People's Democracy

May Day Will Again Dazzle

                  Sukomal Sen

Enough now of the wet eyes of Winter,

Not another single tear,

Hour by hour now, green is beginning,

The essential season, leaf by leaf,

Until, in Spring’s name, we are summoned

To take part in joy.

[PABLO  NERUDA - Dazzle of Day]

HISTORICAL achievements of the working class beginning with the heroic May Day martyrdom of the Chicago heroes in 1886 followed by worldwide working class struggles, for the last two and half decades were sought to be shrouded under the wintry chill of the fierce offensive of imperialist globalisation.

But as Shelly said, ‘if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’ With the beginning of the new millennium, the thaw has started to melt, and the working class struggles all over the world are again rising from the ashes like the proverbial phoenix.

MAY DAY IN CHANGING CONTEXT   

May 1, 2006 is appearing with a turbulent background of working class struggle in different parts of the world.

Since the beginning of the period of imperialist globalisation, and the continuing role of IMF, World Bank and WTO to save world capitalism from unprecedented crisis, the working class has been mercilessly targeted with bleeding exploitation all over the capitalist world. Today the aim of international finance capital is to exorbitantly inflate the profits of the capitalists on the one hand whilst reducing the number of workers as drastically as possible. For this twin purposes, through its international agencies world capitalism is foisting anti-worker devices on the national governments --- dismantle all labour protections and snatch away social security benefits, which the working class earned through decades of bitter and sometimes bloody struggles.

In fact, the supreme sacrifices of the valiant heroes of May Day episode in Chicago in 1886, and the subsequent over a hundred years of working class struggles worldwide and its achievements, are all being declared null and void trying to push back the conditions of service to a hundred years back. 

WHEELS OF HISTORY TURN FORWARD

As far back as in 1848, the Communist Manifesto explained: “The history of human civilization (excepting the period of primitive communism) is the history of class struggle”. Meaning the struggles between the two opposing classes - the capitalists and the working class. At different times in history, the degree and intensity of this class struggle varies - sometime it turned out to be very turbulent and violent, sometime it scaled down to a temporary lull, again to rise up as a storm.

With the increasing onslaught of world capitalism and the increasing ferocity of imperialist globalisation, it appeared as it May Day was gradually starting to lose its significance. The bourgeoisie rejoiced crazily – “Make it a trade union free world! Socialism is dead!”  But what is May Day? The May Day episode of Chicago of 1886, according to them, was sheer madness of some anarchists!

Meanwhile, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the correlation of world forces also drastically changed. US imperialism appeared to be the unchallengeable super power. Then followed Afghanistan and Iraq and Iraq twice - till Iraq was totally destroyed with the superpower’s ghastly firepower and the ‘villain’ Saddam Hussein was arrested and put on so-called trial! Similar threats followed - to Cuba, North Korea, Syria and now Iran. "Subdue or destroy everybody who dares to defy the Bush administration."

But the dialectical analysis of society envisages an inevitable rise of antagonistic forces - as a Third Law of Newtonian mechanics - ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ - what Marx explained later as interpenetration of opposing forces. Operation of this third law, became visible in the final decade of the last century itself, and with the beginning of this new millennium, the world witnessed the biggest of anti-imperialist and anti-globalisation upsurge rocking different parts of the world. Anti-imperialist and anti-globalisation upsurge began to generate a writhing pain in the bellies of the beasts themselves - George W Bush’s United States and Tony Blair’s United Kingdom. History’s biggest and most militant anti-war and anti-globalisation demonstrations not only rocked the USA and UK, Western and Central Europe also shivered with the storm of protests.

India, Japan, South Africa, Austria and even New Zealand too witnessed most militant protest demonstrations. But Latin America created history by turning itself into storm centre of working class and political protests - the toppling of at least half a dozen pro-US and pro-globalisation governments and electing anti-US and anti-globalisation regimes. It was a different type of change of regime --- certainly not what Bush wanted in different countries. Venezuela and Cuba inspired this stormy political change in several Latin American countries, and the working class played the pivotal role as enjoined by history.

MAY DAY IN JOBLESSNESS

Mr. Somavia, Director General of the International Labour Organisation declared in a statement issued on 25 January 2006, during the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, "The world is facing an ‘unprecedented global job crisis of mammoth proportions." The global jobs crisis is a growing concern in terms of its impact on markets and incomes, and a threat to the credibility of democracies around the world. This crisis isn’t going unnoticed on the streets of rich and poor countries alike. Increasingly, political leaders are hearing the voices of people demanding a fair chance at decent jobs and new opportunities to find and keep work. Yet far too often, those opportunities just aren’t there.

This ‘opportunity gap’ took a heavy toll on the lives of women and men and their families, not only because it meant that millions of people might not have enough or even any income, but also because having decent work affects people’s dignity, their sense of self-worth and the stability of their families.

The ILO Director General illustrated the extent of this global job crisis by a number of factors:    

1. Half of all the workers in the world - some 1.4 billion working poor - currently live in families that survive on less than US$ 2 a day per person. They work in the vast informal sector - from farms to fishing, from agriculture to urban alleyways - without benefits, social security or health care.

2. Unemployment in terms of actual people out of work is at its highest point ever, and continues to rise. In the last ten years, official unemployment has grown by more than 25 per cent and now stands at nearly 192 million worldwide, or about 6 per cent of the global workforce.

3. Of these unemployed, the ILO estimated that 86 million, or about half the global total, are young people aged 15 to 24.

4. When people cannot find work at home in their communities and societies, they look elsewhere. In the present environment, labour migration easily becomes a source of tension, not to speak of trafficking and other similar activities.

“One might ask whether the recent global economic growth is sufficient to offset the jobs crisis”, said Somavia. “But the straight answer is no. Despite robust economic growth of 4.3 per cent in 2005, the global economy is failing to deliver new jobs for those entering in the job markets. We will need to create some 40 million jobs each year over the next decade just to keep up with the growing numbers of workers who are seeking work.”  

TURBULENT BACKGROUND

It is in this extremely dismal situation of not simply joblessness, but job-loss in practice, that the working class observed May Day 2006.

To the working class and students of France, a salute for again creating history in the month of March 2006, against President Jacques Chirac’s promulgation of an enactment called ‘ Contract de Premiere’ (CPE) or the ‘First Job Contract’ (CPE)! The Act allowed the French employers to sack any young worker under the age 26 years without justification during the first two years of employment. It was a deliberate measure following the anti-worker dictates of world capitalism, channelised through its agencies - IMF and World Bank.

It is not the purpose here to detail the brave saga of this struggle when a million of young students and workers of France almost laid siege to Paris and declared ‘no backing out until the law is annulled’. Ultimately, the Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin hastily withdrew the retrograde labour law to restore normalcy, which was soon going out of control.

This struggle of the French students and workers is but another glorious repetition of their historic strike struggle of 1968, when the students of France laid siege to all universities and college campuses and one million workers joined them by occupying the factory premises protesting against capitalism’s deception and exploitation of various kinds.

The massive protests of the French workers and students was accompanied by the biggest ever public service workers strike in Britain on March 28, 2006 when about 1.5 million government employees went on a total strike against curtailment of pensionary benefits. This strike of the public service workers of Britain was preceded by its biggest public sector work stoppage for the last 14 years in Germany continuing for several weeks against the government’s plan to raise the working week from 38.5 to 40 hours along with a cut in bonus. At the same time bank employees of Greece also went on total strike on March 28, 2006 against privatisation of pension. In Portugal, the workers and the government employees organised a massive struggle against reactionary labour reforms in February 2006. And while this piece is being written, the railway workers of Britain have threatened indefinite strike against dilution of pensionary benefits.

Workers in India also did not lag behind. The successful national-level indefinite strike of the employees and officers of the State Bank of India, which began on April 3, 2006 demanding a rise in pension quantum, came to an end only after achieving substantial victory.

Similarly, the contract workers of Japanese Honda company of Gurgaon, Haryana struck work for regularisation of jobs on the same day on April 12, 2006 when the Supreme Court of India ruled out any regularisation of the temporary workers and lent full support to the employers’ right to keep workers on temporary and contract basis.

These are glorious instances of how the workers have risen up in different parts of the world to beat back the offensive of the capitalists - whether it is retrograde labour law, increase of weekly hours or curtailment of pension benefits.

It would be worthwhile to recall that the Indian working class are rising up in biggest of nationwide strikes on different issues, as on February 24, 2004 demanding Right to Strike against the Supreme Court’s ruling prohibiting government employees strike, and on September 29, 2005 against the economic offensive and retrograde labour reform conspiracy of the government in collusion with the employers.

May Day 2006 comes in this stormy background of working class struggles.

EARLIER REVISITS

It would not be out of relevance to recall what Frederick Engels wrote in his celebrated work ‘Anti-Duhring’ as back as the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He wrote, ‘In 1831, the first working class uprising took place in Lyons, between 1838 and 1842. The first national working class movement that of the English Chartists, reached its heights. The class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie came to the front in the history of the most advanced countries of Europe ………. Facts more and more convincingly gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economy as to the identity of the interests of Capital and Labour, as to the universal harmony and prosperity that would be the consequence of unbridled competition!’ (emphasis added). Then he boldly pointed out, ‘From that time forward socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie’.

Following the invaluable teachings of Marx and Engels, we can also emphatically assert today, that the fate of imperialist globalisation as also imperialist military hegemony and the future of society will ultimately depend upon the working class awareness and its struggle - the bitter class struggle between the proletariat and the capitalist class - however powerful the latter may appear for the time being.

This is not at all a dogmatic prophecy, on the contrary, the incontrovertible truth of science of Marxism dialectics.

The bitterest of class struggles are bound to burst forth all over the capitalist world in the not too distant a future, India being no exception.

Long Live The Revolutionary Message of May Day!