Krantikari Naujawan Sabha (KNS)
From the filth and dirt of the cities of the present, emerges a shriek of revolt. Liberal society based on inequality squirms, and tries desperately to take contain it and dole out relief. The people asserting their power and dignity of labour persist with the question—who controls access to urban resources and who dictates the quality and organization of daily life. Is it the financiers and developers, or the people?
Nonadanga, in the eastern fringes of Kolkata in West Bengal, has brought this question again starkly to the foreground which is being posed everywhere. In this area, lie several slums with thousands of households, housing a population of few belongings and only their capacity to labour and dignity in hand. The bulldozers of the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) with brute Police force burnt and razed the houses in Mazdoor Pally and Shramik Colony to the ground on 30 March 2012 in the name of ’emptying the land’. This prime land including water bodies in and around Nonadanga of 80 acres is to be handed over to developers of ‘star/budget hotels, shopping malls, multiplexes, restaurants, serviced apartments, recreational facilities’. If the 80 acre project materializes, another 1000 odd houses are in line to be demolished. The legal and parliamentary channels had already been close to exhausted before this round of evictions. Peaceful marches by residents under the banner of the local autonomous Ucched Pratirodh Committee (Resistance-to-Eviction Committee) on 1 and 4 April, sit-in demonstration on 8 April and many agitations were organized, appeals were made. The government responded with allusions of Nonadanga being a place where ‘outsiders are inciting’ and ‘stockpiling arms and ammunitions’. Kolkata Police resorted to brutal lathicharge on a protest rally on 4 April, and many suffered severe injuries including children and pregnant women. On 8 April the committe decided to go for a road-side sit-in-demonstration and police was intimated accordingly. But within an hour police force mobilised and picked up 69 residents and activists, later among them 62 were released but seven activists continue to languish under many charges ranging from ‘assaulting public servant in the execution of his duty’ to ‘anti-national activities’ (5 of them were released on bail after about two weeks imprisonment). Then continued series of mass protests and subsequent arrests, and alongwith we witnessed attack on APDR rally by TMC goons. On 28 April, after the confrontation of residents with police over the blocking of the entry-exit points with a boundary wall by the KMDA, 11 residents including 5 women were arrested and slapped with a host of cases, and were put into police custody. The threat of further repression through legal and illegal channels looms large.
Who are the residents of Nonadanga?
An area meant for rehabilitation for evictees from various canal banks and slums across Kolkata, Nonadanga is crowded with single roomed flats of 160 sq ft, which were distributed to these evictees with many anomalies. The ‘rehabilitation’ did not contain schools, health centers or markets. Later more and more evicted and forcedly migrated people from the crisis in the rural areas, majorly from Sunderbans after Aila, started to come here and build their homes as they thought that the land stipulated for rehabilitation would be the last one where jaws of eviction could reach. Having pushed here thus, the people of Nonadanga are employed in various small-scale industries, in petty production and many are unemployed workers. Some in the garment industry, some in the ‘Kasba Industrial Estate’ nearby, some in other small factories of the subcontractors of big industrial houses. A large number of people work as construction workers and contract workers in various places. Many are auto-drivers, rickshaw-pullers, van-pullers, drivers of personal or official cars. Many people are self-employed in small roadside shops of food, tailoring, mobile-recharge, grocery and majority of women are employed as domestic-helps. The question of living wages in such a situation is one of the most important. Linked to that, the quality of living condition is horrible to say the least and the struggle to reproduce everyday life is rife with insecurity. Struggle over shelter and rent, added with worries over water and sanitation constantly plague the people. These insecurities also play out into internal divisions over the struggle for scant resources.
As in each and every urban concentration across India, they bear with them the marks of the violent process of development both in the rural and urban areas. And this pain and their function in the chain of capitalist production is their strength and power. In the villages, they have seen their debts with the landed elite and prices of agricultural inputs soar, the pesticides ruin the nutrition of their soil, even caste related atrocities jump in number, and have been thrown out unceremoniously as companies pounce on their resources. They bear with them the crisis in the urban areas where huge ‘industrial model towns’ have no mention of workers housing even in the grand ‘master plans’, where workers are being pushed daily into selling the endless days and nights of labour even cheaper. With no proper housing, they are pushed into residing in rented dormitories and slums where the state has wilfully withdrawn from all its responsibilities. The working classes are thus ‘legally’ handed over to networks of the local elites and goons (who are hand in glove with the local police, the company owners in the nearby industrial estates, the political party in power or parliamentary opposition) who impose exorbitant rent and user charges on any service that is provided. All this comes under the rubric of ‘illegality’, and the pitching of the people as encroachers. To manage this, the system also has in place several welfare programs and NGOs who act as middlemen, ‘service providers’, ‘consultancy groups’ to delink the struggle in the rural and the urban, the factory/workplace and the household, and push the struggle only into litigation and as a question of lack of rule of law. Integrated in the global networks of capital, cheap labour has to be ensured for the ruling class by constant regulation—by the force of law, by the police and by the ameliorate benevolence of the NGOs.
Exposing the present model of ‘development’
There is nothing surprising about eviction and repression as everywhere in India, and across the world, cities are restructured to suit the needs of capital accumulation, as the attack of neoliberal capital intensifies. In the resistance in Nonadanga is seen an active process of exposing the linkage between exploitation and state repression—both of which defines the fabric of ‘normalcy’ and ‘development’. The residents of Nonadanga formed an independent organization without links to the Trinamool or CPI(M) or any of the standard vote-shops, and asserted their power without relying on the NGOs either. This has been possible, even in the face of their weak economic condition and other insecurities, because of their will and the presence of struggling left revolutionary forces from much before this present agitation started—who are working in coordination during the struggle. Even after all the houses were demolished, the residents refused to budge from the site, put up shelters, ran a community kitchen, and are confronting the might of the police everyday with their bare hands and indomitable will. Since 11 April, 10 comrades under this Ucched Pratirodh Committee persisted with a fast-unto-death in the site for 12 days with undeterred support of the entire slum, and beyond. Fighting the might of the developers and the state, they have reconstructed almost all the burnt and demolished houses, and are preparing to face further assaults from the government, like the boundary wall being constructed by the KMDA and constant threat of further violence by the police, and TMC goons. A local school here, during the present agitation, has been turned into a police camp. However, even in the face of this, some initiatives in education, ecology, health camps are stirring to imagine a different vision of development, even as the state is sought to be held responsible and answerable to their demands. The built makeshift houses stand for now, but so do the demands for proper housing.
The residents continue to demand unconditional dropping of charges against the arrested activists and residents. That without ‘organisational prejudice’, 7 activists of various mass organisations were arrested on 8 April, and then again 11 residents of the area have been arrested on 28 April, shows that whoever raises a voice against the developmental terrorism of capital, without exception, will be crushed. The illusions of justice by the government, police, administration, and judiciary are daily breaking, coming face to face with them in the arena of struggle. The TMC and CPI(M) of the Singurs and Rajarhats have been exposed as lapdogs of the land sharks and company mafia. The state has been forced into retreat after confrontation—the government has been forced to grant bail to the 7 arrested activists (though 2 of them are still in jail) and make promises (albeit temporary) not to go into further evictions. The solidarity campaign by revolutionary left forces and mass organizations in different places also got energized into thinking, debating and linking the ongoing struggles against similar processes in own specific locations. In cases of local resistance, not only did the general process of capitalist restructuring of cities and resistance as the only way to confront it come up again, but thinking around questions of forms of resistance and organization within the struggle are also showing itself.
Beyond anti-Mamata-ism, and the empty discourse of (il)legality
During the ongoing struggle, we have witnessed repeated attempts to not only repress the movement, but at the same time to depoliticize and divert it as an ideological offensive by the ruling class. Even the solidarity campaign when picked up by the civil society, the NGOs, the national media or a organization like SFI focused on (a) anti-Mamata Banerjeeism, (b) depoliticized appeal to push the release of the ‘eminent scientist, harmless national asset’, Partho Sarathi Ray, and (c) relief to the ‘helpless slumdwellers’, without challenging the discourse of (il)legality.
There is at present, a seemingly anti-Mamata Banerjee wave. From the huge uproar over the arrest of a JU professor over a anti-Mamata cartoon to the ‘don’t talk to CPI(M) members diktat’ around the same time, the corporate media is also ‘lovin it’. Nonadanga then becomes merely a question of ‘bad management’ by the Chief Minister. Whereas one opinion argues for an even more virulent form of corporate rule as the answer (it points to the earlier three decades of so-called ‘communist misrule’), the other opinion grants legitimacy to the CPI(M) as better political managers for the capitalist class. After all, the CPI(M) showed its capability to contain revolutionary and mass struggles for a long time, before it faltered over Singur and the Nandigram, and the building mass discontent and shifting class base. What these opinions fail to see is that these Nonadangas show again that whether it be a Mamata or a Buddhababu, they have to take credit for their shops from the same capitalist class. The handing over countless Singurs and Nonadangas to corporate at throwaway prices, the using of brute repression for it on the resisting population is to continue the normalcy of exploitation and accumulation by further demolishing the power of working class. Against this, what must be posited, in continuation from Singur, is that the revolutionary left forces organizing the working class and masses as a power will fight capital and its political executive of whichever variety, who seek to impose the fear over the people.
The hulaboo over Partho Sarathi Ray as the ‘eminent scientist’ divorced from his political positions against the depredations of global capital and state repression reminds us of the decoupling of ‘the good doctor’ Binayak Sen from his politics of demanding universal primary health (the declaration of Alma Ata, the work with Shaheed Hospital) and protest against the Operation Greenhunt. It reminds us of representing Irom Sharmila Chanu as the vaishnavite/Gandhian divorced from her struggle against the AFSPA and the Indian military’s occupation of the Northeast. The question is in this manner sought to be trivialized to mere condemnation of harassment of these ‘national assets’ ignoring their uncomfortable politics or just mentioning it in passing as merely incidental.
The last argument is a desperate attempt to confine the struggle. It raises the question of rehabilitation and livelihood from a NGOist perspective—not going into its causes, and forgetting that most rehabilitation packages are used by neo-liberalism, more often than not, to make yet another assault on the reproduction of labour-power. They thus see this as only a question of shelter for the marginalized, push the struggle into mere litigation and ask for stronger laws or better implementation of existing ones. However law itself and its enforcers create a false sense of equality even as it constitutes its ‘outside’ i.e. the slums as areas of ‘illegal encroachment’. The struggling people and the revolutionary left forces understand that what is law for one class is repression for others—and only a struggle that seeks to question ruling class law itself can shed light into how they came to be ‘illegal encroachers’ in the first place and overturn it; that it is not a question of mere ‘governance’ or more laws or protection from the state of ‘human right violations’. When here, the law of equal exchanges is pointed out, we reiterate Marx of Capital, “between equal rights, force decides”, as has been the history of capitalist production. The people assert—we are not helpless victims of atrocities but we raise the question of housing as a question of class struggle. We demand wages and housing both simultaneously, recognizing that the increase in distance between the place of residence and the source of livelihood that most resettlement and rehabilitation process imposes on the evicted slum-dwellers further devalues our labour-power by lengthening our average labour day. We link the spheres of reproduction and production, we bear the pain of your poriborton, ‘development’ and ‘aid’, and are a force who posits a different imagination. From the Paris Commune to Occupy Wall Street and the London Riots, imaginations of how cities might be reorganized in socially just and ecologically sane ways—and how they can become the focus for anti-capitalist resistance have been posited. Today in India, we find the urban space as increasingly turning into a site of such resistance even as these are still fragmented, localised and disorganized.
As the struggle in urban areas intensifies, the space of operation of NGOs and civil society organisations as only ‘mediators’ between ‘atrocities happening in some remote part’ and ‘corridors of power’ in the cities, is shrinking more and more each day. As class struggle and urban resistance sharpens, the limits of the framework of ‘legality’ and ‘civil liberties’ within which these forces work will become even starker. The shrinkage of democratic space—manifesting with even more brutal assaults by the police state and juridical machinery on the working class is inevitable. While being engaged in the struggle of Nonadanga, we learn from it and those like it that this presents a possibility, and we must seize this.
The Aspirations/Possibilities of Nonadanga
The movemental militancy here is bound not to be confined in the legal and rights discourses only; it asserts its right to the question of housing as a class question. Neo-liberal capital thrives on cheap labour and segmentation. The working class while asking whose city is it, whose space is it, militantly asserts its inalienable right to all resources and to the dignity of its labour. This possibility in Nonadanga is then the potential of the struggle of the working class in urban areas to fight for the cost of its reproduction i.e. of housing and rent, health, education, transportation. These are reflected in some of the present demands—the movement is now proceeding with the demand for proper rehabilitation which is a political demand for a dignified and free life, along with thinking of the practice of alternate forms (however transitory now) of development.
Linked to this, is the possibility of taking this struggle against exploitation to the site of production, to the connected workplaces—asking for higher wages and better working conditions. In attempting to organize domestic workers and the huge informal sector workers and unemployed in the area in these ways, we believe the struggle can take a crucial turn, and this presents a possibility of unearthing and positing through a period of struggle, a form of organized working class power. In organizational terms itself, a process of democratic churning among left revolutionary forces in tune with the movement also is at play, which is also noteworthy. Today, the future of the present struggle is still uncertain, but these possibilities show themselves as the political question that Nonadanga poses. The crisis of capitalism cannot always be managed by governance, more laws and NGOs which seek to isolate and contain these local struggles—this framework will be in danger, and thus the eruption of a hundred million Nonadangas can be a serious anti-capitalist threat in the heart of capitalism as the terrain of struggle is remapped. The state will increasingly act with the repressive and ideological apparatuses at its disposal and this clash can and will only intensify. What is required is to take the movemental militancy and democratic organizational forms in Nonadanga a step further, and in every space where capital thrusts its violent marks. Standing in solidarity with it can only mean intensifying the struggle in our own locations and furthering them to learn from and connect to each other for a proletarian upsurge.
Published by Parag (09804468173) on behalf of
KRANTIKARI NAUJAWAN SABHA (KNS)
Radical Notes 
Incarcerating Prafulla Chakraborty and Cooperation Ethic
“The emancipation of the working class
must be the act of the workers themselves.”
– Rules of the First International
On 16th October 2011, the veteran 71-year-old trade union leader, the chief advisor of the Kanoria Jute Mill Shramik Sangrami Union, and exponent of cooperation ethic, Prafulla Chakraborty, was arrested on the trumped up charges of attempting to murder a worker of the Kanoria Jute Mill and disturbing industrial peace. He was remanded in judicial custody for seven days; since then he has been on indefinite hunger strike. My objective in writing this piece is not merely to protest his arrest which many have rightfully done, but to argue that the arrest involves something more sinister, which needs to be scanned and opposed. Specifically, underlying his arrest is an attack on cooperation ethic and the institution of the economic collective (1) which Prafulla Chakraborty has personified for the last few years, most definitely in the case of the Kanoria Jute Mill.
This arrest of Prafulla Chakraborty telescopes an attack on the idea of cooperation ethic and represents a move on part of the state-capital nexus in West Bengal to repress the possibility of its appearance among workers. As such, this arrest-attack is an assault on any possible alternative economic imagination the workers may dare to cultivate and/or experience. Among other conditions, (global) capitalism ideally also requires a docile body of workers who would not only be dependent on capitalists, but would also be unable to imagine any relation other than that of this dependency. It is not just the presence of the common that is the target of the logic of capitalism (via primitive accumulation), but more sinister is the attack on the very idea of the common, especially new institutional forms that the cooperation ethic encapsulates. A challenge to this is typically met with ferocious repression campaigns supported by well-grounded ideological apparatuses, as Maruti Udyog and Kanoria Jute Mill workers, in very different circumstances, found out; they have made their respective struggles visible by articulating their own, at times very innovative, practices of resistance. Evidently, Prafulla Chakraborty and the Kanoria Jute Mill Shramik Sangrami Union have disturbed the consensus by challenging the given order of things and its underlying presuppositions; hence the need to exorcise them. That is also the reason why anybody who shares the politics of challenging this consensus needs to understand and condemn the arrest of Prafulla Chakraborty as a political attack against the cooperation ethic and the economic collective. The point is to not to attack the state government per se, which the Union is not doing anyway (which it cannot afford to do, and is in fact not interested in), but to defend the cause of a possible alternative economy based on the cooperation ethic, in which the collective of workers is in charge of the product it creates and of the wealth that comes consequently. The cause espoused is based not on negativity, but fundamentally, on the positive constructivist terrain of freeing themselves from the clutches of anybody else.
The bone of contention is the 81 years old Kanoria Jute Mill which was re-opened in August 2011 after almost five years of closure and handed back to the old promoter-capitalist. This move was trenchantly opposed by Mr. Chakraborty and the Kanoria Jute Mill Shramik Sangrami Union. It would not be totally inappropriate to remind the readers about the plight of the workers of the Kanoria Jute Mill, which is situated in Uluberia in Hoogly. After a struggle spanning two decades, with recurrent setbacks and betrayals (both from inside and outside), facing trenchant opposition from state governments (the so-called Left as well as the Right), from mainstream political parties and from trade unions with vested interests, putting their faith in the promoter-capitalist and seeing it being dashed time and again (the mill has been closed at least eight times since 1992), the vast majority of the workers have now finally come to the understanding that they must take over and run their mill as a collective. It is a lesson they have learnt through their own bitter experience/struggle. The issue for them, at least as espoused by the Kanoria Jute Mill Shramik Sangrami Union, is not merely to own the enterprise, but to be in a decision-making capacity, especially concerning the process of appropriation and distribution of any surplus that they create.(2) Their goal is not merely to create and maintain workers’ unity, but also to produce the imagination of a creative unity based on cooperation ethic which, by default, is opposed to any dependency relation vis-à-vis the promoter-capitalists (or even the state). Whether they ultimately achieve success or they fail, it cannot undermine the strength of their belief in the virtues of the economic collective. In his capacity as adviser to the Kanoria Jute Mill Shramik Sangrami Union, Prafulla Chakraborty has been in the frontline of this ground level movement, campaigning relentlessly among the (for last five years, unemployed) workers about the virtues of cooperative ethic and its institutional form in the economic collective. Given that the initial movement, inaugurated in 1992, has fragmented into parts, claims of whether the Kanoria Jute Mill Shramik Sangrami Union has majority support often reverberates; the Union has even floated the idea of holding ballot based election among the workers to find out who the real representatives of the workers are, a move supposedly resisted by many other trade unions, some now evidently siding with the promoter-capitalist. Notably, this dedicated cultural movement trying to transform workers’ consciousness in favor of cooperation ethic, and that by taking into account the history of the movement itself in the process, has been conducted in a peaceful and dialogical manner. It is thus evident that the demand for an economic collective has risen organically from within the ranks of the workers of the Kanoria Jute Mill.
After the change in government in West Bengal in 2011, there was hope that things would take a different turn, at least in the case of the Kanoria Jute Mill. However, it seems from the initial moves on the industrial front that the new government is bent on pursuing the politics of class collaboration, which, given the existing defensive position of the workers in West Bengal (a situation to which, unfortunately, the CPI (M) led Left Front government contributed), cannot but further decrease the bargaining capacity of the workers; with their backs to the wall, the industrial workers of West Bengal are now being asked to work peacefully for/with the capitalists, and agree to whatever condition is fixed by the state-capital nexus. For example, the Labour minister retorted, “If a factory closes down, the workers are affected the most. The new government believes in negotiations to keep factory gates open. Kanoria Jute Mills will run on mutual co-operation among the owner, government and the workers. Strikes called on trivial issues will be dealt with strictly,” (The Telegraph August 23, 2011) Paradoxically, on today’s globe, that is fast turning against global capitalism, a turbulence which is engulfing the workers of our country elsewhere too, the West Bengal industrial workers are being asked to pledge a dependency relation with state-capital, which de-facto constitutes a demand for surrender. At best, there seems to be an attempt to ensure that the state represent/take the voice of workers to representatives of capital, and the autonomy of their voice stop mattering. Through class collaboration, the ruse of mediation (state/party/etc. usurping the right of workers to speak) once again seems to be reiterating itself in West Bengal.
Against this changed background, the West Bengal government went into a pact with the existing promoter-capitalist of the Kanoria Jute Mill and helped open the mill; a tiny fraction of the total workforce of over 2000 was taken into confidence in this regard and till now only 300 have been employed. A need was felt on the part of capital/state here to nip at its bud the very idea of cooperation/collective and make it seem an absurd or impractical thought. This is essential to bring the workers to the side of the constructed capital-state consensus. Because he trenchantly opposed this move along with many of the workers (the workers have even written a letter to the chief minister), Prafulla Chakraborty was arrested on the murder charge and sent to jail; notably, along with the murder charge, another pretext used was complaint filed by a promoter-capitalist for disturbing industrial peace. How can we make sense of this move other than to see it as an attempt to defeat and indeed erase the possibility of a worker run collective and re-impose the given consensus of dependency relation so that the owner-capitalist can operate freely? Perhaps it is also a signal to the workers in West Bengal in general not to think along the lines of cooperation/collective and accept the politics of class collaboration.
It is important to highlight and rebut the reasoning being used by the Labour Minister (who coming from a Left background was expected to be more sensitive to the plight of the workers) against the idea of a workers-run collective for the Kanoria Jute Mill. He asserted, “There are some leaders who want to form a cooperative to run the factory. But, closure of the New Central Jute mill that was being run by a cooperative society proved that such a society could not keep a jute mill functional for a long period. I would request these leaders to sit for a discussion instead of creating a situation that would hamper the normal functioning of the mill.” (The Statesman, 16th October 2011) He is partially correct. Indeed a collective enterprise may fail; even the Kanoria Jute Mill if run as a workers collective may fail since failure of an enterprise happens due to multiple internal and/or external reasons (these include even something as uncontrollable as product obsolescence). But other private enterprises fail too and quite regularly. The average life span of a large enterprise is 50 years and that of a medium or small one less than seven years. Even the average life expectancy of a multinational corporation – Fortune 500 or its equivalent – is 40 to 50 years.(3) Why pick up the instance of a failure of one cooperative enterprise to call the whole idea of a collective defunct. What about the current wave of instability across the globe, epitomized by rampant plant closure and labour shedding (to name a few effects) within the system of private capitalist enterprises that are turning communities, even whole nations, into wasteland? Secondly, since 1992, the Kanoria Jute mill has been closed at least eight times by this promoter-capitalist; in other words, it has failed 8 times. What about this recurrent failure? Is it the policy of the state to reward such kinds of tested failures? Thirdly, it is often argued, and the Labour Minister shares this view, that economic collectives, even if favourable on a small-scale, are inadequate for large size enterprises. This argument seems to be stuck in the warped beliefs of the 1960s and 70s. All I can do here is to refer to the cases of, to name only a few, the Mondragon Cooperative Complex (MCC) in Spain which is a federation of workers’ collectives (4), the experiments of Kibbutz in Israel (some successful, others failures), the case of our own Amul (that at least shows how a different organization system tuned to large scale production can be successful), and the recently created or taken over collectives in Latin America; some of these, such as MCC, are totally private while many others (owned and run by the workers or/at least with their active participation) depend on state for support (especially for credit). Instead of the state-capital solution undertaken for the Kanoria Jute Mill, we wonder why the state cannot, for once, take the side of workers, plan with them in detail (meticulous planning in this case is fundamental for its success), handover the mill to a cooperative run by workers, ensure the initial infusion of substantial credit (maybe, as an initial one time grant) that is indispensable for the survival of the enterprise and save a whole community from despondency and decline (for the economy of the entire area is largely dependent on the Mill). As of now, though, this route looks unlikely.
Finally, it is time for many in the Left who are opposed to cooperatives to come out of the 1970s style cliché thinking. The world has changed and is now changing faster. Across the globe, the end of Soviet style centralized planning system, the fast disappearing despotic orders, and the current destruction of social life wrought by capitalism makes it apparent that there is no alternative left for the industrial workers (and the unemployed, retirees and the community they belong to) other than to create and run their own economy. This realization is not only evident in Latin America where the influence of the cooperative movement is widespread (5), but it is now also growing rapidly across the continents including in the USA. And, with this arises the realization that this transformation cannot be enacted merely by opposing capitalism, but must include in that opposition the constructivist idea that would snap the dependency relation with capital and perhaps establish a different relation with the state. It must contain the germ of a new ethical economy it would give rise to. I know of no way this can be done other than by the creative union of workers/participants and hence the importance of cooperation ethic and the institution of economic collective. Prafulla Chakraborty believed in this opposition-construction route and it is also the reason why he was put behind bars. Let us at least realize that the injustice of this arrest is also the injustice of repressing the cooperation ethic, the institution of the economic collective and of an ethical economy based on this ethic and institutional form. The struggle for workers-run economies and the right to think of these must be asserted. It is no less urgent than the task of opposing global capitalism and its networks.
Anjan Chakrabarti is Professor of Economics, Calcutta University. He can be reached at chakanjan@hotmail.com.
Notes:
(1) By cooperation, I mean creative unity, that is, the in-common of individuals, here, the workers. In-common refers to a common which is neither you nor me, but a fusion/creation which contains you and me. Here, the mentioned unity is a creation of you and me and yet is distinct from you and me. Therefore the creative unity is a constantly reiterated outcome of thought-decision-action of otherwise free and active individuals. Importantly, this kind of unity only appears through our practice; that is, through how we exercise it rather than whether we possess it. Institution/structure created on the basis of this ethic of cooperation is what I refer to as collective. So, for example, the collective created by workers to produce goods and services with cooperation ethic is an economic collective. Evidently, given cooperation ethic, decisions concern the enterprise of economic collective must be participatory; the term exclusion here is oxymoron to the meaning of cooperation ethic of creative unity. In the usual jargon, this distinction between cooperation ethic and collective is not maintained leading to all kinds of confusion, which we try to avoid here. This distinction also highlights the need to differentiate between the types of collective; a typical state run collective which operates on principles of excluding the workers from decision making would turn out to be inconsistent with cooperation ethic and hence by that criteria is to be rejected as inappropriate. From what I understand, the Kanoria Jute Mill workers espouse a collective based on cooperation ethic. Notably, the influence and presence of economic collectives in India too has a long history, not merely among Marxists but perhaps more pervasively among Gandhians. Other figures such as Rabindranath Tagore remained a steadfast supporter of cooperation ethic. While these trends may have had differences regarding the path and content of collective, one cannot but be captivated by their commitment to it. Thus, cooperation ethic and economic collective is very much part of the critical tradition of India.
(2) It does not entail that the workers would do all the jobs themselves (especially in case of a large collective); it is recognized that a body of workers at a given time may not have the capability to perform all the tasks. Indeed, depending upon the requirement, the members of the collective, by consultation, may hand over the authority to decide on and operate certain processes inside the enterprises (technical, accounting or otherwise) to one or a group of persons deemed as experts; this partial transfer of decision-making is however neither permanent nor non-scrutinized since whatever decision may be arrived by the expert groups would be subjected to further deliberation by the workers which again is done cooperatively and whose decision-authority is final. Many other possibilities can be envisaged; just as capitalist enterprises has over the years invented and worked upon various methods of organization within its specified paradigm, so would economic collectives. Not even in the capitalist enterprise is the daily decisions done by capitalists (say, board of directors) or top management; they are delegated. However, the minimum condition of economic collective is that no policy conclusion regarding the enterprise can be arrived at without the participation/consent of workers (and maybe even including other stakeholders); moreover, the wealth created would also belong not to any group of individuals such as under capitalist enterprise but the workers as a whole. See Mondragon Cooperation Complex in Spain for an example of a one worker-one vote model that develops the organization of a large economic collective along the mentioned time. Also, see Richard Wolff, “Taking Over the Enterprise: A New Strategy For Labor and the Left” in New Labor Forum 19(1): 8-12, Winter 2010.
(3) See, ‘The Living Company’ in Bloomberg Business Week, www.businessweek.com.
(4) Founded in 1956, MCC by 2008 had around 92000 participants with one worker one vote model, profit sharing and business contact/trade spread across multiple countries. Its operations include high technology, machines, tools, auto parts, co-operative banking, an insurance company, retailing, and even a recent “Electric car/Sustainable mobility” project. MCC displays a long-term resiliency which refutes the claim that workers run collective, especially on a large scale, is a recipe for failure. Of the 103 cooperatives created between 1956-1986, only three were shut down, a remarkable survival rate of 97 per cent of three decades (Whyte, William Foote and Kathleen King Whyte, Making Mondragon: The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Cooperative Complex. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1988, 3). On the details of workers cooperation, see J-K, Gibson-Graham, “Enabling Ethical Economies: On Cooperativism and Class” in www.communityeconomies.org and the MCC homepage. It is notable that faced with a growing crisis that turned into an assault on the workers, the United Steelworkers (USW)—North America’s largest industrial union—and Mondragón Internacional, S.A. came to an agreement in 2009 to collaborate in establishing Mondragón-style manufacturing collectives in the United States and Canada. These collectives are to be governed by the “one worker, one vote” model of MCC.
(5) See the movie, ‘The Take’ (2004) by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein on the movement of takeover of closed factories in Argentina by workers through formation of collectives