What is the difference between CPI and CPIM?

Answer 1

The Indian Communist movement, like any other working class movement elsewhere in the world, drew inspiration from the Bolshevik revolution took place in Russia in 1917. India was trying hard to free herself from the clutches of political bondage when several communist groups entered the scene. Most of the communist parties functional in the country, except the CPI and the SUCI argue that it was on October 17, 1920 the first Communist party was founded in Tashkent.

But even prior to the October revolution, the Indian revolutionaries based in Germany and Afghanistan, with their headquarters in San Francisco, formed the Gadhar party in 1913-14 with the objective of liberating India from British rule. In the period of 1905-1907 a circle of Indian revolutionaries in exile, was set up in London and then in Paris. These emigres established close contacts with the Bolshevik Party. The Gadhar Party workers had, during the first world war, started organising infiltration into the ranks of the British Army to organise a revolution. They had been brutally suppressed. Many had been sent to the gallows, while others sent to the dark cells of the Cellular jail in the Andamans.

But there were some other radical groups holding Leftist ideology being operational in the country. They co-existed with the communist party owing allegiance to the USSR. The groups led by Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose and the likes fall in this category who were very sceptical about the ways of Stalin and the USSR.

The point I try to make here is that there have always been many communist groups and parties those want to dismantle the system and construct something ideal in its place. But they differ on certain points. And these differences form the very basis of their being separate entities. In fact the class content and the class position of Left-wing groups and parties define their strategy, tactics and the nature of their ultimate goal of a new society, ie, party programme, the stages of transformation tom a new society the party envisages.

The major difference between the CPI, CPI(M), CPI (ML), and the CPI (Maoist) is the different programmes of the respective parties. The CPI(M) emerged out of a division within the Communist Party of India (CPI) in the backdrop of Sino-USSR split. The USSR was slowly drifting towards the policy of class collaboration instead of the policy of class war. The CPI leaders were also of the opinion that the party programme should also be changed in accordance with the change of Soviet party's attitude. They advocated the party of working class should align with the party of bourgeoisie, the Congress party which had been ruling the country since independence. They argued for the programme of national democracy instead of people's democracy. The CPI had adopted national democracy as its programme while the CPI(M) still holds people's democracy as its programme.