Presenting himself as an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist until his death, Bains acted as the spokesperson and ideological leader of the CPC(M-L), known in elections as the Marxist–Leninist Party of Canada.

During his lifetime, Bains's outlook was initially heavily influenced by Maoism until the Sino-Albanian split, where he then became closely aligned with Hoxhaism and the government of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.

[2] In 1963, he helped found "The Internationalists",[3] which evolved from a UBC political discussion group into an anti-revisionist organization that supported Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet split.

While the Irish Communist Organisation disagreed with the other delegates and walked out of the meeting,[8] Bains became known as a leader of the anti-revisionist movement internationally,[9] and assisted in establishing Marxist–Leninist parties around the world.

Following the leadership of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA), he became a prominent spokesperson of the PLA's line internationally, agreeing with the conclusion that numerous communist parties had devolved into "social imperialism" (such as Leonid Brezhnev's USSR, Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia, Kim Il Sung's North Korea and Fidel Castro's Cuba), while condemning Chinese revisionism, and Eurocommunism.

After his death, a memorial was erected in the honour of Bains and other CPC(M-L) "fallen comrades" in Ottawa's Beechwood Cemetery.

Poet George Elliot Clarke published a poem titled "Homage to Hardial Bains" in 2000 in the Oyster Boy Review.

[13] Bains wrote several books, including Necessity for Change!, Modern Communism, Visiting Cuba, If You Love Your Class and Thinking About the Sixties, as well as many articles, pamphlets and speeches.

Formulated in the early 1960s, NFC thought brought together a variety of Marxist phraseology and addressed some existentialist ideas popular during that time.

"A successful revolution can transform the world in some very definite direction, but whether it will happen, in the final analysis, is still dependent on the world," Bains wrote, arguing that "Unless it is profoundly appreciated that there is a Necessity for Change at each point [in history and the struggle], and theoretical and practical measures are taken to bring about the change, there is no possibility of creating the subjective conditions for revolution.