The workers, peasants, women and youth of India are waging an extremely difficult struggle today, in defence of their livelihood and rights, against the stepped up attacks by the bourgeoisie. All over the country, workers are fighting against privatisation, closures, layoffs, contract labour, intensified exploitation and insecurity of employment. Peasants are rising up in opposition to the penetration, domination and plunder of agriculture by the multinational and Indian monopoly companies in the name of liberalisation and globalisation. Broad masses of people are fighting against the terror unleashed on them by the armed forces of the Indian state. They are fighting against the remnants of feudalism, including the hated Brahmanical caste system that continues to oppress the toilers…

Kanpur Resolution, 25 December, 2000:

One working class, one program, one communist party!

1. 

   The workers, peasants, women and youth of India are waging an extremely difficult struggle today, in defence of their livelihood and rights, against the stepped up attacks by the bourgeoisie. All over the country, workers are fighting against privatisation, closures, layoffs, contract labour, intensified exploitation and insecurity of employment. Peasants are rising up in opposition to the penetration, domination and plunder of agriculture by the multinational and Indian monopoly companies in the name of liberalisation and globalisation. Broad masses of people are fighting against the terror unleashed on them by the armed forces of the Indian state. They are fighting against the remnants of feudalism, including the hated Brahmanical caste system that continues to oppress the toilers.
    

2. There are many parties, including some within the communist movement, that are promising to end the miseries of the people if only they are voted to power. But life experience has shown that whichever party runs the government, it is only the program of the big bourgeoisie that gets implemented. It is capitalism that keeps growing. It is the big bourgeoisie that wields political power. The state — that is, the bureaucracy and armed forces, the courts and jails — serves to preserve the rule of capital and suppress any challenge to this rule. The multi-party democracy and party dominated political process serve to keep the toiling masses out of power.
    
3. The solution to the problems of growing exploitation ad oppression of the workers and peasants lies in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. Such a transformation of society is only possible if the working class leads all the oppressed in one united struggle to smash the oppressive Indian state and establish a new state of the workers and peasants. To do so, it is essential that the working class is united as one political force around this singular aim, with one revolutionary Communist Party at its head.
    
4. What the Indian working class needs today is not any parliamentary party that is interested only in their votes. Those in the communist movement who have merged themselves with bourgeois parliamentary democracy have reduced communism to a policy objective, which is always out of reach. The working class needs a revolutionary Communist Party that would arm the class ideologically and organisationally to consistently battle and defeat the bourgeoisie.
    
5. Restoration of unity of Indian communists in one revolutionary Communist Party is the urgent need of the hour today. Unity of communists can only be established on the basis of intensifying the struggle against privatisation and liberalisation today, not by giving up this struggle and reconciling to put up with the status quo. Unity of communists can be restored only on the basis of a resolute struggle against those in the communist movement who are conciliating with bourgeois ideology and tailing some “progressive” section of the bourgeoisie.
    
6. Taking the above into consideration, we the communists and Indian patriots who have assembled in Kanpur on December 25, 2000, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party in India,

Resolve to

 

• Work towards the restoration of unity of Indian communists, by pooling the energies of all revolutionary communists to provide unified leadership to the struggles of the working class and all the oppressed;

• Oppose and expose those in the working class and communist movement who are creating illusions about a parliamentary front with some “progressive” section of the bourgeoisie at this time; and

• Build organisations of class struggle among workers, peasants, women and youth, to intensify the struggle against liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation and the capitalist offensive, to work tirelessly to advance the alternative program of the working class, with the revolutionary perspective of overthrowing capitalism, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat and building

 

See also Publication: Kanpur Communist Conference 2000: Only Communism Can Save India!