User:Khawaga/Kamunist Kranti

Kamunist Kranti (hindi for communist revolution) is an Indian communist/ ultra-left group based in Faridabad. The activities of the group has been anchored to the publication of the monthly Hindi language newspaper Faridabar Majdoor Samachar (FMS) and its distribution among Faridabad's working class.

Background
The group was founded in 198?, but has roots stretching back to the 1970s. The earliest origins of Kamunist Kranti can be found in the regroupment of the Indian Maoist movement following the Indira Ghandi state of emergency in 1975.

Over nearly 30 years of extended experiences of factory struggles in Faridabad they have moved from Maoism to anti-Stalinist vanguardism to anti-vanguardism. Based on their experiences they have articulated a critique of representation based critiques of large and spectacular struggles (such as strikes and demonstrations) in benefit of smaller "invisible" conflicts or "faceless resistance". Practically the group has abandoned involvement in traditional leftist initiatives in spearheading strikes etc. towards a strategy of smaller and less overt actions.

View on Strikes
Kamunist Kranti argues that large and open conflicts are an obstacle to the working class, e.g. they claim strikes have for decades been used as a weapon against the working class, not the opposite as is most often claimed. Against management work stoppage, be it on the level of a factory or larger, is not anymore a powerful weapon for the working class. On the contrary, management's lockout and management strikes are effective as means for attacking wage workers. The last 20 years has not seen a single strike, anywhere in the world, that has not resulted in wage reductions, retrenchments, work intensification or factory closures

Kamunist Kranti argues that strikes in India is a weapon in the hands of capital and management rather than the working class. If management wants to achieve e.g. wage cuts, layoffs or automation they provoke a strike or collude with the offical unions to start one. The 18-month 1981-83 Bombay textile strike of 250.000 workers, which lead to dozens of closures and massive layoffs, was a management provocation from start to finish according to Kamunist Kranti.

The group claims that a large masses of people - e.g. a strike or a demonstration/protest - seem like they are active, but that it is its representatives and leaders that do the thinking, makes decisions and give orders to the masses. Leaders call the protests, mass meetings are sites for struggles between trade union- and other leaders. All of this is an obstacle for real self-activity. Large spectacular confrontations are also easier targets for the state and management to control through the trade union hierarchy, or if necessary to be suppressed by violence.

Against this Kamunist Kranti has tried to develop and support a more everyday form of resistance that they observe every day, even among so-called apathetic workers that avoid the spectacular forms of struggle. The personal ties of friendship and family outside of work is also present at the work place and creates affinity groups. People help each other and create volumes of communication channels with other groups and association, something which can lead to collective forms of struggle developing.

As an example of this type of struggle the group mentions an incident where management had restricted the number of bathroom breaks, which lead the workers to urinate on the floor until that decision was reversed. Another example is when workers have been ordered to operate dangerous machinery without being trained in their safe use; while using the machinery they "accidentally" break the machines thereby proving that they need proper training.

The activity of the affinity groups range from mutual help to routine resistance against productivity and discipline, along with resistance and steps towards change that challenge hierarchy, competition, money relations and wage-slavery

Selected texts by Kamunist Kranti
| Self-Activity of Wage Workers - Towards a Critique of Representation & Delegation

| A Ballad Against Work

| Faribad Majdoor Samachar (FMS) - texts from Kamunist Kranti's newspaper

| Reflections on Marx’s Critique of Political Economy