Rethinking May Day in the current context of Indian capitalism

Now is the time to revisit the message of the Haymarket Affair, which in essence is taking place every day everywhere in the country, writes Ishita Mukhopadhyay.

—

"Our claims are just— we know they are right,

As honest men will all agree;

We wage no war on capital,

That everyone can see.

If you want to know,

We can soon show, 

Without any exaggeration, 

We'll do as much in eight now

With a little more exertion.

We will take the hours of the day,

And divide them up by three;

First, take eight for labour, which we'll do honestly;

Eight for rest, 

Which at the best,

Gives our strength time to recover;

And eight more to attend the wants 

Of our distressed worthy brothers"

—Bob Hart 

THESE were the lyrics of the Workers' Song of America in the nineteenth century. The song was dedicated to "James Davis and Employees". A picture of James Davis among the multiple worker's unions picketing for their rights in Atlanta in 1961 is available.

Bob Hart's lyrics were addressed to many such James Davises. These were the lyrics that held the core of the May Day message to the world. Looking back, it is necessary to reread and decode the history of May Day in the context of the contemporary experience of predatory capitalism in India and the question of worker's rights.

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The lyrics of the song were simple to communicate the solidarity message of the demand for eight hours of work. Looking back to the sequel of events leading to the Haymarket Affair, the eight-hour demand spread like wildfire among workers in many countries.

Recalling the struggle in history

The eight-hour movement was started in the US by the National Labour Organisation, which was a militant organising centre of the working class. The work from sunrise to sunset during the day led to longer working hours for the workers in the factories and the agitation was against the longer working hours.

The demand for better wages was also raised, but the uniting thread between the various trade unions was the hours of work. In 1866, the demand for eight hours was referred to as freedom from capitalist slavery by the National Labour Union.

A call was given for independent political action. A federation of organised trades and labour unions of the US and Canada in Chicago in 1884 resolved to observe May 1 as the day of struggle of workers for shorter working hours.

This preceded the adoption of May 1 as worker's protest day by the Second International in 1889. A series of worker's strikes were markers in history before the Haymarket Affair.

The number of strikes increased in an unprecedented manner between 1885 and 1886. There were 700 strikes and lockouts in 1885, where 25,00,00 workers were involved. In 1886, the number of strikes was 1,572 and the number of workers involved was 6,000,00.

Chicago was the centre of a militant left-wing worker's movement and a call was given to workers of all trades to protest and demand eight hours of work on May 1.

The response was huge and 3,500,00 workers participated in the strike in 1886, which met repression from the capitalist State. Six workers were killed in police attacks and many were injured. Protest demonstrations followed on May 3 and 4, which is known as the Haymarket Affair.

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The Haymarket Affair symbolised a clear state of conflict between the rights of the proletariat and the repression of the capitalist State. On May 4, 1886, a Chicago rally protested the killing of workers by police and a bomb was hurled in the peaceful protest which turned the affair into a violent one. Seven worker leaders were executed and two were sentenced for life.

Revisiting the historiography of incidents, one can dissect clearly the call of the proletariat in the early days of the development of capitalism. As the poem by Bob Hart narrates, eight hours was the demand due to an excessive workload.

As the movement gained ground, the political challenge became clear and the slogans transformed itself towards overthrow of the capitalist system and emancipation of the proletariat.

Eight hours of work was the beginning of the worker's struggle for survival in the capitalist space. May 1 was declared as Labour Day to commemorate the Haymarket martyrs and the workers' struggle against exploitation in the Second International from 1890.

The red flag symbolised the blood of workers. Eleanor Marx spoke in the Hyde Park on May Day demonstration in 1890 that the demand for eight hours was to be enacted through legal enactment and it was time for worker's struggle to take up the challenge.

According to Eleanor, if the capitalist State was successful in the struggle, the proletariat would lose its foot in the class struggle. May 1 was not the happy idea of using a worker's holiday celebration. The idea of an eight-hour day as a means of survival for the workers was observed in Australia in 1856.

But the idea was that of a proletarian celebration which was later transformed into a political struggle of the working class.

The International Workers' Congress in 1889 decided to observe May Day in 1890. "Naturally no one could predict the lightning-like way in which this idea would succeed and how quickly it would be adopted by the working classes," wrote Rosa Luxemburg.

This is the unique feature of May Day. It continued to be observed as a day to commemorate worker's rights even after the eight-hour day was recognised through an enactment.

An eight-hour day for workers gained legal recognition around the globe. In 1919, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), at the Convention on Hours of Work (Industry), discussed it and it was ratified globally.

Karl Marx in Capital Vol. 1 clearly explains that the hours of the working day depend on the surplus value extracted from surplus labour by the capitalists.

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Necessary labour time for reproduction is determined and fixed, but the working day time varies due to the varying levels of exploitation of labour from the surplus labour.

Capitalism thrives on this surplus labour. But it is also true that the surplus labour time is an area of direct conflict between labour and capital, which May Day symbolises.

This is the day of proletarian struggle against the exploitation of labour by the capital. The zone of surplus labour generating surplus value of capital or profits hence is not only restricted to working hours only. The conditions of work, wages and all other enactments followed the eight-hour work enactment.

Vladimir Lenin, in his speech in the Red Square in 1919, stated that workers in all countries were already taking the path of struggle against imperialism. May Day had already established itself as the day of proletarian solidarity.

Indian history of eight-hour day

The first May Day celebration was held in India in 1923 in Chennai by the Labour Kisan Party under the leadership of Comrade Singaravelu Chettiyar, one of the earliest leftists in India. This marked the unfurling of the red flag in India's worker's movement.

Observation of May Day was preceded by three international landmarks which affected the struggle of the working class in India. These were the publication of Communist Manifesto in 1848, the First International under the guidance of Karl Marx in 1848, the Paris Commune, the first State of the working class in 1871.

These landmark incidents affected the Indian working class and the observation of May Day under the trade union movement in the country after India gained independence.

Indian capitalism traced the declared Nehruvian socialist path of mixed economy. The initiation of building up independent India was through five-year plans. The Second Five Year Plan was in tune with the Feldman Plan of the then Soviet Union and laid the ground for industrialisation in the country.

Trade unions already existed in colonial India. There were different patterns of trade unions in the country and there was heterogeneity in the formations and objectives.

The right to form trade unions was built in the Constitution of India as a fundamental right. It was also recognised by an Act of the legislature. Membership in trade unions increased by 625 percent between 1951 and 1979.

Though there were splits in the trade union movement, the demand for workers within the country was raised unanimously most of the time. Tripartite discussions led to enactments and claims of worker's rights in the country.

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Workers' movement was heterogeneous with respect to the fact that there was a revolutionary path of worker's emancipation by challenging imperialism and global capitalism and there was also the path of reforms and access to benefits for workers within the capitalist production system.

Worker's rights in India under neoliberalism

India is an example of a prolonged semi-feudal, semi-capitalist production system within which Indian capitalism has thrived. This has complicated the process and roadmap of emancipation of the proletariat in the country in spite of legal enactments.

India went on the path of imperialist globalisation in a declared way in 1992. Global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation rule State institutions.

The Indian working class was demanding reforms in the colonial labour laws and the introduction of new laws in response to their claims. India is yet to ratify ILO Conventions 87 (Freedom of Association and protection of the right to organise), and 98 ( Right to organise and collective bargaining).

Neoliberalism was planted in India on the semi-feudal, semi-capitalist production system, which from the very beginning of its journey was stretching out the surplus labour along with bondage to the production system so that capital could be appropriated to the maximum possible extent.

Neoliberal capital entered by creating an oligarchy and governed the Indian State. Labour employment has also undergone severe changes during the thirty years of neoliberalism. The eight-hour day was observed as a legal entitlement of the worker but employment was getting transformed from formal to informal sector.

Labour legislation was ineffective in the broad area of employment in the country. May Day continued to be observed as the demand day of the workers in the country with a national holiday.

Eight-hour work was already being challenged in the capitalist production structure prevailing in the country. Labour was treated as a commodified entity in the binary between formal and informal labour.

Changing norms and patterns of labour employment were institutionalised in the socio-political framework, created and nourished by neoliberal capital or in other words by the political economic provisions of imperialism.

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Informal employment continued to grow as a captive labour force and this created a space for denying the Constitutional provisions for labour and the eight-hour day. This was the mode of operation of neoliberal capital in the world.

Accumulation and valorisation of capital went in a mode of operation where valorisation of capital ceased to be primarily determined by accumulation. Hours of work expanded as the necessary labour hours for reproduction of labour expanded as well as the surplus labour required for generation of surplus value was also extended.

Necessary labour hours for reproduction expanded as real wages fell with time-rated wages switching often to piece-rated wages and workers resorted to working in multiple occupations to preserve the necessary labour hours.

The process of informalisation was also evolving with an impoverished workforce generating the group of the 'working poor'. The eight-hour day became a challenging concept.

With the enforced process of informalisation, the bipolar narrative of formal-informal was replaced by a continuum of mixed formality and informality in labour engagement.

Between the two poles of the continuum, the space of the intermediate zone developed. In this intermediate zone, it was possible and even easy to deny the eight-hour mandate.

Indian capitalism rapidly transformed itself to the process of valorisation of capital through cronies. Inequality and concentration of wealth increased in the hands of few corporates, which exposed skewness that exceeded colonial times.

Global capitalism had hardly recovered from the 2007–08 crisis when Covid made its way. The pandemic exposed the euphoria of the capitalist welfare approach and countries saw the suffering of billions of workers who struggled between life and livelihoods. 

The Indian State was already governed and controlled by corporate power. Valorisation in the name of profiteering surpassed all earlier history where India suffered from immense unemployment and deprivation of all basic entitlements, food, health, education and shelter in the lives of workers.

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The norms of worker's rights which were gained through the proletarian movement were made to recede to the background in the process. The pandemic exposed the exploitation of migrant workers in India where the footlooseness of the workers was made stark.

In this context, the Indian Parliament passed the new labour codes in 2020. All labour legislations were scrapped and four labour codes were introduced.

Capital had already turned aggressive in the hands of a few corporates and actions were resembling the features of primitive capital accumulation as well as feudalism.

The nexus between corporates and State political power created and developed bondage with respect to labour. Proletarian solidarity in the country responded. Work conditions deteriorated and workers had to continue to work under precarious, vulnerable conditions.

Hours of work were also hiking up. During the pandemic, several states raised the working hours to 12 hours without overtime in 2020, exploiting the devastating condition of workers in the country.

Seven states raised the working hours from 48 to 72 hours, a week resonating with 12 hours from the Ministry of Labour in the Parliament in the form of four labour codes.

Increased hours of work were introduced in some sectors in some states earlier in the pandemic. Not only increased hours of work, official statistics of the country in pre-Covid days also revealed deplorable conditions of the workers with earnings less than half the minimum wages, most jobs without job contracts, and most jobs not having paid leaves.

Present official statistics also reveal that half of the paid work is self-employed. For the self-employed, who is going to enforce the hours of work? Self-employed people earn their livelihood in a self-exploitative mode of activity. In 2019, a public interest litigation was filed against three information technology companies in the Telangana High Court against forced work and longer working hours, which was against the legal entitlement of eight hours of work.

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It was recognised that many information technology companies do not give overtime for extra hours of work to the employees. Two southern states have amended the Factories Act, 1948, by an extension of working hours beyond eight hours to 12 hours.

It is relevant to recall Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy's recent comment regarding increasing hours of work to 70 hours a week for educated youth.

This was not even agreed upon by countries who ratified the ILO convention of 40 hours of work a week.

Increased hours of work were the initial sign of aggression of the capitalist empire during the Haymarket Affair. The new mode of exploitation of the proletariat class brought in by the aggression of capital in the corporate governed State apparatus existing in India today is inclusive of the baggage of exploitative conditions of work.

We may recall that hours of work were just the beginning of negotiations but not the end as the trade union movement has shown to the world. In India, the attack on an eight-hour day, a long-earned right of the proletariat, came in with falling wages, hazardous work conditions and precarity of work.

In 2012, workers at a Maruti Suzuki firm in Haryana protested against deplorable work conditions and precarity of work. This was a landmark in the movement of the working class in India.

The strike by the Central Trade Unions in 2019 also gave the message of workers' solidarity against labour policies of the government. Scheme-based women workers such as Asha workers, Anganwadi workers, Mid-Day Meal workers and others who are contractually hired for low wages and higher work hours are striking the streets of the country where we find the echo of a continuing May Day slogans throughout the year.

In the labour code on occupational safety, health and working conditions, the government directly attacked the eight-hour work rule and left the hours of work and wages to the decision of state governments.

The rights, livelihood and living conditions of the workers of India are under attack by Indian corporate profiteering and the corporates also control the State apparatus.

Billionaires and their greed had shaped the profits, inflation and political power in the country where they have squeezed the proletarian space to the bare minimum. Now is the time to revisit the message of the Haymarket Affair, which in essence is taking place every day everywhere in the country.