“History” as per SSKU Leadership: Incomplete & Unsafe

S. Das

History of Workers' Movements, if written with Insufficient Experience, Comprehension and Vision can only Create, at best, Dangerous Confusions

SANHATI is an effort by many students, researchers and in general the Intelligentsia, which describes its effort as “Fighting Neoliberalism in West Bengal”, and SANHATI (available online at www.sanhati.com ) is doing a good, credible, sincere and arduous job indeed.

In the WebPages of SANHATI an article appeared recently — “A Brief History of Workers' Movements in India, with focus on Bengal” (available at http://sanhati.com/front-page/347/ ). As author of that article we found SSKU, and SSKU is a Trade Union organisation working in Hindustan Motors (in popular parlance HINDMOTOR). It seemed to us that the article which aroused much expectation due to its Heading is poorly written in some parts, and what is more, as the Sub-Heading above says: History, if written with insufficient experience, comprehension and vision, can only create, at best, dangerous confusions. In other words, that article could be described as “How Not to Write History of Workers' Movements”. Therefore, we were compelled to write at least this urgent and brief rejoinder to that article. But we request the readers to go through the SSKU article if possible before reading this rejoinder.

The Authors couldn't grasp especially the Emerging ‘New' Trend, and generally, the trends

The jolt starts from first or introductory Para and that gets substantiated in the concluding five Paragraphs. And that's a crucial or one of the most crucial things indicating the trend(s) emerging from the present day workers' movement.

The first or introductory Para is:

“ This histoy is by SSKU , an independent, non-party affiliated trade-union working at Hindustan Motors, West Bengal. Such unions which are free of party allegiance and government interest have often been successful in representing workers' rights and bettering their conditions, for example the Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha of Sankar Guha Niyogi . For SSKU's recent activities, click here . For a summary of the condition of factories in West Bengal, government corruption, sellout to big capital and illegal mass usage of industrial land for real estate, click here . ”

And the last five paragraphs are:

“The decade of eighties of the last century in this state witnessed a new turning point as regards the workers' movement. The workers of different factories of West Bengal started revolting against the anti-Labour move perpetrated by the Central Trade Unions. As a result, the revolting workers started organizing themselves into new consolidations. This process of consolidation gave rise to two distinct trends:

(A) Spontaneous revolts, followed by clashes and violence, that ended sadly in the withdrawal of the movement, and

(B) Initiating organised, unified and protracted movement that culminated in a new form of struggle.

The first trend was embodied in the spontaneous revolt by the workers of Victoria Jute Mill in 1992 and the recent workers' uprising in the Tea Gardens in North Bengal, where a CITU leader was burnt to death by the angry workers. The second trend was heralded by the victorious workers of the Hindustan Livers. The movement of the Jute Worker of Kanoria Jute Mill in the 90s of the last century had taken the issues and just causes of the workers to the society at large. The message of this trend of movement was taken up by a large number of workers in various factories of the state of West Bengal. The movement of the workers of the Mathkal, Garden Reach Ship Builders, Bauria Cotton Mill and others were the representatives of this trend.

Against the prevailing trend of surrender to Capitalists and the Bureaucratic functioning of the central trade unions, this new trend of workers' initiative (of which SSKU is a successful instance) is holding high the banner of internal democracy, honesty and fighting for the just causes of the workers.

The same trend is continuing today and against the real threat of de-unionisation of the workers, the banner of struggle is still flying high. Against the all-round pessimism gripping the Indian society of today, against the virtual acceptance of the globalisation as a fait accompli, the workers are struggling to occupy the driver's seat to bail out society from the clutches of the capital to usher in a more equitable and egalitarian society. However to make this happen, oppressed and conscious people from all strata have to join hands and call for the day…”

And here the article finished abruptly.

So what we get from the above quoted parts of SSKU article about SSKU itself and the emerging ‘new' trend of workers' struggle? We get: “ independent, non-party affiliated trade-union …unions … free of party allegiance and government interest … successful in representing workers' rights and bettering their conditions, for example the Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha of Sankar Guha Niyogi ” AND THEN … two distinct trends: (A) Spontaneous revolts… and (B) Initiating organised, unified and protracted movement that culminated in a new form of struggle… The movement of Kanoria Jute Mill …had taken the issues and just causes of the workers to the society at large. The message of this trend of movement was taken up by a large number of workers in various factories … e.g. Mathkal, … Bauria Cotton Mill … || … this new trend of workers' initiative … is holding high the banner of internal democracy, honesty and fighting for the just causes of the workers. || The same trend is continuing today … the workers are struggling to occupy the driver's seat to bail out society from the clutches of the capital to usher in a more equitable and egalitarian society… ” [Bold ours]

Many questions may crop up: [1] Should the new trend be characterised only by “independent, non-party affiliated trade-union ”; “ unions free of party allegiance and government interest” or by success “ in representing workers' rights and bettering their conditions ”? [ Astonishing comment indeed! In these hard days when in many cases they are being compelled to retreat in a disarrayed manner facing ruling class' assault, in some places the workers are fighting mainly to resist the onslaught of the capitalists, and only in a few places they are getting bits of success in those fight of theirs, the SSKU leaders are talking generally about success in betterment & etc based on a tiny sample! ] Or can the new trend be characterised solely or mainly by the qualities like “holding high the banner of internal democracy, honesty and fighting for the just causes of the workers”? [2] In what way do “ the Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha of Sankar Guha Niyogi ” and the Jute Workers' rebellions of the post-2002 period belong to a single trend? [3] Can that work of the activists of Kanoria, who “had taken the issues and just causes of the workers to the society at large”, at all be called a trendsetter for the ‘new' type of movement, which, they supposed, workers of the other factories did follow? [4] And lastly, “the workers are struggling to occupy the driver's seat to bail out society from the clutches of the capital to usher in a more equitable and egalitarian society” – what does that really signify and how that fits in within the bounds of what they described as “ independent, non-party affiliated trade-union ” or “ unions which are free of party allegiance and government” …etc “!! But we shall refrain from chasing each and every question that may come up for the sake of brevity and go to our salient points.

Just immediately before the line “The decade of eighties of the last century in this state witnessed a new turning point as regards the workers' movement…” the SSKU should have written WHY that said ‘new turning point' appeared or developed; they should have written what was turning to what and how; because, after that line they didn't answer those pertinent questions ; they only wrote, again just as an event, immediately after that sentence that “The workers of different factories of West Bengal started revolting against the anti-Labour move perpetrated by the Central Trade Unions.” It's amazing. How can they at all be able in understanding the essence of the ‘new' ‘emerging' trend when they don't answer what was the ‘old', why a departure from the ‘old' became particularly necessary? Moreover, without taking into account the role of ‘old' parties that controlled the ‘old' unions, how a study of new emerging trend can be done?

Because in that very history written by themselves, so far, i.e. until the arrival of the line containing this cause nowhere there was any sign from where one can get a clue of WHY or HOW the ‘Central Trade Unions' suddenly ‘perpetrated' those ‘anti-Labour move'. Till that point their ‘history' was just plain and simple narration of events of workers' struggles that they thought ‘glorious', ‘historic', etc against all odds, oppressions and etc. As for example just read the preceding three paragraphs that came immediately before the paragraph starting with “The decade of eighties … witnessed a new turning point as regards the workers' movement”:

“The workers of the organized sector (government and semi-governmental offices) started a wildcat strike from the mid-night of July 11, 1960. The police took recourse to terrible repression; several rounds of fire were targeted towards the striking workers, five workers became martyrs, 20 thousand workers were arrested. 2.5 million workers of the Central Government sector joined a strike in September 19, 1968.

“CITU was founded at Lenin Nagar, Kolkata during the period May 28-30, 1970.

“The historic railway strike took place in May, 1974, which shook the entire political fabric of our country and ushered in a new tide of movements throughout the country.”

And this is one of the major failings in their history writing – failing to notice, to realize the ‘defeat' of the world working class movement and to learn from that – naturally the first thing to find out and learn should have been then ‘why our old organizations, parties, unions all got rotten' ‘why we were defeated', ‘what were our weaknesses'. And as they could see what was decaying, dying they couldn't realise what is taking birth and in what condition the ‘new' is emerging. They didn't realise, and we don't blame them for that – rather their inexperience and the general state of muddled observations, theorisations stemming from muddled realisations of past communist movement that is still dominant in the so-called communist revolutionary camp of India — they didn't recognize and grasp the ‘defeat' that surfaced very nakedly in 1990-91, and consequently, they failed to see, feel and realise the ways in which the workers are slowly coming up from the ashes in the form of ‘new'. How then can they appreciate the ‘new' trend with such a major gap in their analysis?

Certainly we shall deal with: (1) the defeat, the weaknesses within the past workers' movements those contributed to the defeat and were glaring after the defeat even to some extent to the rebelling workers, not only their advanced few; and (2) the ‘new' trend that is emerging, and the characteristics of the new trend so far as revealed by the new struggles and by the aspirations of the rebelling workers who are trying to advance. But before going to those points one thing we would like to tell workers and activists of the ‘new' struggles: Apparently, to the outsiders, these new fights and organizations may seem to be ‘non-party-affiliated', ‘non-govt', etc — but don't be deceived by such labels, fashionable though they are to the Bourgeois Media, NGO-s, post-modernists, etc — these do not at all represent most essential qualities of yours [i.e., new fights' and organizations']. Rather, those labels can create at best: enough confusions; and at worst: derailment from the track of the reawakening of the working class movement, though all of your comrades might not be fully aware of that track right now.

The Defeat, the Decaying ‘Old' vs. the Emerging ‘New'

In not a few of our past literatures we dealt with the two questions mentioned above, and so we would appreciate if the observers from outside please go through them and in this way we can avoid repetitions or quoting a lot from what we already have said. [Here is a short list of such items appeared in the print version of our journal and available in the web version too: (A) A lengthy article that analysed the peculiarity of the present day Jute Workers' Movement with historical context, and readers can also get some understanding about the general scenario of workers' movement from that article: “Recent Movement of the Jute Workers – A Review” appeared in May 06 issue; then (B) “Workers Against Unilever” – a short piece which analysed the Hindustan Lever (Garden Reach) workers' fight and organization, appeared in Feb 04 issue; (C) “The CESC Contract Workers' Fight & New Organization Formation”, that appeared in Apr 07 issue.] Anyway, let us start afresh while keeping in mind that we are to avoid repetition. In the past we have seen many fights and unions led those fights; the SSKU gave many glorious examples of such past fights. But though those unions were called workers' unions, workers had no control over them . The outsider leaders, babu-s [gentlemen] controlled the unions. Is this a recent fact? No. But had these unions always betrayed, always did treachery in the past? No, that of course is not a fact. When these unions came into being in the 1940s and 1950s, they were standing on the active support of the workers and enough spontaneity of workers. That time those unions fought somewhat in the interest of the workers. But their fights and functioning of leadership were such that these didn't contribute to the development of consciousness among the mass of worker-members as much could have been done if the unions had been truly working like, as Marx used to say about trade unions, ‘school of communism'. The leaders and activists of the ‘left' parties associated with these unions were not rotten as they are now. But at that time too — the ‘control' of the unions were in the hands of the outsider leaders and party-babu-s. The common workers never took the reign on their hands, never tried so; and the old union leadership too never tried to educate and motivate the workers to take the control on the workers themselves . Workers got the idea from them that a union-leader should be learned, efficient in writing answers to management in English, proficient in Negotiations… so how can the rustic, unsophisticated ‘labour' be a union-leader!

Anyway, the changing or somersaulting of the “left” parties and unions gained speed from the end-1970s, from when the “left” parties formed government. As the workers had no control over the unions the owners could easily buy the leaders. So from “leaders' union” we got “owners' (pocketed) union”. But even during the fighting years of mid 1960s those ‘left' unions and parties betrayed the working class very cunningly and that was not visible or understandable to the workers. Remember how during the Engineering Workers' [the traditionally used term in Bengal for the Metalworkers] movement in the 1960s the Engineering Workers' Unions' leadership [composed of leaders of the so-called ‘left' parties] made the First Engineering Agreement acceding to separation, segregation of workers on the ‘basis' of ‘big', ‘medium' and ‘small' firms just depending on the number of workers in a factory? How struggles of Jute, Engineering, etc workers were never actually merged? How those leaders kept the contract, casual and permanent workers in watertight separations among them in struggles and organizations, which actually harmed the development of class struggle? How long lasting became the scars of those divisions that till today cause itches, that till today we couldn't erase even in the factories where we, the revolutionary communist activists, are working in unions!!

We could extend this above list of questions, but that's not the point; the point is: Does a revisionist-reformist party at all organise workers in real ‘proletarian schools of communism'? Rather they organise workers in ‘bourgeois petit-bourgeois schools of reformism'! When they flatly mentioned the formation of CITU in their history in a single-lined sentence have the SSKU activists pondered over that? Are we not witnessing the massive dead weight of reformism still acting as a bulwark against the development of consciousness?

Internal democracy was impaired, or better to say, was never there — but that is not the fix, not the stumbling block, rather that is a manifestation of the politics inside . One may, particularly at the beginning, start form the manifestation , but from there one has to move forward to the matter inside that manifests as lack or absence of democracy. Formal democracy, as a set of democratic rules of functioning, means nothing if the ‘substance' of politics of working class struggle is not there. In other words, even with very high degree of democratic set of rules one may arrive in a reformist mess. Those who do not essentially, in essence , give supremacy to the ‘working class', do not believe by their heart that this class, through its class struggle, class leadership, class party, class hegemony, class dictatorship (state) … through revolutionary changes, approaches the abolition of classes, but rather believe that this class, being objectively the most organised and radical, is an instrument in the hands of some ‘conscious leaders' in changing society towards ‘betterment', of course ‘for the sake of the workers', can easily arrive to such a reformist mess in the name of ‘socialist' or ‘communist' politics and/or parties.

The SSC (Sramik Sangram Committee) published a pamphlet in early 1994 for workers when the first wave of rebellion in the post-defeat post-Globalisation period was vividly witnessed in West Bengal. The title of the pamphlet was: “Not only Rebellion – Need New Organizations; No more Hoodwink – Need New Way”. Interestingly that was the time when Kanoria Jute Mill was in the media limelight and its news reached some hundred thousand bourgeois-media readers every morning; and the echoes of explosion of Victoria Jute Mill workers' rebellion had not yet died down; when news of newer events came pouring within the activists working in workers' belts; and that pamphlets in Bangla, Hindi and Urdu were bought by the factory workers, much more than fifty thousand copies were bought by workers at different factory gates and workers' quarters of Calcutta and adjacent four districts only. The first part of the Title and also the pamphlet dealt with the rebellion against old established rotten undemocratic traitor “ leaders' trade unions” and the necessity of building up workers own fighting organizations, workers own unions ruled by the workers themselves . To start with, it may often happen now that the thin layer of the ‘advanced' section of the rebelling workers are not yet ready to run the organization themselves and need the help of non-worker activists, and it should be the duty of the latter ones to help the ‘advanced' section of the workers so that those workers can learn how to control, how to lead the union and how to draw close the relatively backward section of the rebel workers too in union works. But the pamphlet didn't stop there at that point, didn't deal that aspect only . The second part of the Title and also of the pamphlet dealt with the question of policies to be followed as against the policies that ruined us, deprived us even of having our own organizations; our unions became capitalists'; naturally the question of ‘alternative' policy came up — the writers of the booklet tried to explain lucidly (as much their ability and wisdom that time permitted) the politics of ‘class', the ‘class line' obligatory for these new organizations to be formed as opposed to the politics of class-compromise and surrender of the old established unions. All these was for a simple reason — the workers' revolts have started, new organisations started taking shape, AND all these are happening in the situation of Party-less-ness, which is imparting new features in the arena of TU struggle!

That a new is germinating was known to the writers of the pamphlet or to the activists spreading those literatures. Already in 1989, an article had been published in Sandhikshan (Bangla) titled ‘End of the Old – Birth of the New' analysing the workers struggles in the very late 1980s. Though we must add here that although till the almost mid-1980s we saw some ‘last ripples' of the past movement in the form of say the Bombay Textile Strike, the British Miners' Strike, the US Airline Strike, etc, the rest of the 1980s, especially the last half, was marked with what we called “very low ebb of workers struggle” and marked with series of three-pronged attacks of capitalists: [1] Decrease in Wage & Benefits, [2] Decrease in workforce by forceful ‘voluntary' retirements and retrenchment, and lastly, [3] Increase of workload. The SSC also predicted the violent nature of the first would-be outbursts observing and analysing the very-brief rebellion in Fort William Jute mill in very early-1990s where interestingly the things first targeted by the angry mob of workers were the CPIM and CITU led party office, union office, the leaders' motorbikes and the turncoat leaders too. The SSC was awaiting the revolt; their 1990 pamphlet titled “If Today is of Surrender, Let Tomorrow be of Resistance” called upon workers to fight to end the years of agonising surrender by betrayer left leadership and ended with a long and famous quote of Eugene Debbs predicting workers rise from the ashes again and again after setbacks; and the pamphlet was greeted by a large mass of industrial workers.

But is the emerging new flawless? Isn't there a remnant of the ‘old' still dragging it behind from within the ‘new'? Of course the ‘new' is not free of remnants of the ‘old' movement. Elsewhere we commented on the characteristics of the ‘new' and the inauspicious influence of the ‘old': “If we observe the arena of class struggle very closely and deeply we shall see that the emerging new trend of rebellion against the ‘old' is emerging from within the general condition of ‘defeat' of the international working class movement and the general scenario of the still continuing low-ebb of the working class' struggle . What are the salient aspects of the ‘new' struggle today? The fights of the workers are mainly in the plane of ‘practical economic struggle'; but then, through the summing-up of past by themselves and through the interaction with communist activists regarding the summing-up of past struggles, defeat, etc a very weak, so to say, ‘struggle' through ‘theoretical-political' discourses is also going on in the ‘realm of ideas', which has also bearing upon the realm of practice in the form of taking and not taking certain decisions, tactics, etc; and surely there is the objectivity that today even these TU level fights are bringing forth, bringing in forefront, some questions related to Globalisation, policies of imperialists and governments, etc which are also giving some ‘political' tinges to these ‘economic' struggles .” Hence, overall the ‘New' trend is characterised by # rebelling workers trying to take control over their destiny, over their fight and organization, learning to take charge of their own unions, # learning, realising the situation of ‘defeat' of the past movement and why we were defeated, starting from simple questions like ‘why and how our old unions, then the parties, leaders went astray…' # learning from the assaults of parties-governments-capitalists-imperialists the politics of Globalisation-Liberalisation etc and the politics necessary to combat it, # learning to look into the very slowly emerging country wide counter-offensive, the ground of which is created by the concerted attacks of the capitalists-governments-parties, and how to build up a unity from below, how to prepare for the future battle… …. And then we wrote, “But the dominating factor still now is clearly and naturally the ‘old'. So contextually this emerging and still weak ‘new' has many remnants of ‘old' intermingled within. The conscious activists of the working class can and should try their best to boost the ‘new' and fight the ‘old' components within each such fights, each such fighting organizations. And conscious bourgeois, petit-bourgeois activists, leaders can do the opposite, can cling to the ‘old', pamper the ‘old', take advantage of the ‘old' within the ‘new'. ” We didn't write what a confused activist will do, but you may well guess that.

The intermingling of the ‘new' and the ‘old', the remnant of ‘old' in the ‘new', etc are more starkly revealed by the “Third Trend” mentioned in “The CESC Contract Workers' Fight & New Organization Formation”, that appeared in our Apr 07 issue. If you look closely in the Toyota Workers' struggle or the Hero Honda Workers' struggle in early 2006 you will not miss to see the blatant contradiction: A CITU or AITUC affiliated union in its fight is crossing the LAKSHMANREKHA, crossing the prohibitory chalk circle drawn by their traitor and utterly reformist leadership, the struggles are going out of the legal-official-governmental barriers… but the workers were still upholding the ‘old' banners, remaining in their old union organizations — in content (in the sense of their fighting spirit discarding the so long practised decent trade-unionism) these workers veered to the ‘new' while at the same time remained in the ‘old' form (in the sense of outward appearance). This contradiction cannot stay for long; though this still-very-weak current of class struggle may permit this contradictory conduct for some time in future as a ‘trend', as for example this trend was somewhat manifest in some smaller factories in U.P. in recent times, and hence we mentioned it as a trend.

Why the SSKU History authors didn't see and study all these

Inexperience is a main cause as we said in the subheading just below the title of this piece, but that is not enough to explain — because the peculiar experience of the comrades there also influenced their logic. We hope that the SSKU comrades will ponder over, reflect introspectively. We just give a single hint here. When SSKU was formed in Hindustan Motors didn't they, the SSKU leadership, compromised too much with the ‘remnants of old' to the extent of having as SSKU president a well-known MP, ‘renowned' established-trade-unionist leader, of utterly revisionist-reformist CPI? Didn't that also reflect their confusion regarding the ‘new'? We are not saying “No Compromise” because there is remnant of the ‘old' in every ‘new', and you must get in if you are to help it change, help it fight. But compromising with the old habit of relying on ‘expert' MP of established parliamentary party and TU leader with ‘connections' to ‘higher levels'… etc: isn't that too dangerous a deviation at the very beginning? Don't their day-to-day activities and the way in which they conducted the past HM movement, the programmes they chalked out still bear much dead weight of the ‘old' way of thinking, the ‘old' way of conducting union movement? Then, consider the apparent media-craze and ardent desire of taking, in Kanoria style, “the issues and just causes of the workers to the society at large” where ‘society at a large' means in this country and at this time nothing else that the petit-bourgeoisie, giving that more importance than propagating the news of the fight and the necessity of rebellion and fight in more number of factories to the ‘workers at large' — what all these show? Kanoria showed brilliantly many things that are not to be done and that includes one of the first of their leaders' senseless decisions, of course ‘passed' in the ‘union general body' by ‘voting' in a perfectly ‘democratic!' manner, the colour of their flag: Maroon & Green – we never mind colours of banner of a TU if there was no hidden intention, but why it was done there? Was it not done in an effort to ‘invite' and ‘accommodate' all shades of politics – to the detriment of the very essence of the ‘new' trend!

See comrades, nobody of us who are trying to develop into Bolsheviks in the true sense are totally free from all the unhealthy influences of our ‘past' movement – we must be sincere in introspection, in study, before embarking on such important a project like writing History of Workers' Movements. Rhetorically speaking: If we try hard we may not be able to help the workers advance by just one millimetre – because the situation is very hard; but if we try in a wrong way we can unknowingly make easier a retreat of a few kilometres – because at least a few workers arisen through the rebellions, through the ‘new' trend, have put faith on us.

 

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