World Socialist Party of India | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Leader | None |
| Founded | 1995 |
| Split from | Communist Party of India (Marxist) |
| Ideology | Impossibilism Classical Marxism Socialism |
| International affiliation | World Socialist Movement (1995–2003; 2014–present) |
| Colours | Red |
| Website | |
| worldsocialistpartyindia | |
The World Socialist Party of India (WSPI) is an Indian political party founded in 1995.
Founded in March 1995 in Calcutta by members of the Marxist International Correspondence Circle (May 1990) in collaboration with the Bengali language journal Lal Pataka group (January 1983), having broken away from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1982, the WSPI inaugurated on 1–3 March 1995 in the Students Hall, College Squire, Calcutta.
Adopting the Object and the Declaration of Principles as laid down in 1904 by the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) as the basis, the party appreciated the SPGB for its opposition to the world wars on grounds of class and description of Russia in 1918 as "state capitalist". Like the SPGB, it has no leadership.
The party was founded with the help of the SPGB and formally established themselves as a companion party of the World Socialist Movement (WSM) in 1995. In common with other parties of the WSM, it was formed as a revolutionary party opposed to Leninism and seeking to win control of the state by parliamentary means in order to abolish it and establish socialism on a worldwide scale.
The party was the only WSM party in Asia until the 9th Annual Congress in February 2003 when it requested to affiliate to Socialist Studies which lasted for five years. [1] This resulted in a split called the World Socialist Group who remained with the WSM. However, the party applied to rejoin the WSM and was ratified by Executive Committee of the SPGB on 5 May 2014. [2]
The Bolsheviks, also known in English as the Bolshevists, were a radical, far-left, and revolutionary Marxist faction founded by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov that split from the Menshevik faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898, at its Second Party Congress in 1903.
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology and the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Marxism–Leninism was the formal name of the official state ideology adopted by the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc and various self-declared scientific socialist regimes in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War as well as the Communist International after Bolshevisation. Today, Marxism–Leninism is the ideology of several communist parties and remains the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam as unitary one-party socialist republics and of Nepal in a people's multiparty democracy. Generally, Marxist–Leninists support proletarian internationalism, socialist democracy and oppose anarchism, fascism, imperialism and liberal democracy. Marxism–Leninism holds that a two-stage communist revolution is needed to replace capitalism. A vanguard party, organised hierarchically through democratic centralism, would seize power "on behalf of the proletariat" and establish a communist party-led socialist state, which it claims to represent the dictatorship of the proletariat. The state would control the economy and means of production, suppress the bourgeoisie, counter-revolution and opposition, promote collectivism in society and pave the way for an eventual communist society, which would be both classless and stateless. As a result, Marxist–Leninist states have been commonly referred to by Western academics as communist states.
State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are organized and managed as state-owned enterprises, or where there is otherwise a dominance of corporatized government agencies or of public companies such as publicly listed corporations in which the state has controlling shares. Marxist literature defines state capitalism as a social system combining capitalism with ownership or control by a state. By this definition, a state capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts like a single huge corporation, extracting the surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production. This designation applies, in the opinion of some Marxists, regardless of the political aims of the state. Many scholars argue that the economy of the Soviet Union and of the Eastern Bloc countries modeled after it, including Maoist China, were state capitalist systems. They also argue that the current economy of China constitutes a form of state capitalism.
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Comintern after Bolshevisation and the communist states within the Comecon, the Eastern Bloc and the Warsaw Pact. Marxism–Leninism remains the ideology of several communist states around the world and the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam.
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International (1919–1943), was an international organization that advocated world communism. It was controlled by the Soviet Union. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state". The Comintern was preceded by the 1916 dissolution of the Second International.
The World Socialist Party of New Zealand (WSPNZ) is a revolutionary socialist and anti-Leninist political party in New Zealand founded in 1930 as the Socialist Party of New Zealand (SPNZ).
Socialist Studies is the name of a quarterly socialist periodical and of the group which publishes it. The group was founded in 1991 by sixteen expelled members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) who claim that their expulsions were the result of an anti-socialist conspiracy. Though small, the group has remained an active and vocal critic of the SPGB since its inception.
Jack Fitzgerald was a founder member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
Jack Kent was a British politician and an important figure in the early history of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
Adam Lewis Buick is a prominent London-based socialist.
The Socialist Propaganda League was a tiny socialist group active in London from circa 1911 to 1951.
Edgar Richard "Hardy" Hardcastle was a theoretician of Marxist economics.
Communism is a philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state. As such, communism is a specific form of socialism.
Impossibilism is a Marxist theory that stresses the limited value of political, economic, and social reforms under capitalism. As a doctrine, impossibilism views the pursuit of such reforms as counterproductive to the goal of achieving socialism as they stabilize, and therefore strengthen, support for capitalism. Impossibilism holds that reforms to capitalism are irrelevant or outright counter-productive to the goal of achieving socialism and should not be a major focus of socialist politics.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1904 as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and opposes both Leninism and reformism. It holds that countries which claimed to have established socialism had only established "state capitalism" and was one of the first to describe the Soviet Union as state capitalist. The party's political position has been described as a form of impossibilism.
The World Socialist Movement (WSM) is an international organisation of socialist parties created in 1904 with the founding of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB).
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Portugal, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
The World Socialist Party (Ireland), founded as the Socialist Party of Ireland in 1949 before changing its name a decade later, was a Marxist political party in the impossibilist tradition. It was a companion party of the World Socialist Movement (WSM) and was closely connected to the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB). The party's offices were in Belfast and it was most active in Northern Ireland, although it was also active in the Republic of Ireland. The party participated in elections in Northern Ireland, but without success. Socialist View was the party's newspaper. The party disbanded in the 1990s.
Charu Mihir Sarkar was an Indian politician. He was a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from 1967–1971 and served as Minister in the 1967 and the 1969 United Front state cabinet.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Marxism: