Resistance has been an integral part of every social order and has taken a pivotal place in society from time immemorial. Subsequently, resistance has given rise to several occasions which have led to radical alterations in society. 1st May, also known as International Labour Day, is the epitome of radical alteration in world history. This article will briefly shed light upon the history of 1st May and subsequently will try to analyze the consciousness of the proletariat, how they define/redefine their consciousness, and how the consciousness of the working class leads to resistance. For theoretical insights, this article will focus on Gramsci and Hegel's understanding of consciousness, specifically extracting insights from Partha Chatterjee's "Caste and Subaltern Consciousness".
The resistance of the labor movement began in the USA in 1886 where workers gathered for a peaceful protest at a place called Haymarket, Chicago. The workers gathered to raise their voices against several issues such as the violation of workers' rights, poor working conditions, low wages, child labor abuses, etc. Inter alia, the main demand was the reduction of working hours to eight. In a similar connotation, workers also protested for eight hours of sleep as their human rights. Eventually, this peaceful protest turned into a violent clash between the workers and state apparatuses. Several workers died during the clash; those who died were later hailed as "Haymarket Martyrs". Though the USA celebrates Labor Day on the first Monday of September every year, in Europe, it is celebrated on 1st May after it was declared by the International Congress of Socialist Parties in July 1889. Hence, we have discussed the brief history of the labor movement, and now the article will move to the constitutive force of consciousness.
Gramsci, in his Prison Notebooks, in the third part, speaks about 'common sense'. Gramsci is of the opinion that the practical man or ordinary workers are engaged in practical activities to understand and transform the world. But they lack any theoretical consciousness. Gramsci claims that this ordinary worker has two theoretical consciousnesses: the implicit and the explicit. The implicit refers to the consciousness of the workers which unites them; it refers to their autonomy. Gramsci says a subaltern group "...may indeed have its own conception of the world...a conception which manifests in action, but occasionally and in flashes...". The explicit refers to the borrowed consciousness, borrowed from the bourgeoisie. Partha Chatterjee also terms this dialectical consciousness as "contradictory consciousness". Chatterjee then mentions that the autonomous elements of implicit consciousness emerge "precisely at the moments of heightened conflict between classes..." which results in two "opposed views of the world".
Considering Chatterjee's claim of the eruption of autonomous elements at "heightened conflict," it is easy to infer that the workers' protest at Haymarket was also a part of the eruption of autonomous elements. It was the implicit, though immediate, mediated through autonomy, and finally became determinate in their own manner. Hegel defines that one's self-consciousness exists in acknowledgment from the other. The worker here rejected acknowledging or recognizing the bourgeoisie as bourgeoisie. This rejection is the subsequent result that emerged as 1st May.
Author : Pranoy Roy
(PhD Scholar, The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta