Talk on ‘Maruti Workers’ Struggle: What went wrong?' was successfully organised today at Students’ Activity Centre in Faculty of Arts, university of Delhi.Satyam Varma from ‘Bigul Mazdoor Dasta’ had been invited as the speaker.
Satyam, a labour activist, and his group, Bigul Mazdoor Dasta was active during the Maruti workers’ agitation at Maruti’s Manesar plant. As is well known, the struggle launched by the Maruti Workers during the middle of this years, continued for almost two-and-a-half months. The workers’ major demand was the formation of an independent workers’ Union however, the struggle resulted in a failure, owing not only to the compromising stance taken by the workers’ leaders and their alleged backstabbing, but also because of long standing economists trends present within the workers’ movement itself in general. In his talk, Satyam gave an eye witness account of the struggle and underlined some of the issues confronting workers’ movement today.
The militancy and spontaneous character of this struggle notwithstanding, Satyam pointed out that an uncritical celebration of working class spontaneity is problematic as certain strands within the workers’ movement tend to undermine the role of leadership, political vision and a well-thought out strategy and tactics by doing this. He also asserted that such trends were not new within the movement and had been present right since the inception of working class movement in India as well as the world. However, today it is more than necessary to counter such trends as Syndicalism, Anarchism and Economism because they have long been causing much harm to the working class movement.
Satyam, a labour activist, and his group, Bigul Mazdoor Dasta was active during the Maruti workers’ agitation at Maruti’s Manesar plant. As is well known, the struggle launched by the Maruti Workers during the middle of this years, continued for almost two-and-a-half months. The workers’ major demand was the formation of an independent workers’ Union however, the struggle resulted in a failure, owing not only to the compromising stance taken by the workers’ leaders and their alleged backstabbing, but also because of long standing economists trends present within the workers’ movement itself in general. In his talk, Satyam gave an eye witness account of the struggle and underlined some of the issues confronting workers’ movement today.
The militancy and spontaneous character of this struggle notwithstanding, Satyam pointed out that an uncritical celebration of working class spontaneity is problematic as certain strands within the workers’ movement tend to undermine the role of leadership, political vision and a well-thought out strategy and tactics by doing this. He also asserted that such trends were not new within the movement and had been present right since the inception of working class movement in India as well as the world. However, today it is more than necessary to counter such trends as Syndicalism, Anarchism and Economism because they have long been causing much harm to the working class movement.
Abhinav of ‘polemic’ conducted the talk. Many labour activists and members of organizations interested in labour issues attended the talk. Paramjeet of PUDR kept position of PUDR and its involvement in the whole struggle. Anirban, a teacher from Delhi School of Economics underlined the role of vanguard and asked the question on what accounts the struggle can be called a failure. Dheeraj, a student from DU, Arya from Krantikari Naujawan Sabha, Prem Prakash of Karawal Nagar Mazdoor Union also commented and asked questions from Satyam. Satyam clarified Anirban and others that the failure of struggle will not be measured absolutely by the results but by the methodology and approach of organizations claiming to be vanguard of masses, the result very much depends on the objective conditions of struggle. The major failure in the struggle, he clarified, was firstly the illusion in workers of the concrete conditions of the struggle. Secondly, there was absence of concrete program to organize the struggle. Thirdly, there was no understanding of process of development of the movement. There is a large labour population in the whole Manesar area which was supporting the struggle but the union had no program to mobilize and organize them. Concluding his talk he said there is a huge population of workers and the whole mass fighting and struggling against the exploitation, the need is to organize them with a clear political vision and well thought out strategy and tactics.
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