Outer Space and Inner Agency: Leadership and the labour movement (1998)
Outer
Space and Inner Agency:
Reflections
on the realm of the Outside in the labour movement
NB - This essay was presented
to the First Conference of the Association of Indian Labour Historians; Delhi
Introduction
This essay is a
speculative exercise undertaken with the purpose of debating afresh one of the
most hoary themes in the history of the working class - the question of
intervention and agency. The subject is vast, and I will not pretend to have
arrived at any definitive conclusion. The observations set out here are not
based on an all-encompassing survey of labour history, but may be substantiated
in a reading of some of my earlier research to which references will be
provided.. The exercise will begin with a
consideration of certain well-worn positions, but will then attempt to analyse
the functional notions of space and boundary inherent in the repeated use of
the term `outside', `outsider', "from without", etc in the language
of managements and unionists of different hues. I will suggest that the
question of the Outside is not merely one of the origins of consciousness (to
which suffixes such as `adequate', `socialist', `historical', etc may be attached
as per ideological preference), but also, and perhaps primarily, one of class
domination and class power. Hence I will suggest an expansion of the
historiographical use of the term. It is also about the types of plebeian
agency and initiative, which the hegemons of labour found acceptable, versus
those, which endangered their position and required to be thwarted in the
immediate sense and disregarded historically...
Our period covers the
Depression and its aftermath, the advent of suffrage-based politics and the
first elected Congress ministry. An examination of the labour movement during
this phase illustrates the nature of nationalist political intervention, and
the interaction of state, managements, unions and workers, during a period
which witnessed the advent of elected ministries in the provinces and the
decline 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.
These 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. In a comment 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
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 proletarians seemed at certain moments to resonate with, and at others
to diverge from that of the Indian elite, who were at pains to maintain the
principle of managerial authority even as they challenged the political
authority of the British; to stabilise their own rule over labour even as they
sought to replace the ruling class. In such a situation, the intervention of
so-called outsiders with multifarious motives and functions was a foregone
conclusion. In the sphere of union activity, the appearance of this person,
very often a local pleader, would suffice for managements to protest loudly
about the imminent advent of Bolshevism. There are numerous instances of
employers of labor claiming that their workers would have remained quite
contented but for his malevolent intervention. Many initial struggles in major
industrial centers were around the question of the right of the workers to be
represented by such persons. One explanation is that the working class was
uneducated and backward and needed the leadership of the political literati.
This position possesses a certain resonance with classical Leninist
epistemology, which posits the `outside' theoretically as a pre-requisite to an
adequate class consciousness. In the context of an unfolding nationalist
movement with its left-radical element, the notion of the indispensability of
the political outsider acquired considerable acceptance.
Although the use of the
term by managements was always in the pejorative, a close study of industrial
relations impels the historian to examine the mercurial roles of these persons
as they were viewed from different vantage points in the spectrum of classes
and indeed, to ask the question about the very nature and necessity of the
implied `outside' sphere.
The Outsider as Mediator
To begin with, the `outsider'
was cast in the role of the fomenter of strikes or the saviour of an otherwise
helpless mass of working people - in either case, the assumption being that he
was the real knowing Subject in the history of modern industrial relations.
This carried the implication that the source of both subjugation and liberation
lay in the Outside sphere, ie, beyond the control of workers themselves. For
radical critics of this approach, it needed to be demonstrated that leadership
could arise from Within the ranks (as in `organic' leadership) - this would
constitute adequate proof that workers could mobilise their own liberation. But
this kind of critique uncritically accepts the division of Outside vs Inside,
as would appear from the following observation by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya:
The
really interesting question was whether there was a possibility of the
proletariat outgrowing their mentors through the development of a leadership
from the rank and file of the workers, i.e., the possibility of stepping from
this paradigm into another where the outsiders, members of the intelligentsia,
would not have such a role..
The most common usage of the term `outsider' was
with reference to the matter of labour representation. Bhattacharya has pointed
out that while the term might have emanated from the vocabulary of managers, it
was acceptable to both moderate and left-wing politicians with union links -
its acceptability being a reflex of a social reality. Of course, it took time
for the capitalists to accept this. The Tatas, for example, were pressured by
senior nationalist leaders to recognise the need for a union, this after
violent conflicts had taken place in 1920 and 1922. It was only TISCO's need
for Swarajist support on the tarriff question that made conciliation possible -
in 1924, Motilal Nehru and C.R. Das agreed to support their case on condition
that the Jamshedpur Labour Association be recognised....
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