Shramik Sangram Committee

History of the Origin of SSC

Through the late sixties of the last century, it gradually became apparent that the old left parties of India had already lent heavily towards reformism and opportunism when they participated in the bourgeoisie constitutional government, betrayed the rising workers’ movements, and lastly, acted as the agents of the ruling class during the so-called “freedom struggle” of Bangladesh; opposing this revisionist line, it was that time when a section from the CPI (M) had broken away to form the CPI (ML)& a broad section of revolutionaries from different parts of India had then joined in the new Party. It was such a time it was not easy to determine the correctness or incorrectness of a line before the powerful tide of the CPI (M-L). Still at that time, a very small group of revolutionaries in Bengal realised that by projecting the peasants as the leading class, the CPI (ML) was deviating from the politics of ‘working class hegemony’, thereby totally neglecting the task of organising the proletariat to prepare them for assuming the leadership of the movement for Socialism, thus the new party had neither the potential nor the promise to lead the movement from a correct position vis-à-vis the reformist revisionist line and build itself as the Party of the proletariat, i.e. a true Communist Party. To speak the truth, this small group was one of those very few who could firmly ignore the ‘revolutionary’ pull of the CPI (M-L) – blessed by the Chinese Party – in those days of 1970-71, who were courageous enough to fight against the two opposite but powerful trends of reformism-revisionism and left adventurism, and who, based on the working class ideology, upheld the necessity of building a true Proletarian Party in India. Since 1974, this small group started publication of the political-theoretical journal ‘Sandhikshan’, meaning the crossroads of times in Bengali. It was really a sandhikshan, as publication started at a time when the old Party was already dismissed, but the New was yet to be born. In addition to publishing 'Sandhikshan', they concentrated their activities to organise politically the industrial proletariats of Bengal & as part of this programme started to take active participation in the trade union struggles in a revolutionary way. Here also, it is to be noted that at that time, while old left parties continued to practice Trade Union activities in reformist revisionist lines, CPI (ML) continued Boycott of Trade Union activities as their political line. In 1978, a small groups of revolutionary industrial workers of Kolkata & its vicinity along with the activists of "Sandhikshan" journals formed Shramik Sangram Committee.