The great Naxalbari Struggle dealt a serious blow to revisionist-reformist trends within the Indian Communist movement. Following it at the time of the formation of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) itself discussions about the struggles to be waged in the trade union front were initiated. In the second meeting of it a resolution on our tasks in the trade union front was adopted unanimously. It called for building up a broad based working class movement with revolutionary orientation fighting against all shades of economism, reformism and parliamentarism.

But by the time of the formation of the CPI (ML), in the Ninth Congress of the CPC in 1969 an extreme left sectarian position based on a basically wrong evaluation of present era, under-estimating the strength of the imperialist camp and calling for a path of quick victory had gained domination in the movement. As a result, CPI (ML) arrived at sectarian positions contrary to the teachings of the Third International and the Great Debate positions of 1963. It rejected all class and mass organisations as highways leading to revisionism. As a result the resolution adopted by the second session of the AICCTU was in effect rejected. All activities in the trade union front were abandoned.

On giving a correct Orientation to the Working Class Movement

Presently the Marxist-Leninist forces in India are engaged in a crucial struggle to reorganise the Communist Movement on bolshevik lines taking lessons from Third International and Great Debate positions in ideological, political and practical fields. As a part of thus building the party surrounded by class and mass organisations, serious efforts to overcome the sectarian errors and to build up a powerful working class movement are being made. It calls for putting forward a correct ideological-political line combatting both right opportunism and "left" sectarianism, and developing both theory and practice based on a concrete analysis of the concrete situation.

Overcoming the reformist-revisionist-opportunist influences and making the proletariat class conscious means mobilising it on correct political slogans and linking its struggles with the concept of capture of political power. The state character has to be exposed continuously.Through and along with this workers’ struggle against the state its class consciousness has to be developed. It is not an easy task to overcome the alien tendencies entrenched within the movement for decades. Especially when the revolutionary working class movement and the international communist movement leading it have suffered serious setbacks, and especially when the great significance of projecting the struggle of the socialist forces against imperialism is neglected, this task is going to be a momentous one. That is why the revolutionary forces should delve deep into the reasons for past shortcomings and develop a revolutionay perspective for the future.

Marx and Engels in the process of a deep analysis of the economic structure of capitalism reached the conclusion that this social system contained the seeds of its own collapse and that a new social system, socialism, would replace it. They discovered that the proletariat, the working class, is the leading social force destined to bring about the great social transformation of abolishing capitalism and building socialism. The Communist Manifesto (1848) stated : "Not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself, it has also called into existence the class which is to wield these weapons, the modern working class, the proletarians. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates the products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable".

In the first place, being the most exploited class in bourgeois society, the working class, owing to its very conditions of life, becomes the most consistent and irreconciliable opponent of the capitalist order. Their vital class interests impel the workers to an implacable struggle against capitalism. Marx and Engels emphasised that "of all classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class". Workers by their very position in production are connected not with its past but with its future and consequently with the future of the whole of society.

It means, in the first place, that the development of the material basis of capitalism -large scale industry - does not threaten the existence of the proletariat as a class, does not undermine its position in society, but, on the contrary, leads to an increase in number of workers and enhance their role in the life of society.

It means, furthermore, that the interests and aspirations of the working class coincide with the main trend in the development of the productive forces. The level of development of these forces attained under capitalism requires the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. And it is the working class that is destined to carry out this task. As Marx and Engels put it, the bourgeoisie executes the sentence which private ownership passes on itself by engendering the proletariat. As a matter of fact the working class is the only class that has no part in the ownership of the means of production and therefore does not need to attach any value to it. Moreover, since the private ownership of the means of production forms the basis for exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, its abolition and replacement by social ownership, i.e. by socialism, is the only way to liberate the working class. Lastly, in concluding that it was the working class that was destined to destroy capitalism and build socialism, Marx and Engels also based themselves on the fact that it was the only class possessing the fighting qualities needed to accomplish so great an historical objective.

First of all the working class has the advantage of mass. It is one of the most numerous and rapidly growing classes in capitalist society. Secondly, by virtue of the very conditions of its life and labour the working class is capable of the highest degree of organisation. Thirdly, the work at large enterprises daily instils in the workers such qualities as the spirit of collectivism, capacity for strict discipline, united action, and mutual aid and support. These qualities are invaluable not only when engaged in labour but in the field of struggles also. By gathering thousands of workers under the roofs of plants and factories, which generally are located in large cities, the capitalists themselves help the workers to overcome the disunion and isolation that was and is the curse of the other mass movements of the working people, especially the peasant movement. Workers lend themselves to organisation and union more readily than any other classes. Besides, among all oppressed classes, the working class is most capable of realising is special position in society and its class interests, and of adopting an advanced, scientific world outlook. The conditions of class struggle in the capitalis epoch requires a much higher political consciousness, which is acquired not only and not so much from books as from experience in labour and in struggle. The best minds of the revolutionary intelligentia come over to the side of the working class and help it to evolve a scientific, revolutionary world outlook,which by becoming the property of millions of workers grows into a prodigious force. Its high degree of class consciousness as well as its more highly developed organisation make the working class the most militant and revolutionary class of society. Because of these qualities the working class is capable of fulfilling the mission of abolishing capitalism and replacing it by socialism. Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto : "All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independant movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority".

In building its "class-conscious independent movement of the vast majority" the working class at no time abandons in any way its basic positions and doesn’t think of sinking its differences with the bourgeoisie. Lenin wrote in the prerevolutionary Russian context: "Any worker who is at all class-conscious knows fully well that the people struggling against the autocracy consist of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is very keen on freedom, it is making a great stir about it, writing in the press, and addressing meetings against the autocracy. Yet is there a person so naive who does not understand that the bourgeoisie will never give up private ownership of the land and of capital, but, on the contrary, will fight to the last ditch to retain it against the encroachment of the workers? For the worker to abandon differences on questions of principles with the bourgeoisie, along with which he is fighting the autocracy, is tantamount to abandoning socialism, to abandoning the idea of socialism and the preparatory work for socialism. For the worker, in short, it means abandoning the idea of his economic emancipation, the emancipation of the working people from poverty and oppression. All over the world, the bourgeoisie struggled for freedom, which it won largely with the hands of the workers, only thereafter to launch a furious struggle against socialism. Therefore the appeal to sink differences (that is to adopt the path of class collaboration-Ed) is a bourgeois appeal" (Lenin, C. W. Vol.5, p.503).

Today the imperialist bourgeoisie as well as the comprador bourgeoisie in the neo-colonies have once for all abandoned the path of even struggling against autocracy. They are themselves becoming more and more autocratic and fascistic abandoning even the earlier limited bourgeois democratic positions. Working class should build op their movement with the awareness that they alone can give leadership to raise the banner of democracy and socialism today, and that in achieving them they have to wage a no holds barred struggle against imperialist bourgeoisie at the international level, uniting all class brothers internationally, and against the native comprador bourgeoisie, for winning political power to realise democracy and socialism within their own country as a part of the world socialist revolution.

For developing this consciousness, a historical understanding about the main trends of proletarian class struggle from the beginning of capitalist epoch, especially from the beginning of 19th century when the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat started reaching higher levels with the development of scientific socialist consciousness and of the proletarian parties with an internationalist approach, is necessary. The workers’ parties, and the working class organisations under their leadership having various structural forms, and diverse ideological and politicial hues and orientations that existed or came into existence by the turn of the 19^th century, worked on the task of elementary level organisation of the proletariat and worked for expanding the influence of socialism. Side by side they waged a struggle for the improvement of the living condition of the working people.

But in the new historical situation they were unable to prepare the working class for socialist revolution in these capitalist countries, to rally allies around it, to head all the revolutionary forces, and to ensure the winning of political power by the proletariat. As they were inadequately centralised, these parties disregarded the principle of ideological unity and cohesion of the party ranks and dit not venture to purge themselves of the revisionists, who under the ‘Motto of freedom of criticism’ were trying to erode the political centralisation from within. In 1904, Lenin wrote about this "fundamental characteristics of opportunism in matters of organisation" (C. W. Vol. 7, p. 397)

By the early years of the 20th century, with the beginning of the imperialist era, the situation demanded revolutionary workers’ parties of a new type capable of leading and bringing to a victorious completion the struggle against the monopoly bourgeoisie, which to preserve its rule had set up a ramified repressive state apparatus, a powerful military machine, and an armoury of economic, political and ideoligical means for disuniting and disarming the working people. The new type of workers’ party capable of leading the working class had to be not only the advanced, organised and politically conscious part of the working class, but also the highest form of its organisation, directing all other proletarian organisations and all forms of struggles by the proletariat.

During this period, with the pre-monopoly capitalism’s evolution into imperialism, it became imperative that the working class should raise the level of struggle against the new forms of exploitation and the overall intensification of economic and political oppression. So this period marked the struggle against the right opportunist line of the second International leadership for building proletarian revolutionary parties capable of leading socialist revolutions in the capitalist imperialist countries and democratic revolutions in the Asian, African, Latin-American countries under colonial plunder and oppression - both these trends of revolution forming integral parts of the world socialist revolution - as well as organise and lead the proletariat and other toiling masses for democracy and socialism. The struggle on all these fronts under the leadership of the CPSU guided by Lenin led to the victory of great October Revolution, to the formation of the Third International, and to the formation of communist parties all over the world surrounded by revolutionary class and mass organisations.

These advances were a real break through from the period of the stagnancy faced by the revolutionary movement by the first decade of this century. And on organising trade unions as a part of the activities during this period, Lenin wrote "Trade Union Organisations not only can be of tremendous value in developing and consolidating the economic struggle, but can also become a very important auxiliary to political agitation and revolutionary organisation" (C. W., Vol. 5, p. 456). In developing trade unions on these lines, struggle between the revolutionary and the right opportunist, revisionist trends soon became necessary. Tendencies like pure trade-unionism of absolute bourgeois type which began to surface even in the policies of trade unions that originally had a revolutionary class orientation had to be fought against. Similarly institutionalisation of trade unions as well as their bureaucratisation had to be fought against.

Another reformist tendency surfaced during this period was the anti-strike attitude, which tamed the trade unions to settle disputes only by peaceful means suiting to the interests of the bourgeoisie. Yet another dangerous trend was anarcho-syndicalism which Lenin called "revisionism from the left". Although it sprang from the desire of the working people, fed-up with the reformist tendencies among trade union leaders, for vigourous action, an anarcho-syndicalism, just as anarchism in general, was an expression of the anger, impatience and vacillations of the petti-bourgeoisie that saw no future prospectus. Because of their left adventurist actions and verbiage, the anarcho-syndicalists were a serious obstacle to proper action by the trade unions in acting together with the revolutionary parties. In the name of autonomy, decentralisation of trade unions and denunciation of mutual-benefit, they damaged the organisational work for setting up large and strong trade union centres.

During this period, the opportunists in the trade union movement proclaimed neutrality of the trade unions, dissociating them from the proletarian parties. That went against the vital interests of the working class, because without close association with the workers’ parties the trade unions could not fight in the long run and at a broader scale against the ferocious attacks aimed at them.

All these and many other similar opportunist trends though were fought against and dealt serious blows to during the period of the Third International, came back with renewed vigour in the post-World War II years, especially after the emergence of Krushchevite revisionism in the 1950s inflicting serious setbacks on the international communist movement. In the early 1960s under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), guided by Mao Tsetung, through the 1963 Great Debate positions, once again there was a serious effort on the part of the Marxist-Leninist forces to combat these non-class opportunist trends.

But the emergence of the Lin Piaoist trend within the CPC by the time of its 1969 Ninth Congress with its extremely sectarian and idealist positions did incalcuable damage to the working class movement. Under its influence the necessity for building trade unions was rejected. Almost during this time various other tendencies, projecting every other section of classes in society except the working class as leader of the revolution, also surfaced. As a result the trade union movement almost as a whole was abandoned to the control of reactionaries, revisionists, reformists and opportunists. Even now there are quite a large number of political organisations, parties and groups in numerous countries, who call themselves Marxist-Leninist, who strongly reject the task of building trade unions and the role of the working class as the leader of the revolution. Without fighting uncompromisingly against this extreme sectarian trend, it is impossible to rebuild the working class movement firmly on revolutionary class positions making it capable of shouldering the great, historic tasks in front of it in this period when the contractions between capital and labour in the imperialist countries, between imperialism and people of the neo-colonies, and between the capitalist imperialist system and socialism as a whole have intensified to extreme levels calling for immediate solution.

May 1998