For over 100 years the monopoly capitalist class has ruled Canada through treachery, robbery and plunder. It has committed genocide against the Native Indian people, suppressed the people of Quebec by armed force, and viciously exploited the whole Canadian working class and people. When the people rise to defend themselves the monopoly capitalists reply with fascist repression and massive conspiracies to strengthen their dictatorship and divide the ranks of the working and oppressed people.
The reactionary government of the monopoly capitalist class has made it known that:
1) The proletariat has no right to fight against capitalist exploitation.
2) The proletariat has no right to organise itself into associations of its choice.
3) The proletariat must remain a slave class under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
4) The native Indian people have no hereditary rights.
5) The people of Quebec have no right to national liberation.
To this end they use their state – its laws, its police, its jails – to suppress the working class. This for them is “just” because the workers are “disturbing the social peace” of society and are “engaging in class struggle”. The working class for them, however, has no right to resist. Unable to solve any of the social problems which it has created, this ruling class is escalating the most unbridled violence with its laws.and its clubs and thinks that it can cow down the people in such a manner. For the working people to defend themselves, this state, its laws, its police forces and all its instruments must be terminated. Political power must be seized from the hands of this moribund ruling class and the class of producers, the working class, must constitute itself as the ruling class and rebuild the country in its own image, and not in the image of the bourgeoisie.
Previously the Internationalists and now the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), have fought the bourgeois elements tooth and nail for years. The entire historical experience of our organisation has taught us two basic lessons:
1) We must struggle against the bourgeoisie if we are to accomplish anything, and,
2) We must continue opposition to the bourgeoisie if we are to consolidate the fruits of the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle.
There are comrades in our midst for whom the struggle against the bourgeoisie means struggle in the abstract. That is, there is a monopoly capitalist class out there against whom we launch struggle. So, we participate in some actions, exhaust our ranks and then settle down, pessimistic that the monopoly capitalist class is too all-powerful and cannot be defeated. To see the monopoly capitalist class as the enemy in the abstract, not to see the concrete manifestations of the monopoly capitalist class amongst the people and not to fight these manifestations is not to begin the struggle against the enemy at all.The monopoly capitalist class rule is concrete: there is a state machine with its armed force and its courts; there is parliament and all the legislation passed therein; there is a civil force servicing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the people on behalf of the monopoly capitalist class; there are educational institutions, news media and other aspects of the cultural superstructure, social workers and priests; there are labour aristocrats, the holy alliance of the “left” and above all the iron control of the relations of production over the labouring masses. This entire manifestation of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is very real. To struggle against the bourgeoisie means to build the organisation of the working class which is, at once, opposed to all the ideology, politics, culture and the state of the monopoly capitalist class.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in its Manifesto presents its first mission as the overthrowing of the monopoly capitalist class as the ruling class and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) bases its programme on the immediate needs of the proletariat and the strategic needs of the proletariat. It analyses the concrete conditions and presents the political line to actually struggle against the monopoly capitalist class on the fronts which are decisive in developing the objective class struggle. Take for example the need to organise and establish the Party. This need has not been felt because of reading a book or listening to some speaker who concocted it. Instead, it has been the concrete experience of the youth and student movement, the working class movement, the struggle of the Native people and the experience of the national liberation struggle of the people of Quebec that “without a revolutionary party based on revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”. So the task of all revolutionaries is to build this Party. To build this Party is to struggle against the enemy, and not to do so is to be either neutral in the class struggle (thaf is to passively support the enemy) or to be an avowed spokesman of the enemy. The holy alliance of the “left” with their declared theory that “the party will emerge from the mass movement” like rats originating from hay is the theory that is actively promoted to stop the building of the Party. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the monopoly capitalists financed sociologists to write books expounding the theory that “ideology” has come to an end, that there is no more proletarian ideology. A trotskyist organisation in the United States rewrote it this way: “The ideology developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao, through their participation in revolution, has come to an end what is needed is a new ideology”. That is, there is a necessity to combat the Marxist-Leninist ideological positions. The ideologues of this line have been proven wrong by history and have been discarded by the developing revolutionary mass movement. Also, during the 1950s and 1960s, the monopoly capitalist class financed sociologists to write books to prove that the working class is not the revolutionary class. The holy alliance, of course, peddled this theory against the working class. The development of revolutionary consciousness in the working class also smashed this theory and with it went the theory that “the lumpen proletariat is the revolutionary class”, etc. During the 1950s and 1960s the monopoly capitalists financed sociologists to write books saying that there was no longer any need for a revolutionary party. The holy alliance of the “left” of course, picked up and did propaganda for it. The developing revolutionary mass movement also rejected this sinister theory. Now when the air is a bit cleaner, a new holy alliance is emerging, with the old holy alliance theories but in rewritten form in terms of ideology, they don’t say there is no need for ideology, they say “we should take a critical attitude towards it”. In terms of the working class, they don’t say that it is not a revolutionary class but that “workers are all preoccupied with ’making it’ ”, and lastly, they do not directly oppose the building of the Party as a concept but oppose building it in practice. They hold that the “Party will emerge out of the mass movement”. All these theories are financed by the monopoly capitalist class, supported by the state apparatus and popularised by the educational institutions and the news media of the monopoly capitalist class. This clearly shows that those who advocate those theories are not really opposing the monopoly capitalist class, but, in fact, are supporting the monopoly capitalist class. To suggest that they are struggling against the bourgeoisie is to make a serious mistake.
Struggle against the bourgeoisie is not abstract but concrete. Building the Party is concrete opposition to the bourgeoisie. Wherever the Party was strong and organised struggles, the struggles, instead of being liquidated, flourished. Enthusiasm was generated amongst the people to engage the bourgeoisie in struggle. This was the case when the Internationalists were reorganised in Montreal in May 1968. Without the founding of the Internationalists, Montreal was a den of bourgeois “revolutionaries”, terrorists on the one hand and reformists on the other. With the establishment of the Internationalists, both reformism and terrorism were opposed and revolutionaries seriously began struggle against the bourgeoisie.