... The thirty-two points[1] which have been raised by our comrades working in L’Association Nationale des Etudiants du Quebec (ANEQ) boil down to one point – whether ANEQ is part of the “conscious and systematic movement of the proletariat towards a definite goal”[2] or it is detached from it. In other words, does ANEQ work for the achievement of the strategic aims of the proletariat or is it neutral or opposed to the achievement of the strategic aims of the proletariat? This is the issue. One of the leading comrades of ANEQ draws our attention to the “present level of class struggle in Quebec”, but then he fails to analyze this “present level of class struggle in Quebec”. He fails to discuss the strategic aims of the proletariat; in fact, he makes no mention of it whatsoever. Instead, he sums up the work of ANEQ by detaching it from the working class movement and emphasizes certain problems ANEQ is having, without discussing the aims of ANEQ and how these aims work for the same strategic goals as the goals of the proletariat.
Here is how our comrade looks at the problems of ANEQ: 1. He explains that “as the economic crisis deepens”, the “monopoly capitalist class escalates its attacks against the people”. But he does not analyze how the proletariat and other working people are fighting, and how the struggle of the students can only be studied in the light of the class struggle against U.S. imperialism and Canadian monopoly capitalism.
2. He does, however, acknowledge the difficulties faced by the students:
– “Students lately have had many problems to solve, problems which are imposed by the sharpness of class struggle.”
– “Many struggles erupted in the student movement where the students were impotent to deal with the ’complexity’ of the situation,” etc.
However, he neither presents the cause of this “impotency”, nor does he provide a solution to the problem, but merely asserts that the students were “unwilling” to examine their difficulties.
3. Then he reaches the absurd conclusion that the students “were not able to give themselves correct guidelines”, and that students blame themselves for the “lack of carrying out a conscious programme.”
4. And the reason why the students “were not able to give themselves correct guidelines” was because the students did not “study carefully certain important theoretical questions” and that one of the sources of their difficulty was “their refusal” to split with the “spirit of subservience to spontaneous struggles”.
Our comrade completely detaches ANEQ from the working class movement and arrives at these four erroneous conclusions: 1) Instead of analyzing the work of ANEQ as part of the working class movement, he studies it independent of the “conscious and systematic movement of the proletariat towards a definite goal.” This means that he fails to study the role of non-Party mass organizations in proletarian revolution. 2) He fails to study the work of ANEQ in the light of the leadership provided by Mouvement Etudiant Quebecois (MEQ), thus missing the opportunity to examine the role of MEQ, a Party organization, in ANEQ. 3) He fails to sum up the role of the Party in leading the work of ANEQ, thus refuses to grasp that the Party leads all sections of the people. 4) Finally, he underestimates both the role of the Party, and the Party organization MEQ, in providing the proletarian revolutionary line to ANEQ. On the contrary, he alludes to students overcoming their problems by splitting with the “spirit of subservience to spontaneous struggles” and by studying “carefully certain important theoretical questions”.
Other comrades working in ANEQ make the same mistakes. They state that:
1. “The situation is quite different from what it was when ANEQ
was about to be formed ...”
2. “It is no longer sufficient for ANEQ to go around and say that it
defends the basic interests of the students and stop there.”
3. What is needed “is the creation of political groups in the student movement” and “content for the movement”.
4. ANEQ should be “far more political than it was before – making it an open anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and necessarily anti-revisionist organization”.
In other words, for ANEQ “to go around and say that it defends the basic interests of the students and stop there” means that it lacks “content”, is not sufficiently “political”, and that it is not sufficiently “anti-imperialist”, “anti-fascist” and “anti-revisionist”. Thus you will have, following this line of thinking, falsification of the role of non-Party mass organizations, the role of the Party organization MEQ in the student movement, the role of the Party in leading the students, and you will give rise to an organization which is “leftist” in phraseology but rightist in essence, completely paralyzed by its own erroneous line. If you follow this line of thinking in practice, you will liquidate the student movement and ANEQ, as well as damage the Party’s work with the students.
When you discuss the conditions prevailing at the time of the formation of ANEQ, you correctly sum up the role of the Party. You correctly state that the “students led by the Party were able to defeat the anarcho-syndicalist trend which was blocking the development of the student movement...” But when you analyze the conditions in 1976, then you underestimate both the leading role of the Party and the disruptive role of the anarcho-syndicalist trend. You do not firmly grasp that once the anarcho-syndicalist line regarding ANEQ was defeated in one form, it was bound to rise in another form. Our comrades must keep a high level of vigilance on this point. Remember that the anarcho-syndicalist position is merely a refurbished, right opportunist position. It is no accident that En Lutte!, a notorious anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-fascist organization has to take up the tactics of Trotskyites and yell themselves hoarse about lack of “democracy” in ANEQ,[3] in order to disrupt the work of ANEQ. En Lutte!, and their comrades “Canadian” “Communist” League (“M-L”), have thoroughly disgraced themselves by taking up the mission of open anti-communists, police agents, Trotskyites, and other agents of the state who are desperately trying to eliminate the influence of CPC(M-L) on ANEQ.
You write that “If from July 1974 to April-May 1975, the creation of the mass defence organization was decisive, now it is all the more important to say that the creation of political groups in the student movement is decisive.” Don’t you think that there is a glaring contradiction in what you state here and what you have stated before? According to your own analysis “students led by the Party were able to defeat the anarcho-syndicalist trend which was blocking the development of the student movement...” That is to say, the political party of the proletariat played a “decisive” role in establishing ANEQ. But now you make no mention of that. Instead, you have concocted that the “creation of political groups in the student movement is decisive” now! How do you use the word “decisive”? Can what is “decisive” for the student movement be different from what is decisive for the workers’ movement, or, for that matter, for the revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism and monopoly capitalism in Canada? Only if you detach the student movement from the overall revolutionary class struggle, can you come to these sorts of conclusions, and assert that what is “decisive” for the student movement is not the same as for the workers’ movement.
Let me digress a bit. Certain opportunists are making a lot of noise, and have been doing so for some years now, that students do not exist as a class. Fine, no one says that they exist as a class. But when the students organize their associations, can we say that because the students are not one homogeneous class, therefore it follows that their student associations will be neutral in class struggle? No, we cannot say that. Student associations like ANEQ will either support one class or the other. The class character of the student mass organizations will be decided, not by the fact that the majority of the students are either from bourgeois or petty bourgeois class background, that is, not solely by the class composition of their members, but also, and decisively, by which class interest they serve. “For whom?” is the decisive point. The question of ”for whom?” and ’’In whose interest?” is fundamental. We use the same criteria to judge whether a proletarian organization is revolutionary or not. Even though the class composition of a proletarian association is one hundred percent proletarian, nevertheless, we will judge its class character by examining whose class interest it serves.
You can see that the criteria used to judge whether or not a student association is revolutionary are exactly the same as the criteria for a proletarian association. But it has to be further grasped that a revolutionary organization will degenerate if it is filled with alien class elements. There is such a thing as class instinct, an inherent character of the proletariat, its gravitation towards socialism. Only the proletariat is the most revolutionary class. Thus, besides having a correct political and ideological line, the Party must be composed of the advanced elements of the proletariat. It simply won’t do that a student association with correct Marxist-Leninist political and ideological line substitutes itself for the Party. A student association can remain revolutionary and play a revolutionary role only if it is guided by a revolutionary party based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and composed of the advanced elements of the proletariat. It will be impossible for a student association to carry proletarian politics for too long in the absence of such a political party. It will either have to come under its leadership if such a party exists, as is the case now, or it has to establish such a party if it does not exist, as was the case in 1968. That is why we gave the slogan in 1968 that the students must come under the leadership of the proletariat, that is, under the ideological, political and organizational leadership of the party based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. We established such a party through our own efforts. CPC(M-L) is such a party. The opportunists, by raising the question of whether the students constitute a class or not, are causing maximum confusion on the central issue of “for whom?”.
If you analyze the practice of ANEQ in the light of what I have said, then the first question you will have to answer is: In whose class interest is ANEQ organized? Is it true that because the class composition of ANEQ is mainly bourgeois or petty bourgeois students, that it has been serving U.S. imperialism and Canadian monopoly capitalism and all its lackeys? You must answer this question first. But instead of answering this question, I am afraid you are detaching the student movement from class struggle and 1) you are looking at the student movement as if its problems, in general terms, are not of the same nature as those of the working class movement, and 2) you are advocating that by making changes in form here and there, you will be able to sort out the problems facing ANEQ.
But when you give your views, you do not confine yourselves to the student movement either. You talk about the trade unions as well. But you talk about the trade unions in the same manner as you do about ANEQ, that is, by detaching them from the working class movement. And there also you arrive at erroneous conclusions. You state that as “far as workers are concerned, there are also indications that they feel that the trade unions, the way they are run, are not fulfilling the task of being organizations which mobilize the workers politically against the bourgeoisie”. So your objections about the trade unions are:
1. “the way they are run” and
2. that they “are not fulfilling the task of being organizations which
mobilize the workers politically”.
Here again, you miss the role of the mass workers’ associations and the role of the Party. What is the role of the trade unions? How did they arise historically? What role did they serve in the past, what is their role at present, and what should our attitude be towards them? Instead you raise a tangent that the trade unions “are not fulfilling the task of being organizations which mobilize the workers politically”, in order to muddle up the issue. The trade unions are “fulfilling the task of being organizations which mobilize the working class, but against the interests of the proletariat. The contemporary capitalist trade unions are waging political struggle, but it is from the other side, from the side of the bourgeoisie. It is class struggle waged against the proletariat. The question of “the way they are run” is irrelevant, as it is merely a reflection of their bourgeois political character – undemocratic and class-collaborationist. It is revisionist and anarcho-syndicalist phrase-mongering to suggest that there are such things as “pure” economic associations. It is also revisionist and anarcho-syndicalist phrase-mongering to perpetually raise the issue of “the way they are run”.
Contemporary trade unions are integrated into the capitalist state machine. They are capitalist trade unions. Trade unions serving the basic interests of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie will be born out of revolutionary struggle. The labour aristocrats, the labour-fakers, the revisionists, and other kinds of opportunists will be driven out of the trade unions in the course of revolutionary struggle. We should work within the trade unions not for the fulfilment of the aims of the bourgeoisie, but against the bourgeoisie.
When you use the phrase “mobilize them politically”, you must be aware that an economic form of proletarian struggle is a political struggle, as it is a struggle of class against class. Only anarcho-syndicalists repeat the phrase “political struggle” which they have learnt by rote, in order to confuse matters. The proletariat has advanced from perceptual knowledge to conceptual knowledge through many revolutionary struggles. The founding of the Communist Party in Canada in 1921, on the theoretical basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, ended the period of perceptual knowledge and began a “conscious and systematic movement of the proletariat towards a definite goal”, that is, the goal of seizure of political power by revolutionary violence, overthrowing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat so as to achieve communism. This was inscribed on the banner of the proletariat in Canada. This is why, since then, the struggle against the opportunists of both right and “left” has been crucial. When you raise the issue of mobilizing the workers “politically”, you completely eliminate the role of the Party. You succumb to the anarcho-syndicalist propaganda that there are “spontaneous struggles” to which they are going to bring “socialism” etc. These struggles which the contemporary leaders of the trade unions organize are “conscious and systematic” struggles. There is nothing “spontaneous” about them.
The class character of trade unions is determined by whether or not they take up revolutionary politics. But revolutionary politics will not be taken up by the trade unions just because someone takes up the mission of transforming the capitalist trade unions. On the contrary, only by waging a revolutionary class “struggle,” that is, developing revolutionary politics, and building the Party in the course of these revolutionary politics against the bourgeoisie can the proletariat be won over to socialism. Winning the proletariat over to socialism is not equivalent to saying that if we win the trade unions over to revolutionary politics then the proletariat is won over to socialism.
It will be creating very harmful illusions about the character and role of trade unions as mass defence organizations of the proletariat as well as totally obscuring and belittling the role of the political party of the proletariat based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and organized in a revolutionary style. It is necessary to add here that the workers in the course of struggle against the bourgeoisie are impelled to overthrow the bourgeoisie from their own mass organizations through the leadership of their revolutionary party.
Let us go further. You say: “From July 1974 to April-May 1975, the creation of the mass defence organization was decisive.” Now I ask you two questions: 1) if “from July 1974 to April-May 1975, the creation of the mass defence organization was decisive”, then what would have happened to the student movement if this “mass defence organization” had not been created? Then, according to your reasoning, the student movement would have been blocked. 2) Decisive for what? Merely founding a “mass defence organization” became a “decisive” factor in social revolution? You will have to explain. From all the comments you make, you draw the conclusion that in the past, for the student movement to advance, “the creation of the mass defence organization was decisive”. Thus, without a mass defence organization, there would have been no student movement. But I am certain you do not mean this.
Another comrade elaborates the same point in the following manner: “Many reasons can be given to explain the changes which occurred in the student movement. But the major and decisive factor was the creation of the defence organization of the students, ANEQ. By its establishment, ANEQ allowed concentration and systematization of the experience of the student masses: it has become, as it was pointed out during the Foundation Congress, the ’school of the student masses’.” Two points have to be made here. One, the comrade repeats that ANEQ was the “major and decisive factor” for the “changes which occurred in the students’ movement”. I assume that the comrade is talking about “changes” in the same manner as the other comrade mentioned, the “qualitative” changes. Secondly, according to the comrade, ANEQ became the “school of the student masses.” But the issue – in whose class interest – is not dealt with here at all. The same comrade explains quite aptly the thesis which all you comrades are presenting about “qualitative change”, the “decisive factor”, the necessity for the “creation of political groups” or providing the student movement with “content”. A comrade states: “It is somewhat like this: while some people agreed to create ANEQ in the past, now the question is to take a big leap forward, to organize the students in a large anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and anti-revisionist contingent. But now that we are at a cross-roads, they don’t want to go forward and they want to capitulate before the state and the opportunists. One comrade made the comparison the other day that they were like bourgeois democrats participating with the proletariat in the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal struggle for bourgeois democracy, but now that the socialist revolution is on the agenda, they want to back track.”
Comrades, all these are empty phrases which are keeping you from summing up the experience of the “mass defence organization” and from preparing to wage the class struggles looming ahead. In my view nothing “qualitative” has changed even though there are quantitative changes, that is, there is a student movement which is taking up the cause of the proletariat as its own, and is a fighting contingent of the people led by the proletariat against U.S. imperialism and Canadian monopoly capitalism.
Finally, you are suggesting that the “creation of political groups in the student movement is decisive now”. What will happen if these “political groups” are not created now? There will be disintegration of the student movement? This is an altogether wrong analysis-as well.
What was decisive in the student movement in 1974 is the same thing which was decisive in the workers’ movement and that decisive factor remains the same today. The decisive factor is class struggle and its instrument, CPC(M-L). In other words, what is decisive is that CPC(M-L) provides political, ideological and organizational leadership to ANEQ. It was CPC(M-L) which was the decisive factor in leading the students to found their “mass defence organization” ANEQ, and it was CPC(M-L) which provided this defence organization with the slogan Make the Rich Pay! in 1975-76. You are also aware that some students are rallying around the Party and in certain places “Le Quotidien du Canada Populaire (QCP) is used as a tool by the militants to guide their work”. But instead of summing up the role of the Party as the decisive factor, you have detached this summation from the revolutionary movement and have come up with the analysis that ANEQ has certain peculiar problems of its own. Comrades, you did not sum up the experience of revolutionary class struggle and you have come up with conclusions that are not based on taking class struggle as the key link. Herein lies your fundamental error.
Your erroneous analysis can be presented as follows:
1. ANEQ was “decisive” to organize the student movement in July 1974. It was organized on the slogan Defend the Interests of the Students.
2. Now the situation is changed. It is “decisive” now to give up the slogan Defend the Interests of the Students and organize the association on a “political basis.”
3. Reading through the lines, you quite clearly state that ANEQ, based on the slogan Defend the Interests of the Students is somehow a lower form of organization, while now you are going to build the “higher form”, the “political organization”, the “anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, anti-revisionist” organization.
En Lutte! came up with a similar line in the fall of 1974 which I vigorously denounced in the article “Against En Lutte!’s Variety of Opportunism.” I pointed out that for “En Lutte! the actual ’practical economic struggle’ the students waged was not ’against the state of the bosses and against capitalism’, but it would have become so if the students had inscribed their ’struggles within the general movement of the workers’ and people’s struggles against the state of the bosses and against capitalism’.”[4] The struggle of the students, according to En Lutte! was not “against the state of the bosses and against capitalism”. Why not? we ask. Everything they did was “against the state of the bosses and against capitalism”. The student struggle actually was against definite attacks om the “state of the bosses”. It was an economic struggle, an act of resistance with a very limited objective and was not insurrectionary in the immediate sense.
You comrades have perceptual knowledge about the two tendencies which have emerged in front of your eyes. 1) “As far as the students are concerned, there is now an ascending trend of developing ANEQ’s role in making it an organization which is far more political than what it was before – making it an open anti-imperialist, anti-fascist and necessarily an anti-revisionist organization.” 2) “Within the majority there exist two lines. One trend we call ’trade unionist’, would like to ’stand on its feet’, to take care of ’direct problems of the students’, to ’trip less on theory’ or find they have ’tripped enough with the Party’.” “The other sees the necessity to do systematic work according to a well-defined plan, a programme to advance the situation, to advance the struggle on the theoretical front so as to advance the students’ resistance movement.”
You are further conscious of the opportunists and the role of the state. You write: “... we can say that the situation is excellent in the sense that the line of the Party has great influence on everything living and combative – with the professors, professionals, maintenance workers and the students. The enthusiasm generated by the comrades contributes greatly to the development of unity in action.”
“But with this breath of fresh air, which is definitely dominant, its opposite is also developing: the stagnant and dry air of slanders and mystifications, coming from the fascists and the anarcho-fascists. We are witnessing the rise of fascism and opportunism. The administration of the CEGEP is systematically attacking the students (with riot squads, police agents disguised as professors or students, increased administrative arrogance, large increases in student fees, etc.). Simultaneously, all those who follow the line of the Party put forward by the student comrades are attacked physically and verbally, from the right as well as from the ’left’ opportunists.”
Thus you are conscious of two tendencies in the majority (of ANEQ), plus the line of the opportunists, the administration, the state and their agents. If you sum up the overall class struggle, then you will find that the same situation also prevails in the workers’ movement.
The state, the administration and the opportunists are waging a most pernicious and vile class struggle against the proletariat and other working people, and against the political party of the proletariat, CPC(M-L). You will also note that the state, the administration and the opportunists are waging this class struggle to smash the influence of CPC(M-L) in ANEQ. In the same manner, they joined hands to disrupt the influence of CPC(M-L) in the Anishinabe people’s struggle. They also would like to smash the East Indian Defence Committee and any other fighting organizations of the people.
Let us go further. It was Party work which led to the founding of ANEQ as the “mass defence organization of the students” in 1974. It was Party work which smashed the disruptions by the opportunists and provided clear guidelines for the consolidation of ANEQ in 1975-76. It is the Party which has been struggling with you comrades to pay great attention to the Party’s work in the educational institutions, especially the work of disseminating Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and elaborating the Party’s basic programme, and its strategic and tactical thinking. You comrades should implement the systematic plan of work of MEQ, one of the important tasks of which is the dissemination of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and the elaboration of the Party’s basic programme and its strategic and tactical thinking. In the absence of this work, there will remain confusion of revolutionary theory, organization and political lines in the student movement. Now some of you want to kill ANEQ by making it “anti-imperialist, anti-revisionist, anti-fascist, and anti-Trotskyite”, that is, by putting anarcho-syndicalism in command of the Party and ANEQ. You are opposed to the strengthening of the “mass defence organization of the students” on the basis of the correct slogan Defend the Basic Interests of the Students. Here I use basic to mean that “the basic interests of the students” can be defended only by opposing the class interests of the bourgeoisie.
There will be student leaders who will come forward and suggest that the “basic” interests of the students are defended not only by refusing to oppose the class interests of the bourgeoisie, but also by actively collaborating with the bourgeoisie. These students must be opposed by pointing out that the basic interests of the students can only be defended when the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is overthrown and the dictatorship of the proletariat is established.
Students are not to be condemned and made the target of attacks because of their bourgeois and petty bourgeois backgrounds.
Instead, they have to be won over to the side of the proletariat in the course of revolutionary struggle, and their outlook remoulded.
A recent Peking Review contains an article written by the Mass Criticism Group of Peking and Tsinghua Universities. This article points out: “One of the important tasks of the proletarian dictatorship is to use proletarian world outlook to prevail over the bourgeois world outlook and to unite, educate and transform the intellectuals. To help the intellectuals remould their ideology is entirely different from regarding them as ’objects of dictatorship’, which was a slander by advocators of the Right deviationist attempt to reverse correct verdicts with ulterior motives.”[5] It is through revolutionary struggles that intellectuals are remoulded. To raise the slogan of defending the basic interests of the students on a mass basis means to point out that the basic interests of the students are the same as the basic interests of the proletariat. It means to win the students onto the side of the proletariat. Those who are pushing the erroneous thesis that ANEQ should stand on its own feet, take care of problems of the students “themselves”, trip less on theory, stop tripping with the Party, etc. are making the same mistake.
You acknowledge that by “its establishment, ANEQ allowed concentration and systematization of the experience of the student masses” and “with their successive struggles, the student masses of Quebec have learned from their own experience, and have raised their level of political consciousness on several important theoretical questions: the nature of the state machine, opportunism, etc.”. Now think back. How did the students learn all this? Because ANEQ openly declared that it is “anti-imperialist, anti-revisionist, anti-fascist”, etc., or because it organized itself on the correct slogan of defending the basic interests of the students? You must admit that it was the slogan of defending the basic interests of the students which “allowed concentration and systematization of the experience of the student masses,” and “with their successive struggles, the student masses of Quebec have learned from their own experience and have raised their level of political consciousness of several important theoretical questions: the nature of the state machine, opportunism, etc.”
Thus it follows that the slogan of establishing the “mass defence organization of students on the basis of defending their basic interests” was altogether correct. If that slogan was correct in 1974, how can it be incorrect in 1976 when its implementation, according to your own words led to “concentration and systematization of the experience of the student masses” and “with their successive struggles, the student masses of Quebec have learned from their experience, have raised their level of political consciousness on several important theoretical questions: the nature of the state machine, opportunism, etc.”?
Therefore comrades, the correct thing to do now is to strengthen the mass character of ANEQ by vigorously taking up the basic interests of the proletariat as the basic interests of the students by actually, in practice, launching one anti-imperialist, anti-revisionist, anti-Trotskyite struggle after another. It is quite clear that in Quebec, ANEQ stands as the most advanced, non-Party mass organization with the overall slogan of Make The Rich Pay! Further, we have student masses in it who “with their successive struggles... have learned from their own experience, have raised their level of political consciousness on several important theoretical questions: the nature of the state machine, opportunism, etc.”. If students can learn so much on the basis of existing ANEQ slogans, then, comrades, to change these slogans would be a blunder.
You state: “In all the work done up to now, we can say that no mistakes of principles were made, i.e., as far as the general line is concerned... “Then if ”no mistakes of principles were made”, why are you proposing a change in principle, that is, changing ANEQ from a defence organization based on the slogan Defend the Basic Interests of the Students to: “An open anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and necessarily anti-revisionist (including anti-Trotskyite) contingent”?
This proposed change is not merely a tactical change in emphasis from what you call a “student interest” based ANEQ to a “more political ANEQ”. It is a major shift from Marxism-Leninism to anarcho-syndicalism. It is the line of prostrating oneself in front of difficulties instead of vigorously dealing with them. Thus in the majority, in order to fight the “trade unionist line”, you are taking up anarcho-syndicalism in opposition to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. If this is done you will assist the state, administration, their agents and the opportunists, to split, liquidate and disintegrate the student movement. This mistake should not be made.
Your erroneous line is reflected in this manner: “Revolutionary students who are also pro-communist want and look to having their own political organization based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.” I know that you consider MEQ, CPC(M-L) “your own political organization based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought”. But, at the same time, you also see the rise of student sentiment for revolution. Then what should be done? 1) Take the road of anarcho-syndicalism, a short-cut to liquidation and declare ANEQ as “anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, anti-revisionist, anti-Trotskyite” etc., or 2) take the road of capitalist trade union politics and split from CPC(M-L). Both the lines in the majority are erroneous. They are a radical divorce from the original organizational principle on which ANEQ was founded.
CPC(M-L) is the political party of the proletariat, the political party of the proletariat which, besides drawing the best elements of the proletariat, also contains individuals from other classes. Its class nature is determined by which class interest it serves. The historical mission of the proletariat is to emancipate all the oppressed and exploited masses. Therefore the class nature of the political party of the proletariat is determined by whether or not it follows the political line of “the seizure of political power by revolutionary violence, guiding the proletariat in its struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat so as to achieve communism.”[6] This is what is decisive.
There are political parties in Canada which have workers in them. The NDP even claims itself to be a “party of workers” because it has workers in it. But the NDP strives to reconcile the antagonistic contradiction between labour and capital, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and between the socialist road and the capitalist road. We cannot therefore call it a political party of the proletariat.
But you cannot have a mass organization of the students which is “based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought”. Student organizations which are mass in character are necessarily non-Party organizations. These organizations accept the ideological and political leadership of the Party. When the revolutionary struggle is sufficiently developed, they will also accept the organizational leadership of the Party.
I have mentioned before that mass student organizations can defend the basic interests of the students only by taking up and fighting for the basic interests of the proletariat, that is, by fighting on the side of’ the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. This, ANEQ has already done. It has declared itself on the side of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, and has taken up the slogan Make the Rich Pay! During its history of close to two years ANEQ has never supported the bourgeoisie, nor taken up any positions advocated by the bourgeoisie. In fact, ANEQ has fought the bourgeoisie and the opportunists tooth and nail. This is the only role ANEQ can play.
Comrades have to grasp the fact that there are many students who will become communists by joining the Party, but you cannot have a Party which is based on students, whose entire class composition is students. While it is true that the political-ideological line of the Party determines whether or not it is the political party of the proletariat, such a party which merely has a Marxist-Leninist political line, but is filled with members of alien classes, will not remain a political party of the proletariat for too long. Even its correct political-ideological line will soon degenerate. Indeed, an aspect of the correct political and ideological line of a proletarian party is that it must necessarily be entangled in the life of the proletariat through its manifold connections, and must be composed of the advanced elements of the proletariat. Thus, your student organization can only be an auxiliary to the Party, a non-Party mass organization under the leadership of the Party; it cannot itself become communist or Marxist-Leninist.
In May 1975, in a speech I made in Montreal to oppose opportunism, I pointed out:
“I am extremely pleased to come here to talk to students. We have been told that CPC(M-L) is an organization of students and that our main support lies in the universities. Right at the outset, I would like to say to you that the students in the imperialist countries and the students in the colonial, neo-colonial and socialist countries are all making, and they have made, an important contribution in the anti-imperialist-socialist revolution. As far as we are concerned the matter is not one of addressing students but one of taking communist politics to all classes and strata of society. As Lenin in fighting the Economists teaches:
“To bring political knowledge to the workers the Social-Democrats (communists – ed.) must go among all classes of the population, must dispatch units of their army in all directions’.[7]
“And furthermore, we are addressing ourselves to that section of the society which is influential in the political affairs of the country and it is from this section the propagandists for the bourgeoisie as well as the proletariat come into being. This section is the section of intellectuals, and a lot of them are brought into struggle against the bourgeoisie and they have become, through their politics, revolutionary intellectuals. A lot of you are revolutionary intellectuals coming from the working class as well as the petty bourgeoisie and some even from the bourgeoisie, but all of you have one thing in common, that is revolutionary politics against the bourgeoisie. In this era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, it is very important to pay a great deal of attention to the training of the revolutionary intellectuals. If we have a contingent of revolutionary intellectuals who are Marxist-Leninist theoreticians, our newspapers and propaganda will not suffer from superficiality and ineptness as they do in certain cases at this time. If we have contingents of revolutionary intellectuals well-versed in Marxist-Leninist theory, we could launch a nation-wide campaign to bring a high-tide in the work on the theoretical front. What we have, comrades and friends, is a few Marxist-Leninists who are studying and applying Marxist-Leninist theory and are good at it to a certain extent. What we want is to have a large number of Marxist-Leninists who are good in studying and applying Marxist-Leninist theory to the concrete conditions of this country.
“The imperialists and social-imperialists and their hirelings are creating maximum confusion on the questions of political line, ideology and theory. They are waging warfare against the proletariat on these questions. What we must do is fight them by studying and applying Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the concrete conditions of the Canadian revolution. If the revolutionary intellectuals whose thinking is based on Marxist-Leninist theory do not respond to the counter-revolutionary work of the imperialists, social-imperialists and all reactionaries and expose it to the entire society, then the revolutionary movement will remain very weak and suffer tremendously. Struggle on the theoretical front is an important struggle and must be waged in all earnestness.
“It is decisive at this time to mobilize contingents of workers on the theoretical front – whether they originate from the working class or the petty bourgeoisie or bourgeoisie is totally irrelevant. What is relevant is that they adopt Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as the theory guiding their thinking and they deal with the concrete practice of the Canadian revolution. Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is a science and is universally applicable. We have launched several campaigns in the past to study and apply Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought in a living way. The time has come to begin a campaign all over again, a campaign which must be much more deep-going than before and must be broad in its scope. In order to develop this struggle in all earnestness, I must say to you comrades that whether a member of our Party is at the place of work in a factory or is a non-industrial proletarian or is a university student or professor, one quality which must distinguish this member of ours from everyone else, is that he is a fighter on the theoretical front against the bourgeoisie.”[8]
Nowhere in this speech did I suggest that the Party can be built on the shoulders of the revolutionary intellectuals, and that the Party should not be the political party of the proletariat. On the contrary, I called upon the revolutionary intellectuals to wage a vigorous and sustained struggle against the bourgeoisie. Certain opportunists have even drawn conclusions from the above statement, and other statements I have made on the subject, that we consider CPC(M-L) as a party of the communists, and not of the proletariat.
These opportunists are trying to put a Chinese wall between communists and proletarians. I quote here from Document No.4 of the Propaganda Commission of the Party, which analyzes the Second Congress of CPC(M-L). Under the heading that the working class is the leading force, Document No.4 states:
“The 2nd Congress took action against the line of not mobilizing the working class as the leading force of revolution. An erroneous view is held that the Party is the only leading force, while the rest of the workers’ organizations, and the working class as a whole have no role to play. This is considered as dangerous and gravely misleading. The working class is the leading force of the proletarian revolution, which means millions upon millions of workers put together as one, by the social conditions, to face the onslaught of the monopoly capitalists, on a daily and continuous basis. It is these workers who form the leading force. But to say that the working class is the leading force of the revolution and leave it at that is wrong. It is the organizations of the workers which comprise the leading force, the most advanced contingent of which is the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). Those who considered only the Party as the leading force, and not the entire class, and in fact, shied away from the organizations which had a majority of workers but were still backward, had not yet grasped the laws of class struggle and of proletarian revolution.
No doubt, the organized contingent of the advanced sections of the proletariat is the core, but the entire working class with its manifold organizations comprises the leading force. It is the responsibility of the Party to influence these organizations and do constant propaganda in their midst. Without this revolutionary propaganda in their midst, we will not be able to arouse our class.
“The 2nd Congress worked out detailed guidelines as to how to develop working class politics, not merely in the sense of doing propaganda on behalf of the working class, but also carrying it out right amongst the working class; serving that class and forging connections and relations with that class. Without carrying the vigorous revolutionary politics right into the working class, the revolution will not advance much. While it is counter-revolutionary to deprive the working class of its proletarian revolutionary line by presenting the working class on the basis of economic determinism totally subordinate to bourgeois ideas and politics, it is equally wrong to deprive the proletarian revolutionary line of its class. This detaches the line from its working class base, making it into a general form of political struggle against the bourgeoisie, without basing it right in the class and developing it there. The holy alliance of the ’left’ is guilty of pursuing both these counter-revolutionary lines. They are economic determinists and their class base is the petty bourgeoisie. We are proletarian revolutionaries, some of us came out of the petty bourgeoisie, but our class base is the working class. Over the short period of a few years, we have built many invaluable ties in the working class. The 2nd Congress took firm action against the line which holds that the proletarian revolutionary line is everything while mobilizing the working class is nothing. While it was previously correct to deal with various other questions concerning Party building and not being that much entrenched in the class, now there is no reason why we should not take further steps to base ourselves more and more in the working class.
“We have been told by some intellectuals that the ’Communist’ Party of Canada came out of the working class struggles. By using this historical fact, they are attempting to suggest that the ’Communist’ Party today is not a revisionist, reformist and totally class-collaborationist party. We are also told that we came out of the youth and student movement. This fact is also being used to obscure our Marxist-Leninist political line and our line of active class struggle against the monopoly capitalist class. To those who take this question lightly, we must remind them that the great revolutionary leaders like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Chairman Mao did not come out of the working class. What was decisive was that they took up the mission of the working class and oppressed people, integrated with them, built their political parties and led their revolution. Meanwhile, there have been many, many agents of the bourgeoisie whose origin was the working class. Khrushchov came out of the working class and so did many other renegades and traitors. Those who are taken in by the revisionist propaganda about coming out of the working class movement should think about the matter seriously. The revisionist party today is not the representative of the working class but is, instead, the representative of the bourgeoisie in the working class. It is by their politics that they must be judged and not by their point of origin. It is true that the ’Communist’ Party of Canada was born out of the working class struggles and that the workers gave birth to it but it is not the revisionist party which is that Communist Party and is carrying on those traditions. The inheritor and defender of the great tradition of the communist movement which the working class gave rise to is the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). The revisionists are mere renegades and traitors to those who gave birth to this glorious Party. Those individuals who are being taken in by the revisionist propaganda are mixing things up. They take the relative weakness and inexperience and immaturity of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) as its deadly sin and are damning it, while they are glossing over the counter-revolutionary political line of the revisionists and erroneously suggesting that they are the ’working class’ party.
“The 2nd Congress not only clarified that confusion, but it also took to task those who did not see the necessity of mobilizing the working class and building the Party on this basis. On this front also the composition of the 2nd Congress explained some basic points. Over eighty percent of the delegates, alternative delegates and observers were actual workers. Because such a large majority were actual workers, they brought with them the desires and sentiments of the working class and made sure that CPC(M-L) based its programme on the backs of the workers. In this respect, the 2nd Congress made definite progress. ”The entire question of the leading force is a class question. The bourgeoisie damn the workers as ’backward’. They do so on the basis of their view of the entire class. They denounce the working people as ’capable of nothing’, and slander them profusely. The working class has utter contempt for this view of the bourgeoisie. They rightly consider the bourgeoisie capable of nothing. The bourgeoisie can neither build bridges, nor erect buildings, nor pave roads and they are not capable of tilling the soil, or digging up the minerals or transporting goods to and fro. We, the communist revolutionaries, deeply share this sentiment of our class; we concentrate and idealize their contempt for the bourgeoisie on a daily and continuous basis, and spread this sentiment. Similarly we have nothing but praise for our class and we, again, proudly hail this modern class of proletarians as the grave-diggers of the entire old society. Not to consider the working class as the leading force is to make a serious mistake. But it does not follow that every worker is a class conscious worker, or that bourgeois ideology and politics have no influence amongst the workers. On the contrary, what it means is that the working class, by dint of its social condition, is revolutionary as a class and it is struggling to overthrow the capitalist class and its system. It is for this reason the working class gives birth to its advanced contingent, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), as well as to its mass organizations, while it constantly strives to purge itself of its alien elements. Over and over again, workers rise up against the bourgeois leadership of their organizations, and the advanced elements of the proletariat have repeatedly emerged out of the working class to fulfill its historic mission. The 2nd Congress firmly established the basic concept that the working class is the leading force of the revolution.”[9]
Comrades can see clearly that neither can the political party of the proletariat be built without Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, nor can it remain the political party of the proletariat without totally integrating with the proletariat. There are certain opportunists who push the line of polycentrism on the question of revolutionary theory, thus depriving the proletariat of its political party based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. There are others who neither recognize the inherently revolutionary instinct of the proletariat, nor consider it necessary to mobilize the proletariat into their political party. Thus when you propose that the students want to have a “political organization based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought”, then you are following a totally incorrect line.
Students cannot have an “organization based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought”. There can only be the political party of the proletariat based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, a party which is the leader and commander of all the revolutionary classes, sections and strata of the society, and which is composed of the advanced elements of the proletariat. Students, of course, should join the Communist Youth Union of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)[10]; but again, it cannot be stated that CYUC(M-L) is a student “organization based on the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought”.
Because you did not sum up your work properly, you failed to come to the correct conclusion that, during the period of 1974-76, MEQ did not boldly carry out the revolutionary work of elaboration and dissemination of Marxist-Leninist theory to the student masses.
MEQ did not carry this out as its main work on a systematic basis. Instead MEQ became an auxiliary of ANEQ. Instead of ANEQ being a vehicle and lever of Party politics, MEQ became a vehicle and lever of ANEQ politics. This is where you have to look to find your shortcomings and weaknesses.
Yet in spite of weaknesses, the Party did establish special committees to guide the work against opportunists in ANEQ and led it to adopt the slogan Make the Rich Pay! It is no accident that in certain places, MEQ was superseded by the students from ANEQ under the influence and work of the Party. But this influence, that is, ANEQ’s becoming the “vehicle and lever of Party politics”, and the consolidation of this influence, cannot be brought about by the so-called “consolidation of ANEQ”, but on the contrary, by consolidating Party influence over ANEQ. MEQ should establish its own units in the educational institutions and it should carry out its own distinct work of elaborating the Party programme and disseminating Marxist-Leninist theory to the broad masses of the students. MEQ must carry on the task of winning over the students to communism and of mobilizing them to integrate with the working class. Only in this way can the Party influence on ANEQ be consolidated and maintained.
You state that in “all the work done up to now, we can say that no mistakes of principles were made, i.e., as far as the general line is concerned”, and then you admit that “several mistakes were made in the practical work, especially in the method and style of work”. You further elaborate that this “was characterized by spontaneity in the work (running around), and by the fact that often the mass line was not put into practice in the work, so that many people who have a deep desire to work were left aside”. This confession on your part is erroneous. Actually, it is this “confession” which is a reflection of “spontaneity in work”, as it ignores the limits and scope of the student agitation last year. This erroneous “confession” begins with the wrong view that during “the last autumn session, many struggles erupted in the student movement where the students were impotent to deal with the ’complexity’ of the situation, not because they were unwilling to examine them, but because they were not able to give themselves guidelines for their struggle against the state and against the opportunists”. I ask, why were the students “impotent to deal with the ’complexity’ of the situation”? You state that they “blamed only themselves for this situation, and they recognized promptly that those things were due to lack of carrying out a conscious programme, failing to study carefully certain important theoretical questions, and refusing to split with the spirit of being subservient to spontaneous struggles.” Here you neither take into consideration the tremendous revolutionary spirit the students showed in class struggle nor do you take into consideration their boundless enthusiasm for socialism. You do not analyze the strategic and tactical line of ANEQ and you do not take into consideration the limits imposed on the agitation by the historical conditions. Instead, you put forward the erroneous thesis of “consolidating” ANEQ, and sorting out certain problems peculiar to itself independent of the “conscious and systematic movement of the proletariat towards a definite goal”.
You have noticed yourselves that the question of summing up the experience of ANEQ is a practical question. So get on with it. Organize fact-finding teams and find out precisely what is going on, and then draw conclusions from what you find. It simply doesn’t do for you to impose your own feelings onto ANEQ and call that summing up. You have already noticed that it is “life-experience” which has taught the students many lessons. Then why not present a revolutionary programme so that students can have further life-experience. I repeat here – the students could not have advanced their struggle any higher than they had already taken it. The Party would have been adventurist and foolhardy if it had called upon students to storm the barricades without preparation. Now is the time to prepare for waging struggle against the bourgeoisie, and for waging it more tenaciously, persistently, in greater depth and on a much broader scale.
[1] Refers to thirty-two questions by various comrades working in ANEQ raised with Comrade Hardial Bains before the convening of the Fourth Consultative Conference of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) held on May 15-16, 1976, in Montreal.
[2] Stalin, J.V., “Concerning the Question of the Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists”, Collected Works, Volume 5, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1953, p. 164.
[3] ”To Fight Exposure of Its Counter-Revolutionary Line, CPC(M-L) Resorts to Physical Violence”, En Lutte!, Vol. 3, No. 22, June 10, 1976, p. 2.
[4] Bains, Hardial, “A Brief Comment on En Lutte!’s Variety of Opportunism”, Peoples Canada Daily News/On The Line, Vol. 5, No. 257-262, p. 1.
[5] Mass Criticism Group of Peking and Tsinghua Universities, “Repulsing the Right Deviationist Wind in the Scientific and Technological Circles”, Peking Review, Vol. 19, No. 18, April 30, 1976, p. 7.
[6] Fang Hai, “Study Political Economy”, Red Flag, No. 7, 1972; reprinted in Hsinhua News, August 5, 1972.
[7] Cited in, Bains, Hardial, “Against Opportunism”, Mass Line, Theoretical Journal of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), Vol. 5, No. 55, p. 8.
[8] Ibid., pp. 7-8.
[9] Propaganda Commission of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), “The Working Class Is the Leading Force of Revolution”, On Unity of Marxist-Leninists, The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), Montreal, 1976, pp. 74-78.
[10] Communist Youth Union of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is the youth wing of CPC(M-L) which was founded in the course of the proceedings of the Fourth Consultative Conference of CPC(M-L). The First Congress of CYUC(M-L) will be held in the near future.