
The discussion that follows was prompted by the article: Revolt of the garment and textile workers in Bangladesh. The discussion was initiated by Fred.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!
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The discussion that follows was prompted by the article: Revolt of the garment and textile workers in Bangladesh. The discussion was initiated by Fred.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!
As an exposure of the barbaric, cruel and murderous ways of our beloved bourgeoisie - how would we manage without them? - and a laying out of the noble efforts of some of the most badly treated, savagely exploited and repressed workers on the planet, in the Bangladeshi rag-trade, mostly women and children, this article wins the Gold Medal. Read it and weep! But read it and cheer too! If workers imprisoned at this level of impoverishment and slave labour conditions, locked in their disgusting cheaply built factories, liable to collapse at any time, with water turned off by the bosses as punishment for daring to complain about working conditions, if these workers can find the energy for revolt, then there is hope for us all. You might say, given their conditions who wouldn't revolt! But it takes courage and vitality to revolt, as well as some modicum of self-organization, not so easy to find if you're truly at the bottom of the bourgeois shit heap. And these workers are.
The authors make a good point about not trusting in the Unions whether they're present or not, and in the need to consciously reject them in favour of SELF-ORGANIZATION. Without self-organization this revolt tended to turn into mere rioting. Without self-organization revolts and protests around the world tend to fall into line behind bourgeois type demands for better democratic procedures, or, as happens so often with youth protestation, into looting and violent expressions of frustration and anger. But what exactly is this SELF-ORGANIZATION which alone points the way forward for proletarian struggle? If you had been present at these protests in Bangladesh what would you have advised the workers to do? "Look," you say, "we've got to get ourselves organized, or we're dead meat." So what do we do next? Draw up a list of demands? Elect delegates to take our demands to the bosses? Send pickets out to neighboring factories asking for solidarity? Have a discussion about how sticking together makes us strong and that with determination we can get somewhere? But where exactly? Have another discussion about what "we've got to get ourselves organized" actually means, and why it's essential?
It isn't difficult to talk about and even demand self-organization for workers. But what does it mean and, more importantly how do we start to do it?