India as a neoliberal state

The relationship between multinationals and national states is not so simple today. A multinational draws its strength from its “multiple” identities and states compete with one another to ‘home’ it. With financialisation this competition among the states have considerably increased with ‘capitals’ seeking to regiment the ‘arbitrary’ state behaviour with the everlooming threat of flight of capital. However it would be wrong to consider this relationship as totally one-sided, as the proponents of ‘footloose capital’ make us believe. With increasing monopolisation (but never monopoly) the competition among capitals has intensified too, they struggle to establish their production and circulation bases to surpass competitors. This forces them to rely on particular states for protection and representation in negotiations for the acquisition of these ‘bases’. Of course, financialisation has increasingly instrumentalised the state, but this has made capitals increasingly dependent on this instrument too.

A neo-neoliberal state like India in recent years has remarkably shown its efficacy as an ‘instrument’. If something has made the Indian state emerge as clearly neoliberal, it is its proactive reclaiming of Indian diasporic “non-resident” capitals. Unlike the Chinese, which tried to attract the Chinese diaspora to increase the production capacity within its territory, the Indian state has increasingly instrumentalised itself by facilitating Indian capital (NR and domestic) expansion beyond its territory. In fact, the Indian government was proactive in international acquisitions like Arcelor and Corus, and for its many pharmaceutical multinational companies. Many of these companies are not at all dependent on Indian earnings or don’t have any plans to re/patriate their NR earnings. However, they have found in the Indian state a tremendous agency for their bargainings, increasing their ‘political’ leverage in the competitive world market. A dual citizenship to Non-resident Indians (NRIs) and People of Indian Origins (PIOs) was not to attract working class remittances or the grandchildren of indentured labourers, but to provide ‘Indian’ capital all over the world an ‘identity’. It is interesting to note that the initial proposal was to restrict “dual citizenship to PIOs from a select group of countries”, excluding especially the Third World PIOs. But this could have excluded a very fat lot that dominate wealth in many third world countries especially in Africa and Asia.

It would be interesting to see the Indian state’s response (taking into consideration that it has not shown any mercy to such resentment within its own territory) to recent Ugandan uprising against “a government proposal to allow the Mehta Group to clear a quarter of the Mabira forest reserve to grow sugar. The 30,000-hectare (7,400-acre) reserve, east of Kampala, contains some of the last patches of virgin forest in Uganda and serves as an important water catchment area.” (Guardian, April 13, 2007)

Proposed changes in labour laws – Disorganising the organised

This is another old article published in Liberation, April 2001

The Budget speech has reaffirmed the Finance Minister’s, or rather, the government’s, excellent domestication and grooming by the corporate sector. The minister has demonstrated his ability to be His Masters’ Voice. The concluding notes of his budgetary speech threw the gathering at CII’s headquarters into ecstasy, which “pronounced it an unqualified triumph of the liberalisation process.” (Frontline, March 30, 2001). Bulls and bears went wild in the markets.

The budget came up with interesting proposals to boost industrial growth in the country. In the series of proposals given in Part A of the Budget 2001-2002, three paragraphs (52-54) included under the subhead “Labour Market” are striking. They tend to completely alter the industrial structure evolved during the post-independent era.

Economic Survey

In the Economic Survey presented before the Budget the Government had already made it evident that it would eliminate every hurdle before global and national capital. It called for attention to the “critical gaps” in the reform process in order to replicate “the high industrial and GDP growth rates seen during 1994-95 to 1996-97.” Among these “gaps” figured those “relating to labour laws and procedures, bankruptcy, land ceiling and rent control and small scale industry reservation”, which “inhibit industrial restructuring, raise costs and reduce international competitiveness.” The Survey propounds that “labour mobility is hampered by the existing labour laws and land utilisations by the Urban Land Ceiling Act and rent control laws. Consequently, resources in the industrial sector have not been able to move to more productive uses, in particular towards labour-using employment-generating industries, that could lead to higher industrial growth on a sustained basis.”

The trickery of preserving small-scale entrepreneurs’ interests, flexibility and competitiveness are utilised to legitimise the labour law changes. It is ironical that the same logic of competition is raised in these documents to de-reserve items, which protected the local small entrepreneurs till now. The budget has “proposed to de-reserve another 14 items related to leather goods, shoes and toys.” If we visit this notion of “small-scale” holistically and in a wider perspective of socio-economic processes, it becomes quite evident that it is simply one of the vague terminologies used and abused to mesmerise the public and legitimise the hidden agenda followed through the process of liberalisation. ‘Deregulation’ of factor markets and industries will not favour ‘small’ as against of ‘big’ but would obviously lead to monopolisation, which is a natural culmination of open competition. Deregulation is, in fact, regulation in favour of capital in general, which tendentiously moves towards concentration. Further, small-scale production units are generally ‘decentralised’ units of bigger industries, as they undertake the jobs put out by the latter.

It is in this perspective that the Economic Survey 2000-01’s ruling on the contract labour law should be understood. It says that, “the contract labour law, as it exists today, makes it impossible for genuine small-scale entrepreneurs to provide services to industry.” In the Survey, the broad framework for framing a “modern contract labour act” has been established, i.e., it “should encourage outsourcing of services so that new employment is generated.” It further provides the rationale to alter the labour laws and procedures. It states that they “have reduced the incentive for organised labour to work efficiently and have made it unprofitable for the organised industry to generate new jobs.” It even strikes a chauvinistic note even while talking of the virtues of competition and free markets: “Greater flexibility is essential if Indian industry is to compete with the Chinese industry and generate as many new jobs as the latter has.” And, only labour law changes can ensure it, since there-is-no-alternative (TINA) to ‘disorganising-the-organised’ strategy.

Budget proposals

The Budget has simply concretised the above-mentioned recommendations in the Economic Survey, though the Union Budget is an unusual place to propose changes in the labour laws. Of course, anti-labour legislations are packaged as growth measures. The Budget boldly states the need “to address the contentious issue of rigidities in our labour legislations.” It directly hits at the very basic core of the labour laws, but has followed the tradition in packaging the attack.

Changes in the Industrial Disputes Act 1947

The budget has provided an effective mechanism with which the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 would be completely emasculated. The Finance Minister conveys the distress of his corporate mentors by stating that “some existing provisions in the Industrial Disputes Act have made it almost impossible for industrial firms to exercise any labour flexibility. The Government is now convinced that some change is necessary in this legislation.”

The existing ID Act 1947 provided a segmented three-level protection machinery against layoffs, retrenchment and closure on the basis of the firms’ size –

a. No protection to those working in a firm employing less than 50 workers;

b. Some protection to those employed in the firms with 50-100 workers; and,

c. More protection to those employed in larger firms.

Generally speaking, the object of contention is chapter VB of the ID Act, which “stipulates that employers in specified industrial establishments must obtain prior approval of the appropriate government authority for effecting lay-off, retrenchment and closure, after following the prescribed procedure.” The proposal made in the Budget has a very simple solution in hand, which along with the replacement of the ‘three-level protection machinery’ by a single-level, will eventually do away with the protection itself. It is proposed, “that these provisions may now apply to industrial establishments employing not less than 1000 workers instead of 100.” It uses the classic tool of segmenting the labour market, i.e., the Number Test or Filter, for its complete deregulation. All filters segment the labour market, by protecting a small minority and informalisation of the majority. But, since about 85-90 per cent of the units in the organised sector operate with less than 1,000 workers, besides the already existing boundless informal sector, the provision will effectively eliminate the partially ‘protected’ sections of the working class.

The subsequent provisions on relief to the workers (which “would act as a deterrent on employers to take recourse to lay-off, retrenchment and closure in a routine manner”) are mere statements and empty talk. They provide for an increase in the separation compensation from 15 days to 45 days for every completed year of service. But the “number test” would filter the employer’s fear of being monitored, and industrial relations would be fully informalised. Then, the role of ID Act as the basic labour law will be diminished fully.

Contract Labour (Abolition & Regulation) Act 1970

Casualisation and contractualisation of the work-process are the modes through which the so-called “flexibility” in the labour market is established and maintained. They provide a complete control of the employers over the work conditions and assigning any work to the workers becomes their prerogative. While they can continually minimise their obligations in the “contract of employment”, the growing workforce and ensuing competition thereof bind the “free” worker to accept every work condition – they can reject the offer only to obtain in return, unemployment, deprivation and hunger.

Hence, the Budget complies with the directives of the Economic Survey for creating a “modern contract labour act”. It says, “rigidities [or, in other words, obligations for the employers] inherent in the existing legislation regarding contract labour inhibit growth in employment in many service activities.” The logic is interesting since it envisages a “growth in employment” to be the product of insecurity of the employed. The Keynesian logic of “full employment”, which at least gave some respite and social security to the population, is simply sidelined in favour of “growing employment” which assumes a “natural rate of unemployment” taking the existence of a pool of voluntarily unemployed to be granted and permissible.

Contract labour in India has another dimension, which makes its employment an efficient mechanism to ensure a supply of unprotected labour, for whose exploitation, compliance of legal obligations does not arise. It evolves layers of agencies amidst which the principal employer is almost untraceable, and he becomes free from any duty to deal with the workers. On the other hand, it becomes difficult for the workers to wage any sectionalist struggle, unless the whole system itself is questioned, since they are unable to trace an adversary to fight.

Like in the case of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, the Contract Labour (Abolition & Regulation) Act 1970 too is rendered barren, if the budgetary provisions really inspire legislations. The Budget singles out section 10 of the Act for deletion since from it is derived the vitality of the Act. While summarizing the section itself, the cat leaps out of the bag – “Section 10 of the existing Act envisages prohibition of contract labour in work/process/operation if the conditions set therein — like perennial nature of job etc. are fulfilled.” Hence, firstly, the differentiation, between perennial and incidental, core and peripheral ought to be eliminated, obviously only for their exploitation by capital. It could have been a marvellous proposal if it were good intentioned, in the sense that the protection provided in the labour laws were made universally applicable. At a time when all legal protection provided to the workers are being taken away, this expectation is untenable. Further, the contractualisation of the work process would, in fact, create greater differentials and segmentation in the labour market, as completion of a job would entail layers of contractual relations to be executed under various work conditions. The recommended amendment would simply give an opportunity to capitalists to equally exploit all the “strata” of labour.

The budget ultimately comes out with its clear agenda. “Section 10 enables the contract labour engaged in prohibited jobs to become direct employees of the principal employer. To overcome this difficulty, and at the same time, ensure the protection of labour, it is proposed to bring an amendment to facilitate outsourcing of activities without any restrictions as well as to offer contract appointments.”

The verbosity of pro-labour statements is evident for the reasons stated above. They need to be filtered away to have access to the hidden agenda. Their only purpose is to legitimise the “reforms” in the eyes of voters. Hence, the statements – “It would not differentiate between core and non-core activities, and provide protection to labour engaged in outsourced activities in terms of their health, safety, welfare, social security, etc. It would also provide for larger compensation based on last drawn wages as retrenchment compensation for every year of service.”

Changes in Context

The finance minister is sure that these changes “will promote industrial investment in labour-intensive, and export-oriented activities providing for renewed industrial growth.” Whatever the figures say, it would definitely increase competition in the labour market and ensure a growth, if any, with low wage and high profits. Further, it would help increase concentration of wealth, and eventually, free play for monopolies for which “SSIs” (employing less than 1000 workers) would serve as subsidiaries.

The changes recommended by the Budget along with divestment, etc., complete the basic institutional transformation needed for the new Post-Fordist regime of accumulation professed by the international agencies of capital – WTO, IMF and World Bank. This regime overcomes the crisis of the earlier regime by transforming the labour process in accordance with the flexibility given by automation. More fundamentally, a capitalist crisis developed globally as real wages continued to rise, while fixed capital cost, too, tremendously increased in relation to the total work force, resulting in a fall in the general rate of profit. To fight this trend, an expansion of market was necessary. The technologically less advanced third world would have to be made to compete with the advanced economies, thus transferring surplus value produced in the former as realised profit for the latter. To coerce the underdeveloped world to open up their economy, the prices of primary products, for which these countries were the exporters, were made to crash in 1980s leading to balance of payments crisis in the 1990s.

India accepted the IMF-WB designs for liberalisation and restructuring in the wake of its foreign exchange reserve depletion. It was during the latter half of the eighties that the switchover from an inward looking, closed or import-substituting development strategy to an outward-looking, open or trade-linked strategy started, the orientation for which is evident throughout the economic policy documents of the present government. An export-oriented outlook essentially signifies that the profit would be realised on surplus production, exploiting the national labour on the basis of the effective demand in a foreign country. Hence, to increase the

competitiveness of the exports, it needs to be continuously cheapened which would entail dismantling labour protection and envisaging a labour market free of all regulations. It was at this juncture, that all the labour laws, which impeded the exit of labour or capital, were considered to be evil, and the logic of flexibility versus rigidity evoked.

If we go through the statistics provided by the Economic Survey, it would be evident that the labour law changes are simply for legalisation of the process of disorganising the organised, already evident in the statistics (See table).

Table

Estimates of employment in organised sectors (Millions)

Years Public sector Private Sector Total
1990 187.72 75.82 263.53
1991 190.57 76.76 267.33
1992 192.10 78.46 270.56
1993 193.26 78.51 271.77
1994 194.45 79.30 273.75
1995 194.66 80.59 275.25
1996 194.29 85.12 279.41
1997 195.59 86.86 282.45
1998 194.18 87.48 281.66
1999 194.15 86.98 281.13

Note: (i) Includes all establishments in the Public Sector irrespective of size of employment and non-agricultural establishments in the Private Sector employing 10 or more persons.

(ii) Excludes Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Lakshwadeep as these are not yet covered under the programme.

Source: Ministry of Labour, (DGE&T); Economic Survey 2000-01; Website document: http://indiabudget.nic.in/es2000-01/app3.3.pdf

In this regard it is quite interesting to note that the growth of employment in the organised sector was 2.6 per cent in 1981, which came down to –0.3 per cent in 1998. It further diminished in 1999. With disinvestment occurring on a larger scale, the figure in the years to come can well be imagined. Between 1983 and 1998, the number of employees in the organised sector just inched up from 24 million to 28 million, while the total size of the work force leaped from 289 million to 397 million.

What else can one make out from the data and intentions evident in the Economic Survey and the Budget, except that the rulers are ready for a complete fragmentation of the organised sector? It would allow the capitalists to regiment the workforce, decrease the necessary labour time required for its reproduction (i.e., doing away with wage-rigidities) and an increase in surplus labour time, realised in greater profits.

Equilibrium after information

This is an old article which I found just now. It was published on March 22, 2002 in The Pioneer, one of the national newspapers in India, known for its open right reactionary allegiance. I remember sending a letter to the editors, after its publication, asking why it was titled “Equilibrium after information”. And I am still wondering why. – Pratyush

Pick up any elementary book on Economics; the first thing one comes to know is that a good becomes a commodity (to be sold and purchased) only when it is scarce. “Scarcity is central to the logic of market.” Further, property rights are supposed to induce people to economise on scarce resources. Scarcity makes a thing ‘rivalrous’-If I drink more from your bottle of wine, you will get less.

But the supposed dawning of an information age has sent the academia into turbulence. It has brought a good in the market which is essentially not scarce and the whole global politics is in perspiration to make it scarce artificially. Information is such a ‘commodity’. As Kenneth Arrow, a neo-classical economist of repute noted while trying to construct an “economics of information”: “Patents and copyrights are social innovations designed to create artificial scarcities where none exist naturally”. We do not consume information or it does not depreciate in the same way as any other durable or non-durable goods. As another American economist, Michael Perelman, who has come out with his recent testament baptised as The End of Economics, notes, “With information, you can have your cake and eat it too.” If I sell information to you, it still remains in my possession. It is essentially, in economic terms, non-rivalrous.

Exclusion of people from access to information would not increase our information, but it would definitely spread ignorance. In fact sharing would have given you an opportunity to further enrich it, by gaining from my experience.

Further, in economics we read that goods are priced at their marginal cost (MC)-the cost of producing one more unit of production. In the case of information, despite the substantiality of the initial cost of producing or gathering information, the cost of its further transmission is minimal-MC is effectively zero. “A scientist could simply post it (his discovery) on the internet for all to read”. Hence, the pricing of information, which is characteristically heavily priced, clearly violates economic laws. Its patenting or making it a private property is immoral by the logic of market itself. Perelman states the modern paradox in economics very succinctly in his Class Warfare in the Information Age, “when information becomes the dominant resource, the laws of economics tell us that the laws of economics themselves are invalid”.

Another basic economic principle, as noted by Arrow, is flouted in the process of marketing information. Markets require a rational consumer who is perfectly informed. Information can be gathered by browsing through a store, or going through a brochure, etc. But, information about information is information itself. In the information market, there is a complete identity between the information about the product and the product itself. Hence in order to market an informational product, the secrecy maintained by the owner prevents a prospective consumer to do shopping for information in an informed manner. Hence, ethically, information should be freely accessible to all. Further, even if we allow its marketisation it cannot work well since the value of information could not be assessed by the consumers without first bringing it under their possession. In the scenario of generalised commodity production, where production is essentially targeted for sale and that too to gain profit, if one wishes away the markets for information, no one would invest their time and energy into it, unless some kind of subsidy is granted from somewhere. (Or else a different kind of social order is required, the symptoms of whose plausibility and preparedness could be witnessed in various kinds of initiatives as free software movements, etc). As a response to this market failure, various kinds of legal regulation like patenting and intellectual property rights are construed to create artificial scarcities. One could not imagine an unregulated markets for information as all economics fail to justify its existence in principle. Liberalisation loses all charm for its ideologues when we demand a free flow of information like other goods.

Joseph Stiglitz’s “Another World”

Joseph Stiglitz is counted as one of a few dissenting economists in mainstream academia, and for some time now his dissent has been attracting quite a number of activists. He is officially invited by the “Another World is Possible” people to their meetings. Naturally he will think himself authorised to tell people how another world is possible, and what will be that world. He precisely does this job in his March column, “The EU’s Global Mission” distributed through Project-Syndicate:

“Another world is possible. But it is up to Europe to take the lead in achieving it.”

So the revolutionary project already has a vanguard, the only job left for the foot soldiers is to convince him/her/it to lead. How insightful! Any pessimism in this regard is ill-founded as

“the European project has been an enormous success, not only for Europe, but also for the world.”

Of course, like our Indian monkey-god Hanuman, Europe lacks ready self-confidence and needs a bear bard for encouragement. Stiglitz’s article does that job. Questioning the economistic common sense, he tells Europeans not to feel unconfident before the warlords in the US, as their competitors’ supremacy is baseless and phoney –

“…while GDP per capita has been rising in the US, most Americans are worse off today than they were five years ago. An economy that, year after year, leaves most of its citizens worse off is not a success.”

Moreover, the European Union’s mission is distinct, which are not laws, regulation, or phoney prosperity, but “long-lasting peace”, “greater understanding, underpinned by the myriad interactions that inevitably flow from commerce”. And “The EU has realized that dream” – “neighbors live together more peacefully”, “people move more freely and with greater security”. Stringent immigrant laws for and policing of the people from the South (this identity is very broad since it includes Black and Arab French, Muslim Europeans…) etc are perhaps aberrations, or may be the Southerners are racially ‘uncountable’ “within a new European identity that is not bound to national citizenship”.

Furthermore, Europe has mastered the competitive art of giving, and has surpassed the US –

“Europe has led the way, providing more assistance to developing countries than anyone else (and at a markedly higher fraction of its GDP than the US).”

Do we need to tell our Nobel laureate the economics of Aid, even AIDS?

Stiglitz too feels (not unlike Bush) that the world has changed during the past six years. However, he finds “democratic multilateralism” being challenged, human rights abrogated. Obviously he ignores all the contributions in grounding Bushism that earlier US governments made, especially Clinton’s, of which Stiglitz himself was a part. What if NATO was not less active earlier, Iraq too was continuously bombarded…

Stiglitz feels the need for multipolarity, and that Europe

“must become one of the central pillars of such a world by projecting what has come to be called “soft power” – the power and influence of ideas and example. Indeed, Europe’s success is due in part to its promotion of a set of values that, while quintessentially European, are at the same time global.”

Does it really matter if this whole discourse of “a set of [quintessentially European, but universal] values” seems hardly any different from Bush’s? Moreover, what are these values? First is “Democracy” – not just elections, “but also active and meaningful participation in decision making, which requires an engaged civil society, strong freedom of information norms, and a vibrant and diversified media that are not controlled by the state or a few oligarchs.”

Which formally democratic country officially denies these, and how many countries, including the EU members, provide safeguards against corporate-state monopoly over information and media? Further, the whole logic of the European monetary integration was to insulate strategic financial and economic institutions from any “active and meaningful” democratic influence, as it was considered external and an economic nuisance.

“The second value is social justice”, which is just individualism, however realized “only if we live in harmony with each other”. Does Bush deny this? The issue is rather who will establish the rules for that “harmony”.

What else?

In Stiglitz’s dream, the White Man’s burden definitely changes shoulders, but it remains the white man’s burden all the same –

“For the sake of all of us, Europe must continue to speak out – even more forcibly than it has in the past.”

Back to the old world – while the “world” remains the same – a white man’s world.

On Aditya Nigam’s “Genealogies of Globalisation”

Pratyush Chandra

In India, the West Bengal government’s explicit neoliberal shift has led to a rethinking endeavour within the Left – not only in assessing the nature of left politics, but also on the theoretical plane. On the one hand, there has been an effort to sharpen the analytical tools for grasping the Indian reality; on the other, there is a theory-internal rethinking, specifically, about Marxism, whether its theorisations have misguided the left. The latter comprises of the resurgence of all sorts of arguments that followed the collapse of the Soviet bloc. A major band of academicians in this has been the descriptivist brigade (which generally goes by the name of postmodernism) who finds in all these happenings a proof of relative realities and histories which Marxism is alleged to have ignored in its ‘universalist’, ‘teleological’ conceptualisations. This has further led to a trend of Marxian apologists – who endeavour to prove how Marxism is not what it is alleged to be, thus ultimately accepting the principles espoused by the former brigade. It is generally forgotten that in this process, what is lost is the dialectical core of Marxism. Relativism stands out instead of the logic of “universal and particular”, Anti-essentialism instead of “essence and appearance” and “chance/possibility and necessity” etc, ultimately bringing discussions to the level of proto-philosophical, where you cannot philosophise, you cannot theorise, you cannot derive any logic, since everything is what it is, so simply describe, but descriptions too are nothing but hi(fi)-stories…

Aditya Nigam’s article, “Genealogies of Globalisation: Unpacking the ‘Universal’ History of Capital”, published recently in EPW (2007, VOL 42; NUMB 12, pages 1047-1053) is written in similar tenor. In the name of re-reading Marx in a non-universalist manner he throws away the whole Marxist critique of political economy, except ‘Primitive Accumulation’ which is reduced to description. While one can sympathise with his criticism of the sarkari left in India, his attempt, though ironically, to universalise/reduce the problems of the communist and working class movement throughout the world embedded within the relative moments of the ever-dynamic class struggle to “a certain narrative of Progress and History” is very superficial. In his attempt to “Unpacking the ‘Universal’ History of Capital”, he is confusing between the logic of capital and the history of capitalism. Like the sarkari left in India, he too reads Marx’s Capital as a history textbook (remember, even the majority of the third world Marxists take Capital as a story of British capitalism), rather than as Marx’s attempt to understand the Logic of Capital – the universalising tendencies of capitalism. Marx in this attempt is not unaware of its particularising historical aspects, its articulation with non-capitalisms, which he deals with in his political, historical writings (in and out of Capital). On the other hand, postmodern descriptivism, which Nigam also adheres to, fetishises the “particulars” in the particularising moments of capitalism (which constitute “Spaces of Global Capitalism” and where relative “genealogies” definitely come into play, creating a universe with “Uneven Geographical Development”).

The problem with the sarkari left in India is not essentially theoretical or that of any narrative, but it is rather in their siding with a class in the class struggle, which is obviously not the working class (theories are definitely invoked rightly or wrongly for justifying purposes).

A Note on Party 2

Pratyush Chandra

In West Bengal (in fact, everywhere in India) the working class and the poor peasantry have outgrown the traditional left. This is not something new and to be lamented upon. It always happens that organisations develop according to the contemporary needs of the class struggle, and are bound to be institutionalised, and even coopted, becoming hurdles for further battles, not able to channel their forces for the new exigencies of the class dynamics and struggle. This happens so because in the process of a struggle, a major segment devoted to the needs of this struggle is caught-up in the networks it has established for their fulfillment. It is unable to detach itself from the fruits of the struggle, therefore losing its vitality and is overwhelmed by the existential needs.

In the name of consolidation of movemental gains, what is developed is a kind of ideologisation, a fetish – organisation for organisation’s sake. This leads to the organisation’s and its leadership’s cooption in the hegemonic setup (obviously not just in the formal apparatuses) which due to struggles had to concede some space to new needs. In fact, this is how capitalism reproduces itself politically. And this is how the societal hegemonies gain agencies within the radical organisations, and they are organisationally internalised – developing aristocracies and bureaucracies.

Two important points regarding the agitations in West Bengal can be fruitful for us in understanding the above mentioned dynamics:

1) As prominent Marxist historian Tanika Sarkar says, “an amazing measure of peasant self-confidence and self-esteem that we saw at Singur and at Nandigram” is a result of whatever limited land reforms the Left Front (LF) initiated and is in the “very long and rich tradition of the Left politics and culture”.

2) The price of state power that helped sustain this was the cooption of the LF in the hegemonic policy regime, which is neoliberal for now. So the vested interests that developed during these struggles and cooption led to the situation where “[b]eyond registration of sharecroppers and some land redistribution, no other forms of agrarian restructuring were imagined.” Also, “industries were allowed to die away, leaving about 50,000 dead factories and the virtual collapse of the jute industry,” as competition and the flight of capital were not challenged (which probably in the federal setup of India could not be challenged) by questioning the nature of production relations.

However, there is no fatalism in the above view – the radical vitality of an organisation/party is contingent upon the sharpening of struggle between the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic tendencies within an organisation, which in turn is embedded within the overall class struggle. I.e. it all depends on the class balance and struggle within an organisation.

A Note on Party – An Institution or in Movement?

Pratyush Chandra

A comrade working in India recently circulated a question – “Are there no possibilities of outside party movements now?”. This question is already internationally debated, prominently within a large section of radicals, who have either been part of the party based movements or have struggled fervently against what can be called the party’s tendency to “substitute” the spirit of self-emancipatory struggles through its organisational conservatism and control. However, this question has been reframed in various ways, especially as, “Is there any possibility of party movements now?” The issue has become all the more relevant in the context of recent revolutionary upsurges in Latin America, given the rising scepticism among the traditional left and jubilation among the non-party/post-party left. In India, where the communist movement despite its splintering has been a decisive force both within state politics and radical politics, the question has become significant with the mushrooming of diverse varieties of movements independent of party influences. However, I believe, this question of party and beyond-party has always been a central concern in the socialist movement the world over. The Luxemburg-Lenin debate on party too was centred around it.

In my opinion, any “yes-no” answer to the above question is bound to be refuted by counter-examples. In fact, crucial part of the answer to that question lies in understanding movement, party and party building as processes, in their fluidity, not as fixtures imposing themselves on the spontaneity of the masses. If a party is organically linked to a movement, then it perpetually recreates itself in the moments of that movement. A revolutionary party is nothing more than an organisation of the militants of a revolutionary movement. You can have a group-structure (well-organised or loose) prior to any movement, but until and unless it refounds itself within the movement, it generally polices the popular energy.

There are innumerable examples of movements throughout the world that can claim to be partyless – prominent among them are the Venezuelan, Argentine and Zapatistas in Mexico. However, there are numerous groups, even traditional party structures operating within these movements – but none of them individually can claim these movements to be ‘theirs’. What is a movement which is not more than a party? But in the very “organisation” of all these movements, we find a continuous party building process or rather processes going on in the attempts to give definite expressions to the goals and visions of the movements.

So, in my opinion, to put it rather schematically, what we witness in the formative processes of a movement is that groups or group-structures (it is immaterial whether they call themselves parties or not), with their own prior movemental experiences come into contact with mass spontaneity – where they are either reborn as groups of “militants” trying to give expression to the movemental needs and goals or they come as predefined structures shaping the movement according to their own fixed needs and goals (for example, to win elections etc).

However, when I say they “come”, it does not mean that these groups are not there. But their there-ness is defined by the consolidation and institutionalisation of their prior experiences, gains and failures. During these latter processes, these groups either congeal as having interests which are now accommodated within the system or they are ready to unlearn and relearn during the course of the new struggles of the oppressed and the exploited. In the first case, they are there as part of the hegemony or as its agencies (conscious or subconscious), and in the second case, they are “reborn” as groups or parties of militants, of organic intellectuals – intellectuals organically linked to the working class, as Gramsci would put.

On this perpetual making and remaking of the organisation and party within and with relation to movements, Marx makes a very interesting observation in his letter to Friedrich Bolte (November 23, 1871), where he recapitulates the role and problems of the First International:

“The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point… [O]ut of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.”

It is important to remember and grasp the dialectics of Marx’s dual assertion about the need of a communist party, on the one hand, and what, as Engels asserts in his 1888 preface of the English edition of the Communist Manifesto, “‘the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself”. The latter was already there in the General Rules of the First International (“That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”). In his Critique of Gotha Programme too, while criticising the Lasalleans, Marx says, “The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men’s Association.” Marx clearly rejects here any substitutionist tendency, which has been rampant within the workers and peasants’ movements in India and elsewhere, as the ‘vanguard’ organisations attempt to “possess” movements. A striking example is the following quote from the party programme of probably the most organised constituent of the Indian left:

“The people’s democratic front cannot successfully be built and the revolution cannot attain victory except under the leadership of the working class and its political party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).”

In the above-quoted letter to Bolte, Marx makes a very illuminating remark on the function of sectism within the working class movement, which can be a lesson for all of us today:

“The International was founded in order to replace the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle. …The Internationalists could not have maintained themselves if the course of history had not already smashed up the sectarian system. The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary. Nevertheless what history has shown everywhere was repeated within the International. The antiquated makes an attempt to re-establish and maintain itself within the newly achieved form.”

As the most recent and clear example of “the antiquated” making an “attempt to re-establish and maintain itself within the newly achieved form” are, what Michael Lebowitz calls, the “glum faces” in reaction to Chavez’s call for a unified party in Venezuela. To resist the replacement of “the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle” at the time when the working class has attained maturity is “essentially reactionary”.

In India, too, at the grassroots level the labouring classes have time and again come together and demonstrated their will and energy to move beyond the systemic logic, but the presence of the “antiquated” becomes a hurdle in transforming this solidarity into a decisive challenge to the system. This hurdle is perpetuated by schematically subordinating the working class consciousness (dubbed “economistic”) to the “politics” of parties. The party becomes an organisation above class rather than “the organisation of what already exists within the class” (Tronti), in other words, as the organisation of class capacity. Hence the issue of class seizure and control of production apparatuses and means of production as a challenge to the capitalist hegemony transforming the social relations is relegated to the secondary level, while the issue of ensuring formal political consolidation and stability in a competitive setup becomes the end of the party politics. The issue of posing class alternatives to capitalist regime of accumulation is sidelined in the process of “accumulation of power”.

However, this “antiquated” cannot be fought by wishing away the notion of “party”, it can only be done by viewing party building as a process with all its contradictions and as a continuous class struggle, including against internalised hegemonies – against labour aristocrats and party bureaucrats.