e —

e A Tl

D. Workers’ Participation in the Under-Developed World

If participation has proved difficult in the capitalist countries
and is not yet perfect in the socialist ones, in the underdeveloped
world it is doubly difficult. I have argued that it is the private
character of capital which is the basic obstacle to a socialised form
of management and that even where serious attempts to institute
this type of management have been made, the end result has
always been either the breakdown of the whole machinery or the
complete alienation of the institutions created to cater for workers’
participation.

In the underdeveloped world — the backyard of the capitalist
world — these difficulties duplicate themselves. But that is not all.
Here the relationship between management and labour force is
even more repressive and authoritarian because of the foreign
character of capital as well as the general domineering social
milieu inherent under neo-colonialism.

The most important decisions in enterprises are rarely taken
within the underdeveloped counties in which the enterprises are
rarely taken within the underdeveloped countries in which the en-
terprises are situated. The appropriation of surplus is not only
private but also foreign. Thus the management of these enterprises
is necessarily also foreign. All this creates conditions that are not
conducive to meaningful participation of the workers in the en-
terprises. Furthermore, because of the lack of education and skills
of the local population as well as the smallness of the industrial
working class as such — factors which are a direct result of the

- neo-colonial structure of these countries’ economies*® — par-

ticipation is a very far-fetched idea.

In fact few countries of the underdeveloped world have ex-
perimented with any form of workers' participation, and the
results have not been very encouraging either. Das explains the
failure of such attempts in India by the ‘socio-economic cir-
cumstances’ of the country without however realising that these
are a product of the ‘circumstances’ in the West.

The socio-economic circumstance in India today are not yet conducive
to the development of worker participation because (i) traditions of
political democracy are more rooted in the West, (ii) the attendant
benefits of a developed economy have provided a more congenial
climate there, and (iii) employers there are more progressive (?) and
receptive in their outlook.*’

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