COMMUNICATIONS 61 in a government department or tea garden and mau^adari, or agency for collection of land revenue in the countryside. Both are evidently parasitic jobs requiring only a modicum of enterprise and productive skill.® The post-independence middle class has produced "more affluent and ambitious95 technicians, executives and bureaucrats, no doubt, but a true Assamese bourgeoisie, which, to repeat, owns and operates property on capitalist lines, continues to remain a rare species as before. And, even the strongest proponents of the 'regional bourgeoisie' categorization would hardly constitute it entirely with engineers, managers and (well or badly paid) clerks ! Thus, the class Gohain is dealing with is, in fact, none other than the petty-bourgeoisie, the old and unreliable friend of the proletariat. Its exercising a greater degree of access to and control over the financial resources of the state does not by any means transform it into a bourgeoisie in the usual sense of the term. At the best, the state becomes a source of its primitive accumulation. The control and power it exercises is not due to its ownership of property but by virtue of its function in the productive and administrative processes. When all is said and done, the difference between an engineer and a skilled apprentice in a factory is merely the difference between I IT and ITI. The sooner this confusion is ended, the better it is for both. Next, what is to be done with or about this petty-bourgeoisie then? Does this diddle class' fall among the friends of the toiling masses or among its enemies? Gohain5 s interpretation has, we feel, exaggerated the negative aspect of the Assamese middle class and does not say anything about its positive oppositional role to the forces under whom it also suffers exploitation. Does our struggle require the presence of some sections of the bourgeoisie in the broad people's democratic front under the leadership of the proletariat? If so, where will they come from, if the revolutionary possibilities of the Assamese middle class have been totally exhausted? Hiren Gohain's analysis is not very helpful in this respect. It is essential to remember that in case one believes that the present phase of our revolution is primarily anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, some sections outside the working class and the toiling peasantry— in particular, sections of the small and middle bourgeoise and salaried and professional people—do find a place in the revolutionary front, under the leadership of the proletariat. It is fairly obvious that the petty-bourgeoisie, not being a politically independent class, cannot be judged to be revolutionary, non-revolutionary or counter-revolutionary on the basis of its own movement. Its true character comes out only on examination of its role in relation to strong movements of the working class and other toiling masses. Unfortunately, petty-bourgeois intellectuals have been trying to condemn their class precisely on the basis of subjective assessment of such objective non-events as independent petty-bourgeois movements. Their very condemnation is a pathetic attempt to bestow upon this vacillating class a degree of