How does a mass organization form?
Our job as organizers and people fighting for a free and just world is to bring people into our fight, so they eventually become organizers and commit to our collective liberation, a world free of injustice, oppression, and inequality. This is a very basic objective of organizers. It is through forming democracy by involving masses of people, building our collective consciousness through a dialectical process of working with each other, and forming a practice in which masses of people decide what kind of world we are entitled to and fight for that world that we define and bring to life the kind of world we should be living in. However painful or time consuming it may be, honestly carrying out such a process is crucial in our fight because it demonstrates that another world is possible and cultivates the strength and experience among the masses to make it possible.
How, so, do we compel people to commit their life to this fight? I always think about how I was compelled to give my life to this. My entry to political work was becoming a member of a mass organization, which meant that my entry to political/economic/social change was from a framework that regular people (i.e. mass people) can and should be the ones shaping the kind of world we live in. Mass organizations have this benefit—and it is in fact exactly this that forms the foundation of mass-based organizations—they can pull anyone into their membership, regardless of experience or conscientiousness. It is actually those who have the least institutional access and power who should form the backbone of mass organizations because it is these people that make up most of our world. Mass organizations after all are fighting for the lives of the majority of the people. The majority of the people being those who get fucked over by our world ruled by corporations and the governments that serves them.
Instead of answering my frustration of a cruelly unjust system, particularly for the poor, women, and people of the Global South, by getting involved in electoral, advocacy, or developmental/service work, I was brought into a mass organization that took our political, social, and economic circumstances into our own hands because it believed in the collective power of regular people. Funny thing is, I was actually working for an assemblywoman’s office while first becoming involved in Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) and that was formative for me in being able to identify the power mass organizations have in fundamentally transforming society and contrast it with the ineffectiveness of merrily being involved in electoral politics. But that is a story for another time.
If I were given the choice, I would be studying political and social movements and revolutions in history and those that are currently taking place. I would be studying how mass and party organizations have successfully and unsuccessfully fought for another world instead of computer science. I feel as though knowledge and exposure to this kind of thing for all organizers and people working towards our collective liberation is critical to forming a winning strategy. It is due to my exposure to various types of social change organizations and approaches that I am confident it is only through organizing masses of people and having organized people direct social change projects that we will be able to change the current systems we live in.
It is true, however, that many mass-based organizations are not driven towards a political vision. Many mass-based organizations are apolitical, not directed by a political vision, or single issue based and do not work towards transforming society as a whole. It is because of this practice and its failure in transforming society that I am more convinced that mass organizations need to form a political vision and work towards such a vision that holistically changes our society. This is no easy task and I am at a point where, to me, it seems like we are nowhere near the scale we need to be to launch a transformative campaign. Mass-based organizations are often in the form of nonprofits, which means they are forced to be more accountable to funders than their own members because of financial stress. Additionally, these organizations collectively do not represent a substantial part of working-class and marginalized communities. The work to be done in the States, I feel, is to scale up, politicize our work, and carry it out with vision.
This is where I believe we have much to learn from people’s movements in the Global South. My first exposure to political organizations and organizers outside the States was last summer and I was initially very awed by the scale and political vision of the organizations I had become familiar with. Organizations would be made up of hundreds of thousands of members with a couple to none paid staff members. Most people who do movement work did them in addition to their paid work. How can these organizations retain so many members with so little staff? It demonstrates their ability to create and retain truly compelling and democratic mass organizations. Additionally, most militants of the organizations had a very sharp class consciousness—something I don’t see quite often in the States where most people are accustomed to “privilege” talk based on identity as opposed to understanding our world as a manufactured class-based society. By the end of the summer I had a better sense of the extent to which developing a class consciousness among people is crucial in our movement.
A class consciousness is crucial in not only understanding the strength in class unity but also the power we exercise as a class because we help run society. When I say “class consciousness” I am also referring to the particular ways in which women, other oppressed genders, and poor people of color make up the backbone of our society. Class consciousness also reveals the logic of our society and in turn reveals how to fight against this world and create a different one.
All this to say, I am very interested in learning about how exactly mass-based organizations organize, build up their organization, participate in movements, and develop class consciousness among their base in the Global South. The fight against the latest stage of capitalism—neoliberalism—is a global one. Capital has been able to form a transnational capitalist front and continues to wage a war against poor people globally. It is because of this that I believe we need to be able to build an international people’s front against capital if we are going to win.
It is because of all of this that I came to India. Truth be told, I’ve only been this full of joy once before and that was when I was developing DRUM’s gender justice program, Eckshate, and working with the young women who gave birth to the program. The founding members of Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS), West Bengal Farmworkers’ Union, were moved to build such an organization because none of their social change-driven academic, party, and NGO work were making substantial changes to the conditions of the people. Even though the two have had successes in organizational campaigns, they found that the type of the institutions they were working in were inept in actually changing the material conditions of working and poor people. So, they decided they needed to get involved in a mass organization organizing the most oppressed people in India—rural agricultural workers.
In a state ruled by party politics, religious disputes, and gender-based oppression the founding members couldn’t find a mass organization that was driven by its base in the region. They decided then to begin organizing on their own. Swapan da would sit in the side road of Dahakanda, a village in West Bengal, and chat with the young people about the issues that poor people were dealing with in the area. He would join them jokhon ura adda marchilo and hang out with them. While hanging out casually with them Swapan da would agitate the young people and give them books to read around building class power. Those who Swapan da was able to agitate were originally fighting for many things, but the ones they were able to win were an 8-hour workday and a minimum wage. At first, most of the village—about 85%—were against the work Swapan da was doing. However, by agitating and building the consciousness of the youth, who then agitated their family members, Swapan da was able to win over 90% of the village. Dahakanda was a village like any in West Bengal—it was plagued with rivalries across members of the CPI(M) with members of the Congress and sections of the Muslim community with sections of the Hindu community. These rivalries meant that there were an existed 157 ongoing land settlement cases in court. Swapan da and Anuradha di, the two founding members of Khet Majoor Samity, managed to resolve the disputes among the rival factions and unprecedentedly got all of the 157 court cases dismissed. This further increased the people’s trust in the two in addition to unity among the class. To this day, everyone in the village from the young to the very old, due to their great respect, call Swapan da and Anuradha di “boda” and “bodi.”
To me, what is remarkable about this is that the way in which the political education and agitation was done. It politicized the person who Swapan da was talking to and everyone that person knows because the education was a training on how to get others to join the organizing efforts as well. There must have been a collaboration effort as well among the youth when they went on to talk to their community. Oftentimes, the political education that is done ends with the people in the room. However, in order to build wide class consciousness, the education needs to be done in a way such that everyone who participates then goes on to their respective communities and facilitates the same kind of political education. In order to facilitate this kind of spread of class consciousness, the facilitation of political education needs to be grounded in the lived experiences of everyday people, be connected to winning material changes in people’s lives, and building an inspiring political vision.
The method that Swapan da used is also significant. Swapan da decided to set himself in a place where most people gather to hang out and and meet new people. He went to a place where the people would ask him about himself and he can use that opportunity to organize community members.
Swapan da and Anuradha di were also not only primarily concerned by economic issues but invested in building class unity in order to fight towards a classless society. As such they needed to also deal with communal issues such as those of religion and the division of workers based on party affiliations. Their commitment to building a true mass organization demonstrated their vested interest in people, which ultimately won the people’s trust.
In Dahakanda’s fight for an 8-hour work day, the community organized a system in which a bell would be rung at the beginning of the lunch hour and at the end of the lunch hour so that workers would know when to take a break for lunch and when to return. The bell ringer would walk all over the village ringing the bell. Doing this sparked the curiosity of the nearby village. They, inspired by the organizing success of Dahakanda, also fought for an 8-hour workday and a minimum wage. It was after all of this that 1,400 workers organized a convention where they decided to form Khet Majoor Samity. 3 decades later, the union has 100,000 members all over West Bengal.
For me, two things are significant about the beginning of the union: (1) one is the style of the organizing that compelled the power of workers to grow. The bell, for example, not only enforced the win of an 8-hour workday and better working conditions but its loudness also ensured that other workers would also fight for the same things in their respective villages. Thus, there was an orientation to not only achieve wins for workers in their own village, but an interest in organizing people at a greater scale as well. (2) Two, the union was only formed after a convention was organized by workers who were involved in organizing efforts and it was their decision that formed the union. Thus, the formation of the organization was fundamentally from the ground up, resulting in members having a profound feeling of ownership of the union.
From the very start, an additional convention was had in which the state of women in the organization was discussed. Although to this day, the union is made up of mostly women, the attendees of the convention determined that an autonomous women’s organization needs to be built to focus on the particular struggles of working women. It is through this that Sreema Mahila Samity (SMS) was born. At first, members of Khet Majoor Samity felt that the union was interfering with family affairs when Swapan da and Anuradha di would challenge the oppressive treatment of women. However, although they were resistant to the challenge, the members had a lot of trust in the two, which meant the successful formation of the working women’s union. This sort of care for the struggles of various sections of the working-class is very striking to me. It demonstrates a holistic and profound understanding of the various dynamics that need to be dealt with when fighting against our oppressive society.
While discussing the history of the union, Swapan da took care to mention to me the weaknesses of unions. Now, most unions in India are controlled by political parties, meaning the unions are not worker/member-directed. Additionally, most trade unions only focus on day-to-day, industry-based economic issues. This means that the political education and political vision among the base is very weak. The crucial struggle of building class unity across party lines, caste, and religion is often missing in most Indian unions. Khet Majoor Samity, however, understands that in order to transform society, the organizing needs to challenge all aspects of political, social, and economic conditions of workers.
It is because of this awareness that the union is made up of members of all parties, all religions, and all castes. I was blown away by the sharpness of the union members when I got to sit in on two of the union’s village meetings. There was a sense of identification with the union. In Kathakal, the first village I went to, the members asked me about myself and the kind of work that I am involved in right at the beginning of the meeting. When I, in return, asked them questions about the organization’s formation and the meeting’s purpose, they eagerly responded. When the meeting started, the facilitator broke down the political party environment including the strategy of the TMC-Congress, the CPI(M), and the BJP in West Bengal. The information presented was clear and agitating. It is important for the union to provide a clear and compelling breakdown of how the different parties are moving, how poor people will be affected, and how the organization should respond. This is because the makeup of the union consists of a diversity of party affiliations. When the union finds that a particular party needs to be opposed, the union needs to provide a compelling and logical understanding of why so that union members cannot protest resisting their own party solely because they are party members.
Once the facilitator, a whole-time secretary of the union, broke down the political environment, he instructed members to reveal the information presented in their communication with village members and to set-up a meeting with those who did not get to attend. Members were instructed to come up with a strategy to bring the information presented to their village. Two of my favorite parts of the meeting was learning about chaal na gaal dow meaning when members ask to talk to community members they tell them to sit down with them and to either give them rice or their mouth depending on how valuable the information was to them. This, to me, demonstrated that union members are able to politically move community members in a way that actually is relevant to their lives while training their members with a lot of humor. I also loved how the facilitator coined the CPI(M)’s strategy to winning the next election the “British policy” due to its divide and conquer method.
I was impressed by the protagonism of the members. They were not hesitant to ask questions or challenge the facilitator, paid close attention throughout the entirety of the meeting, and kept other members in check so they were also listening. The fulfillment of the purpose of the meeting is not with the 20 members that attended it but rather when those 20 members take everything that was said and communicate and discuss it with their community, outside the union.
This level of responsibility is significant but also a necessity in maintaining an organization with 100,000 members with only 20 whole-timers across both the farmworkers’ and women’s union. Most of the union’s work fall on state committee members, which is an elected position, who have to carry out the decisions of the union on top of their regular paid, agricultural work. I learned that part of the level of protagonism, consciousness, and responsibility among members is due to the regular training that is done among union members. A heightened sense of protagonism, class consciousness, and responsibility among members is crucial in moving forward the work of the union.
People who work full-time for the union mostly live in a collective space outside of Kolkata. Since whole-timers are not paid but are only given a stipend to fulfill living costs, the collective space is where everyone eats, raises their children, and basically lives. People must live with basic necessities and cannot live lavishly. All the people living in the collective must put in their savings, property, and whatever income into the collective trust that maintains the space. This means that whole-timers and those who live in the collective have to give up living luxuriously in order to live communally. The collective space also holds dorms for survivors of domestic violence or other women who cannot live at home, participants of organizational trainings, and volunteers like me to stay. In my stay here at the collective, I have gotten to meet some of the union’s youth who go to school and/or organize their villages for the union. All of them are around my age and come from a variety of backgrounds including scheduled castes, adivasis, and Muslim communities. The union obviously sees the significant role of youth in transforming society and as such invests in and trains them to work for the organization.
To me, what is most remarkable about Khet Majoor Samity is the protagonism and sense of ownership they have been able to facilitate within their membership. It is also no easy task to be organizing across such a diversity of communities but the union recognizes this as a crucial aspect to building a classless society. Additionally, their commitment to socialist values such as giving up a luxurious life, living communally, and dedicating their lives to building a classless society is truly an inspiration to me. Me being inspired, however, does not mean anything. It is how the union is able to inspire a 100,000 farmworkers to fight together, as Khet Majoor Samity, that is significant.
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