour, work, make use of their creativity, and in circumstances that they do not determine.
If I were to translate ‘creativity’ in the register that agitational politics usually makes use of: it is nothing but our capacity and need to labour. Understanding creativity like this would allow us to elaborate upon the nature of the said continuum. When Marx says ‘working class,’ does he mean only the ‘male, white, industrial proletariat?’ Maybe. But what was the logic behind designating somebody a worker? The working class is that section of the people on which work is imposed; the people who are alienated from their creativity, who are forced to create in circumstances that they do not want to create in, and who as a result will have to fight to be able to determine these circumstances. There was another concept, that Marx often made use of: the collective worker. The collective worker is this continuum, a continuum beyond localized time or space, of the working class subjectivity. The collective worker is a universal, common to all those on whom work is imposed. Work is imposed on the collective worker: the collective worker is made of various people on whom work is imposed in various ways; in a different way in the factory, in a different way in agriculture, in a different way in the university, in a different way in the household. So work is imposed on the professor in one way. We propose that work is imposed on the student in another. Studenthood is a phase in the life of this ‘collective worker.’ It doesn’t matter if some students come from rich households, if some will go on to become factory owners, or vice chancellors, at the moment of studenthood they are part of the collective worker. Professors and students are part of the same continuum. They together occupy the university, and in fighting for self-determination they are essentially on the same side. So in opposition to the student as a consumer, and the student as a product, is the student as worker. That the student does not create ‘value’ does not matter, because capitalism decides what is valuable and what is not: but this does not change the fact that work is imposed upon the student.
Anyhow, we need self-determination for happiness, and for self-determination we have to fight. The tribal in Chhattisgarh might need to fight the police, multinationals, and the armed forces for self-determination, the factory worker will need to fight the factory owner, we have to fight the administration, the vice chancellor for instance. If students, teachers and Karamcharis work in the university, what right has any random person to determine what will happen here? The Vice Chancellor and his pals are not elected representatives; they come in through mechanisms in which we have no say. Today we might be fighting the semester system, or the service regulations, or against the attendance rule, fee-hike or for timely payment of karamchari salaries, but we also need to fight the arbitrariness with which these problems impose themselves upon us. It is not enough to say that the vice-chancellor should not bring in the semester system, we have to ask why the vice-chancellor should do anything at all? If there has to be an administrative body, then we should elect it, and have the power of immediate recall, if what we don’t want to happen happens. Of course all this is a long way off, but are we even ready to think our problems through? If we don’t push further than questioning a move here or a move there, we should know that till there is an administration, such things will happen.
What about political students’ organizations: essentially left organizations. How do they see the university and the students? They too seem to not think of the university as a valid site for struggle. For them it seems, the struggle is always somewhere else: in the forest, or in the factory or in slums? Of course it is there. It needs to be fought there. But it is also here. And it needs to be fought here as well. The university is not a place where activists are to be made to go and fight elsewhere. Unless we bring the struggle home, fight the particular forms of power that we face, transformation can never happen. I don’t intend to be vituperative; these are not charges. It is just an appeal to rethink the aims of struggle in the university.
Someone could ask, ‘what if we do get this right to determine what happens here? What if we are allowed to elect our own administration? Does this mean our problems are over?’ No, of course not. If we struggle merely for power to regulate, it won’t take us anywhere. Once we gain it, instead of the current administration some of us will be mediating between the market and the university. The outside, which will continue to be a problem, arbitrary, based on the idea of profit, not human happiness, will still determine us. Self-determination will not be complete in this localized fashion. Our demand for self-determination at a local level can only be tactical, not the final end. People everywhere face the problem that we face here, in different forms, in different degrees; but essentially the same. True self-determination, true democracy can only come when the structure that centres this dynamic is destroyed. People struggling in their respective circumstances, for self-determination, will finally need to come together to push the struggle to its culmination. But this is a somewhat larger matter. We start with what we face, with the local structure through which power tries to determine our lives. In the process we will of course, as Laclau would say, solve a number of small problems, make our lives in the university a little better, bring a greater degree of democracy here, but we must keep in mind that these small things are not the end, because the end is that which seems impossible right now; this impossible can be made possible, through an act which will retroactively make its own impossibility the condition of its possibility, shifting the horizon of possibility altogether.
Mezhdunarodnyi den’ rabotnitz, Moscow 1920 — Women’s Day or Working Women’s Day is a day of international solidarity, and a day for reviewing the strength and organisation of proletarian women.
But this is not a special day for women alone. The 8th of March is a historic and memorable day for the workers and peasants, for all the Russian workers and for the workers of the whole world. In 1917, on this day, the great February revolution broke out.[2] It was the working women of Petersburg who began this revolution; it was they who first decided to raise the banner of opposition to the tsar and his associates. And so, working women’s day is a double celebration for us.
But if this is a general holiday for all the proletariat, why do we call it “Women’s Day”? Why then do we hold special celebrations and meetings aimed above all at the women workers and the peasant women? Doesn’t this jeopardise the unity and solidarity of the working class? To answer these questions, we have to look back and see how Women’s Day came about and for what purpose it was organised.
How and why was Women’s Day organised?
Not very long ago, in fact about ten years ago, the question of women’s equality, and the question of whether women could take part in government alongside men was being hotly debated. The working class in all capitalist countries struggled for the rights of working women: the bourgeoisie did not want to accept these rights. It was not in the interest of the bourgeoisie to strengthen the vote of the working class in parliament; and in every country they hindered the passing of laws that gave the right to working women.
Socialists in North America insisted upon their demands for the vote with particular persistence. On the 28th of February, 1909, the women socialists of the USA organised huge demonstrations and meetings all over the country demanding political rights for working women. This was the first “Woman’s Day”. The initiative on organising a woman’s day thus belongs to the working women of America.
In 1910, at the Second International Conference of Working Women, Clara Zetkin [3] brought forward the question of organising an International Working Women’s Day. The conference decided that every year, in every country, they should celebrate on the same day a “Women’s Day” under the slogan “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism”.
During these years, the question of making parliament more democratic, i.e., of widening the franchise and extending the vote to women, was a vital issue. Even before the first world war, the workers had the right to vote in all bourgeois countries except Russia. [4] Only women, along with the insane, remained without these rights. Yet, at the same time, the harsh reality of capitalism demanded the participation of women in the country’s economy. Every year there was an increase in the number of women who had to work in the factories and workshops, or as servants and charwomen. Women worked alongside men and the wealth of the country was created by their hands. But women remained without the vote.
But in the last years before the war the rise in prices forced even the most peaceful housewife to take an interest in questions of politics and to protest loudly against the bourgeoisie’s economy of plunder. “Housewives uprisings” became increasingly frequent, flaring up at different times in Austria, England, France and Germany.
The working women understood that it wasn’t enough to break up the stalls at the market or threaten the odd merchant: they understood that such action doesn’t bring down the cost of living. You have to change the politics of the government. And to achieve this, the working class has to see that the franchise is widened.
It was decided to have a Woman’s Day in every country as a form of struggle in getting working women to vote. This day was to be a day of international solidarity in the fight for common objectives and a day for reviewing the organised strength of working women under the banner of socialism.
The first International Women’s Day
The decision taken at the Second International Congress of Socialist Women was not left on paper. It was decided to hold the first International Women’s Day on the 19th of March, 1911.
This date was not chosen at random. Our German comrades picked the day because of its historic importance for the German proletariat. On the 19th of March in the year of 1848 revolution, the Prussian king recognised for the first time the strength of the armed people and gave way before the threat of a proletarian uprising. Among the many promises he made, which he later failed to keep, was the introduction of votes for women.
After January 11, efforts were made in Germany and Austria to prepare for Women’s Day. They made known the plans for a demonstration both by word of mouth and in the press. During the week before Women’s Day two journals appeared: The Vote for Women in Germany and Women’s Day in Austria. The various articles devoted to Women’s Day – “Women and Parliament”, “The Working Women and Municipal Affairs”, “What Has the Housewife got to do with Politics?”, etc. – analysed thoroughly the question of the equality of women in the government and in society. All the articles emphasised the same point: that it was absolutely necessary to make parliament more democratic by extending the franchise to women.
The first International Women’s Day took place in 1911. Its success exceeded all expectations. Germany and Austria on Working Women’s Day was one seething, trembling sea of women. Meetings were organised everywhere – in the small towns and even in the villages halls were packed so full that they had to ask male workers to give up their places for the women.
This was certainly the first show of militancy by the working woman. Men stayed at home with their children for a change, and their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings. During the largest street demonstrations, in which 30,000 were taking part, the police decided to remove the demonstrators’ banners: the women workers made a stand. In the scuffle that followed, bloodshed was averted only with the help of the socialist deputies in parliament.
In 1913 International Women’s Day was transferred to the 8th of March. This day has remained the working women’s day of militancy.
Is Women’s Day necessary?
Women’s Day in [North] America and Europe had amazing results. It’s true that not a single bourgeois parliament thought of making concessions to the workers or of responding to the women’s demands. For at that time, the bourgeoisie was not threatened by a socialist revolution.
But Women’s Day did achieve something. It turned out above all to be an excellent method of agitation among the less political of our proletarian sisters. They could not help but turn their attention to the meetings, demonstrations, posters, pamphlets and newspapers that were devoted to Women’s Day. Even the politically backward working woman thought to herself: “This is our day, the festival for working women”, and she hurried to the meetings and demonstrations. After each Working Women’s Day, more women joined the socialist parties and the trade unions grew. Organisations improved and political consciousness developed.
Women’s Day served yet another function; it strengthened the international solidarity of the workers. The parties in different countries usually exchange speakers for this occasion: German comrades go to England, English comrades go to Holland, etc. The international cohesion of the working class has become strong and firm and this means that the fighting strength of the proletariat as a whole has grown.
These are the results of working women’s day of militancy. The day of working women’s militancy helps increase the consciousness and organisation of proletarian women. And this means that its contribution is essential to the success of those fighting for a better future for the working class.
Working Women’s Day in Russia
The Russian working woman first took part in “Working Women’s Day” in 1913. This was a time of reaction when tsarism held the workers and peasants in its vice-like a grip. There could be no thought of celebrating “Working Women’s Day” by open demonstrations. But the organised working women were able to mark their international day. Both the legal newspapers of the working class – the Bolshevik Pravda and the Menshevik Looch – carried articles about the International Women’s Day: [5] they carried special articles, portraits of some of those taking part in the working women’s movement and greetings from comrades such as August Bebel and Clara Zetkin.[6]
In those bleak years meetings were forbidden. But in Petrograd, at the Kalashaikovsky Exchange, those women workers who belonged to the [Bolshevik] Party organised a public forum on “The Woman Question”. Entrance was five kopecks. This was an illegal meeting but the hall was absolutely packed. Members of the party spoke. But this animated “closed” meeting had hardly finished when the police, alarmed at such proceedings, intervened and arrested many of the speakers.
It was of great significance for the workers of the world that the women of Russia, who lived under tsarist repression, should join in and somehow manage to acknowledge with actions International Women’s Day. This was a welcome sign that Russia was waking up and the tsarist prisons and gallows were powerless to kill the workers’ spirit of struggle and protest.
In 1914, Working Women’s Day in Russia was better organised. Both the workers’ newspapers concerned themselves with the celebration. Our comrades put a lot of effort into the preparation of Working Women’s Day. Because of police intervention, they didn’t manage to organise a demonstration. Those involved in the planning found themselves in the tsarist prisons, and many were later sent to the cold north. For the slogan “for the working women’s vote” had naturally become in Russia an open call for the overthrow of tsarist autocracy.
Working Women’s Day during the imperialist war
The first world war broke out. The working class in every country was covered with the blood of war. [7] In 1915 and 1916 Working Women’s Day abroad was a feeble affair – left-wing socialist women who shared the views of the Russian Bolshevik Party tried to turn March 8th into a demonstration of working women against the war. But those socialist party traitors in Germany and other countries would not allow the socialist women to organise gatherings; and the socialist women were refused passports to go to neutral countries where the working women wanted to hold international meetings and show that in spite of the desire of the bourgeoisie, the spirit of international solidarity lived on.
In 1915, it was only in Norway that they managed to organise an international demonstration on Women’s Day; representatives from Russia and neutral countries attended. There could be no thought of organising a Women’s Day in Russia, for here the power of tsarism and the military machine was unbridled.
Then came the great, great year of 1917. Hunger, cold and trials of war broke the patience of the women workers and the peasant women of Russia. In 1917, on the 8th of March (23rd of February), on Working Women’s Day, they came out boldly in the streets of Petrograd. The women – some were workers, some were wives of soldiers – demanded “Bread for our children” and “The return of our husbands from the trenches”. At this decisive time the protests of the working women posed such a threat that even the tsarist security forces did not dare take the usual measures against the rebels but looked on in confusion at the stormy sea of the people’s anger.
The 1917 Working Women’s Day has become memorable in history. On this day the Russian women raised the torch of proletarian revolution and set the world on fire. The February Revolution marks its beginning from this day.
Our call to battle
“Working Women’s Day” was first organised ten years ago in the campaign for the political equality of women and the struggle for socialism. This aim has been achieved by the working-class women in Russia. In the soviet republic the working women and peasants don’t need to fight for the franchise and for civil rights. They have already won these rights. The Russian workers and the peasant women are equal citizens – in their hands is a powerful weapon to make the struggle for a better life easier – the right to vote, to take part in the soviets and in all collective organisations. [8]
But rights alone are not enough. We have to learn to make use of them. The right to vote is a weapon which we have to learn to master for our own benefit, and for the good of the workers’ republic. In the two years of soviet power, life itself has not been absolutely changed. We are only in the process of struggling for communism and we are surrounded by the world we have inherited from the dark and repressive past. The shackles of the family, of housework, of prostitution still weigh heavily on the working woman. Working women and peasant women can only rid themselves of this situation and achieve equality in life itself, and not just in law, if they put all their energies into making Russia a truly communist society.
And to quicken this coming, we have first to put right Russia’s shattered economy. We must consider the solving of our two most immediate tasks – the creation of a well organised and politically conscious labour force and the re-establishment of transport. If our army of labour works well we shall soon have steam engines once more; the railways will begin to function. This means that the working men and women will get the bread and firewood they desperately need.
Getting transport back to normal will speed up the victory of communism. And with the victory of communism will come the complete and fundamental equality of women. This is why the message of “Working Women’s Day” must this year be: “Working women, peasant women, mothers, wives and sisters, all efforts to helping the workers and comrades in overcoming the chaos of the railways and re-establishing transport. Everyone in the struggle for bread and firewood and raw materials.”
Last year the slogan of the Working Women’s Day was: “All to the victory of the Red Front”. [9] Now we call on working women to rally their strength on a new bloodless front – the labour front! The Red Army defeated the external enemy because it was organised, disciplined and ready for self sacrifice. With organisation, hard work, self-discipline and self-sacrifice, the workers’ republic will overcome the internal foe – the dislocation (of) transport and the economy, hunger, cold and disease. “Everyone to the victory on the bloodless labour front! Everyone to this victory!”
The new tasks of Working Women’s Day
The October Revolution gave women equality with men as far as civil rights are concerned. The women of the Russian proletariat, who were not so long ago the most unfortunate and oppressed, are now in the Soviet Republic able to show with pride to comrades in other countries the path to political equality through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and soviet power.
The situation is very different in the capitalist countries where women are still overworked and underprivileged. In these countries the voice of the working woman is weak and lifeless. It is true that in various countries – in Norway, Australia, Finland and in some of the states of North America – women had won civil rights even before the war. [10]
In Germany, after the kaiser had been thrown out and a bourgeois republic established, headed by the “compromisers”, [11] thirty-six women entered parliament – but not a single communist!
In 1919, in England, a woman was for the first time elected a member of parliament. But who was she? A “lady”. That means a landowner, an aristocrat. [12]
In France, too, the question has been coming up lately of extending the franchise to women.
But what use are these rights to working women in the framework of bourgeois parliaments? While the power is in the hands of the capitalists and property owners, no political rights will save the working woman from the traditional position of slavery in the home and society. The French bourgeoisie are ready to throw another sop to the working class, in the face of growing Bolshevik ideas amongst the proletariat: they are prepared to give women the vote.[13]
Mr Bourgeois sir – it is too late!
After the experience of the Russian October Revolution, it is clear to every working woman in France, in England and in other countries that only the dictatorship of the working class, only the power of the soviets can guarantee complete and absolute equality, the ultimate victory of communism will tear down the century-old chains of repression and lack of rights. If the task of “International Working Women’s Day” was earlier in the face of the supremacy of the bourgeois parliaments to fight for the right of women to vote, the working class now has a new task: to organise working women around the fighting slogans of the Third International. Instead of taking part in the working of the bourgeois parliament, listen to the call from Russia – “Working women of all countries! Organise a united proletarian front in the struggle against those who are plundering the world! Down with the parliamentarism of the bourgeoisie! We welcome soviet power! Away with inequalities suffer by the working men and women! We will fight with the workers for the triumph of world communism!”
This call was first heard amidst the trials of a new order, in the battles of civil war it will be heard by and it will strike a chord in the hearts of working women of other countries. The working woman will listen and believe this call to be right. Until recently they thought that if they managed to send a few representatives to parliament their lives would be easier and the oppression of capitalism more bearable. Now they know otherwise.
Only the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of soviet power will save them from the world of suffering, humiliations and inequality that makes the life of the working woman in the capitalist countries so hard. The “Working Woman’s Day” turns from a day of struggle for the franchise into an international day of struggle for the full and absolute liberation of women, which means a struggle for the victory of the soviets and for communism!
DOWN WITH THE WORLD OF PROPERTY AND THE POWER OF CAPITAL!
AWAY WITH INEQUALITY, LACK OF RIGHTS AND THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN – THE LEGACY OF THE BOURGEOIS WORLD!
FORWARD TO THE INTERNATIONAL UNITY OF WORKING WOMEN AND MALE WORKERS IN THE STRUGGLE FOR THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT – THE PROLETARIAT OF BOTH SEXES!
Notes
2. Tsarist Russia still used the old “Julian” calendar of the Middle Ages, which was 13 days behind the “Gregorian” calendar used in most of the rest of the world. Thus March 8 was “February 23″ in the old calendar. This is why the revolution of March 1917 is called “the February Revolution” and that of November 1917 “the October Revolution.”
3. Clara Zetkin was a leader of the German socialist movement and the main leader of the international working women’s movement. Kollontai was a delegate to the international conference representing the St. Petersburg textile workers.
4. This is not accurate. The vast majority of unskilled workers in England, France and Germany could not vote. A smaller percentage of working-class men in the United States could not vote – in particular immigrant men. In the south of the US black men were often prevented from voting. The middle class suffrage movements in all the European countries did not fight to give votes to either working-class women or men.
5. At its 1903 Congress, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party divided into two wings, the Bolsheviks (which means “majority” in Russian) and the Mensheviks (which means “minority”). In the period between 1903 and 1912 (when the division became permanent) the two wings worked together, unified for a while, split again. Many socialists, including entire local organisations, worked with both wings or tried to stay neutral in the disputes. Kollontai, an active socialist and fighter for women’s rights since 1899, was at first independent of the factions, then became a Menshevik for several years. She joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and became the only woman member of their central committee. She also served as commissar of welfare of the Soviet Republic and head of the women’s section of the Bolshevik Party.
6. August Bebel (1840-1913) was a leader of the German Social-Democratic Party. He was a well-known supporter of the women’s movement and author of a classic book on Marxism and women Die Frauenfrage, translated into English as Woman Under Socialism, which has been translated into many languages.
7. When war broke out in 1914, there was a massive split in the international socialist movement. The majority of the social democrats in Germany, Austria, France and England supported the war. Other socialists, such Kollontai, Lenin, the Bolshevik Party and Leon Trotsky in Russia, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, and Eugene Debs in the United States, to name some of the leaders, denounced the pro-war socialists for being traitors to the working class and to the fight for a workers’ revolution.
8. The word “soviet” means “council”. Soviets, or workers’ councils, are democratic bodies in which delegates are elected in factory and neighbourhood meetings and are controlled by their sister and brother workers. The representatives of the soviets must report back to their constituency and are subject to immediate recall.
9. After the working-class seizure of power in October/November 1917, the Russian workers’ state was faced with two major problems. One was an invasion, including the United States; the second was resistance by the pro-monarchist and pro-capitalist elements in Russia. Primarily under the direction of Leon Trotsky, the soviets created a workers’ and peasants’ army, the Red Army, which defeated the forces of counterrevolution.
10. Women had won the right to vote in several of the states of the United States prior to World War I. A federal amendment guaranteeing all women over 21 the right to vote was passed on August 26, 1920. It was not until the 1960s that the last legal barriers to working-class people voting in the United States were abolished.
11. The “compromisers” Kollontai is referring to are the Social Democratic Party leaders who formed a new capitalist government in Germany after the fall of the kaiser in 1918. They actively supported counterrevolution after coming to office.
12. While the aristocratic Lady Astor was indeed the first woman to serve in the British parliament, the first woman elected to parliament was the Irish revolutionary Constance Markievicz. Together with other members of the Sinn Fein party, she refused to take her seat in the imperial parliament.
13. French women did not finally get the vote until after World War II.
A text from the first wave of Italian ‘autonomist Marxist’ theory, first published under the name Guido Baldi in Radical America (Vol. 6, No. 3, May-June 1972).
1
The years from the beginning of the century up to the English general strike of 1926 witness this crucial new feature in class struggle: Whereas deep contradictions between developed and backward areas characterize capitalism at this stage and confine it to national levels of organization, the political autonomy and independence of the working class reach an international level: For the first time, capital is bypassed by the workers at an international level. The first international cycle, roughly 1904 to 1906, is a cycle of mass strikes which at times develops into violent actions and insurrections. In Russia, it starts with the Putilov strike and develops into the 1905 revolution. 1904 is the date of the first Italian general strike. In Germany, the spontaneous Ruhr miners’ strike of 1905 on the eight-hour issue and the Amburg general strike of 1906 lead a class wave that overflows into a large network of middle-sized firms. In the US, the miners’ strikes of 1901 and 1904 and the foundation of the 1WW in 1905 seem to be a premonition of the struggles to come.
2
The second cycle starts with 1911. We see the same class vanguards initiate the struggle: In the US the vanguards are the coal miners of West Virginia, the Harriman railroad workers, and the Lawrence textile workers; in Russia they are the Lena gold miners of 1912; in Germany they are the workers of the 1912 mass strike of the Ruhr. World War I represents the occasion for the widest development of class struggle in the US (1,204 strikes in 1914; 1,593 in 1915; 3,789 in 1916; and 4,450 in 1917 – and the National labour Board sanctions a number of victories: collective bargaining, equal pay for women, guaranteed minimum wage) while laying the groundwork for a third international cycle.
Since the War has produced a boom in precision manufacturing, electrical machinery, optics, and other fields, the class weight of the superskilled workers of these sectors is enormously increased in Germany and elsewhere. They are the workers who form the backbone of the councils in the German revolution, the Soviet Republic in Bavaria, and the Italian factory occupation of 1919. By 1919, the year of the Seattle General Strike, 4,160,000 workers in the US (20.2% of the entire labour force) are mobilized by the struggle. In the international circulation of struggles, Russia, the “weakest link”, breaks. The capitalist nightmare comes true : The initiative of the working class establishes a “workers’ state”. The class that first made its appearance in the political arena in 1848 and that learned the need for political organization from its defeat in the Paris Commune is now moving in an international way. The peculiar commodity, labour power, the passive, fragmented receptacle of factory exploitation, is now behaving as an international political actor, the political working class.
3
The specific political features of these three cycles of struggle lie in the dynamics of their circulation. The struggle starts with class vanguards, and only later does it circulate throughout the class and develop into mass actions. That is, the circulation of struggles follows the structure of the class composition that predominates in these years. That composition consists of a large network of sectors with diverse degrees of development, varying weight in the economy, and different levels of skill and experience. The large cleavages that characterize such a class composition (the dichotomy between a skilled “labour aristocracy” and the mass of the unskilled is one prominent example) necessitates the role of class vanguards as political and organizational pivots. It is through an alliance between the vanguards and the proletarian masses that class cleavages are progressively overcome and mass levels of struggles are reached. That is, the “political re-composition of the working class” is based on its industrial structure, the “material articulation of the labour force (labour power)”.
4
The organizational experiments of the working class in these years are by necessity geared to this specific class composition. Such is the case with the Bolshevik model, the Vanguard Party. Its politics of class consciousness “from the outside” must re-compose the entire working class around the demands of its advanced sectors; its “politics of alliances” must bridge the gap between advanced workers and the masses. But such is also the case with the Councils model, whose thrust toward the self-management of production is materially bound to the figure of the skilled worker (that is, the worker with a unique, fixed, subjective relationship to tools and machinery, and with a consequent self identification as “producer”). In Germany in particular, where the machine-tool industry developed exclusively on the basis of the exceptional skill of workers, the Councils express their “managerial” ideology most clearly. It is at such a relatively-high level of professionalization – with a worker/tools relationship characterized by precise skills, control over production techniques, direct involvement with the work plan, and co-operation between execution and planning functions – that workers can identify with their “useful labour” in a program for self-management of the factory. In the heat of the struggle, this program gains the support of productive engineers.
5
With the Councils, “class consciousness” is expressed most clearly as the consciousness of “producers”. The Councils do not organize the working class on the basis of a political program of struggles. The Council structure reproduces – by team, shop, and plant – the capitalist organization of labour, and “organizes” workers along their productive role, as labour power, producers. Since the Councils assume the existing organization for the production of capital (a given combination of variable and constant capital, of workers and machines) as the basis for their socialist project, their hypothesis of a workers’ democratic-self-management can only pre-figure the workers’ management of the production of capital, that is, the workers’ management of their very exploitation.
6
Yet, the revolutionary character of all workers’ struggles must always be measured in terms of their relationship to the capitalists’ project. From this viewpoint, it becomes clear that the organization of the Councils, by reproducing the material articulation of the labour force as it is. Also freezes development at a certain level of the organic composition of capital (the level of fixed, subjective relationship between workers and machines). Therefore, it challenges capital’s power to bring about whatever technological leap and re-organization of the labour force it may need. In this sense the Councils remain a revolutionary experience. As for the ideological aspect of the self-management project, the hypothesis of a workers’ management of the production of capital, it also becomes clear that “the pre-figuration of a more advanced level of capitalist development was the specific way in which workers refused to yield to the capitalist needs of the time, by trying to provoke the failure of capital’s plan and expressing the autonomous working-class need for conquering power”. (De Caro) It is in the workers’ refusal to be pushed back into a malleable labour force under capitalist rule, and in their demand for power over the productive process (whether in the form of the Councils’ “self-management” and freeze over development, or in the Bolsheviks’ plan for development under “workers’ control”) that the fundamental political novelty of these cycles of struggle lies: on an international level, the workers’ attempt to divert the direction of economic development, express autonomous goals, and assume political responsibility for managing the entire productive machine.
7
When the capitalists move to counter-attack, they are not prepared to grasp the two main givens of the cycles of struggle : the international dimension of class struggle, and the emergence of labour power as the political working class. Thus while the international unification of the working-class struggle raises the need for an international unification of capital’s response, the system of reparations imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty merely seals the inter-capitalist split. While confronted by the international working class, the capitalists can only perceive their national labour powers. The outcome is a strategic separation between their international and domestic responses. Internationally, world revolution appears to the capitalists as coming “from the outside”, from the exemplary leadership of the USSR: hence the politics of military isolation of the Revolution in Russia. Domestically, all the capitalists know is the traditional tools of their rule: (1) the violent annihilation of workers’ political organizations (the Palmer raids and the destruction of the IWW; Fascism in Italy; bloody suppression of the “Red Army” in the Ruhr, and so forth), which breaks the ground for (2) technological manipulation of the labour force (Taylorism, the “scientific organization of labour”) as a means of politically controlling class composition.
8
Taylorism, the “scientific organization of labour”, the technological leap of the Twenties serves but one purpose: to destroy the specific articulation of the labour force which was the basis for the political re-composition of the working class during the first two decades of the century (Thesis 3). The introduction of the assembly line cuts through traditional cleavages in the labour force, thus producing a veritable revolution in the composition of the entire working class. The emergence of the mass worker, the human appendage to the assembly line, is the overcoming of the vanguard/mass dichotomy upon which the Bolshevik Party is modeled. The very “aristocracy of labour” that capital created after 1870 in its attempt to control the international circulation of the Paris Commune (the very workers supposedly “bribed” by the eight-hour work day, Saturdays off, and a high level of wages) became one of the pivots of the circulation of struggles in the Teens. Through the assembly line capital launches a direct political attack, in the form of technology, on the skills and the factory model of the Councils’ professional workers. This attack brings about the material destruction of that level of organic composition which served as the basis of the self-management project. (The political unity between engineers and workers is also under attack. From Taylorism on, engineers will appear to the workers not as direct producers, but as mere functionaries of the scientific organization of exploitation; and the self-management project, devoid of its original class impact, will reappear as a caricature, the “managerial revolution” to come.)
9
Thus, capital’s response to the struggles follows the Nineteenth Century’s “technological path to repression”: It entails breaking whatever political unification the working class has achieved during a given cycle of struggles, by means of a technological revolution in class composition. Constant manipulation of class composition through continual technological innovations provides a tool for controlling the class “from within” through its existence as mere “labour power”. The re-organization of labour is a means to the end of the “political decomposition” of the working class. Since the working class has demanded leadership over the entire society, to push it back into the factory appears as an appropriate political move. Within this strategy, factory and society are to remain divided. The specific form of the labour process in the capitalist factory (that is, the plan) has yet to be imposed on the entire society. Social anarchy is counterposed to the factory plan. The social peace and the growing mass production of the Twenties seem to prove that traditional weapons have been successful again. It will take the Depression to dissipate this belief.
10
With 1929, all the tools of the technological attack on the working class turn against capital. The economic and technological measures for containing the working class in the Twenties (re-conversion of the war economy, continuous technological change, and high productivity of labour) have pushed supply tremendously upward, while demand lags hopelessly behind. Investments decline in a spiral toward the great crash. In a very real sense, 1929 is the workers’ revenge. Mass production and the assembly line, far from securing stability, have raised the old contradictions to a higher level. Capital is now paying a price for its faith in Say’s law (“supply creates its own demand”), with its separation of output and market, producers and consumers, factory and society, labour power and political class. As such it remains caught in a tragic impasse, between the inadequacy of the economic and technological tools of the past and the lack of new, political ones. It will take Roosevelt-Keynes to produce them.
11
While Hoover resumes the old search for external “international causes”, Roosevelt’s approach is entirely domestic: a re-distribution of income to sustain the internal demand. Keynesian strategy is already emerging – keeping up demand by allowing wages to rise and by reducing unemployment through public expenditure. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) of 1933 raises wage rates, encourages unionization, and so forth at the same time that it authorizes both massive investment in public works through the PWA and large relief funds. The political break with the past is enormous. In the classical view, the flexibility of wages is the main assumption. Workers’ struggles are seen as an outside interference with a self-regulating economy: labour organizations belong with other “institutional factors” that maintain wages “artificially”, while it is the State’s role to preserve the economy against such artificial interference. In the Keynesian model, the downward rigidity of wages is the main assumption; wages are taken as independent variables. The State becomes the economic subject in charge of planning appropriate redistributions of income to support the “effective demand”.
12
Keynes’ assumption of the downward rigidity of wages is “the most important discovery of Western Marxism” (Tronti). As wages become an independent variable, the traditional law of the “value of labour” collapses. No “law” but only labour through its own struggles can determine the value of labour. Class antagonism is brought into the heart of production and is taken as the material given on which capital must rebuild its strategy. The NRA is precisely a political maneuver to transform class antagonism from an unpredictable element of risk and instability into a dynamic factor of development. Through its emphasis on the income effect of wages, as opposed to the mere cost effect, the New Deal chooses wages as the mainspring of growth, but within precise limits: Wages must rise harmoniously with profits. The necessary control over wage dynamics requires the institutionalization of class struggle. For workers’ struggles inside capital’s plan means working class inside capilal’s State. Hence the need for the emergence of two new political figures in the Thirties: capital as the new “State-as-Planner” and the working class as organized “labour”.
13
The turn toward State-as-Planner is a radical break with all previous policies of State intervention. The NRA regulates the whole of industrial production. The certainty of a capitalist future has been shaken to its roots by the crisis: The NRA “codes”, involving the totality of the capitalist class (95% of all industrial employers), guarantee that a future exists. As the depth of the crisis makes the State’s function of “correcting mistakes” obsolete, the State must assume the responsibility of direct investment, “net contribution” to purchasing power. The State must expose the myth of “sound finance” and impose budget deficits. It is no longer a juridical figure (the bourgeois government of law); it is an economic agent (the capitalist plan). (All this represents a historical watershed, the beginning of a long political process that will culminate in the “incomes policy”, the wage-price guideposts of the New Frontier.) Most important, as the representative of the collective capitalist, the State’s main function is the planning of the class struggle itself. Capital’s plan for development must establish an institutional hold on the working class.
14
Hence, the need for labour as the political representative of the working class in the capitalist State. But the technological leap of the Twenties has entirely undermined the trade unions, by making their professional structure obsolete: By 1929. the AFL controls only 7% of the industrial labour force. By cutting through the old class composition and producing a massification of the class, Taylorism has only provided the material basis for a political re-composition at a higher level. As long as the mass worker remains unorganized he/she is entirely unpredictable. Thus with “Section 7a” of the NRA and later with the Wagner Act the collective capitalist begins to accept the workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively. It will be no smooth process, for while capitalists as a class support the NRA, the individual capitalist will resist its consequences at the level of his own factory. The birth of the CIO will make the victory of a thirty-year-long struggle for mass-production unionism. Capital and the mass worker will now face each other as the State-as-Planner and organized labour.
15
Class struggle, once the mortal enemy of capitalism to be dealt with through bloodshed, now becomes the main-spring of planned economic development. The historical development of labour power as the political working class is acknowledged by capital’s plan in this major theoretical breakthrough. What was conceived of as a passive, fragmented object of exploitation and technological manipulation is now accepted as an active, unified political subject. Its needs can no longer be violently repressed; they must be satisfied, to ensure continued economic development. Previously, the working class was perceived as capitals immediate negation and the only way to extract profits was to decrease wages and increase exploitation. Now, the closed interdependence of working class and capital is made clear by the strategy of increasing wages to turn out a profit. Whereas the reduction of the working class to mere labour power was reflected in a strategic split between factory (exploitation) and society (repression) (Thesis 9), capital’s political acknowledgment of the working class requires the unifying of society and factory. Capital’s plan is outgrowing the factory to include society through a centralized State.
This involves the development of the historical processes leading to the stage of social capital: the subordination of the individual capitalist to the collective capitalist, the subordination of all social relations to production relations, and the reduction of all forms of work to wage labour.
16
The signing of the NRA by the President (June 1933) marks the beginning of a new cycle of struggle. The second half of 1933 witnesses as many strikes as the whole of 1932 with three and a half times as many workers. By June 1934, with sharply reduced unemployment and a 38% growth of the total industrial payroll, the strike wave gathers momentum: 7.2% of the entire labour force (a peak not to be matched until 1937) is mobilized by the struggle. The crucial sectors are being affected – among them steel and auto workers, the West Coast longshoremen, and almost all textile workers, united behind wage, hours, and union recognition demands. 1935 is the year of both the CIO and the Wagner Act. Between the summer of 1935 and the spring of 1937, employment surpasses the 1929 level, from an index of 89.2 to 112.3. In a context of relative price stability, industrial production moves from an index of 85 to 118, and wages move from 69.1 to 110.1. The massification of the working-class struggle and the economic development of capitalist recovery are two sides of the same process: The struggle circulates to small factories and marginal industries while the sit-downs begin at Fire stone, Goodyear. and Goodrich. 1937 is the year of 4,740 strikes, the peak year in the generalization of the mass worker’s struggle. In February GM capitulates; in March US Steel recognizes the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and accepts its basic demands: 10% wage increase for a 40-hour week.
17
The crucial aspect of the struggles throughout the New Deal is the general emergence of wages (wages, hours, unionization), the workers’ share of the value produced mutually acknowledged by both capitalists and workers as the battlefield for the new stage of class struggle. For capital, wages are a means of sustaining development, while for the workers they represent the weapon that re-launches class offensive. It is precisely this contradictory political nature of wages (the means of workers’ “integration” on one hand, and the basis for the class’s political re-composition and attack on profit on the other) that causes Roosevelt’s failure to ensure steady growth while at the same time maintaining control of the working class. To the threatening massification of struggles, big business responds with an economic recession, a refusal to invest, a “political strike of capital”. (B.Rauch: The History of the New Deal)
18
The economic recession of 1937-38 is the first example of capital’s use of the crisis as a means of regaining initiative in the class struggle. Inflation, unemployment, and wage cuts are weapons that break the workers’ offensive and are means for a new political de-composition of the working class. The political necessity of the economic crisis shows dramatically that the Keynesian model is not sufficient to guarantee stability; only through an act of open violence can capital re-establish its domination over workers. Yet, it is only with the introduction of crises as a means of controlling the class that the Keynesian model can show its true value. While in 1933 the use of class struggle as the propelling element of capitalist development was the only alternative to economic recession, five years later, with the “Roosevelt recession”, “crisis” is revealed as the alternative face of “development”. Development and crisis become the two poles of one cycle. The “State-as-Crisis” is thus simply a moment of the “State-as-Planner” – planner of crisis as a pre-condition for a new development. From now on, capital’s crises will no longer be “natural”, uncontrollable events, but the result of a political decision, essential moments of actual “political business cycles”. (Kalecki)
19
The political figure which dominates class struggle from the 1930s on is the mass worker. The technological leap of the Twenties has produced both the economic recession of 1929 and the political subject of class struggle in the Thirties (Thesis 8). The “scientific organization” of mass production necessitates a malleable, highly interchangeable labour force, easily movable from one productive sector to another and easily adjustable to each new level of capital’s organic composition. By 1926, 43% of the workers at Ford require only one day for their training, while 36% require less than a week. The fragmentation and simplification of the work process undermine the static relationship between worker and job, disconnecting wage labour from “useful labour” entirely. With the mass worker, “abstract labour” reaches its fullest historical development: The intellectual abstraction of Capital is revealed as worker’s sensuous activity.
20
From the plant to the university, society, becomes an immense assembly line, where the seeming variety of jobs disguises the actual generalization of the same abstract labour. This is neither the emergence of a “new working class” nor the massification of a classless “middle class”, but a new widening of the material articulation of the working class proper. (In this process, however, lies the basis for much ideology. Since all forms of work are subsumed under capital’s production, industrial production seems to play less and less of a role, and the factory seems to disappear. Thus, what is in fact an increasing process of proletarianization – the main accumulation of capital being the accumulation of labour power itself – is misrepresented as a process of tertiarization, in which the class dissolves into the abstract “people”. Hence the peculiar inversion whereby the notions of “class” and “proletariat” appear as “abstractions”, while “the people” becomes concrete.)
21
From the worker’s viewpoint, interchangeability, mobility, and massification turn into positive factors. They undermine all divisions by productive role and sector. They provide the material basis for the political re-composition of the entire working class. By destroying the individual worker’s pride in his or her skills, they liberate workers as a class from an identification with their role as producers. With the political demand of “more money and less work”, the increasing alienation of labour becomes a progressive disengagement of the political struggles of the working class from its economic existence as mere labour power. From the workers’ viewpoint, wages cannot be a reward for productivity and work, but are instead the fruits of their struggles. They cannot be a function of capital’s need for development, they must be an expression of the autonomous needs of the class. In the heat of the struggle, the true separation between labour power and working class reaches its most threatening revolutionary peak. “It is quite precisely the separation of the working class from itself, from itself as wage labour, and hence from capital. It is the separation of its political strength from its existence as an economic category.” (Tronti)
After several years, a land mark judgment has come in favor of slum dwellers. We can say that a pro poor judgment has been delivered by the judiciary on the basis of existing legislation & policies, which were denied to them earlier in several cases.
A division bench of Delhi High court comprising justice A P Shah & justice S Murlidhar has delivered the order yesterday. The case was filed by members of Delhi Shramik Sangathan of New Sanjay camp, Okhla Industrial area, New Delhi. The part of Sanjay camp was demolished on 5th Feb’09 by PWD in the name of Right of Way and the evictees were not resettled under the relocation policy. The part of Nehru camp of Patparganj was also demolished in 2007 in the name of Right of way by PWD and the evictees were not resettled.
The case was represented in the court by eminent Supreme Court lawyer Sh Prashant Bhushan & his committed team. The DSS members of New Sanjay camp put a lot of effort in collecting information & evidences in support of the case. The central team of DSS provided all secondary information & other inputs. The DSS local team worked with assistance of lawyer Mr. Somesh & Mr. Rohit of Mr. Prashant Bhushan team.
Below is the report on the judgement from a mainstream newspaper, The Hindu:
NEW DELHI: Observing that “jhuggi dwellers are not to be treated as secondary citizens and are entitled to no less an access to basic survival needs as any other citizen”, the Delhi High Court on Thursday ruled that every eligible slum dweller has to be relocated to a place with proper civic amenities before being evicted from a piece of public land.
A Division Bench of the Court comprising Justice A. P. Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar delivered the judgment on a bunch of petitions seeking proper relocation of jhuggi dwellers whose slums set up at various places across the Capital were demolished without relocating them at alternative sites.
Dismissing the argument of the Delhi Government and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi that these jhuggi dwellers did not deserve to be relocated as they had set up their jhuggis on public roads and thus violated the “right of way”, the Bench said: “This Court would like to emphasise that in the context of the Master Plan for Delhi-2021, jhuggi dwellers are not to be treated as secondary citizens. They are entitled to no less an access to basic survival needs as any other citizen”.
“It must be remembered that the Master Plan for Delhi-2021 clearly identifies the relocation of slum dwellers as one of the priorities for the government.
Spaces have been earmarked for housing of the economically weaker sections. The government will be failing in its statutory and Constitutional obligation if it fails to identify spaces equipped infra-structurally with civic amenities that can ensure a decent living to those being relocated prior to initiating the moves for eviction,” the Bench ruled.
“The decision of the respondents holding that the petitioners are on the ‘right of way’ and are, therefore, not entitled to relocation is hereby declared illegal and unconstitutional. In terms of the extant policy for relocation of jhuggi dwellers, which is operational in view of the orders of the Supreme Court, the cases of the petitioners will be considered for relocation,” the Bench said.
The Bench said that within four months from today each of those eligible among the petitioners in terms of the relocation policy be granted an alternative site as per the Master Plan subject to proof of residence prior to the cut-off date.
This will happen in consultation with each of them in a meaningful manner as indicated in this judgment.
The State agencies will ensure that basic civic amenities consistent with the right to life and dignity of each of the citizens in the jhuggis are available at the site of relocation.
The Bench ordered that a copy of this order be sent to the Member-Secretary, Delhi Legal Services Authority, with the request that wide publicity be given to the operative portion and directions of this judgment in the local language among the residents of jhuggi clusters in the city as well as in the relocated sites.
It said the Legal Services Authority would also hold periodic camps in jhuggi clusters and in relocated sites to make the residents aware of their rights. “A copy of this order be also sent to the Delhi Chief Secretary for compliance,” the Bench added.
Last week, India’s “wall street journal”, Mint, brought out an interesting editorial entitled, “Proletariat, a misleading idea“ (posted on December 29). In the editorial of a business newspaper meant for stockmarketeers and businessmen, what else do you expect on a conceptual matter? First it will trivialise the concept, mostly because of the authors’ ignorance, but sometimes for conscious propaganda too.
In the editorial a historical snapshot of the usage of the term, “proletariat”, is presented – underdog (during the industrial revolution), obsolete (due to Western welfarism), buried (after the cold war), renewal (during the recent “upswing in industrial unrest”). Ultimately, the argument is simple that the workers’ problems must not be posed as matters of class struggle (“conflict between managements and labour”), rather they should be left entirely to free market “competition between firms” with full freedom to hire and fire, which will eventually resolve everything. And also don’t talk about “rights” because they politicise the workplace, obstructing a free competition between firms. Don’t talk of unionisation – let the bosses continue to scramble freely for golden pie in market growth, and you wait open mouthed for flying crumbs to fall. That’s the message.
This message is understandable, but I was still surprised why such an urgency to call “proletariat, a misleading idea” – does it really need an editorial to be devoted upon? Casually, I continued browsing Mint‘s website for other pieces on labour matters, and I found out the reason. There was an elaborate report on the labour unrest in the auto industry which was posted the previous day (December 28): “The rise of the new proletariat“. It provides a decent backgrounder (decent in comparison to other news reports on labour issues) on the recent industrial unrest in India. In fact, Maitreyee Handique’s (the reporter) has been sensitively presenting the labour side of industrial relations in India. She quotes a Trade Union leader in this particular report:
“Today, my boys are educated. They know how to use computers. They are not going to (sit by) and watch exploitation”.
So these “boys” constitute the “new proletariat”!
Further,
So what’s different about this wave of trade union activity? Timing. It comes as the world is emerging from a financial crisis that marks an inflection point in its industrial development. As the world’s fastest-growing economy after China—and one that sailed through the economic crisis relatively unscathed—India is poised to become one of the powerhouses that pulls everybody else out of the trough.
Take India’s automobile sector—it’s helping to define the future of the global car industry by churning out the low-priced models that are propelling growth as markets elsewhere lose steam. It’s also one of the key fronts on which workers are fighting companies, which explains why the stakes are so high.
And more,
In other nations, such as Malaysia, contract workers are actually paid more because they don’t have job security, said C.S. Venkataratnam, director at the International Management Institute in New Delhi.
“Here (in India), the typical argument is that workers are not qualified,” he said. “In India, we do not pay premium, but discounted wages, for quality.”
Workers say lopsided numbers at many companies – a small regular workforce dwarfed by a larger group of contract hires that’s being constantly retrenched and replenished – render it impossible to register demands and make management responsive.
However, the reporter is determined not to take sides and end the report with an employer’s view:
Kapur said the trouble at the factory was “politically motivated by outside influences”, without elaborating. He accused the unions of trying to create an atmosphere in which industry wouldn’t be able to survive, saying that this had already happened in the two states where the communists are holding power.
“Kolkata and Kerala don’t have industries, and now it’s starting in Gurgaon,” Kapur said.
Despite this balancing between the perspectives of labour and capital in the report, it seems the title “The Rise of the New Proletariat” was quite chilling for the business community, and the very next day the editors, who sensed this, felt the need to target the very two issues that the above report brought out:
“the disparity in wages between contract and permanent employees and difficulties in forming unions at workplaces.”
And they found India’s new chief economic advisor, Kaushik Basu’s statement authoritative enough to correct the damage done.
Further, Mint in the end had to assure its readers:
“Today, the nature of work in modern economies is very different from what it was in the Victorian age. Many workers in the same firm don’t even work together. The idea of a proletariat rests on shared experiences at a workplace. That is a fiction even in assembly line manufacturing today. A gentle draught of economic reason is enough to evaporate a politically evocative expression.”
It seems that the very Idea of Proletariat is dangerous, it smacks of class struggle, it (mis)leads workers to unrest leaving the capitalists distraught.
Until last year, people in the Ethiopian settlement of Elliah earned a living by farming their land and fishing. Now, they are employees.
Dozens of women and children pack dirt into bags for palm seedlings along the banks of the Baro River, seedlings whose oil will be exported to India and China. They work for Bangalore-based Karuturi Global Ltd., which is leasing 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of local land, an area larger than Luxembourg.
The jobs pay less than the World Bank’s $1.25-per-day poverty threshold, even as the project has the potential to enrich international investors with annual earnings that the company expects to exceed $100 million by 2013.
“My business is the third wave of outsourcing,” Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, the 44-year-old managing director of Karuturi Global, said at the company’s dusty office in the western town of Gambella. “Everyone is investing in China for manufacturing; everyone is investing in India for services. Everybody needs to invest in Africa for food.”
Companies and governments are buying or leasing African land after cereals prices almost tripled in the three years ended April 2008. Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Ethiopia alone have approved 1.4 million hectares of land allocations to foreign investors since 2004, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.
Emergent Asset Management Ltd.’s African Agricultural Land Fund opened last year. On Nov. 23, Moscow-based Pharos Financial Advisors Ltd. and Dubai-based Miro Asset Management Ltd. announced the creation of a $350 million private equity fund to invest in agriculture in developing countries.
‘Last Frontier’
“African agricultural land is cheap relative to similar land elsewhere; it is probably the last frontier,” said Paul Christie, marketing director at Emergent Asset Management in London. The hedge fund manager has farm holdings in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
“I am amazed it has taken this long for people to realize the opportunities of investing in African agriculture,” Christie said.
Monsoon Capital of Bethesda, Maryland, and Boston-based Sandstone Capital are among the shareholders of Karuturi Global, Karuturi said. The company is also the world’s largest producer of roses, with flower farms in India, Kenya and Ethiopia.
One advantage to starting a plantation 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the border with war-torn Southern Sudan and a four-day drive to the nearest port: The land is free. Under the agreement with Ethiopia’s government, Karuturi pays no rent for the land for the first six years. After that, it will pay 15 birr (U.S. $1.18) per hectare per year for the next 84 years.
More Elsewhere
Land of similar quality in Malaysia and Indonesia would cost about $350 per hectare per year, and tracts of that size aren’t available in Karuturi Global’s native India, Karuturi said.
Labor costs of less than $50 a month per worker and duty-free treaties with China and India also attracted Karuturi Global, he said. The $100 million projected annual profit will come from the export of food crops, including corn, rice and palm oil, he said. The company also is plowing land on a 10,900- hectare spread near the central Ethiopian town of Bako.
The project will give the government revenue from corporate income taxes and from future leases, as well as from job creation, said Omod Obang Olom, president of Ethiopia’s Gambella region and an ally of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party.
“This strategy will build up capitalism,” he said in an interview in Gambella. “The message I want to convey is there is room for any investor. We have very fertile land, there is good labor here, we can support them.” The government plans to allot 3 million hectares, or about 4 percent of its arable land, to foreign investors over the next three years.
Surprised Workers
Workers in Elliah say they weren’t consulted on the deal to lease land around the village, and that not much of the money is trickling down.
At a Karuturi site 20 kilometers from Elliah, more than a dozen tractors clear newly burned savannah for a corn crop to be planted in June. Omeud Obank, 50, guards the site 24 hours a day, six days a week. The job helps support his family of 10 on a salary of 600 birr per month, more than the 450 birr he earned monthly as a soldier in the Ethiopian army.
Obank said it isn’t enough to adequately feed and clothe his family.
“These Indians do not have any humanity,” he said, speaking of his employers. “Just because we are poor it doesn’t make us less human.”
One Meal
Obang Moe, a 13-year-old who earns 10 birr per day working part-time in a nursery with 105,000 palm seedlings, calls her work “a tough job.” While the cash income supplements her family’s income from their corn plot, she said that many days they still only have enough food for one meal.
The fact that the project is based on a wage level below the World Bank’s poverty limit is “quite remarkable,” said Lorenzo Cotula, a researcher with the London-based IIED.
Large-scale export-oriented plantations may keep farmers from accessing productive resources in countries such as Ethiopia, where 13.7 million people depend on foreign food aid, according to a June report by Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food. It called for ensuring that revenue from land contracts be “sufficient to procure food in volumes equivalent to those which are produced
for exports.”
Karuturi said his company pays its workers at least Ethiopia’s minimum wage of 8 birr, and abides by Ethiopia’s labor and environmental laws.
‘Easily Exploitable’
“We have to be very, very cognizant of the fact that we are dealing with people who are easily exploitable,” he said, adding that the company will create up to 20,000 jobs and has plans to build a hospital, a cinema, a school and a day-care center in the settlement. “We’re going to have a very healthy township that we will build. We are creating jobs where there were none.”
The project may help cover part of the $44 billion a year that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says must be invested in agriculture in poor nations to halve the number of the world’s hungry people by 2015.
“We keep saying the big problem is, you need investment in African agriculture; well here are a load of guys who for whatever reason want to invest,” David Hallam, deputy director of the FAO’s trade and markets division, said in an interview in Rome. “So the question is, is it possible to sort of steer it toward forms of investment that are going to be beneficial?”
Buntin Buli, a 21-year-old supervisor at the nursery who earns 600 birr a month, said he hopes Karuturi will use some of its earnings to improve working conditions and provide housing and food.
“Otherwise we would have been better off working on our own lands,” he said. “This is a society that has been very primitive. We want development.”
