The Politics of the Labour Movement: An Essay on Differential Aspirations
NB - The Delhi Historical Materialism Conference (Convention Centre, JNU, 3-5 April 2013) has a session on labour history, organised by the Association of Indian Labour Historians. See the 11.30 am panel for Wednesday April 3, at http://sacw.net/free/hmdelhiprog.html
The following essay contains the background of my presentation ‘Politics in the mirror of labour history’
The panel will be chaired by Professor Jan Breman. Chitra Joshi will present on ‘Charting the terrain: New frontiers of labour history in India’; and Prabhu Mohapatra on ‘The centre and the margin: The shifting focus of labour history’
[This paper appeared as # 17 in the NLI research study series, 2001]
Introduction
For historians of labour the term 'politics' tends to a usage over and beyond the activity of political leaders and cadre. It encapsulates the entire process of the formation and articulation of class interests. The very act of historicising the activity of the working class and the labour movement implies the consideration of collective identities, howsoever inchoate these might be. This is in marked contrast to the clouds of ideological dissimulation that accompany the representation of capitalist 'growth'. Thus, the interests of capital and capitalists require and generate reified and mystical categories such as Adam Smith's 'invisible hand of the market' or Hegel's 'universal permanent capital'.[i] Movements for nationalist and proto-national identities require fabricated admixtures of fact and fiction, ancient history and modern myth. The interests of workers are more down-to-earth and immediate. The emergence of labour as an ideologised 'factor of production' in bourgeois economy was coterminous with the growth of democracy in the initially developing sectors of global capitalism. The latter process had to contend with and harness the aspirations of the labouring classes to the programme of capital - whether these were projects of imperial expansion in European countries, or of national independence in their colonies. But the attainment of hegemony over labour always carried a price. Political developments such as adult and women's suffrage, combination rights and social welfare; and structural changes involving the regulation of working conditions and technical processes all expressed the growing significance of labour in modern society. In this sense it is relevant to pose the question whether capitalist democracy is at all a stable form of political association, the very End of History (a la Fukuyama), or an inherently unstable form, given to authoritarian degeneration unless driven forward by the aspirations of labour. Stated differently, we might consider whether the labour movement is implicitly social-democratic in nature, not in this or that phase of accumulation, nor ideologically as a vehicle of nationalism or Leninism, but historically, as the constantly present and unassimilable object of capitalist exploitation.
These generalisations need to be tested in the micrologic of historical events, wherein the activities of workers take place in the backdrop of a larger confluence of classes and interests. Such an examination can enable the discernment of the differentia specifica of the workers movement. This essay will address the above general theses, not via the entire gamut of class relations in colonial India as a whole, but through a case-study of the class behaviour of workers in Chota Nagpur in the early decades of the twentieth century. Paradoxically, we start by finding the politics of labour expressed not as the pure movement of a defined class, but as part of a social movement in a determinate situation. In the material set forth below, which concerns the labour movement in the 1920's and 30's, I will argue that workers were cognisant of nationalist politics, but in their own way, and with the tendency to invest nationalism with their own specific content. The colonial subjugation of India made sense in light of their experience of European supervisors; questions of democracy were translated into such issues as the right to choose their leaders (including the notorious 'outsider') irrespective of the preferences of the established unionists or factory owners; and the emergence of popular ministries became for them an occasion to launch mass struggles for long-standing demands. The observations set out here are grounded in research to which references will be provided.[ii]
The material upon which I shall base my generalisations is the history of the labour movement in Chota Nagpur in the 1920's and 1930's. This area is a demographically distinctive region, and the location of the heaviest concentration of metallurgical and mining enterprises in colonial India. The core zones were the belt around the Tata Iron and Steel Company in Jamshedpur (TISCO), and the Jharia coalfields in the Dhanbad subdivision of Manbhum. Several 'associated companies' were engaged in engineering and metallurgical work in Singhbhum, which was also the site of metallic-ore mines. These included the Tinplate Company, the Tatanagar Foundry, the Indian Steel Wire Products Ltd, the Cable Company, and the Indian Copper Corporation at Ghatsila. Jharia and its environs contained the richest seams of superior-grade coal in India. There were also coal and mica mines in neighbouring Hazaribagh. Some 1 to 1.25 lakh workers were employed in the production and despatch of coal, the most crucial energy commodity in the colonial economy, for which the chief customers were the Railways, the merchant Marine, metallurgical industries, and industries running on steam-driven engines, including various mills.
Steel production in TISCO reached 429,000 tons in 1928 and 800,000 tons in 1939.[iii] During 1914-1918 nearly all of its capacity was devoted to the British war effort in the Middle East. Its workforce was 30,135 in 1923-24 [iv], after which the management began to implement reductions. In the late 1920's the local government reported a workforce of 29,000.[v] Contractors' `coolies' varied in number from 4000 to 8000. Allied establishments such as the Tinplate Company, the Cable Company, the Copper Corporation, the Indian Steel and Wire Products Company, and the EIR and the Bengal-Nagpur Railway (BNR) workshops employed a total of 14,352 blue collar workers in 1938.[vi] The population of Jamshedpur grew to 57,000 in 1921, and was 84,000 in 1931.[vii] In 1929, the pool of unemployed workers in Jamshedpur was estimated at 7000.
The Politics of Intervention
Our period begins in the aftermath of the First World War and leads through the Depression to the advent of (limited) suffrage-based politics and the first elected nationalist ministries. An examination of the labour movement during this phase illustrates the nature of nationalist intervention and the interaction of state, managements, unions and workers, in the declining years of colonial power. During the eventful decade of the thirties, the workers of Chota Nagpur - many of them first generation employees - underwent a painful learning process, in the course of which employers great and small, began reluctantly to concede a more democratic system of labour relations. Concessions were wrung from the capitalists in the course of bitter and often violent struggles, which took place in a context complicated by the politics of nationalism and retreating imperialism. Commenting on the authoritarian nature of the managerial regimes then prevailing, Professor Radhakamal Mukerjee, a member of the Bihar Labour Enquiry Committee had this to say :
even the formation of the trade union... provokes intimidation and victimisation on a large scale from the management. Workers want to... secure the rights of collective bargaining. But the agents whom they elect or choose are dubbed 'outsiders'... and treated with indifference and scorn... It is the managements' deliberate policy of non-recognition of unions and persistent refusal to deal with (their) accredited representatives... that is one of the most frequent causes of strikes in India, and a labour union hardly ever gets recognition without the ordeal of a strike... [viii]
The struggles for democratic industrial relations and against intensification of labour were central to the history of the labour movement in Chota Nagpur, and had their own political expressions and consequences. In the context of a national movement committed to displacing the colonial bureaucracy, the insubordination of the working class at certain moments resonated with, and at others diverged from that of the Indian elite, who needed to maintain the principle of managerial authority even as they challenged the authority of the British; to stabilise their rule over labour even as they sought to replace the ruling class. [ix] If we consider the major periods of labour unrest ñ 1920 to 1922, 1927 to 1931, and 1937 to 1939, we can discern three recurrent concerns in their agitation, viz., the demand that the management respect their choice of leaders; that it refrain from the use of direct or indirect intimidation; and that working conditions be altered. Underlying all these was the rejection of colonial, capitalist and racial domination. Their understanding of these phenomena may have been partial. In addition, they had to contend with the often invisible forms of manipulation and connivance between leaders, officials and managements. However, a survey of their resistance shows that the workers as a class, from their most backward elements such as miners, rezas and contract workers, to the skilled metallurgical operatives, possessed democratic expectations which had been influenced by the political climate of the times, and to which they contributed by the very fact of their combination.
TISCO's chief goals in the 1920's - Indianisation, increased productivity and reductions, were linked to the intensification of labour. Read the full article:
http://www.sacw.net/Labour/DSimeonLabourHist.htmlFor historians of labour the term 'politics' tends to a usage over and beyond the activity of political leaders and cadre. It encapsulates the entire process of the formation and articulation of class interests. The very act of historicising the activity of the working class and the labour movement implies the consideration of collective identities, howsoever inchoate these might be. This is in marked contrast to the clouds of ideological dissimulation that accompany the representation of capitalist 'growth'. Thus, the interests of capital and capitalists require and generate reified and mystical categories such as Adam Smith's 'invisible hand of the market' or Hegel's 'universal permanent capital'.[i] Movements for nationalist and proto-national identities require fabricated admixtures of fact and fiction, ancient history and modern myth. The interests of workers are more down-to-earth and immediate. The emergence of labour as an ideologised 'factor of production' in bourgeois economy was coterminous with the growth of democracy in the initially developing sectors of global capitalism. The latter process had to contend with and harness the aspirations of the labouring classes to the programme of capital - whether these were projects of imperial expansion in European countries, or of national independence in their colonies. But the attainment of hegemony over labour always carried a price. Political developments such as adult and women's suffrage, combination rights and social welfare; and structural changes involving the regulation of working conditions and technical processes all expressed the growing significance of labour in modern society. In this sense it is relevant to pose the question whether capitalist democracy is at all a stable form of political association, the very End of History (a la Fukuyama), or an inherently unstable form, given to authoritarian degeneration unless driven forward by the aspirations of labour. Stated differently, we might consider whether the labour movement is implicitly social-democratic in nature, not in this or that phase of accumulation, nor ideologically as a vehicle of nationalism or Leninism, but historically, as the constantly present and unassimilable object of capitalist exploitation.
These generalisations need to be tested in the micrologic of historical events, wherein the activities of workers take place in the backdrop of a larger confluence of classes and interests. Such an examination can enable the discernment of the differentia specifica of the workers movement. This essay will address the above general theses, not via the entire gamut of class relations in colonial India as a whole, but through a case-study of the class behaviour of workers in Chota Nagpur in the early decades of the twentieth century. Paradoxically, we start by finding the politics of labour expressed not as the pure movement of a defined class, but as part of a social movement in a determinate situation. In the material set forth below, which concerns the labour movement in the 1920's and 30's, I will argue that workers were cognisant of nationalist politics, but in their own way, and with the tendency to invest nationalism with their own specific content. The colonial subjugation of India made sense in light of their experience of European supervisors; questions of democracy were translated into such issues as the right to choose their leaders (including the notorious 'outsider') irrespective of the preferences of the established unionists or factory owners; and the emergence of popular ministries became for them an occasion to launch mass struggles for long-standing demands. The observations set out here are grounded in research to which references will be provided.[ii]
The material upon which I shall base my generalisations is the history of the labour movement in Chota Nagpur in the 1920's and 1930's. This area is a demographically distinctive region, and the location of the heaviest concentration of metallurgical and mining enterprises in colonial India. The core zones were the belt around the Tata Iron and Steel Company in Jamshedpur (TISCO), and the Jharia coalfields in the Dhanbad subdivision of Manbhum. Several 'associated companies' were engaged in engineering and metallurgical work in Singhbhum, which was also the site of metallic-ore mines. These included the Tinplate Company, the Tatanagar Foundry, the Indian Steel Wire Products Ltd, the Cable Company, and the Indian Copper Corporation at Ghatsila. Jharia and its environs contained the richest seams of superior-grade coal in India. There were also coal and mica mines in neighbouring Hazaribagh. Some 1 to 1.25 lakh workers were employed in the production and despatch of coal, the most crucial energy commodity in the colonial economy, for which the chief customers were the Railways, the merchant Marine, metallurgical industries, and industries running on steam-driven engines, including various mills.
Steel production in TISCO reached 429,000 tons in 1928 and 800,000 tons in 1939.[iii] During 1914-1918 nearly all of its capacity was devoted to the British war effort in the Middle East. Its workforce was 30,135 in 1923-24 [iv], after which the management began to implement reductions. In the late 1920's the local government reported a workforce of 29,000.[v] Contractors' `coolies' varied in number from 4000 to 8000. Allied establishments such as the Tinplate Company, the Cable Company, the Copper Corporation, the Indian Steel and Wire Products Company, and the EIR and the Bengal-Nagpur Railway (BNR) workshops employed a total of 14,352 blue collar workers in 1938.[vi] The population of Jamshedpur grew to 57,000 in 1921, and was 84,000 in 1931.[vii] In 1929, the pool of unemployed workers in Jamshedpur was estimated at 7000.
The Politics of Intervention
Our period begins in the aftermath of the First World War and leads through the Depression to the advent of (limited) suffrage-based politics and the first elected nationalist ministries. An examination of the labour movement during this phase illustrates the nature of nationalist intervention and the interaction of state, managements, unions and workers, in the declining years of colonial power. During the eventful decade of the thirties, the workers of Chota Nagpur - many of them first generation employees - underwent a painful learning process, in the course of which employers great and small, began reluctantly to concede a more democratic system of labour relations. Concessions were wrung from the capitalists in the course of bitter and often violent struggles, which took place in a context complicated by the politics of nationalism and retreating imperialism. Commenting on the authoritarian nature of the managerial regimes then prevailing, Professor Radhakamal Mukerjee, a member of the Bihar Labour Enquiry Committee had this to say :
even the formation of the trade union... provokes intimidation and victimisation on a large scale from the management. Workers want to... secure the rights of collective bargaining. But the agents whom they elect or choose are dubbed 'outsiders'... and treated with indifference and scorn... It is the managements' deliberate policy of non-recognition of unions and persistent refusal to deal with (their) accredited representatives... that is one of the most frequent causes of strikes in India, and a labour union hardly ever gets recognition without the ordeal of a strike... [viii]
The struggles for democratic industrial relations and against intensification of labour were central to the history of the labour movement in Chota Nagpur, and had their own political expressions and consequences. In the context of a national movement committed to displacing the colonial bureaucracy, the insubordination of the working class at certain moments resonated with, and at others diverged from that of the Indian elite, who needed to maintain the principle of managerial authority even as they challenged the authority of the British; to stabilise their rule over labour even as they sought to replace the ruling class. [ix] If we consider the major periods of labour unrest ñ 1920 to 1922, 1927 to 1931, and 1937 to 1939, we can discern three recurrent concerns in their agitation, viz., the demand that the management respect their choice of leaders; that it refrain from the use of direct or indirect intimidation; and that working conditions be altered. Underlying all these was the rejection of colonial, capitalist and racial domination. Their understanding of these phenomena may have been partial. In addition, they had to contend with the often invisible forms of manipulation and connivance between leaders, officials and managements. However, a survey of their resistance shows that the workers as a class, from their most backward elements such as miners, rezas and contract workers, to the skilled metallurgical operatives, possessed democratic expectations which had been influenced by the political climate of the times, and to which they contributed by the very fact of their combination.
TISCO's chief goals in the 1920's - Indianisation, increased productivity and reductions, were linked to the intensification of labour. Read the full article:
