From the Fundamental Concept of Leadership to the Workers’ Role in the Movement
WOULD WORKERS ALWAYS BE INVOLVED?
To bring down a regime is not an insurmountable task in fact the landmark events of the past 2/3 years has been the fall of regimes through mass insurrections even though these insurrections were not mature enough to fully displace the old regimes. For this feat the intelligentsia and many ideologues argue that the workers are indispensable. Many even claim that the workers must be duly represented in any major committee piloting the affairs of the movement. This is largely accurate given the substantial economic stake of the workers in any society.
This has already been recognized by youth in the End SARS movement when they tried to impose a strike by grounding to a halt all vehicular movement and chanting “no work on Monday/next week”. No doubt the movement was affected by the non-participation of the workers and their unions/fighting platforms. The workers’ movement is one of those movements where members have not taken leadership role into their hands by subjecting the officials to their will.
Yes the workers are indispensable in any struggle for social transformation or if substantial or long-lasting social change is to be realised, that is why the whole End SARS movement tended toward economic disruption which corresponds with a workers’ strike. If this be the case the working class must be part of the whatever coordinating body for any movement that seeks social transformation. This does not mean that other layers of the oppressed are not needed it only means that the workers due to the nature of their role in the production process are best positioned to drive through this change, not only so but their proportion in participation will be overwhelming than others layers when the consciousness of the workers is ripe.
In spite of all these it will be wrong to take the position of economism, that is, to esteem economic demands or demands that seem to affect the workers directly than other demands since economic, political and democratic demands are all connected so that a bane to one of the trio automatically affects the remaining two detrimentally. These do not require extensive elucidation since the excesses of SARS is what triggered a movement that will later develop into, in the actual sense, anti-government/anti-system uprising that seeks democratic as well as political and economic change.
It will also be illusory to think that the working class can be sidelined or replaced in a revolutionary process for social change since the basis for any society is the economic system. While attempts to force the workers to join the movement like stopping vehicular movement are not just welcome but inevitable, appeals to the workers to join the movement must not be exhausted. Not by pleading with the workers but by making them see the interconnectedness of the present campaign and their objective conditions as workers.