Desperately seeking an element to boost their sagging morale, the two communist parties -- the CPI and the CPI-M -- have come forward to host the 11th International Meet of the Communist and Workers Parties in India. The meet will be held in Delhi on November 20-22.
The decision to host the meet was taken by the Communists when they had a sizeable presence in Parliament. But in the recent general elections, the combined strength of the four Left parties in Parliament has reduced to 25 from the earlier 61 members.
According to sources close to the CPI-M central leadership, the setback had forced them to think again about whether they should go along with the initial decision of organising the meet or not.
"We did not anticipate the kind of setback we had faced in the elections. So, there was some hesitation on our part as to whether we should go ahead with this kind of meet," confided one Left leader.
Finally, they decided to stick to their original plan, but with less pomp.
At least 100 delegates from 67 countries representing 81 parties will come to Delhi to take part in the three-day meet. According to party sources, prominent leaders from Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, France, Portugal, Greece and Russia will attend the meet.
The agenda of the conference is to discuss 'The Crisis of Capitalism and the Role of the Communist and Workers Parties for building an alternative' to that.
After the demise of Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Socialist Bloc in East Europe -- the communist parties all over the world suffered a serious setback. The Chinese Communist Party compounded the crisis as it turned inward and took the capitalist road.
But the revival of Left movement in Latin America gave the much-needed oxygen to the international communist and workers movement. Thus the first such meet of the various communist and workers parties took place in Athens in 1999, almost a decade after the demise of Soviet Union.
Thereafter, the participant countries decided to meet annually. After holding the first seven annual meets in Greece, it shifted its venue to Portugal, then Belarus, and finally last year the meeting was held at Sao Paolo, Brazil.
In the initial years of the meeting, the talks were more on the crisis of the international communist and working class movement. Later on, with series of electoral victories in Latin America by the Left, the talk veered around the growing menace of US imperialism.
Finally, the global meltdown has emboldened the Communists to focus on the 'Crisis of Capitalism', which is the central theme of this year's conference. Initially, the Kerala unit of the CPI-M offered to host the conference in their state.
But the party's central leadership did not agree to that proposal as the party in the state is beset with serious infighting between the chief minister V S Achuthanandan and the state party secretary P Vijayan, and instead decided to organise the meet in Delhi.
At a time when the Left in both Kerala and West Bengal is facing a major political crisis, the leadership is pinning much hope on the international conference to restore some of their lost prestige.
