Learning from the Seoul strike

By Arief Budiman

SALATIGA, Central Java (JP): Workers will move history in a progressive direction. They will be the midwife that delivers a new society free from exploitation of one class over the other. This new society will be a socialist or communist society.

It is easy to infer that the above line of thought comes from the writings of Karl Marx, a social scientist and philosopher, a man renowned as the father of the world socialist movement.

According to Marx, the class struggle is the engine that moves history. In this way the capital owning class defends its position from the rise and dominance of the exploited class that does not own capital. Under capitalism this struggle has manifested itself mainly in the constant battle between the bourgeoisie (the class that owns and controls capital) and industrial workers.

Only if workers win this battle and capital is no longer in private hands but owned collectively by society, will a socialist society be born. This will also be the end of history because then there will be no more class struggle and people will live happily ever after.

However, history tells a different story. The socialist countries which are based on state-led socialism and call themselves worker states, have crumbled. In these countries, a new bureaucratic class (whose existence was not predicted by Marx but by Max Weber) then started to emerge.

This new class consisted of the office holders of the Communist Party. In a different way, this class also exploited the working class. Therefore, it was not surprising that it was the working class that led the march against the "workers' state" in Poland, Russia and other East European socialist states.

Academics still debate whether this is the end of socialism as an ideology, or if it is only a variant of this ideology (state- led socialism known in Marxist literature as Stalinism) that has collapsed. However, we cannot deny that the role of workers in our present society has become more important.

This is because many countries are moving toward massive industrialization. In the factories, hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers work together. Marx once said capital is like a vampire, it sucks the blood of workers to produce profit. A large amount of capital investment in a country means the population of workers is growing rapidly. If these workers go on strike, the factories are paralyzed and the well-being of the nation's economy is also threatened.

Thus, with or without Marxism it cannot be denied that the position of workers is very important for a nation's economic growth and they are even more important in industrialized countries. The present nationwide workers' strike in South Korea is a proof of this.

South Korea is one of the newly industrializing countries together with Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. Along with the expansion of industries, the population of industrial workers is growing rapidly. In 1990, 35 percent of its labor force was employed in industry, 47 percent in services and only 18 percent in agriculture. Thus, about 82 percent of its work force was employed in the formal sector. However, in Indonesia only 14 percent of the labor force worked in industry, 31 percent in services and 55 percent in agriculture, according to a UNDP 1996 report.

It is not surprising that the government of South Korea has to be cautious in dealing with the nationwide strike. Hyundai, one of the biggest car companies, has closed its factories for an indefinite time. It is not difficult to predict that this will be followed by other industrial companies if the government fails to find a solution shortly.

For the government, there are two possibilities. First, they can order the military to suppress the strikers and restore national discipline to control the workers. Second, they can negotiate with union leaders and find a satisfying solution for both sides.

The first option seems to be impossible. Not only are the workers and students more organized in fighting for their rights, the use of violence in repressing public demonstrations has been tried on several occasions and failed.

The Kwangju incident in which hundreds of students were killed in a bitter confrontation with the military is one example. Following this, the students were under tight surveillance for several years. However, the negative impact this had on the government keeps emerging. One of the considerations mentioned in the ruling of the death penalty to former president Choon Doo Hwan was to give the same punishment to students involved in the Kwangju incident.

Thus, it is very unlikely that President Kim Young-sam will take harsh action against the strikers. The second option of a compromise with workers is more likely, although it will not be easy.

Watching the situation in South Korea now, we can learn some important lessons. Comparing the situation to Indonesia, it is not exaggerating to say Indonesian workers are very polite and soft in expressing their demands. Indonesian workers are among the lowest paid workers in the world and yet they very rarely complain. If they do strike, the number is relatively small and they are easily controlled by state security.

Strikes in Indonesia also sometimes involve tens of thousands of workers, but unlike South Korea, these strikes are over in one or two days due to the harsh actions of the military. The military usually arrests the leaders of the strikers (sometimes their leaders are students, or unrecognized union leaders such as Muchtar Pakpahan) and brands them as communists.

However, the growing process of industrialization in Indonesia means workers will soon play an important role in the country's economic survival. The growing power of workers is evident from several cases in this country.

Some years ago, just before Indonesia hosted the APEC meeting, there was a spontaneous strike by transportation workers in Jakarta. They workers were protesting against the new Traffic Law which would have dramatically increased the fines for violation of traffic regulations. Jakarta was at a standstill as no buses and taxis were available. Thousands of people were stranded and chaos rocked the capital. But the situation was short-lived as the security forces stepped in to resolve the problem. As a result, the government declared public holidays during the APEC meeting.

The South Korean workers' strike provides an important lesson. The Indonesian government has to be more sensitive to the demands of the workers. With or without Marxism, workers are important in the country's move to rapid industrialization. Whether we want to learn from the experience of South Korea or whether we are going to allow the same experience to occur is up to us to decide.

The writer is a sociologist and researcher based in Salatiga.