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The history of all hitherto existing society [2] is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master [3] and journeyman,
in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried
on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending
classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of

society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have
patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-
masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate
gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not
done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of
oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two
great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the
rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America,
trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities
generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known,
and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid
development.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding

political advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility,
an armed and self-governing association of medieval commune [4]: here independent
urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as
in France); afterward, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-
feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact,
cornerstone of the great monarchies in general -- the bourgeoisie has at last, since the
establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the
modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state
is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal,
patriarchal, idyllic relations.
It has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous "cash
payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of
chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical
calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the
numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable
freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political
illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up
to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the
man of science, into its paid wage laborers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the
family relation into a mere money relation.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor, the work of the
proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the
workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most
monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.

The lower strata of the middle class -- the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired
tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants -- all these sink gradually into the
proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which
Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large
capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of
production. Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it
becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength
more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are
more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor,
and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition
among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers
ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly
developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between
individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of
collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations
(trade unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of
wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for
these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their
battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.
This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by
Modern Industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one
another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local
struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every
class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the
Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian,
thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently, into a political party,
is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But
it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of
particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the
bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the Ten-Hours Bill in England was carried.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of
dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society,
assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts
itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.
Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the
bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in
particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level
of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone
is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the
face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie
is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all
settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the
antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain
conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence.
The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as
the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a
bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of
industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He
becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.
And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class
in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. It
is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his
slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him,
instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other
words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the
formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage
labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry,
whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due
to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of
Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the
bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore
produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat
are equally inevitable.

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http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CIP.CHA
P5.HTM

5.1 MARX AND CLASS CONFLICT

It is important to recognize that Marx viewed the structure of society in

relation to its major classes, and the struggle between them as the engine of
change in this structure. His was no equilibrium or consensus theory.
Conflict was not deviational within society's structure, nor were classes
functional elements maintaining the system. The structure itself was a
derivative of and ingredient in the struggle of classes. His was a conflict
view of modem (nineteenth century) society.

The key to understanding Marx is his class definition.1 A class is defined

by the ownership of property. Such ownership vests a person with the
power to exclude others from the property and to use it for personal
purposes. In relation to property there are three great classes of society:
the bourgeoisie (who own the means of production such as machinery and
factory buildings, and whose source of income is profit), landowners
(whose income is rent), and the proletariat (who own their labor and sell it
for a wage).

Class thus is determined by property, not by income or status. These are

determined by distribution and consumption, which itself ultimately
reflects the production and power relations of classes. The social
conditions of bourgeoisie production are defined by bourgeois property.
Class is therefore a theoretical and formal relationship among individuals.

The force transforming latent class membership into a struggle of classes is

class interest. Out of similar class situations, individuals come to act
similarly. They develop a mutual dependence, a community, a shared
interest interrelated with a common income of profit or of wages. From
this common interest classes are formed, and for Marx, individuals form
classes to the extent that their interests engage them in a struggle with the
opposite class.

At first, the interests associated with land ownership and rent are different
from those of the bourgeoisie. But as society matures, capital (i.e., the
property of production) and land ownership merge, as do the interests of
landowners and bourgeoisie. Finally the relation of production, the natural
opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie, determines all other
activities.

As Marx saw the development of class conflict, the struggle between classes
was initially confined to individual factories. Eventually, given the
maturing of capitalism, the growing disparity between life conditions of
bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the increasing homogenization within
each class, individual struggles become generalized to coalitions across
factories. Increasingly class conflict is manifested at the societal level. Class
consciousness is increased, common interests and policies are organized,
and the use of and struggle for political power occurs. Classes become
political forces.
The distribution of political power is determined by power over
production (i.e., capital). Capital confers political power, which the
bourgeois class uses to legitimatize and protect their property and
consequent social relations. Class relations are political, and in the mature
capitalist society, the state's business is that of the bourgeoisie. Moreover,
the intellectual basis of state rule, the ideas justifying the use of state power
and its distribution, are those of the ruling class. The intellectual-social
culture is merely a superstructure resting on the relation of production, on
ownership of the means of production.

Finally, the division between classes will widen and the condition of the
exploited worker will deteriorate so badly that social structure collapses:
the class struggle is transformed into a proletarian revolution. The
workers' triumph will eliminate the basis of class division in property
through public ownership of the means of production. With the basis of
classes thus wiped away, a classless society will ensue (by definition), and
since political power to protect the bourgeoisie against the workers is
unnecessary, political authority and the state will wither away.

Overall, there are six elements in Marx's view of class conflict.

• Classes are authority relationships based on property ownership.

• A class defines groupings of individuals with shared life situations,
thus interests.
• Classes are naturally antagonistic by virtue of their interests.
• Imminent within modern society is the growth of two antagonistic
classes and their struggle, which eventually absorbs all social
relations.
• Political organization and Power is an instrumentality of class
struggle, and reigning ideas are its reflection.
• Structural change is a consequence of the class struggle.

Marx's emphasis on class conflict as constituting the dynamics of social

change, his awareness that change was not random but the outcome of a
conflict of interests, and his view of social relations as based on power were
contributions of the first magnitude. However, time and history have
invalidated many of his assumptions and predictions. Capitalist ownership
and control of production have been separated. Joint stock companies
forming most of the industrial sector are now almost wholly operated by
non-capital-owning managers. Workers have not grown homogeneous but
are divided and subdivided into different skill groups. Class stability has
been undercut by the development of a large middle class and considerable
social mobility. Rather than increasing extremes of wealth and poverty,
there has been a social leveling and an increasing emphasis on social
justice. And finally, bourgeois political power has progressively weakened
with growth in worker oriented legislation and of labor-oriented parties,
and with a narrowing of the rights and privileges of capital ownership.
Most important, the severest manifestation of conflict between workers
and capitalist--the strike--has been institutionalized through collective
bargaining legislation and the legalization of strikes.

These historical events and trends notwithstanding, the sociological

outlines of Marx's approach have much value. His emphasis on conflict, on
classes, on their relations to the state, and on social change was a powerful
perspective that should not be discarded. The spirit, if not the substance, of
his theory is worth developing.

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http://www.economictheories.org/2009/05/karl-marx-class-struggle-theory.html

The dissolution of the relationships existing in the old feudal society

created new group alignments. The period of primitive accumulation
caused a marking off of two economic groups—those who had the
money funds to hire others, and those who, having the personal
freedom to hire out themselves, had to submit to being hired as the
only possible source of a livelihood. With the accumulation of capital in
the hands of the former group and their descendents, the continued
tendency for workers to get nothing but their subsistence, and the
embodiment of capital funds in new and better mechanical devices,
these two classes were pushed further and further apart until in Marx's
day their interests became so antagonistic that he felt the situation to
be obviously that of a life-and-death struggle between them. It was
Marx's purpose to instill into the workers a sense of this irreconcilable
clash of interests. With their class consciousness developed, class
struggle would ensue, and this, necessarily taking a political form,
would be the first step in preparation for the overthrow of capitalism
and the establishment of a new order.

Surplus Value—The Economic Source of Class Struggle

In attempting to arouse workers to a consciousness of their own

exploited position, Marx wove his argument around his theory of
surplus value. The surplus was the essence of the clash of interests; so
long as it existed and was acquired by those who had the power to
take it, there could be no basic social harmony. So long as the
property institutions of capitalism awarded this surplus to one class,
leaving the other to acquire nothing but the means of its subsistence,
there was an unbridgeable gulf between the two classes. On one side,
acquiring the surplus value out of which they accumulated still more
capital, stood the owners; on the other, exhausting their wages in
their own reproduction, were the workers. Marx labeled the former the
bourgeoisie, the latter the proletariat. So long as capitalism prevailed,
surplus value would be generated and would go to the bourgeoisie,
and so long as this took place, the proletariat could never change its
economic status—it could merely continue to exist.

The Composition of the Bourgeoisie

The distinguishing feature of the bourgeoisie is the ownership of

property— in money funds, land, and man-made instruments of
production. Since Marx makes surplus value the source of the incomes
of the moneylender, the landowner, and the capitalist employer, he
implies that there are no essential differences in their interests or their
positions within the bourgeoisie. Their ability to acquire income follows
from their status as owners. "It is not because he is a leader of
industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of
industry because he is a capitalist."

Certain sections of the bourgeoisie, however, were not closely knit into
the fabric of their class, They could not remain members of it in-
definitely.

The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shop-

keepers, and retired tradesman generally, the handicraftmen and
peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because
their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern
industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the
large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered
worthless by new methods of production.
It is also held that as the class struggle "nears the decisive hour,"
defection will occur for "a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who
have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the
historical movement as a whole."

The Contributions of the Bourgeoisie

The bourgeoisie were far from the conservative class implied by the
modern use of that term. Marx and Engels pointed out:
Historically, the bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary part. The
bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to
feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the
motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has
left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest,
than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly
ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has
resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the
numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single
unconscionable freedom— Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation,
veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked,
shameless, direct brutal exploitation.

In short, the bourgeoisie played the role of innovator in the changes

that laid the basis for modern industry. Those arrangements, customs,
and institutions which stood in the way of change it promptly
dispensed with, oftentimes forcibly and with great human suffering
and alienation.

These changes were not without benefit to human society as a whole.

They brought the parts of the world into close contact.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the dis-
covery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense
development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land.

The bourgeoisie . . . has been the first to show what man's activity can
bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian
pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted
expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and
crusades. . . . The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred
years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces
than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's
forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry, and
agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of
whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole popu-
lations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a
presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social
labor?

Creation of the Proletariat by the Bourgeoisie

Despite all these accomplishments, the bourgeoisie has set in

operation certain forces that will cause its ultimate downfall. In a
sense these forces are personified in the proletariat—"a class of
laborers who live only so long as they find work, and who find work
only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must
sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article
of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of
competition, to all the fluctuations of the market." Since the
bourgeoisie can exist only if and to the extent that there is a
proletariat, the former may be said to have created the latter.
Moreover, in developing modern industrial processes the bourgeoisie
often herded large masses of workers together under one roof and in
one town. The proletariat was therefore in a much better position to
"form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois," to "club
together in order to keep up the rate of wages," to "found permanent
associations in order to make provisions beforehand for these
occasional revolts." The proletariat is further strengthened "by the
improved means of communication that are created by modern
industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact
with one another." Moreover, the bourgeoisie is constantly getting
portions of the proletariat to fight its battles for it, battles with
antagonistic elements within the bourgeoisie and with foreign
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie thus "supplies the proletariat with its own
elements of political and general education; in other words, it
furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie."10
Combining all this with the already-noted defections from the
bourgeoisie to the proletariat, Marx concludes that "what the
bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own gravediggers.
Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."
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http://en.internationalism.org/node/3686
As the working class in India is an important regiment of the international working class,
the situation, conditions and problems of the class struggle here cannot be fundamentally
different from the international class struggle. The situation, conditions, problems,
difficulties and perspectives of the international class struggle have been presented and
discussed in detail in reports to our International Congress. The purpose of this report is
to analyse and understand the development of class struggle in India in the light of our
global framework.

The last international congress of the ICC correctly asserted that the struggle of the
working class in India, China, Brazil and other ‘emerging economies' will play a very
significant role in the process of development of the next upsurge of the world proletarian
revolution. These countries have a very large working class population and working class
concentrations. Moreover the struggles in these countries will accelerate the process of
development of the international unity and solidarity of the working class, making the
various sorts of divisive, concerted efforts of the world bourgeoisie ineffective. Thus it
has become a very important task of the ICC as a whole and Communist Internationalist
in particular to understand as profoundly as possible the conditions of the working class
struggle, the fermentation going on in its ranks, its strength, weaknesses, difficulties,
problems, possibilities, perspectives, and the attacks and manoeuvres of the class enemy
to derail the class.

As in the countries in the heartland of capitalism the working class in India has also quite
a long history of heroic class struggle, both against direct imperialist exploitation and
repression and against the intensified exploitation and oppression by the ‘independent'
native bourgeoisie since 1947. Thousands of working class people have been killed; more
have been injured, repressed and imprisoned in very inhuman conditions for years at a
time. But this has failed to crush the militant spirit of the working class. This history of
heroic struggle has to be profoundly understood as an indispensable task. We are not
going into this detail in this report. We are only focusing on some important struggles in
the recent period. These struggles are perfectly in line with the important struggles
mentioned in the report on the international class struggle and their significant
characteristics.

The struggles of the diamond workers in Gujarat, the struggles of the Hyundai workers in
Chennai, auto part workers in Coimbatore, struggles of the auto and auto parts industry
workers very near to the Indian capital region are some of the most important struggles
that have taken place in spite of the lofty claims of the Indian bourgeoisie about
successfully overcoming the worst effects of the crisis and being well set up on the way
to recovery. In Gujarat, unorganised contract workers spearheaded the struggle. In
Gurgaon these were workers of the auto companies. In Gujarat the diamond workers went
on wildcat strike. This strike spread very rapidly to many other cities where diamond
polishing is done. All these struggles have been violently crushed by the ‘democratic'
state machinery. Other struggles of the working class in various forms have taken place
in various parts of India: There have been important strikes in the public sector - bank
workers' strike, Air India pilots' strike, all India strike by oil workers in January 2009,
and a strike by government employees in January 2009 in Bihar. Some of these have been
the expression of bitter conflicts where the state tried to hit the workers very hard and
crush them. This was the case with the oil workers' strike in January 2009 when the state
used ESMA [Essential Services Maintenance Act] and other laws to crush the workers
and resorted to various repressive actions. This was also the case with the strike of
government employees in Bihar where the government wanted to teach the employees a
lesson. In the case of the oil workers' strike the government later backed off from further
repression as there was a threat of the strike spreading to other public sector
undertakings.

BSNL employees went on strike on 27 August 2008; on 24 September of the same year
bank employees went on strike. On 1 October2008 there was a strike by cine workers. On
7 January 2009 oil workers of IOC, BPCL, HPCL and GAIL went on strike for higher
wages. Airport workers went on strike on 30 April, 2009. On May 20/21 there was a
strike by mine workers in the Bailadilla mines. On 25 May PWD workers in Goa struck
for higher wages. On 12 June 2009 bank employees again went on strike. Workers of
MRF Tires and Nokia factories in Tamilnadu were also engaged in struggles on 22
September 2009 against their bosses around the same time. In addition to these there have
been important struggles of the dock workers and jute mill workers in West Bengal. In a
suburb of Kolkata jute mill workers were so enraged against the management staff that
they pounced upon and killed some of them. Tea garden workers have also gone on strike
several times

Struggles of the new generation (PTTI)

We have seen in other parts of the world a new generation of workers or would-be
workers entering struggles on a proletarian terrain to defend their future against the
capitalist states. The struggles of the students in France and Greece are very important,
significant and inspiring. The efforts at self-organisation, general assembly, extension,
openness to discussion, attitude o learning from the past experience of the working class,
solidarity and unity, questioning capitalism, expressing strong indignation against its very
existence any further are the precursor of the new evolving situation of the class struggle.

In this context, the struggle of the PTTI (Primary Teachers' Training Institute) students in
West Bengal is quite significant. These students have either passed the training course
from government recognised training institutes or were in the way of completing the
course. But these institutes have now been declared to be unrecognised by the central
educational authority (NCTE). So the degree certificates they got after successfully
completing the course have now become illegal and valueless in the employment market.
Thus these students have suddenly become unemployable. Even thousands of teachers
who are already serving as teachers in government Primary schools are also victims of
this declaration because their degree certificates have also been made illegal at the stroke
of a pen by the same educational authority controlled by the central government. These
students have spent a lot of money in undergoing the training course. Some of these
students were so frustrated that they committed suicide.

This precarious situation pushed students to launch struggle for getting employment as
teachers. Seventy six thousand such students have been involved in this struggle. For
those who have already been serving as teachers, the threat of losing their job stares them
in the face because of this completely irrational political game of ruling parties both in
central and state government. In the beginning there was an element of self-organisation
and mistrust against all the political parties and trade unions of the left and right of
capital. They asserted that they will not allow themselves to be pawns in the political
chess game of various political parties. Very often there have been violent confrontations
with the police force, repression by the state and imprisonment of the students. In spite of
this, the struggle of these PTTI students points to the evolving state of class struggle of
not only the new generation of workers or would-be workers but also other sectors of the
working class in the near future.

Some of the very important characteristics of these struggles are given below.

Simultaneity of Struggles

Simultaneity of attacks means greater potential for simultaneity of struggles. There will
be an increasing likelihood that workers from different sectors under attack will start to
go beyond ‘their' sector, beyond ‘their' union and aim to seek solidarity from other
workers as a first step towards pushing back the attacks.

What we see today is that more and more workers are willing to take up the struggle
against the attacks of the bosses. While the struggles are more numerous in many parts of
the country, there is a tendency toward simultaneity of struggle in the same geographic
areas as well. This opens the possibility of linking up and extension of struggles. It can be
seen in the struggle of diamond workers in Gujarat who went on wildcat strikes
simultaneously in several cities. This can be seen in strikes of auto workers in Tamilnadu
and Pune and Nasik where several strikes in the same geographic area broke out at the
same time. The bourgeoisie could sense this threat and scaled back its repression. This
simultaneity is the result of identical attacks that all sectors of workers are facing today.
The most significant strike was the struggle of diamond workers in Surat which seemed
to have some elements of the mass strike, since workers in Rajkot and Amreli districts
also went on strike in support of their demands.

In Ahmedabad district, hundreds of diamond workers pelted stones and tried to enforce
closure in Bapunagar area. The strike in the diamond industry over wages spread to
Palanpur and Mehsana in north Gujarat. Workers in a number of factories in Gurgaon-
Manesar have been waging struggle against their bosses. In Honda Motorcycles, workers
had been agitating for several months for better wages and against the practice of
increasing casualisation of permanent jobs. Workers of other factories actively agitated in
their support. This opened the possibility of extension and unification of the struggles, the
only way in which workers can fight and push back the attacks of the bosses. This the
bourgeoisie fear most and the unions want to avert