Capturing the New Politics of contemporary General Strike

India is heading towards the 22nd general strike of its neoliberal period. These strikes are popularly seen as strikes based on contemporary economic issues and demands of the workers. And, from that emanates a socio-psychological limitation of realizing the actual political potential of the general strikes. It creates a lacuna, the inability to transform the strikes as weapon against the capitalist state and the system as a whole. This calls for a quantitative and qualitative study of strike-struggle. This is a task of utmost importance for all working-class parties in order to understand the stage and routes of development of capitalism and its most precious creation – the modern working class.
The bourgeois critics and their spokespersons always have attempted to dilute the perspective of general strikes by propagating doubts about its effectiveness; while half of them raise questions about its success, the rest mourn about the loss of economy and livelihood of poor people impacted by it. For this one day, the masters of plunder miraculously turn into self-sacrificing saints. The only answer to their hypocrisy and tantrum is the formation and development of class-consciousness and expression of class’ strength through the strike actions, when the strikers assess their numbers on the street and the society recognises its actual driving force i.e., the working people.
From this point of view, strike-action is an exercise of self-assessment of the striking power, organizational capacity and reach of the strikers participating in the general strike. At the same time, general strike-action is also pivotal for proper evaluation of level of political consciousness, i.e., the degree of penetration of politics of strike within the strikers. It is crucial to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the ongoing organized working-class movement in this regard.
Undoubtedly, the general strike has a great economic implication. It creates a rupture in the production and circulation of commodities and services, not only of a specific sector, but across a wide web of value chains and different stages of value accumulation. General strike creates fissures in four class processes - the production, appropriation, distribution and receipt of surplus values. The simultaneous attacks over these four class processes exposes the bloody class antagonism, completely brings out in open the class character of the state and thus making the distinction between the two camps overtly prominent – the driver and the subject of an oppressive state.
But generally, it is not a spontaneous process; it doesn’t flow free from the economic attack; rather the general strike transcends to a political one if the strikers can identify the nature of the state, through their struggle and experience.
However, there is a startling phenomenon appearing in current Indian experience of strike struggle. To understand this, we have to decode and analyze the recent strikes in India with its historic experiences and perspective. Though the strike statistics are very much unreliable and unavailable in India and government reports are blatant underestimation and suppression of reality, we will follow the trend presented in it to have an idea of the changed dynamics of the new labour regime and its response to the system.
Central government publishes a report annually called “Statistics on Industrial Disputes, Closures, Retrenchments and Lay-offs in India”, though the last report available in public domain was published in 2023. The study of the reports of last two decades reveals that the number of industrial strikes, the number of strikers and loss of man-days have drastically reduced throughout this time period. At the same time, the general strikes have become more consistent, participative and militant during this time. It is a departure from our traditional understanding of relation between industrial and general (economic and political) strike.
In his 1912 article Economic and Political Strikes, Comrade Lenin wrote “When the movement was at its highest (1905), the economic basis of the struggle was the broadest; in that year the political strike rested on the firm and solid basis of economic strikes.” “In the first quarter of 1905, for instance, economic strikes noticeably predominated over political strikes... In the last quarter of 1905, however, the ratio was reversed… But all the time there was a connection between the economic and the political strike.” But, in current Indian scenario, the reality certainly appears to be different.
The reason lies within the changes in the process of production and the relation of employment as well as the construction of the whole social production- reproduction eco-system as a gigantic capitalist machine of surplus extraction. We will try to explain it step by step.
The modern stage of capitalism with unprecedented development of transport, communication and remote operation has fragmented the process of industrial production in numerous layers. Globalization and eventual existence of different economic zones facilitate this process with supply of cheapest labour and raw-materials at the service of capital. An auto OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) factory may have 200-300 Tier-1 suppliers who provide major components and systems such as engines, transmissions, brakes, and electrical systems; 1,500-2,000 Tier-2 suppliers who provide sub-components and raw materials; and thousands of Tier-3 suppliers who provide raw materials, commodities, and basic components to Tier-2 suppliers. Total Suppliers are more than 5,000 across all tiers. This fragmentation of work-process has dismantled the old Fordist concept of big, one-roof shop-floor. The rate of surplus extraction of these big companies largely depend upon the capacity to exploit its supply-chain workers through squeezing their employers i.e., the suppliers. There lies very less scope for the workers of those supply-chain companies to fight a united strong decisive industrial battle against their employers due to the paucity of numbers of the workers in a single establishment, comparatively lower rate of profit of the employers down the value-chain and limitation of organization due to fragility and precarity of the employment and spread of production-chain all across the globe.
The second aspect is the massive non-regularity in the employment process. In strategic public sectors, the number of contractual employees has come to 70% or more of the total strength; one can imagine the situation in private sectors. A contractual or fixed term worker, an apprentice or trainee, employed for Rs 10,000 per month salary or stipend, will be naturally sensitive about the status and protection of his job. A huge army of unemployed youth is standing at the factory gate to replace them. In a highly unemployed society, these jobs remain as only income source for crores of workers. For migrant workers, other forms of social-insecurities are added over and above these issues. There is a very little chance for them to lodge strong specific factory based industrial action until mass of the workers face retrenchment or any other penal actions. But their lives, living and working conditions increasingly become subject to further deterioration and disgrace; they want to protest but still vulnerable to be organized at the specific factory level.
And most importantly, modern capitalism has expanded its clutches over the farthest and deepest points of Indian society and over all strata of working people. It has established an invisible surplus extraction mechanism through the penetration of market, finance and state to ensure the sub-human subsistence of the mass of the population, forced attachment of them into their temporary unsecured occupation and transfer of their surplus towards the corporate masters of the regime. The self-employed, petty-producers, traders or peasants – all are prey to the diktats of market and the state, run by the big bourgeoisie and the international finance capital. Mass of the Indian people, the below 50%, are surviving in inhuman condition and frustrated, angry upon the existing socio-political system.
A general strike gives all of these different constituents of the “collective workers” a scope to express their discontent and rage; it is a disturbed but mighty symbol of their painful existence and rough reality. It goes without saying that the industrial workers working in strategic and manufacturing sectors will be the spearhead of this collective action, but its spread engulfs a large section of working masses. And here lies the material reason of strong support of general strike all across the country. With this, emerges new tasks for the transformative political forces.
The ground for transforming the general strikes towards a political strike is ready. But the nature of the strike is still defensive – workers are trying to resist the changes introduced by the capitalists worsening living and working conditions of them (say, repealing of labour codes). We must internalize that capitalism is in crisis and the strike-actions of our time will evolve as more offensive, not only to protect but to transform the existing reality.
Certainly, crisis demands militant action from working class; but to give the general strike a true political character, the requisite will be to advance and popularize transformative demands; demands not only to expose the ruling state and system but to create an imagination, a glimpse of the future society. A campaign of definite and concrete alternatives can only show a ray of hope to this great, diverse and dispersed productive force of Indian society – united by a general strike, expressing its existence and strength to the world. As the enemies say - Behind every strike lurks the hydra [monster] of revolution; it is our task to shake their fortress with the 9th July strike.