People's Democracy

Resurrect The Revolutionary Glory Of May Day 1886   

Sukomal Sen   

IN his letter to Sorge on April 29, 1886, Engels thus described the events of Chicago: “For the first time there is a real mass movement amongst the English-speaking population. That it should still be feeling its way, awkwardly, at random and in ignorance, is inevitable. But all these will right itself, the movement must and will evolve by learning from its own mistakes. Theoretical ignorance is an attribute of all young nations, but so is speedy practical development. In America as in England no amount of exhortation will help until the need is really there. And in America it is there, as is a growing awareness of it. The entry of the indigenous working masses into the movement in America is for me one of the great events of 1886” (Engels was referring to the mass strike in America for 8 hours’ work.)   

Further, in his letter to F Kelley-Wishnerwetzky on June 3, 1886, he said: “this appearance of the Americans upon the scene I consider one of the greatest events of the year. What the breakdown of Russian czarism would be for the great military monarchies of Europe --- the snapping of their mainstay --- that is for the bourgeoisie of the whole world the breaking out of the class war in America. For America, after all, was the ideal of all bourgeois, a country rich, vast, expanding, with purely bourgeois institutions unleavened by feudal remnants or monarchical traditions, and without a permanent and hereditary proletariat. Here everyone could become, if not a capitalist, at all events an independent man, producing or trading, with his own means, for his own account. And because there were not, as yet, classes with opposing interests, our – and your – bourgeoisie thought that America stood above class antagonisms and struggles. That delusion has now broken down, the last Bourgeois Paradise on earth is fast changing into a Purgatory, and can only be prevented from becoming, like Europe, an Inferno by the go-ahead pace at which the development of the newly fledged proletariat of America will take place. The way in which they have made their appearance on the scene, is quite extraordinary; six months ago nobody suspected anything, and now they appear all of a sudden in such organised masses as to strike terror into the whole capitalist class. I only wish Marx could have lived to see it.”  

WORKING CLASS IN PRESENT TIMES  

While underlining the continuing relevance of May Day, we may recapitulate what Marx and Engels taught in regard to classes and class struggle in order to better understand the changes in working class composition.   

An attempt to understand politics in the light of class struggle is a fundamental feature of Marxism. Marx and Engels wrote in 1879: “For almost 40 years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving power of history, and in particular the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat as the great lever of the modern social revolution” (Selected Works, Moscow, 1967, p 327).   

Though the concluding chapter of Capital, Volume 3 (on classes) is unfinished, the general tenor of Marx’s theory of class is quite clear. His starting point is “the specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the direct producers.” In other words, classes are defined in terms of exploitation within the relations of production in the society in question.  

These relations of production depend, according to Marx, on the distribution of the means of production. Distribution underlies the relationship between capital and wage labour: “not distribution in the ordinary meaning of distribution of articles of consumption, but the distribution of the elements of production itself, the material factors of which are concentrated on one side, and labour-power, isolated on the other.” This distribution of the means of production “determines the entire character and the entire movement of production.” On it depends the particular form in which surplus labour is extracted from direct producers.
Later Marxists noted a gradual change in the structure of the working class with the onset of the 20th century and the strides in capitalist development’ The “definition of the proletariat, which includes the mass of unproductive wage-earners (not only commercial clerks and lower government employees, but domestic servants as well),” was undoubtedly the one advanced by Marx, Engels and their most “orthodox” followers like Plekhanov, Lenin, Luxemburg et al. It has the benefit that it well accounts for the position of important categories of white-collar employees, namely, clerical workers.   

Bourgeois sociologists have described the transformation of clerical work in the 20th century. A hundred years ago, clerks in Britain were predominantly male and worked in small units – perhaps four to an office. The sort of work they did – book-keeping, correspondence and the like – placed them in close and continuous contact with their employers. “The relations between the clerk and his employer,”’ wrote Charles Booth in 1896, “or between him and the work he undertakes, are usually close and personal.” The educational qualifications for this sort of work – “a little instruction in Latin, and probably a very little in Greek, a little in geography, a little in science, a little in arithmetic and book-keeping; a little in French” – set clerks apart from manual workers, even after the introduction of compulsory primary education in 1870. “The elite of clerical workers, employed in banking and insurance, earned an income which enabled them to reside in a fairly genteel neighbourhood, wear good clothes, mix in respectable society, go sometimes to the opera, shrink from letting their wives do household work” (see Alex Callinicos and Chris Harman, The Changing Working Class). Even the low-paid clerks whose income was comparable to that of skilled manual worker aspired to a lifestyle that resembled that of the bourgeois gentlemen and the professional middle class.  

People often equate manual workers with production industries and the so-called white-collar workers with ‘services’. The conclusion then drawn is that the growth of service employment compared with manufacturing employment involves a ‘decline’ of the working class. But the equation is misplaced. Some of the most important ‘service industries’ overwhelmingly employ manual workers of the traditional sort. Dustmen, ancillary workers in hospitals, dockers, lorry drivers, bus and train drivers, postal workers are all part of the ‘service’ workforce --- and a very big part.  

For example, in England, total employment in services was 13,436,000 in March 1985. Distribution, hotels, catering and repairs accounted for 4,240,000 jobs, “transport and communications” for 1,263,000 jobs, postal services and telecommunications for 400,000 jobs, refuse disposal and cleaning services for 293,000 jobs, laundries, dry cleaners, hair dressers, etc for 175,000 jobs, and hospitals, nursing homes and so on for 1,307,000 jobs. These categories cover nearly 60 percent of all service employment, and each of them included a quite large number of jobs stereotyped as “traditional manual”(ibid).   

After the Second World War in particular, rapid expansion of healthcare, education, sanitation and other infrastructure created a very huge number of service workers. Also, of late, the development of computer technology has further expanded the service sector. One may note that the structure of the working class was never static; it continuously changed with the expansion of accumulation of capital and the consequently changing social profile. But Marx’s conceptualisation of classes on the basis of distribution of the means of production does apply to the present situation.  

GLOBALISATION OFFENSIVE TODAY  

Thus the size of the working class has not shrunk though the number of industrial workers has shrunk due to the neo-liberal globalisation in modern times. Its modern profile includes those working in the services, unorganised sector or informal self-employment sector. Naturally, throughout the world, working class will observe May 1, 2007 too as the “International Solidarity Day” of the workers.   

During the unforgettable May 1886 episode in Chicago, workers shed their blood and their leaders were hanged for their ‘crime’ of fighting for 8 hours work a day, for their urge that workers should live as human beings and not as animals – in a word, for their fight against capitalist exploitation. Their martyrs mounted the gallows while shouting “Down with Capitalism!”  

The sacrifices of the Chicago workers did not go in vain. Sooner or later, workers won an 8 hours working day almost throughout the world.   

However, the situation today is critical without precedence, because of the neo-liberal globalisation at the World Bank-IMF-WTO diktat. The international capital’s greed of profit has entered its most ferocious phase now.   

First, capitalism has begun to flagrantly violate the 8 hours’ work rule in most of the workplaces, particularly in the newly created ones, and is imposing 10 to 12 hours of work on workers while reducing their wage packets. So workers are now more exploited.   

Secondly, noting this situation, the International Labour Organisation has been raising the question of ‘decent work’ in all its fora. But what is decent work? Taking advantage of the grim unemployment situation, and in its inhuman and sordid zeal, capitalism has intensified the workers’ exploitation both in relation to salary packets and with other indecent conditions of work.  

The funniest part of the story is that while the IMF and World Bank are claiming higher GDP growth in capitalist countries, to show the ‘progress’ of their economies, the unemployment rate is rising in each country along with deterioration in the quality of work. The question, naturally, arises: progress for whom? Undoubtedly it is for the capitalist class.   

According to the Global Employment Trends, January 2006, published by ILO:  

1) The world’s unemployment rate stood at 6.3 percent, unchanged from the previous year and 0.3 percentage points higher than a decade earlier. In total, nearly 191.8 million people were unemployed around the world in 2005, an increase of 2.2 million since 2004 and 34.4 million since 1995. Youth are almost half of the unemployed in the world --- a troublesome figure given that youth make up only 25 percent of the working-age population. Compared to adults, youth are more than three times as likely to be unemployed.  

2) The largest increase in unemployment occurred in Latin America and Caribbean where the number of the unemployed rose by nearly 1.3 million and the unemployment rate by 0.3 percentage points between 2004 and 2005 to 7.7 percent. Central and Eastern Europe (non-EU) and the CIS region also witnessed a year-over-year increase in the unemployment rate, which stood at 9.7 percent, up from 9.5 percent in 2004. Asian region’s unemployment rates stayed almost unchanged in 2005: it stood at 3.8 percent in East Asia, the lowest in the world; at 4.7 percent in South Asia and at 6.1 percent in South-East Asia and the Pacific. At 13.2 percent, the rate of unemployment remains the highest in Middle East and North Africa. It stood at 9.7 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. The only considerable decline was observed in the developed economies and EU where it declined from 7.1 percent in 2004 to 6.7 in 2005.  

It is a pity that this year the working class will observe May Day when the number of workers in the organised sector is fast declining along with an increase in the number of those in unorganised sectors and when the quality of work has so much worsened that the ILO’s call for ‘decent work’ remains a pious wish.  

SITUATION IN INDIA  

Insofar as India is concerned, the National Sample Survey says the number of unemployed youth rose from 2.65 crores to 3.52 crores in five years --- 1999-2000 to 2004-2005. Thus the increase is as big as 87 lakh. It is a really grim situation.  

But more than mere unemployment, today the working class is faced with an all-round onslaught on its life and livelihood --- in terms of its rights, social security benefits, terms of job, working hours, contract and casual service, and above all a total deterioration in the quality of job.   

Hence the May Day this year will be yet another occasion to pledge an intensification of the class struggle against intensified exploitation and increasing unemployment, and to demand the restoration of 8 hours work for all categories of workers and for decent work.  

This battle, rather the war, cannot be an easy one as it is neo-liberal globalisation, the most ferocious stage of capitalism.  

This is the revolutionary message of May Day in the context of neo-liberal globalisation. The working class has to wage a furious class war against capitalism to bring its downfall and pave the way for a radically changed, socialist society. It is here that one grasps the continuing relevance of the revolutionary teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin.   

Down with Neo-liberal Globalisation!  

Down with Capitalism!  

Long Live the Revolutionary Message of May Day!