First Published: Lines of Demarcation Nos. 3-4, n.d. [early 1977]
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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This article demonstrates that the League’s opposition to right opportunism is only a cover for its own right opportunism and a cover for its attack on Marxism-Leninism. “It has been shown in practice that working-class activists who follow the opportunist trend are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie itself.” (Lenin)
Ever since the task of building the party was put on the agenda and our movement consolidated itself as a movement of struggle for the party, it has been a common assumption that the building of the party would pass through the stage of a “pre-party organization”, or, as more commonly referred to today, “an organization of struggle for the party”. This concept was never clearly defined and seemed to be little more than an imported American concept.
It was this sort of unclarity in the movement that facilitated the secret[1] formation of three small groups in Montreal, notorious for a history of the grossest and “purest” right-opportunism[2], into the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist).
This organization released a Statement of Political Agreement for the Creation of the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist), which will be referred to hereafter as the “Agreement”.
In the introduction to the “Agreement”, the Marxist-Leninist movement was informed (for the first time) that
This marks a big step forward for unity of Marxist-Leninists (unbeknownst to the vast majority of them – BU) in the struggle for the creation of a Marxist-Leninist Communist party in Canada. We have begun to break the localism and dispersion which characterized, up until now, the young Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement. The creation of this vanguard organization represents a major event in the future development of class struggle in Canada. (Agreement, p.5)
One might wonder how three small groups in Montreal have “begun to break the localism and dispersion” in the movement by fusing to form the “vanguard organization”. They say that “our organization is the product of many months of struggle for unity by Marxist-Leninists.” (Ibid.) Did they break with “localism and dispersion” by keeping this a secret from the rest of the Marxist-Leninist movement? Did they “break” with “localism and dispersion” by hatching a deal between three small groups in Montreal to create the “vanguard organization” for all of Canada?
... Unity cannot be “created” out of “agreements” between intellectualist groups. To think so is a profoundly sad, naive, and ignorant delusion. (Lenin, “Unity”, LCW 20:319)
Since this “struggle” was held secretly, it was difficult for others in the Marxist-Leninist movement to respond to it. (Anyone who thinks this was not deliberate is naive, to say the least.) In Struggle! would have been the logical candidate to open up the analysis and critique because it had been leading the struggle against right-opportunism. Also, In Struggle! should have had the best sources of information in order to demystify the process of the League’s formation. Unfortunately, In Struggle! was apparently completely taken aback and never could mount a counter-attack. Instead, their own right-opportunism became dominant and they mounted an attack on the League as “leftist”, “sectarian” and “dogmatist.” In Struggle’s attack on the CCL(ML) has been almost entirely on the League’s apparent “form” but has offered negligible criticism of the League’s “content”, i.e., its political line.
And so the Bolshevik Union in the first issue of LINES OF DEMARCATION took up struggle against the League’s position on the principal contradiction and demonstrated that the League’s basic political line on the strategy for revolution in Canada is a right-opportunist, menshevik, and imperialist economist political line.
In this issue we are taking up the League’s basic line on building the party and are showing that it is an Economist and right-opportunist line. In a future issue we will be taking up the League’s opportunist line on the international situation and its relation to the Canadian revolution.[3]
The League is now a year old. From this vantage point it is much easier to analyse the League on the question of building the party because we have the advantage of one year of the League’s “practice” as a so-called pre-party organization. This is also true because the League used a great deal of Marxist-Leninist terminology as rhetoric in the Agreement which served to obscure it essence, which has become more and more revealed.
... We judge people not by the brilliant uniforms they don, not by the high-sounding appelations they give themselves, but by their actions, and by what they actually advocate... (Lenin, What Is To Be Done, Peking, p. 9)
We are constantly making the mistake in Russia of judging the slogans and tactics of a certain party or group, of judging its general trend, by the intentions or motives that the group claims for itself. Such judgment is worthless. The road to hell – as was said long ago – is paved with good intentions.
It is not a matter of intentions, motives or words but of the objective situation, independent of them, that determines the fate and significance of slogans, of tactics or, in general, of the trend of a given party or group. (“Word and Deed”, LCW 19:262)
It is absolutely essential that we take these words of Lenin even more seriously because in the last 70 years it is not only proletarian ideology that has developed, but also bourgeois ideology, particularly in its ability to disguise itself in Marxist-Leninist terminology.
Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. (“Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra,” LCW 4:354)
The League makes a big show of standing behind these words – particularly when it tries to pose as a “left” alternative to the right-opportunism of In Struggle! – but in practice it has done very little of it. In fact, from the beginning they have seen the drawing of lines of demarcation as an obstacle to unity. (See On the Unity of Marxist-Leninists: lessons from the debates between En Lutte! and MREQ, Oct. 1975, p. 11-14.)[4] In fact, they rejected the whole dialectical method of motion through contradiction.
A somewhat curious procedure, we felt, starting from the point of differences rather than establishing points of unity from which divergences can then be eliminated. (Ibid., p. 6)
A “more perfect” statement of metaphysics has probably never been concocted.
Every difference in men’s concepts should be regarded as reflecting an objective contradiction. (Mao, “On Contradiction,” MSW I, p. 317)
Each and every difference already contains contradiction and... difference itself is contradiction. (Ibid., p. 318)
“A somewhat curious procedure” indeed! Dialectical materialism, generally, and the law of the unity of opposites, particularly, are “a somewhat curious procedure” to the bourgeois mind!
This is not, however, just a “mistake” by the League or a youthful exuberance, for their intention is clear when they say that they favour “establishing points of unity from which divergences can then be eliminated.” (incredibly, the emphasis is theirs!)
Every difference in men’s concepts should be regarded as reflecting an objective contradiction.... If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party’s life would come to an end. (Ibid., p. 317)
The League’s intention is to “eliminate” the struggle over “divergences” in the Marxist-Leninist movement and eliminate the “divergences.” This is nothing but an attempt to kill the Marxist-Leninist movement.
“As soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in.” (Engels, as quoted by Mao in ibid., p. 317)
Following the League’s path is to follow a path that will lead to the death of the Marxist-Leninist movement as a movement of struggle for the party and instead will represent the victory of the bourgeoisie over the Marxist-Leninist movement by achieving the hegemony of right-opportunism and revisionism.
The League follows this path in all major aspects of its theory and its practice, although it does its best to deny it. It will be the purpose of this article to demonstrate in theory and in practice how CCL(ML) is not making “sectarian” errors but is following a consistent plan for the victory of right-opportunism in the Marxist-Leninist movement and ultimately the restoration of revisionism to its position of dominance in the working class movement.
But the League, and all the other forces of right-opportunism and revisionism in the world, cannot achieve revisionist unity and “eliminate” “divergences” because these “divergences” exist in reality and represent the class structure of society. As long as classes exist, class “divergence” will exist, and although the bourgeoisie struggles so that “divergences can be eliminated”, they fail because “divergences” do exist inevitably and independent of the will of the bourgeoisie or any of its agents. As Lenin led the proletariat to victory against the bourgeoisie and its agents by developing the “divergences” in the Second International, as Mao has led Marxism-Leninism to victories over modern revisionism by developing “divergences”, so we must develop our divergences in the Marxist-Leninist movement so that the forces striving for the restoration of revisionism, those striving to reverse the correct verdicts of history, can be exposed and purged from the movement. The building of the Marxist-Leninist party cannot be realized independent of this victory. And this victory can only be won through the motion of contradiction, through the discussion about and widening of divergences between the proletarian line and the bourgeois line.
Although the League demarcates itself rarely, the League must operate in the real world, and thus its attempts to deal with reality give fertile ground for investigation. It is the exploration of these “demarcations” that lays bare the essence of the League.
On the question of the principal contradiction it was by exploring the differences the League itself had put forward that we could open up the League’s political line on the strategy for revolution in Canada and expose it for the right-opportunist, menshevik, imperialist economist can of worms that it is.
It is on the question by the League itself, “Should Marxist-Leninists participate in immediate struggles?” (Forge no. 11, p. 11) specifically and on the whole question of right-opportunism that we will lay bare the essence of the League on the question of party-building.
Today there is a debate inside the Marxist-Leninist movement on this question. Some Marxist-Leninists pretend that communists must distribute their newspapers and tracts but must not participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles. They want to restrain Marxist-Leninist education to book learning. These people pretend that they are above immediate struggles. They think that it is economist to participate in these struggles. (Ibid.)
The League puts to the fore the difference between those who would “distribute their newspapers and tracts” from the outside of “immediate struggles” with those who would “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.” In other words, to push on the workers from outside the immediate struggle is to push on the basis of “book learning”, instead of pushing from the inside of the struggle or pushing from the inside of a factory in order to “initiate” struggle.
Lenin’s views are quite clear on this “debate.” (We ask the reader to study these views carefully and we are therefore going to quote from Lenin extensively. We ask the reader to suffer our “book learning” because a careful examination of books like What Is To Be Done? will reveal just exactly why the League would like people to immerse themselves in the “immediate struggles” instead of “book learning.”
The conclusion you draw, however, is that the working-class movement must not be pushed on from outside! In your political innocence you fail to note that you are playing into the hands of our Economists and fostering our amateurishness. In what way, may I ask, did our students “push on” our workers? Solely by the student bringing to the worker the scraps of political knowledge he himself possessed, the crumbs of socialist ideas he had managed to acquire (for the principal intellectual diet of the present-day student, “legal Marxism,” could furnish only the rudiments, only crumbs of knowledge). THERE HAS NEVER BEEN TOO MUCH OF SUCH “PUSHING ON FROM OUTSIDE”; ON THE CONTRARY, SO FAR THERE HAS BEEN TOO LITTLE, all too little of it in our movement, for we have been stewing too assiduously in our own juice; we have bowed far too slavishly to the elementary “economic struggle of the workers against the employers and the government.” We professional revolutionaries must and will make it our business to engage in this kind of “pushing” a hundred times more forcibly than we have done hitherto. But the fact that you select so despicable a phrase as “PUSHING ON FROM OUTSIDE” – A PHRASE WHICH CANNOT BUT ROUSE IN THE WORKERS (at least in the workers who are as unenlightened as you yourselves) A SENSE OF DISTRUST TOWARDS ALL WHO BRING THEM POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE AND REVOLUTIONARY EXPERIENCE FROM OUTSIDE, AND ROUSE IN THEM AN INSTINCTIVE DESIRE TO RESIST ALL SUCH PEOPLE – proves that you are demagogues, and demagogues are the worst enemies of the working class.
Yes, yes! And don’t start howling about my “uncomradely methods” of controversy! I have not the least intention of doubting the purity of your intentions. As I have already said, one may become a demagogue out of sheer political innocence. But I have shown that you have descended to demagogy, and I shall never tire of repeating that DEMAGOGUES ARE THE WORST ENEMIES OF THE WORKING CLASS. The worst enemies because they arouse bad instincts in the crowd, BECAUSE THE UNENLIGHTENED WORKER IS UNABLE TO RECOGNIZE HIS ENEMIES IN MEN WHO REPRESENT THEMSELVES, AND SOMETIMES SINCERELY SO, AS HIS FRIENDS. The worst enemies because in the period of disunity and vacillation, when our movement is just beginning to take shape, nothing is easier than to employ demagogic methods to mislead the crowd which can realize its mistake only later by the most bitter experience. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 151)
Like their friends, Workers’ Unity (Toronto), the League also persists in taking the opposite side to Lenin in the “debate” in What Is To Be Done?[5] But not only does Lenin denounce groups like the League for being demagogues on the issue of “pushing from the outside”; he is also clear about those who would “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.”
Our Economists, including the Rabocheye Dyelo, were successful because they pandered to the backward workers. But the Social-Democratic worker, the revolutionary worker (and the number of such workers is growing) will indignantly reject all this talk about fighting for demands “promising palpable results”, etc., because he will understand that this is only a variation of the old song about adding a kopek to the ruble. Such a worker will say to his counsellors of the Rabochaya Mysl and the Rabocheye Dyelo: you are wasting your time, gentlemen, and shirking your proper duties, by MEDDLING WITH SUCH EXCESSIVE ZEAL IN A JOB THAT WE CAN VERY WELL MANAGE OURSELVES. There is nothing clever in your assertion that the Social-Democrats’ task is to lend the economic struggle itself a political character; that is only the beginning, it is not the main task of Social-Democrats. For all over the world, including Russia, the police themselves often make the start in lending the economic struggle a political character, and the workers themselves learn to understand whom the government supports. The “economic struggle of the workers against the employers and the government, about which you make as much fuss as if you had discovered a new America, is being waged in a host of remote spots of Russia BY THE WORKERS THEMSELVES WHO HAVE HEARD ABOUT STRIKES, BUT WHO HAVE HEARD ALMOST NOTHING ABOUT SOCIALISM. The “activity” you want to stimulate among us workers, by advancing concrete demands promising palpable results, we are already displaying and in our everyday, petty trade union work WE PUT FORWARD THESE CONCRETE DEMANDS, OFTEN WITHOUT ANY ASSISTANCE WHATEVER FROM THE INTELLECTUALS. But such activity is not enough for us; we are not children to be fed on the thin gruel of “economic” politics alone; WE WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING THAT OTHERS KNOW[6], we want to learn the details of all aspects of political life and to take part actively in every single political event. In order that we may do this, THE INTELLECTUALS MUST TALK TO US LESS OF WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW, AND TELL US MORE ABOUT WHAT WE DO NOT YET KNOW AND WHAT WE CAN NEVER LEARN FROM OUR FACTORY AND “ECONOMIC” EXPERIENCE, THAT IS, YOU MUST GIVE US POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE. You intellectuals can acquire this knowledge, and it is your duty to bring it to us in a hundred and a thousand times greater measure than you have done up to now; and you must bring it to us, not only in the form of arguments, pamphlets and articles which sometimes – excuse our frankness! – are rather dull, but precisely in the form of live exposures of what our government and our governing classes are doing at this very moment in all spheres of life. JUST DEVOTE MORE ZEAL TO CARRYING OUT THIS DUTY, AND TALK LESS ABOUT “RAISING THE ACTIVITY OF THE MASSES OF THE WORKERS”!
We are far more active than you think, and we are quite able to support, by open street fighting, demands that do not promise any “palpable results” whatever! And it is not for you to “raise” our activity, because activity is precisely the thing you yourselves lack! Bow less in worship to spontaneity, and think more about raising your own activity, gentlemen! (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, pp. 89-92)
For all of the League’s “close and organic contact” with the proletariat, haven’t they noticed that if is the workers themselves who “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles”?
But how will the masses recognize that Marxism-Leninism is really their science if communists do not show this concretely, if they do not lead struggles against the effects of capitalism, democratic battles...and if they do not link these struggles to the fight for socialism? (Forge no. 11, p. 11)
... if they do not “lend the economic struggle itself a political character”!
In other words, if Communists do not take leadership of the economic struggle, the working class will never know “that Marxism-Leninism is really their science.” Lenin must have been “wrong” when he stated that “Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside of the economic-struggle, from outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers.... The reply to the question as to what must be done to bring political knowledge to the workers cannot be merely the answer with which, in the majority of cases, the practical workers, especially those inclined towards Economism, mostly consent themselves, namely ’To go among the workers.’ ” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 98), to “attempt to participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.”
Their task (Marxist-Leninists) is to participate in the immediate struggles to bring revolutionary consciousness.“ (Forge, no. 11, p. 11)
The fundamental error that all the Economists commit (is) their conviction that it is possible to develop the class political consciousness of the workers from within, so to speak, their economic struggle, i.e., making this struggle the exclusive (or, at least, the main) starting point, making it the exclusive, or, at least, the main basis. Such a view is fundamentally wrong. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 97)
CCL(ML) clearly considers the lessons of What Is To Be Done? irrelevant when it states without shame that “communist agitation seeks to develop the political consciousness of workers using the most immediate economic and political needs as a starting point.” (Agreement, p. 70)
We not only “think that it is economist”, we know “that it is economist”, but that is what we get for “restrain(ing) Marxist-Leninist education to book learning.”
The League operates on the basis of the classical Economist conception put forward in Lenin’s day that “ ’the economic struggle is the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into active political struggle’ “ (What Is To Be Done?, p. 71) and therefore we must concentrate our efforts on an ”attempt to participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.
Those who concentrate the attention, observation and consciousness of the working class exclusively, or even mainly, upon itself alone are not Social-Democrats; for its self-realization is indtssolubly bound up not only with a fully clear theoretical – it would be even more true to say not so much with a theoretical, as with a practical understanding, of the relationships between all the various classes of modern society, acquired through experience of political life. That is why the idea preached by our Economists, that the Economic struggle is the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into the political movement, is so extremely harmful and extremely reactionary in its practical significance. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 86)
What are immediate struggles?
In order to understand the question of whether Marxist-Leninists should “participate in immediate struggles”, it is necessary to understand what the League means by immediate struggles and what it means by “participate.”
The League defines “immediate struggles” as “struggles against the effects of capitalism, democratic battles.” Furthermore the League makes it clear that these battles are “class struggle” at the heart of Marxist-Leninist “practice.”
Rare indeed are workers who have never participated in a strike at one time or another. This form of struggle is becoming increasingly frequent, tempering the working class more and more in the fire of class struggle. (Forge no. 1, p. 2)
Lenin, on the other hand, saw strikes in a different light.
We are all agreed that our task is that of the organization of proletarian class struggle. But what is this class struggle? When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognizes the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and the individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle. “Every class struggle is a political struggle” – these famous words of Marx are not to be understood to mean that any struggle of workers against employers must always be a political struggle. They must be understood that the struggle of the workers against the capitalists inevitably becomes a political struggle insofar as it becomes a class struggle. (“Our Immediate Task”, LCW 4:216)
So once again the League goes against Lenin and exposes its Economist and right-opportunist nature. Lenin made it clears that “the Economists believed that any clash between classes was a political struggle. The Economists therefore recognized as ’class struggle’ the struggle for a wage increase of five kopeks on the ruble.” (“Liberal and Marxist Conceptions of the Class Struggle”, LCW 19:121)
But it must be remembered that “the ’Economists’ do not altogether repudiate ’politics’ but that they are constantly straying from the Social-Democratic to the trade-unionist conception of politics.” (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 67)
This “trade-unionist conception of politics” that the League operates under is graphically set forward in the first issue of The Forge.
For some years now, the Canadian working class has battled the exploitation with numerous, hard fought strikes. But today the all-out attack by the bourgeois state against wages obliges workers to take up a political struggle – class against class – across the entire country, (p. 3)
Lenin, however, saw these politics as “trade union politics, i.e., the common striving of all workers to secure from the government measures for the alleviation of the distress characteristic of their position, but which do not abolish that position, i.e., which do not remove the subjection of labour to capital.” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 52)
The spontaneous working-class movement by itself is able to create (and inevitably creates) only trade unionism, and working-class trade-unionist politics are precisely working-class bourgeois politics. The fact that the working class participates in the political struggle, and even in political revolution, does not in itself make its politics Social-Democratic politics. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 117)
“There are politics and politics” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 52) and the politics of the League are not the politics of Marxism-Leninism but are the politics of Economism and right-opportunism. The League tries to cover its Economism by putting forward the theory of “pure economism” that Economists and right-opportunists are those who engage in “uniquely trade union work or reformist politics” (Forge, no. 11, p. 11). This is a deliberate attempt to distort the nature of Lenin’s whole polemic against the Economists, who were a current among Social-Democrats (i.e.. Communists) who tried to combine trade-unionism with Social-Democracy, who were “constantly straying” from the one to the other one, who paid lip service to communist politics but practiced trade-unionist politics by placing emphasis on leading the economic struggle against the government.
“Economic struggle against the government” is precisely trade-unionist politics, which is very, very far from being Social-Democratic politics. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 80)
And so, when the League in the November 1975 “Special Issue” of The Forge states that “we must unite with all the workers of Canada, class against class, to scrap the Trudeau law” (p. 2), is this anything other than the “economic struggle against the government”?
The working class must unite and resist this foul law by all means necessary. We must struggle class against class – workers against the bourgeoisie and its state. We must scrap the Trudeau law which holds down our wages while allowing profits and prices to go unchecked. In the struggle against this anti-worker law, we must also build our forces to put a final end to the capitalist system.” (Ibid., p. 1)
In other words, “we must” “lend the economic struggle itself a political character.”
The CCL(ML) is a communist organization. It is not at all like the false friends of the working class . . . which try to tie workers down to completely reformist social democratic struggle. . . .“ (Ibid.)
Unlike “the false friends of the working class”, the League does not want to “try to tie workers down” to immediate struggles “completely”. Just mainly! For, unlike those “false friends”, the League wants to lead the “Economic struggle against the government.” The League, unlike all those “false friends”, will “lend the economic struggle itself a political character”. The Canadian working class should be so grateful that it has such good “friends” like the CCL(ML).
In fact, these “friends” make it clear just exactly what it is they are going to do for the working class.
In taking part in the political struggle for reforms, we seek to clarify the goals of these struggles and to lead them openly against the bourgeoisie and its state. Initiating and leading directly political struggles...is what is most important for us. (“Agreement”, p. 69)
In fact the ideal leader, as the majority of the members of such circles picture him, is something far more in the nature of a trade union secretary than a socialist leader. For the trade union secretary of any, say British trade union, always helps the workers to conduct the economic struggle.... In a word, every trade union secretary conducts and helps to conduct the ’economic struggle against the employers and the government.’ It cannot be too strongly insisted that this is not yet Social-Democracy. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 99)
In fact, let us compare the views of these “friends” (the CCL(ML) ) with another organization of “friends of the working class.”
The CCL(ML) intends to participate immediately in the daily struggles of the working class against the bosses and their measures like the Trudeau law and to build for a socialist tomorrow. (Forge no. 1)
In the daily struggles of the workers the Communists see the socialist future of the working class. The Party seeks to win leadership of the majority of the working class by advancing its policies in the daily struggles for the immediate needs of the working people and by pointing out the lessons to be learned from these struggles. It engages in public work on all issues of the day, and fights for the unity of the working class. (The Road to Socialism in Canada: The Program of the Communist Party of Canada, p. 66)
The League commits itself, from its creation, to participate in the daily struggles of the working class with the aim of linking them to the political struggle for socialism. [Forge, Special issue, Nov. 75. P.1)
While opposing reformism the Communist Party fights for reforms both to protect the working people from capitalist exploitation, and to gain experience, to strengthen their unity and organization and their class consciousness. THE COMMUNIST PARTY LINKS THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS WITH THE REVOLUTIONARY TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY. (The Road to Socialism in Canada: The Program of the Communist Party of Canada, p. 43[7])
In sharp contrast, Lenin states that:
It is the task of the bourgeois politician “to assist the economic struggle of the proletariat”; the task of the socialist is to bring the economic struggle to further the socialist movement and the success of the revolutionary working-class party. The task of the socialist is to further the indissoluble fusion of the economic and the political struggle into the single class struggle of the socialist working-class masses. (“Apropos of the Profession de Foi,” LCW 4:294)
How is this done? Not by linking socialism to the economic struggle, not by being the best at winning five kopeks on the ruble, not by making it six kopeks, but by diverting the working class from the trade union struggle to the conscious struggle for socialism – the class struggle – not by bowing to spontaneity, but by defeating it.
The spontaneous working-class movement is trade unionism... and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy. (What Is To Be Done, Peking, p. 49)
The League instead chooses to worship spontaneity, to “link” the economic struggle with socialism, i.e., to combine bourgeois politics – trade unionism – with proletarian politics – socialism.
This becomes even clearer when the League tells us that “socialism, a product of class struggle, will rid us of crises and their effects.” Since strikes are “class struggle” we can only assume that “socialism” is a product of strikes – i.e., socialism is equivalent to a more comfortable mode of existence under capitalism. But, to be fair to the League, they do recognize a “higher” form of “class struggle.” This, of course, is the “economic struggle against the government ” – “We must unite with all the workers of Canada, class against class, to scrap the Trudeau law.” A political struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state to be sure – a trade union bourgeois political struggle.
Thus, the modern revisionists see the revolution as a simple evolutionary process, as the totality of reforms. According to them, the demarcation line between the revolution and reforms has disappeared. In the present-day conditions, they say, democratic transformations and “structural” reforms are becoming stages on the road to socialism, forms of the approach towards and transition to socialism. (“The Objective and Subjective Factors in the Revolution,” Albania Today, as reprinted in Canadian Revolution 1:3, p. 26)
The Editorial of Issue no. 2 of The Forge carries this headline: “Prepare for the general strike. Fight for socialism.” In that editorial the League states that “the struggle against this rotten legislation is part of the struggle for socialism.” So now we find out that the union hacks, the “C”PC, and the trotskyites are all struggling “for socialism” by opposing “this rotten legislation”. The problem, apparently, is that Joe Morris doesn’t admit it! Of course, the CCL(ML) isn’t going to be reformist about it. After all, they are going “to concentrate our energies on building a revolutionary resistance to the Trudeau law.” (Emphasis theirs!) What is the essence and thrust of this “revolutionary resistance”? “What we and all those workers who are ready to fight the bourgeoisie’s attack must do now, is prepare the working class for a general strike.” (Emphasis theirs again!) So not only are Joe Morris, William Kashtan, Hardial Bains and Ross Dowson struggling for socialism, they are engaged in a de facto United Front with the League in “building a revolutionary resistance to the Trudeau law” because along with the League (and In Struggle!) they prepare(d) the working class for a general strike.”
The transition from capitalism to socialism and the liberation of the working-class from the yoke of capitalism cannot be effected by slow changes, by reforms, but only by a qualitative change of the capitalist system, by revolution. (Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Moscow, International Publishers, 1940, p. 14) This means that we do not “fight for socialism” by “prepar(ing) for the general strike”, which in the context of Canada today is nothing more than a trade union struggle, an “economic struggle against the employers and the government”, conducted by a working class which is saturated with bourgeois ideology, and the success of which is measured by the withdrawal of the law. Comrades, if this is not reformism, what is?
“The transition ... to socialism ... cannot be effected ... by reforms.” Preparing for a general strike in order to achieve a reform as the principal aspect of the strike will do nothing for “the transition from capitalism to socialism.”
“Economic” concessions (or pseudo-concessions) are, of course, the cheapest and most advantageous from the government’s point of view, because by these means it hopes to win the confidence of the masses of the workers. For this very reason, we Social-Democrats must not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OR IN ANY WAY WHATEVER create grounds for the belief (or the misunderstanding) that we attach greater value to economic reforms, or that we regard them as being particularly important. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 78)
The League cannot make things any different by calling for “a revolutionary resistance to the Trudeau law” and calling on Marxist-Leninists to “reinforce the unity of the working class in its revolutionary struggle.” Not only is the League calling the struggle for reforms “particularly important”, they are calling them revolutionary! And they wonder why we call them Economist – we think we are being terribly kind.
The Editorial in Issue no. 1 of The Forge boldly declared: “CCL(ML): Vanguard Organization of the Working Class.” This apparently represented some sort of decision on their part as to just exactly what it was they are the vanguard of, because in the “Agreement” the League stated:
The creation of this vanguard organization represents a major step in the future development of class struggle in Canada, (p. 5)
Many have criticized the League for going too fast in this direction, for in fact acting like the party itself[8]. In fact, the Toronto Marxist-Leninist Collective went so far as to criticize the League for being “left in form but right in essence” by carrying out the tasks of the second stage. This sort of criticism only serves to obscure what the League is.
What does it mean for “this vanguard” to be “a major step in the future development of the class struggle”?
As we have seen, the “class struggle” for the League is equivalent to strikes and “the economic struggle against the employers and the government ”, which it calls political struggle against the bourgeoisie. “The CCL(ML) must become an organization of proletarian leaders,in the class struggle.”
Says the bourgeoisie to the proletariat: ... You should show preference for leaders with a tendency to become “practical leaders of the real political movement of the working class” ... (“Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,” LCW 9:119-22)
Or, in the words of the League, “not to participate in the immediate struggles of the working class is to leave the direction of these struggles in the hands of the actual reformist leaders.” (Forge, no. 11, p. 11) Lenin had a rather different view of the matter. “It is the task of the bourgeois politician ’to assist the economic struggle of the proletariat.” (“Apropos of the Profession de Foi,” LCW 4:294)
The economic struggle is the collective struggle of the workers against their employers for better terms in the sale of their labour power, for the better conditions of life and labour. This struggle is necessarily an industrial struggle, because conditions of labour differ very much in different trades, and, consequently, the fight to improve these conditions can only be conducted in respect to each trade (trade unions in the Western countries, temporary trade associations and leaflets in Russia, etc.). Lending “the economic struggle itself a political character” means, therefore, striving to secure satisfaction of these trade demands, the improvement of conditions of labour in each separate trade by means of “legislative and administrative measures” (as Martynov expresses it. ...) This is exactly what all workers’ trade unions do and always have done. Read the works of the thoroughly scientific (and “thoroughly” opportunist) Mr. and Mrs. Webb and you will see that the British trade unions long ago recognized, and have long been carrying out, the task of “lending the economic struggle itself a political character”; they have long been fighting for the right to strike, for the removal of all legal hindrances to the cooperative and trade union movements, for laws protecting women and children, for the improvement of labour conditions by means of health and factory legislation, etc.
Thus, the pompous phrase about “lending the economic struggle itself a political character,” which sounds so “terrifically” profound and revolutionary, serves as a screen to conceal What is in fact the traditional striving to degrade Social-Democratic politics to the level of trade union politics! On the pretext of rectifying the one-sidedness of the Iskra, which, it is alleged, places “the revolutionizing of dogma higher than the revolutionizing of life”, we are presented with the struggle for economic reform as if it were something entirely new. As a matter of fact, the phrase “lending the economic struggle itself a political character” means nothing more than the struggle for economic reforms.(What Is To Be Done?, Peking, pp. 75-6)
The League seeks to take “revolutionary” leadership of “the struggle for economic reforms” by declaring it “revolutionary!” ”The establishment of the CCL(ML) marks a turning point in the revolutionary struggle in Canada” (Forge no. 1). Well, if you didn’t know it, “this vanguard organization” has informed you that “the revolutionary struggle in Canada” is not only well underway but existed before the creation of “this vanguard organization” and its creation is “a turning point in the revolutionary struggle.” Funny, we never noticed the outbreak of revolution, but that is probably because we just don’t understand that we must “reinforce the unity of the working class in its revolutionary struggle” by “participat-(ing) in or attempt(ing) to initiate or direct immediate struggles” to add “five kopeks onto the ruble” by “lending the economic struggle itself a political character.” Or maybe it is simply that the struggle for reforms becomes revolutionary if our wonderful friends from the League are leading them?
Need we wonder what kind of Party the League wants to create when they boldly announce that “today in Canada the immediate task which confronts us is to create our party in the heat and fire, in the forge of class struggle”? (Forge, no. 1, p. 5)
When the League criticises Mobilisation in the same issue for wanting to build the party “in the masses” (p. 12), the League is not counterposing the correct Marxist-Leninist path of a Bolshevik party based on an organisation of professional revolutionaries guided by the most advanced theory, but rather “an organisation of proletarian leaders in the class struggle” (ibid., p. 3), i.e., an organisation of trade-union militants masquerading as Marxist-Leninists, a vanguard organisation of Economists.
Workers’ Unity (Toronto) “let the cat out of the bag” in their letter printed in issue no. 3 of The Forge.
We are greatly encouraged that unity was reached between the three founding groups of the League. There are certainly important lessons for MILITANTS across the country to learn from this process, (p. 3)
Yes, “important lessons for” trade-union “militants”, but only an important negative example for communists. The League, too, in their “Reply to May First” (Canadian Revolution 1:6), consistently refers to its friendly audience as “militants” but to those who do not have this “militant” trade-union “practice in the working class” as “opportunists.” The League is only interested in building an organization of “proletarian” trade-union militant “leaders” in the “class struggle.”
The League is not the party. Why? Because although it has the ideological and organisational characteristics of the party, it has not yet defined a true revolutionary programme nor is it yet a detachment of the working class. (“Agreement,” p. 56)
So the League is not the party, but of course it has all of the “characteristics” of the party. Lenin, who put forward a plan for building the party centred around a newspaper that would be the “scaffolding round a building under construction which marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organized labour” (“Where To Begin”, LCW 5:22), never confused the scaffolding with the building. The Iskra organization did not have the “characteristics of the party.”
Instead of basing themselves on Lenin’s experience of building an organization around a newspaper, an organization of professional revolutionaries who “conduct that systematic, all around propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of Social-Democracy in general and, in particular, the pressing task of the moment” (ibid., pp. 20-21), the League puts itself forward as a small party.
The League quotes “Theses on Tactics, Third Congress of the Third International”* (Agreement), p. 69):
Communist parties can develop only in struggle. EVEN THE SMALLEST OF PARTIES must not limit themselves to simple propaganda and agitation. In all the mass organisations, they must be the vanguard which shows the backward masses how to wage the battle and which... shows them the betrayal of all the non-communists...
This clearly reveals that the League sees itself as a small party that has to “initiate and lead the struggles of the working class.” As we have already seen, “what is most important for us” (the League) is leading the trade union struggle, and because of this the League discards Lenin’s entire plan for building a Bolshevik party and adopts characteristics of a party as a cover and justification for their Economism and right-opportunism.
That the League’s plan to build a party has nothing to do with Lenin’s should be clear to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Iskra period.** We will not in this article attempt to lay emphasis on this contradiction. Instead we will examine the League’s plan for building a party to elucidate what kind of party the League is trying to build if not a Bolshevik party.
“The first of these conditions is the development of a correct political line.” (“Agreement”, p. 64) But, as everybody already knows, the League already states that it has the “correct political line”. In LD no. 1 we began to show just exactly what the League’s political line is, and the last thing it can be described as is correct.
The League states in a recent Forge that “we already have defined the essential elements of the political line” and then goes on to say that
correct ideological and political line is always decisive, but at any given moment it can become necessary to centre our energies on one of three conditions. We think that, at the present time, the priority should be placed on the rallying of a certain number of advanced workers. (Forge, no. 14, p.11)
After the League is through playing its pea-shell game of “now you see it, now you don’t”, it should be obvious to anyone who isn’t taken in by this sort of hucksterism that political line is never important to the League; that what is always primary is Economist work among the “advanced” workers.
The League’s political line has never been struggled over except in secret tripartite negotiations between three small groups and it looks like it never will be because “the rallying of a certain number of advanced workers” is primary and, after all, the political line is correct – isn’t it?
Not only does the League put political line in the background, they bitterly attack any who would in any way emphasize theory.
In fact, they put forward an elaborate attack against the development of theory as being “right-opportunist” if it is divorced from “practice” and “class struggle” (Forge, no. 11, p. 10-11)
Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This thought cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 28)
We have seen the League’s “fashionable preaching of opportunism” and their placing primary “the rallying of a certain number of advanced workers” is nothing but “an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.” Of course, the Economists of Lenin’s day bitterly attacked him with such statements that Iskra “places the revolutionising of dogma higher than the revolutionising of life” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 28)
In order to justify its bankrupt position, the League pulls a quote by Mao out of any historical context and does not even give a reference.
They quote as follows:
To learn Marxism, it is not enough to learn it from books; it is above all by class struggle, practical work and contacts with the working and peasant masses, that we can really assimilate it.[9]
When Mao wrote this, did he have in mind that the “class struggle” was strikes and “the economic struggle against the employers and the government”? We think not, we rather suspect that Mao had in mind the conscious class struggle for the political power of the proletariat under the dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist political party in the third stage of its formation (the situation in 1957), and that Mao here was describing how Marxism is assimilated under the concrete conditions of this situation. The League uses Mao to attack learning any part of Marxism from books and one-sidedly emphasize “practical work” – i.e., Economism – in order to negate the role of theory precisely during the period when revolutionary theory is principal. Why doens’t the League quote Mao when he stated:
The creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory plays the principal and decisive role in those times of which Lenin said, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” (Mao, “On Contradiction,” MSW 1:336)
To the League, practice is always primary, but even more than practice, “the rallying of a certain number of advanced workers” “plays the principal and decisive role.”
Lenin, in quoting Engels, made it quite clear what the primacy of theory means.
It will be the duty of the leaders to gain an ever clearer insight into all theoretical questions, to free themselves more and more from the influence of traditional phrases inherited from the old world outlook, and constantly to keep in mind that Socialism, since it has become a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, i.e., that it be studied. The task will be to spread with increased zeal among the masses of the workers the ever more clarified understanding thus acquired. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, pp. 31-32)
The League attacks those who would do this as right-opportunists, decrying them for “reducing communist activity to study and parlour room discussions on political line and refusing to work within the masses or lead their struggles. Thus we see that right-opportunism refuses to work for the fusion of Marxist-Leninist theory with the working class and ultimately refuses o to struggle for the Party.” (Forge, no. 11, p. 10)
Lenin and Engels saw this fusion taking place on the basis of theory, on the basis of comprehensive study. “The task will be to spread with increased zeal among the masses of the workers the ever more clarified understanding thus acquired, to knit together ever more firmly the organization both of the party and of the trade unions.” (Engels, in What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 32)
The fusion is accomplished with theory that is based on the most rigorous study. In contrast to the Marxist-Leninist method of fusion, the League thinks that the fusion is accomplished by gracing the masses with their very presence – that is, by “work within the masses” and by “lead(ing) their struggles”, as if they were the party itself.
The League draws its line of demarcation between those who emphasize theory – “right-opportunists” – and those who “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.”
And again we ask the impartial reader, do we slander the Rabocheye Dyeo-ites (may I be forgiven for this clumsy expression!) by calling them concealed Bernsteinians when they advance, as their point of disagreement with the Iskra, their thesis about the necessity of fighting for economic reforms? (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 77)
And we ask the impartial reader, do we slander the League-ites (may we be forgiven for this apt expression!) by calling them Economists and concealed (nascent) revisionists when they advance as their point of disagreement with the Bolshevik Union[10] their thesis about the necessity to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles”?
Finally, it should be noted that the League’s political line is only a caricature of a Marxist-Leninist political line. The League’s political line is simply a cover for its opportunism.
As Lenin observed, “No wonder people say that practice marches ahead of theory (especially in the case of those who are guided by a false theory).” (“Bourgeois Intelligentsia’s Methods of Struggle”, LCW 20:457)
The second condition for creating the party is the achievement of the greatest possible unity of Marxist-Leninists in Canada. (“Agreement”, p. 65)
Although we will only be touching on this aspect, at this point in the article it is important to note that for all the League’s rhetoric of late on this subject, the League’s purpose since its inception is clear in the following.
The CCL(ML) will seek to unite all the Marxist-Leninists in the country, once they are convinced of the correctness of its line – always within the perspective of assuring the unity, thus the reinforcement, of the revolutionary movement of the working class. (“Agreement”, p. 68)
The League is not interested in struggle over political line, it is only really interested in recruiting those who “are convinced of the correctness of its line”, i.e., those who out of backwardness or an opportunist disregard for theory simply accept the drivel the League tries to pass off as a political line. Not only is ignorance and opportunism necessary to achieve unity with the League, the would-be uniters must be a “reinforcement of the revolutionary movement of the working class.” As we have already seen, “the revolutionary movement of the working class” is just another euphemism for the trade-union struggle of the working class. In other words, would-be uniters have to be willing to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles”, i.e., become petit-bourgeois implantation-ists.
The League’s record of uniting with groups like Workers’ Unity (Toronto), individuals from groups like Bulletin Populare and the Toronto Marxist-Leninist Collective, and their impending unity with Mobilisation is ample evidence of what sort of “Marxist-Leninists” the League considers to be a “reinforcement of the revolutionary movement of the working class.”
As for the rest of the Marxist-Leninist movement, the League considers most of it to be “opportunist” and in practice only considers itself and In Struggle! as within the Marxist-Leninist movement. All other groups are “opportunist” if they do not succumb to the hegemony of the League.
Of course, the League does not consider the achievement of unity in the Marxist-Leninist movement to be of much importance, and it generally seeks to accomplish unity with the most consolidated Economists and right-opportunists. For them the principal task and the key link “at the present time” is “the rallying of a certain number of advanced workers.”
The third major condition to fulfill before we can create the party is the rooting of our organisation in the heart of the proletariat – in other words, the recruitment of a certain number of conscious workers and the formation of factory cells in the principal industrial centres of the country. Only the widespread agitation and propaganda of communist ideas will make this possible. (“Agreement”, p. 65)
We will leave the consideration of “the recruitment of a certain number of conscious workers”, the principal task of the League, until after a consideration of “factory cells”, “agitation and propaganda”, and “advanced workers”, because it is through understanding what these really mean that we can come to an understanding of what is really meant by “the rallying of a certain number of advanced workers.”
Our organisation must develop primarily in the working class, in the large factories where the workers are concentrated. The factories will become the fortresses of the League and latter of the Marxist-Leninist communist party. To this end we must send Marxist-Leninist militants into the plants to do communist agitation-propaganda and organisational work; the virtual absence of communist workers in Canada makes such measures necessary. (“Agreement”, p. 69)
The “send(ing of) Marxist-Leninist militants into the plants” is just another euphemism for “implantation.” The League chooses not to use this somewhat discredited word, but it was the major emphasis of the three groups that formed the League and of all the groups that have rallied or are rallying[11].
The League or its constituent parts have never self-criticized for “implantation” and in fact it makes up the bulk of the League’s “practice.”
Workers’ Unity (Toronto) in fact identified the struggle over the question of “implantation” as a question of principle, as the principle line of demarcation to be drawn in building the communist party, and so has the League. The essence of the question of whether Marxist-Leninists should participate in “immediate struggles” becomes whether Marxist-Leninists should be implanted. In fact, the League sees implantation, or to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles”, as the tactical line with which to build the party.
In Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization, MREQ, the dominant group in the fusion of the CCL(ML), elaborates the strategy and tactics of building the party in a section entitled “The Tasks of the Marxist-Leninist Organization and the Strategy for the Creation of the Party” (pp. 34-41). (This section is reproduced in its entirety in the appendix to this article along with “Should Marxist-Leninists participate in immediate struggles?” (Forge, no. 11, pp. 10-11) so the reader can see that we do not slander the League by equating the two positions.)
The section of the MREQ document referred to is a defense of implantation. “It must be stressed that implantation isn’t just one tactic among others, but the correct tactical line for Marxist-Leninists to develop links with the working class.” (p. 39)[12]
Lenin and Iskra had quite a different idea of tactics. Lenin wrote in Iskra no. 1 that “Social-Democracy does not tie its hands, it does not restrict its activities to some one preconceived plan or method of political struggle.” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 57) But, despite its denials, the League still wants to restrict the entire Marxist-Leninist movement to the method of implantation, to the method of “participating in or attempting to initiate or direct immediate struggles.”
More fundamentally, let us see what else Lenin had to say about the question of proletarian “tactics.”
Only an objective consideration of the sum total of reciprocal relations of all the classes of a given society without exception, and, consequently, a consideration of the objective stage of development of that society and of the reciprocal relations between it and other societies, can serve as a basis for correct tactics of the advanced class. ( Karl Marx , in On Marx and Engels, Peking, p. 40)
That is, Marxist-Leninists cannot speak of questions of tactics in the making of proletarian revolution without having developed a revolutionary theory, without having developed a concrete strategy for revolution, without having made an analysis of all of the theoretical questions which are of importance to the proletarian class. And, continues Lenin, fundamental to these questions of class analysis and of strategy and hence to any question of tactics is the question which the League loves to liquidate: the question of the labour aristocracy.
Numerous references by Marx and Engels to the example of the British working-class movement showing how industrial “prosperity” leads to attempts “to buy the proletariat” .... to divert them from the struggle; how this prosperity generally “demoralises” the workers... ; how the British proletariat is becoming “more and more bourgeois,” so that “this most bourgeois of all nations” (Britain) “is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat as well as a bourgeoisie” ...; how its “revolutionary energy” evaporates . .. ; how it will be necessary to wait a fairly long time before “the English workers will free themselves from their apparent bourgeois infection”...; how the British working-class movement “lacks the mettle of the old Chartists”...; how the British workers’ leaders are becoming a type midway between “the radical bourgeois and the worker” ...; how, owing to British monopoly, and as long as this monopoly does not burst to pieces, “the British working man will not budge” The tactics of the economic struggle, in connection with the general course (and outcome) of the working-class movement, are here considered from a remarkably broad, comprehensive, dialectical, and genuinely revolutionary standpoint. (Lenin, “Karl Marx,” in On Marx and Engels, Peking, pp. 42-43)
Lenin, drawing heavily from Marx and Engels, finds the question of “tactics” inseparable not only from revolutionary theory in general but also from the question of the labour aristocracy in particular. We have put forward extensive analyses of the question of the labour aristocracy in this issue and elsewhere, and we definitely see the politics of both the League and In Struggle! as seeking an alliance with the labour aristocracy in Canada. But MREQ and then the League just invent a “general tactical line” for the economic struggle blithely ignorant of all major questions of class analysis and political theory in Canada – and particularly ignorant of the question of the labour aristocracy, which they will not be able to understand without looking in the mirror.
Stalin concurs in this broad conception of “tactics” in insisting that it is not an idea that is just fabricated by some well-intentioned trade-unionists but must derive from a thoroughly scientific strategy for revolution.
The strategy and tactics of the Communist Party of any country can be correct only if they are not confined to the interests of “their own” country, “their own” fatherland, “their own” proletariat, but, on the contrary, if, while taking into account the conditions and situation in their own country, they make the interests of the international proletariat, the interests of the revolution in other countries, the corner-stone, i.e., if, in essence, in spirit, they are internationalist, if they do “the utmost possible on one (their own) country for the development, support and awakening of the revolution in all countries. (“The Political Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists: Synopsis of a Pamphlet”, Works, p. 81-82)
The League’s theory of implantation as “the correct tactical line” is nothing but the opportunist theory of “tactics-as process” (see What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 57-60) – a “process” of implantation and leadership of spontaneous struggle. This is completely opposed to Lenin’s “tactics-as-a plan.”
The question is exactly how is this linking of Marxism-Leninism with the working class to be accomplished?
We feel that the correct way in which a revolutionary organization should bring about this link is to join with the working class, to have militants inside the factories and other workplaces. This practice of placing militants inside the factories is often called implantation. (“Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization,” p. 35)
The League/MREQ goes on to say that “there are many reasons why this practice (note that practice is reduced to implantation – BU) is necessary in the first stages of the struggle to build a Marxist-Leninist party. We will note three of these.” (p. 35)
The first is “to spread Marxism-Leninism among the working class.” Under this heading the League/MREQ informs us that “it is in the factories, working and struggling with the workers, that Marxist-Leninists will show that they are the best defenders of the interests of the working class.” (p. 36)
This is nothing but the application of terrorism to the working class movement. It is an attempt to win workers over by the “self-sacrificing struggle of individuals.” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 93) Whether terrorist “heroism” or the “heroism” of being the most militant in a strike, it is the same petit-bourgeois individualism. “The Economists and terrorists merely bow to different poles of spontaneity.” (Ibid.)
The League sees winning workers over to communism on the basis of personal example in the ability to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.” This of course is the same “tactical line” of the “C”PC, the trotskyites, the anarchists and those who are for “pure” militant trade unionism.
Lenin clearly states that we should not even give the impression that the struggle for economic reforms is “particularly important.” The League, on the other hand, tells us that it is only through the “process” of having the petit-bourgeoisie “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles” that workers can be won to Marxism-Leninism.
But how will the masses recognize that Marxism-Leninism is really their science if communists do not show this concretely, if they do not lead struggles against the effects of capitalism, democratic battles... and if they do not link these struggles to the fight for socialism. (Forge, no. 11, p. 11)
Still others will be carried away, perhaps, by the seductive idea of showing the world a new example of “close and organic contact with the proletarian struggle” – contact between the trade-union and Social-Democratic movements ... (they) envisage the complete fusion of Social-Democracy with trade unionism. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 140)
Attention, therefore, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not at all our task to descend to the level of the “working masses.” (Ibid., p. 161)
Without a sense of theory among the workers, this scientific socialism would never have entered their flesh and blood as much as is the case. What an IMMEASURABLE advantage this is may be seen, on the one hand, from the INDIFFERENCE TOWARDS ALL THEORY, WHICH IS ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS WHY the English working-class movement crawls along so slowly in spite of the splendid organization of individual unions. (Ibid., p. 30)
Martynov, like the League, could not see fusing socialism with the working class on the basis of politics and theory but rather on the basis of “immediate struggles.” Lenin quoted Martynov on “his differences with Iskra”:
“We cannot confine ourselves entirely to exposing the system that stands in its” (the working-class party’s) “path of development. We must also react to the immediate and current interests of the proletariat.... We ... work and shall continue to work for the cause of the working class in close and organic contact with the proletarian struggle.” (Ibid., p. 66)
Lenin goes on to say:
One cannot help being grateful to Martynov for this formula. It is of outstanding general interest because substantially it embraces not only our disagreements with the Rabocheye Dyelo, but the general disagreement between ourselves and the “Economists” concerning the political struggle.. .. “Economists” do not altogether repudiate “politics”, but... they are constantly straying from the Social-Democratic to the trade-unionist conception of politics. Martynov strays in exactly the same way, and we agree, therefore, to take his views as a model of Economist error on this question. (Ibid., p. 66-67)
The League has provided us with a new model of the same old car.
The second justification for implantation is “to learn from the workers by linking up with the masses.”
At the present time, this is as much a matter of understanding the subjective situation (class consciousness, political maturity, etc.) as their objective situation (wages, working conditions, etc.). Communists must try to learn from the masses in order to get to know their needs, their problems, and in order to defend their interests while consolidating their own links with the masses. (“Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization,” p. 36)
The League makes “links with the masses” by summing up their trade union desires and demands and putting them into an opportunist political line.
The Marxist-Leninist organisation will reinforce the unity of Marxist-Leninists on the basis of its correct political line, a line developed through its practice among the masses. (Ibid., p. 19)
And, on this basis, its cadre (like Judy Darcy – see LD no. 1, p. 39) become “trade union secretaries” who do such a good job that the workers figure: “If the union hacks can only get us five kopeks on the ruble and the League can get us six – it must be because they are Marxist-Leninists (at least they keep telling us they are). That must mean that Marxism-Leninism is our science – the science of getting us a larger pay-cheque!* Oh, we’re for socialism too! Socialism means no unemployment or inflation, right?”
What would the working class ever have done without the League to lead the struggle for higher wages (class against class, to be sure!)
And what opportunist demagogy to fail to prepare the proletariat for the sacrifices which may be necessary for the victory of socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat! Like In Struggle!, the League is telling the working class that socialism is the equivalent of an appeasement of the capitalist crisis and better living conditions under capitalism; and, like In Struggle!, the League is preparing the working class to defend the “material incentives” theory of building socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat by constantly portraying socialism as the system best suited to immediately satisfy everybody’s individual little wants.
The third justification for implantation is “to transform the ideology of revolutionary militants.” At this point it should be obvious to the reader that this ideology to which the League wants to transform the petit-bourgeoisie is the ideology of trade-unionism.
These three points are thus all parts of the same PROCESS – building the roots of the Marxist-Leninist organisation in the masses in order to fuse the Marxist-Leninist movement with the working class movement.
This PROCESS of integration with the working class is a dialectical one. (Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization p. 37)
We ask the reader, do we go too far when we say that the League’s “tactical line” is “tactics as process”, a process of implantation; a process of trade union struggle; a process of petit-bourgeois leadership of trade union struggles; a process that bows to the spontaneity of the moment?
That struggle is desirable which is possible, and the struggle which is possible is the one that is going on at the given moment. This is precisely the trend of unbounded opportunism, which passively adapts itself to spontaneity. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 58)
But in the case of the League, it has learned from history and attacks as right-opportunism that which “passively adapts itself to spontaneity” and upholds as Marxism-Leninism that which actively “adapts itself to spontaneity.”
Whereas in Lenin’s day the Economists simply tailed spontaneity, in our day the Economists are trying to lead spontaneity with a disciplined group of opportunists; but yet both see the development of the movement as a “process” and both attack and oppose “tactics-as-a-plan.” The Economists opposed Iskra because it represented a plan, a plan for consistent political exposures that would raise the class consciousness, i.e., the political scientific socialist consciousness of the workers, that would raise the workers to the level of theoreticians; a plan that would divert the spontaneous struggle into the conscious political class struggle for socialism; a plan that would fuse communism with the workers’ movement.
An Iskra-type newspaper does not yet exist in Canada, but elements of this “tactics-as-a-plan” have been practiced by In Struggle! in the past (see other articles in this issue discussing this point), and the League has been in the forefront of attacking them.
The League tells us that “some Marxist-Leninists pretend that communists must distribute their newspapers and tracts but must not participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles. They want to restrain Marxist-Leninist education to book-learning.”
One of these Marxist-Leninists was Lenin, who consistently castigated those who downplayed the role of theory, who oppose “pushing from the outside”, etc.
All talk about “exaggerating the role of ideology” or the role of the conscious element as compared with the spontaneous element, etc., continues to exercise a most baneful influence upon our Party. (“A Talk with Defenders of Economism”, LCW 5:319)
The reason Lenin saw a newspaper as central was precisely because it laid emphasis on rallying advanced workers on an ideological and political level. The League, however, sees it differently.
A great many different papers can be sold at the gates of a factory and all can call themselves revolutionary. How do the workers tell the difference? In the final analysis, the mass of workers can only be won to revolutionary propaganda when they see the militants of an organisation at work practically defending their class interests.
We must admit that both propaganda and agitation are necessary, while not sufficient, to lead the workers to revolutionary action. Workers learn from their own experience who are their friends and who are their enemies.[13] They will acquire this experience in the practice of class struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state. It is during these struggles that communists must prove themselves. They must prove that they are capable of leading workers’ struggles correctly and firmly, and that they can advance the interests of the whole class. To do so, Marxist-Leninists must participate in the day-to-day struggles of the working class and link themselves to the masses. Communists cannot direct working class struggles from the outside. It is through direct involvement in struggle that they will win the respect and confidence of the masses. (Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organisation, MREQ, pp. 38-39)
This kind of demagogic thinking has never been self-criticised and in fact continues to guide the League’s work.
Communists aren’t afraid to confront their political line with concrete practice, to submit it to the collective experience of the masses and thus prove its correctness. While participating in and providing direction to factory struggles and by defending the daily interests of the masses of workers, communists point the road to total emancipation. (Forge, March 11, 1976, p.7)
And, of course, we have seen them say, “But how will the masses recognize that Marxism-Leninism is really their science” if we do not engage in reformism and Economism to prove it?
So how do workers tell one “vanguard” from another? How do the workers tell the revisionists or trotskyites from the League?[14] By who can get the workers a higher wage increase, i.e., “practically defending their class interests.” We also learn from the League that it is primarily “the practice of class struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state”, i.e., the defensive “economic struggle against the employers and the government”, that will “lead the workers to revolutionary action.” We also learn that “it is during these struggles that communists must prove themselves” to be good trade-union secretaries and then “they will win the respect and confidence of the masses.”
But the Martynovs and the other Economists continue to imagine that “by economic struggle against the employers and the government”, the workers must first accumulate strength (for trade-unionist politics) and then “go over” – we presume from trade-unionist “training for activity” – to Social-Democratic activity! (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 113)
The League’s position is bourgeois politics, probably learned by the League’s leadership in Political Science 101 at McGill and the U. of M. The reasoning is this: the masses are stupid, especially the workers who are only interested in making a buck. They don’t care if it is liberals, conservatives, or whoever who leads them, because they don’t think politically, and so if a party promises them some material gain, they will support it.
In bourgeois politics, the working class is only something to manipulate with material incentives, and with the League it is no different. “But how can we identify the advanced workers ... if first of all communists don’t participate in mass struggles? This is impossible because it is only in the mass struggles that revolutionaries can identify the advanced elements and move them forward.” (Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization, MREQ, p. 39)
They are saying that the working class can’t distinguish which ideology to follow because they “all call themselves revolutionary”, and so the petit-bourgeoisie from McGill and the U. of M. has to organise a “vanguard organisation” to sift through the working class to identify the “advanced elements.” It is beyond the comprehension of our friends that these workers might themselves be looking for revolutionary alternatives and might be won to a concrete strategy for a socialist revolution in Canada derived from a thorough scientific analysis of concrete conditions, a strategy which answers to their fundamental interests as workers. To the League, this is “simply . . . the beauty of ideas”, “pure intellectualism.” (“Reply to May First”, Canadian Revolution 1:6, p. 40, 41) The workers must be won through the “political struggle”, i.e., the higher paycheque, “concrete demands promising palpable results.”
And who are these “advanced” workers the League is trying to rally “a certain number of”?
According to the League, certainly not those who rally to communism, because workers are incapable of distinguishing between the different “communisms”. It is the workers who rally to the League because it is the best defenders of the immediate interests of the workers, and because of this they will accept on faith that the “Marxism-Leninism” of the League is their science![15]
In its “Agreement”, the League sets out its analysis of the different strata of the Canadian working class.
The number of communist workers, that is, workers who are class-conscious and who lead the large masses of workers, is extremely small.
There is, however, a good number of combative workers who are progressive enough to put into question the existing system. They aspire in a confused way to socialism. Often in the forefront of local struggles, these workers are active on the local union level and exercise leadership over the masses of workers. But they are undeveloped ideologically, tainted with reformism and nationalism.
The few class-conscious workers and the larger number of combative workers, under the conditions in Canada today, make up the most advanced elements of the working class. These are elements which we must initially rally to communism in order to bring about the fusion of Marxism-Leninism and the workers’ movement.
The intermediate elements, are primarily characterized by a trade union consciousness and some activity on the local level. They do not initiate local struggles, but they participate in them once they are launched.
The backward elements are strongly marked by the ideology of class collaboration and heavily influenced by the labour aristocracy. They are difficult to mobilize, even on the local level.
We have to thoroughly study these different characteristics of the Canadian working class and develop the most adequate methods of agitation and propaganda for raising the political consciousness of the working masses – particularly, at the stage, for rallying the most advanced elements to communism.
Not surprisingly, Lenin had a completely different view on the stratification of the working class and of the role of a newspaper and propaganda and agitation. We consider this analysis of Lenin’s so fundamental (and Lenin himself universalized it) that we will quote from it extensively.
We shall, therefore, have to deal in greater detail with the question of the relation of the advanced strata of the proletariat to the less advanced, and the significance of Social-Democratic work among these two sections.
The history of the working-class movement in all countries shows that the better-situated strata of the working-class respond to the ideas of socialism more rapidly and more easily. From among these come, in the main, the advanced workers that every working-class movement brings to the fore, those who can win the confidence of the labouring masses, who devote themselves entirely to the education and organisation of the proletariat, who accept socialism consciously, and who even elaborate independent socialist theories. Every viable working-class movement has brought to the fore such working-class leaders, its own Proudhons, Vaillants, Weitlings, and Bebels. And our Russian working-class movement promises not to lag behind the European movement in this respect. At a time when educated society is losing interest in honest, illegal literature, an impassioned desire for knowledge and for socialism is growing among the workers, real heroes are coming to the fore from amongst the workers, who, despite their wretched living conditions, despire the stultifying penal servitude of factory labour, possess so much character and will-power that THEY STUDY, STUDY, STUDY AND TURN THEMSELVES INTO CONSCIOUS SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS – “THE WORKING CLASS INTELLIGENTSIA.” This “working-class intelligentsia” already exists in Russia, and we must make every effort to ensure that its ranks are regularly reinforced, that its lofty mental requirements are met and that leaders of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party come from its ranks. The newspaper that wants to become the organ of all Russian-Social-Democrats must, therefore, be at the level of the advanced workers; not only must it not lower its level artificially, but, on the contrary, it must raise it constantly, it must follow up all the tactical, political, and theoretical problems of world Social-Democracy. Only then will the demands of the working-class intelligentsia be met, and it itself will take the cause of the Russian workers and, consequently, the cause of the Russian revolution, into its own hands.
After the numerically small stratum of advanced workers comes the broad stratum of average workers. These workers, too, strive ardently for socialism, participate in workers’ study circles, read socialist newspapers and books, participate in agitation, and differ from the preceding stratum only in that they cannot become fully independent leaders of the Social-Democratic working-class movement. The average worker will not understand some of the articles in a newspaper that aims to be the organ of the Party, he will not be able to get a full grasp of an intricate theoretical or practical problem. This does not at all mean that the newspaper must lower itself to the level of the mass of its readers. The newspaper, on the contrary, must raise their level and help promote advanced workers from the middle stratum of workers. Such workers, absorbed by local practical work and interested mainly in the events of the working-class movement and the immediate problems of agitation, should connect their every act with thoughts of the entire Russian working-class movement, its historical task, and the ultimate goal of socialism, so that the newspaper, the mass of whose readers are average workers, must connect socialism and the political struggle with every local and narrow question.
Lastly, behind the stratum of average workers comes the mass that constitutes the lower strata of the proletariat. It is quite possible that a socialist newspaper will be completely or well-nigh incomprehensible to them (even in Western Europe the number of Social-Democratic voters is much larger than the number of readers of Social-Democratic newspapers), but it would be absurd to conclude from this that the newspaper of the Social-Democrats should adapt itself to the lowest possible level of the workers. The only thing that follows from this is that different forms of agitation and propaganda must be brought to bear on these strata – pamphlets written in more popular language, oral agitation, and chiefly – leaflets on local events. . . .
Only an organised party can carry out widespread agitation, provide the necessary guidance (and material) for agitators on all economic and political questions, make use of every local agitational success for the instruction of all Russian workers, and send agitators to those places and into that milieu where they can work with the greatest success. It is oniy in an organised party that people possessing the capacities for work as agitators will be able to dedicate themselves wholly to this task – to the advantage both of agitation and of the other aspects of Social-Democratic work. From this it can be seen that whoever forgets political agitation and propaganda on account of the economic struggle, whoever forgets the necessity of organising the working-class movement into the struggle of a political party, will, aside from everything else, deprive himself of even an opportunity of successfully and steadily attracting the lower strata of the proletariat to the working-class cause. (“A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social-Democracy”, LCW 4:280-83)
The League, in contrast, tells us that “we should orient our activities toward the large mass of workers, the overwhelming majority of the proletariat.” (“Agreement”, p. 76) In the League’s schema, there are no advanced workers in Lenin’s sense. The League’s “advanced” workers are made up of a few average workers and trade-union militants or “combative” workers. The League’s schema, of course, fits with its overall opportunist conception of workers. “Advanced” workers can be “tainted with reformism and nationalism” but they are willing to fight for higher wages. Average workers are those who “do not initiate local struggles, but they participate in them once they are launched.” And the backward workers are those that are “difficult to mobilize” in the struggle for higher wages.
In Lenin’s view, all of these workers are backward workers. The League may use Lenin’s terminology, but entirely in the spirit of “waving the red flag to oppose the red flag.”
In fact, even within the backward strata the League has the order reversed. To the League, the most “backward elements” are the ones who are “strongly marked by the ideology of class collaboration and heavily influenced by the labour aristocracy”.[16] Of course, there are many backward workers in Canada who are not even willing to fight for minimal trade union demands. But we would be deceiving ourselves if we thought that this is all the League means by the most “backward workers.” For the League, these include those who are “difficult to mobilise” in the League’s attempt to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles” on the reformist level where the League wants to keep them. In other words, those workers who resist the opportunist trade-unionism of the League but who thirst for political knowledge, or those workers (and there are many) whose main problem is cynicism with the trade union bureaucracy and the opportunists, are “class collaborators.” Those workers who follow “combative” workers and trade union hacks but are not enamoured with opportunism are average workers. But those workers who are “underdeveloped ideologically”, “tainted with reformism and nationalism” and who “aspire in a confused way to socialism” are the “advanced” workers. The “advanced workers” are those who cannot tell the difference between the different newspapers at the factory gate but who can understand that “Marxism-Leninism is their science” because of the League’s ability to be the best reformists, i.e., to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles” and win them higher wages. Like In Struggle!, the League directly contradicts Lenin on this subject, who thought that the question of who was an “advanced” worker was a scientific description of the level of political development of a worker and not a description of her/his sentiments.
We leave it to the reader to judge whether it is the so-called “backward-elements” or the League who are the class collaborators. For our part, we will take one “backward element” thirsting for political knowledge and instinctively resist opportunism to any number of “Leaque-ites”.
Not only does the League not recognize the existence of any real advanced workers, the League frantically opposes the formation of any.
Lenin tells us that workers become advanced workers because they “study, study, study and turn themselves into conscious Social-Democrats – the ’working-class intelligentsia.’” The League calls Marxist-Leninists who try to lead workers in this process “right-opportunists” because they are “educating a small number of advanced workers outside of the class struggle.” (Forge, no. 11, p. 11)
Worse still, they want to cut off the leaders of the movement, the most advanced workers, from their class brothers and sisters by pulling them out of the factories, and out of their struggles to restrain them to study. (Ibid.)
But Lenin tells us that “the worker-revolutionary must also become a professional revolutionary.” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 112) Lenin states clearly that we must
... recognize our duty to assist every capable worker to become a professional agitator, organizer, propagandist, literature distributor, etc., etc. In this respect, we waste our strength in a positively shameful manner; we lack the ability to husband that which should be tended and reared with special care... try to place every capable workingman in such conditions as will enable him to develop and apply his abilities to the utmost: he is made a professional agitator, he is encouraged to widen the field of his activity, to spread it from one factory to the whole of the industry, from one locality to the whole country.... A worker-agitator who is at all talented and promising must not be left to work eleven hours a day in a factory. We must arrange that he be maintained by the Party, that he may go underground in good time, that he change the place of his activity, otherwise he will not enlarge his experience, he will not widen his outlook.... (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 163)
In order to “serve” the mass movement we must have people who will devote themselves exclusively to Social-Democratic activities, and that such people must train themselves patiently and steadfastly to be professional revolutionaries. (Ibid., p. 155)
We suppose we will have to remind the League here that trade-union activity is not the equivalent of Social-Democratic (i.e., communist) activity. Lenin also says that we need
detachments of specially trained worker-revolutionaries who have gone through extensive preparation ... for these detachments of men absolutely devoted to the revolution will themselves enjoy the absolute confidence of the widest masses of the workers. (Ibid., p. 164)
But, instead of preparing the vanguard of the proletariat to take its leadership in these tasks, the League wants to substitute the petit-bourgeoisie – with the “correct” line, to be sure! – for these worker-revolutionaries and “it is through direct involvement in the struggle that they (the League-ites – BU) will win the respect and confidence of the masses.”
The League seeks to substitute itself for the advanced workers in the formation of the party.
It is only through the integration and constant linking of its militants with the masses that a Marxist-Leninist organisation will take on a proletarian character. (Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organisation, MREQ, p. 37)
And so, instead of rallying the most advanced workers educated in the science of Marxism-Leninism and thus giving the organization a real proletarian character, the League sends petit-bourgeois “militants” to get working-class jobs (usually in trade-union situations, although vast sections of the proletariat are not unionized), forms them in factory cells and calls them the vanguard of the proletariat. “A revolutionary organization cannot really be proletarian while the majority of its militants are not implanted in the midst of the proletariat.” (Ibid.) And, compare a statement by Workers’ Unity (Toronto), which rallied to the League: “... Implantation is important ... as one means of proletarianization of the revolutionary organization, that is, of adopting the outlook of the revolutionary proletariat.” Canadian Revolution 1:3, p. 47) This obviously continues to be the line of the League, because in Workers’ Unity’s “self-criticism” upon “rallying to the League” they say: “It is not PRINCIPALLY to “proletarnianize” the organization and its militants, nor to attempt to yet lead the struggles of the working class as a whole, that communist militants are ’implanted’ at this time.” (Canadian Revolution 1:6, p. 37) Not “principally” – just “one means”, which is exactly what they had said originally. They are trying to wiggle out of their reformism, but it is a very tight girdle.
If there is any doubt that the League is trying to substitute themselves for the advanced workers and pretend that their petit-bourgeois implantees are the vanguard of the proletariat, consider one aspect of their recent “practice.” At the recent Toronto forum on the general strike sponsored by the League, a “worker” from a “trade union” was introduced to give his views on the general strike. Up stood the worker on the platform – and it was none other than an old “movement” implantee and former member of the Toronto Marxist-Leninist Collective who had “rallied” to the League!
Not only do petit-bourgeois “militants” have to be implanted to give the organisation a “proletarian character”, it cannot be “proletarian” without it. A worker writing to LD (see letter, page 124) uses a much better term for this implantation – “infiltration.” The petit-bourgeoisie is infiltrating the working class in order to assert their leadership over it.
“The League, right from the beginning of its existence, organised itself primarily on the basis of factory cells”; in fact, “the pillars of its organisation are factory cells.” (Forge, no. 6, p. 7) Who are these cells made up of? Workers? No – petit-bourgeois.
Under current conditions, it is important to send some militants of the organization into the factory in order to promote, by their work of agitation and propaganda, by their direct participation in struggles, the creation of factory cells. (“Agreement,” p. 79)
The aim of these petit-bourgeois is to organise the workers into trade union political struggle in addition to leading their “immediate struggles.”
Communists regrouped in factory cells work to transform the spontaneous workers’ movement into a conscious struggle; they work to forge the daily resistance to exploitation into a united force of the entire class directed against the domination of the bourgeoisie. (Forge, no. 6, p. 7)
The opportunist nature of this is clearly revealed when the League states that “the cells will intervene in all economic conflicts, in all the demands of the workers, to expand and deepen the movement, by showing the workers the political consequences, pushing them to larger struggles, to political and not just economic ones.” Indeed, they will “lend the economic struggle itself a political character.”
We have seen that when the League speaks of “rallying a certain number of advanced workers” as the principal task in building the “party”, it is not advanced workers that the League wants. They do not want to get bogged down in “intellectualism” by having to cope with “the working-class intelligentsia.” Instead they want the most combative backward workers. And what does the League want these workers for? To give the organization a proletarian character? No, the petit-bourgeois implantees already do this; in fact, there is no “proletarian character” without them. The League is not trying to win the workers to communism, but instead to get them to follow the League, because the League is better than anyone else at leading the “immediate struggles.” But, of course, the League does not “limit” its work among the “masses” to this.
Through agitation and propaganda the factory cell aims to transform the spontaneous workers’ movement into a conscious struggle, to turn daily resistance to exploitation into a unified force of the whole class directed against the domination of the bourgeoisie. (Forge, no. 6, p. 7)
There has been some debate in the Marxist-Leninist movement over the question of “agitation and propaganda.” It must be realized that “agitation and propaganda” can be conducted for bourgeois ideology and no matter how much the League throws these terms around, it cannot be assumed that the League uses them in a Marxist-Leninist way.
In fact, to the League, “agitation and propaganda” is only the work that the organisation does to motivate “immediate struggles.” “In carrying out our work of agitation-propaganda and organization, we have to initiate and lead the struggles of the working class.”
In other words, “agitation-propaganda” serves to help the League “initiate and lead” strikes. In order to justify its opportunism, the League tries to equate its views on the subject with Lenin’s and Stalin’s, but they do this by deliberately distorting both.
The League refers to Stalin on the subject of the stages of party-building. Since In Struggle! brought Stalin’s formulations to the fore in the debate on party-building (Canadian Revolution 1:3, p. 13), the League cannot ignore it. Instead, the League seeks to render Stalin more profound by changing his words. Stalin clearly saw “propaganda as the chief form of activity” in the first period. (“The Political Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communits: Synopsis of a Pamphlet”, Works, 5:83, FLPH, Moscow 1953. This is the authorized communist translation.) But since the League disagrees with this, and cannot fit it into its Economism and its contempt for theory, it prefers to discard the authorized translation of Stalin’s works into English and instead makes its own translation.
In place of the word “propaganda”, the French version of this article by Stalin has the term “education.” We feel it is correct to give the wider interpretation of the term – that is, propaganda and agitation as the key forms of political education – and not the narrow interpretation of the English word (propaganda as opposed to agitation.) (“Agreement”, p. 66)
This is complete chicanery. The League knows full well that Lenin clearly states that
As long as the question was (and in so far as it still is) one of winning over the vanguard of the proletariat to Communism, so long, and to that extent, propaganda was in the forefront; even propaganda circles, with all the defects of the circle spirit, are useful under these conditions and produce fruitful results. (Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, Peking, p. 98)
However, the League completely ignores Lenin’s line. Apparently they couldn’t find a way to “re-translate” it!
The League also seeks to distort what propaganda and agitation mean. The League tells us that “propaganda ... should speak to the large masses in simple and easily accessible terms.” (“Agreement”, p. 70)
Lenin quotes Martynov, the leader of the Economists, as saying, “ ’By propaganda we would understand the revolutionary elucidation of the whole of the present system or partial manifestations of it, irrespective of whether it is done in a form intelligible to individuals or to broad masses.’ ” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 82) (How is it that the League and Martynov think so much alike?!)
Lenin, as usual, had quite different views.
We congratulate Russian – and international – Social-Democracy on this new, Martynov terminology which is more strict and more profound. Up to now we thought (with Plekhanov, and with all the leaders of the international working-class movement) that a propagandist, dealing with, say, that same question of unemployment, must explain the capitalistic nature of crises, the reasons why they are inevitable in contemporary society, describe the need for its transformation into socialist society, etc. In a word, HE MUST PRESENT “MANY IDEAS,” SO MANY INDEED THAT THEY WILL BE UNDERSTOOD AS AN INTEGRAL WHOLE ONLY BY A (COMPARATIVELY) FEW PERSONS. AN AGITATOR, HOWEVER, speaking on the same subject, will take as an illustration a fact that is most glaring and most widely known to his audience, say, the death from starvation of the family of an unemployed worker, the growing impoverishment, etc., and utilizing this fact, which is known to all and sundry, will direct all his efforts to presenting a single idea to the “masses”, i.e., the idea of the senselessness of the contradiction between the increase of wealth and increase of poverty; he will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses against this crying injustice, and leave a more complete explanation of this contradiction to the propagandist. Consequently, the propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator by means of the living word. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 82-3)
The League reduces propaganda to vague generalisation understandable to the “masses.” Anyone familiar with their “propaganda” will know that it amounts to little more than cliches.
A couple of examples of the “brilliance” of the League’s propaganda from the first issue of The Forge (Special issue, Nov. 75, P.2) demonstrates its value.
The only thing ’excessive’ is the profits of the bourgeoisie.
The League is effectively saying this: “What the hell, the workers don’t need to know about the law of the falling rate of profit or that anarchy of production is characteristic of capitalism. That would just divert them into book-learning. But – telling them the bosses are making excessive profits and that their state plans it this way will make ’the guys at the plant’ fight harder and make more advanced workers out of them, right? After all, The Forge says that ’in carrying out our work of agitation-propaganda ... we have to initiate and lead the struggles of the working class.’ ”
The League, of course, puts primary emphasis on agitation. The League tells us that it doesn’t emphasize just economic agitation, but that it places its emphasis on political agitation. This, the League claims, prevents it from “sinking into economism.” (“Agreement”, p. 71) But once again the League obscures the issue of Economism and equates it with “pure” trade unionism.
... for these practical economists applied political agitation (to the extent that they applied it at all!) almost exclusively on an economic basis. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking.p. 74)
Any cursory reading of a few issues of The Forge, in which “political agitation will be dominant” (“Agreement”, p. 72), should amply demonstrate the point.
We have seen in LD no. 1 (p. 39) what leading League-ite Judy Darcy has presented to the workers as “communist agitation and propaganda.” We have seen that she was carrying a thoroughly bourgeois line to the workers and calling it “Marxist and Leninist.” In a recent Forge (no. 23, p. 7), we can see further examples of the “communist education” which the League doled out to union delegates. The points listed:
a) Fight the wage controls.
b) Oppose tripartism in the unions.
c) Fight layoffs, etc.
d) “Discussions” around recognizing the right of Quebec to self-determination. Reason: to unite the proletariat “in its fight against its main enemy, the Canadian bourgeoisie” (i.e., the fight against the wage controls and layoffs).
e) Build the unity of the workers... socialism ... democratic rights ... fight racism, etc.
“Communist agitation and propaganda”, to the League, is militant trade-unionist agitation for democratic rights and democratic demands. “Socialism” is represented as the equivalent of victory on these questions.
It would be incorrect to say that the League is trying to liquidate the first stage of party-building because the League is not in the process of building a proletarian party. It is for this reason that the League sees no differences in what small parties should do and what the process is to found a party. It is typical of a bourgeois outlook to not see qualitative leaps in the development of a thing. The League sees no qualitative leap between stages. Instead, the League sees the development of the party as a quantitative growth in the number of implantees, the quantitative growth of a “political line” – that will be put in a “programme” when it is convenient, as usual out of view of the rest of the movement – the quantitative growth in the unity of Marxist-Leninists around the League’s political line, but above all the decisive thing at this stage is the “rallying of a certain number of advanced workers.” The petit-bourgeois organisation has everything it needs to be a party except a certain number of combative workers to adoringly follow them around calling them “proletarian leaders”. (Not to mention “precious Marxist-Leninists”. See the letter from the worker sympathetic to the CCL(ML) on page 99 of this issue).
The League’s discussion of “Our tasks in the first stage of party-building” (“Agreement”, p. 66-70) is divided into two sections: “our theoretical tasks” and “practical tasks.” Typical of the League’s anti-theoretical stance, the section on “our theoretical tasks” is confined to less than half a page, whereas the “practical tasks” are conferred seven pages. Although the League gives the usual lip service to theory (“ideological and political line determines everything”, etc.), these questions are never principal for the League in the first stage. The League sees that “communist agitation and propaganda must be our principal task, our principal activity” throughout the entirety of the first stage.
This is fundamentally wrong for three reasons. (1) It completely denies that in the contradiction between theory and practice, theory can ever be primary. (2) It denies Stalin’s view that propaganda is principal in winning the vanguard to communism. (3) It elevates agitation to primacy over or to a level equal to that of propaganda in the first stage when this is true of the second stage.
The League tries to give the impression that Lenin supports their views by citing “The Tasks of Russian Social-Democrats ”, where Lenin states that “inseparably connected with propaganda is agitation”. (“Agreement”, p. 68) First of all, that Lenin says the two are “inseparably connected” does not say that they are equal or that “agitation and propaganda must be our principal task.” As we have already shown, Lenin considers propaganda to be principal in the first stage. But the article by Lenin has some interesting things to say about the relationship of theory and practice in the first stage of party-building that the League “chooses” to ignore.
We emphasize the practical side of Social-Democracy, because on the theoretical side the most critical period ... is now apparently behind us. Now the main and basic features of the theoretical views of the Social-Democrats have been sufficiently clarified. (LCW 2:327-28)
Only the League could say that this is true in Canada throughout the entirety of the first stage.
In fact, if the League had bothered to read “Preface to the Second Edition of the Pamphlet, The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats” (LCW 6:211), they would have found how Lenin situated the importance of this pamphlet and its emphasis on agitation in relation to the question of theoretical and practical tasks and their relative importance at different stages.[17]
There was no such antagonism between the theory and the practice of the Social-Democrats as existed in the period of “Economism”.
The pamphlet in question reflects the specific features of the then situation and “tasks” of Social-Democracy. It calls for deeper and more widespread practical work, seeing no “obstacles” whatever to this in lack of clarity on any of the general views, principles, or theories, seeing no difficulty (at that time there was none) in combining the political struggle with the economic. It addresses its explanations of principles to adherents of the Narodnaya Volya and the Narodnoye Pravo, who are opposed to Social-Democracy, in an endeavour to dispel the misunderstandings and prejudices which keep them away from the new movement.
So, at the present time, when the “economist” period is evidently coming to an end, the Social-Democrats’ stand is again the same as it was five years ago. Of course, the tasks now confronting us are incomparably more complicated, as a result of the immense growth of the movement during this time, but the principal features of the present reproduce, on a broader base and on a larger scale, the specific features of the “second” period. The variance between our theory, programme, tactical tasks, and practical activities is disappearing in proportion to the disappearance of “economism.” We can and must boldly call again for deeper and more widespread practical work, since the theoretical premises for this work have already been created to a large extent. (LCW 6:212-13)
This is precisely what Mao was speaking to when he stated that
In the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is the principal aspect.... The creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory plays the principal and decisive role in those times of which Lenin said, “Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” (“On Contradiction”, MSW 1:335-36)
As Lenin pointed out, Economism “attempts to justify this narrowness and to elevate it to a special ’theory’.” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 128) This is precisely what the League has done in its position on “right-opportunism”. The League, however, is forced to operate within the confines of Marxism-Leninism and thus must engage in the struggle against “right-opportunism.” And so the League restricts what right-opportunism is.
Right-opportunism OPENLY abandons the struggle for the final aim of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat and seeks to reduce the proletariat’s struggle to one for MERE reforms and SMALL changes, e.g., reformist leaders in the trade union movement, the revisionist party. (Forge no. 11, p. 10)
And so, right-opportunism does not exist in the Marxist-Leninist movement, it is merely confined to the bourgeoisie and its agents.
But those who do not confine the working class to “mere reforms”, like the League, but who “lend the economic struggle itself a political character”, those who don’t struggle for “small changes” but struggle for big changes (like the repeal the Trudeau law), those who don’t “openly abandon the struggle for the final aim of socialism” and instead do it covertly, those who don’t engage in “pure economism” but instead engage in impure economism (Forge, no. 11, p. 11), those who don’t engage in “vulgar economism” but instead engage in refined Economism (“Reply to May First”, Canadian Revolution 1:6, p. 40), they of course are not right-opportunists. They are “Marxist-Leninists,” no doubt!
The League tells us that “the main danger in the Canadian workers’ and Marxist-Leninist movements .. . is right-opportunism and comes from those who would:” (Then the League gives us two categories that these dastardly opportunists fall into.) “1. liquidate communist agitation and propaganda for socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat in favour of UNIQUELY trade-union work or reformist politics.” (Forge, no. 11, p. 10) There is of course no one who does this in the Marxist-Leninist movement, because those who favour “uniquely trade-union work” are not Marxist-Leninists and can no longer claim to be. And so, there is no right-opportunist danger in the movement except those in category “2”.
2. or those who refuse to engage in communist agitation on the pretext that their line is not developed and refuse to engage in trade union work on the pretext that it is economist, thus reducing communist activity to study and parlour-room discussions on political line and refusing to work within the masses or lead their struggles. (Ibid.)
The real “right-opportunist” danger in the Marxist-Leninist movement is those people, “like Bolshevik Tendency in Toronto” (ibid., p. 11), who emphasize theory and refuse to provide opportunist trade union leadership, i.e., those who struggle against Economism and attempt to fuse Marxism-Leninism with the working-class using Marxism-Leninism.
This is the whole essence of the League’s demarcation over the question of “Should Marxist-Leninists participate in immediate struggles”? By “participate in” they do not mean intervening in immediate struggles with the view to combatting their spontaneous character and raising the level of the workers to that of socialist theoreticians and revolutionaries. To do so would be to recognize that, at this stage, theory is the principal aspect of the contradiction between theory and practice. To do so would be to recognize that at this stage, propaganda is the chief form of activity.
By “participate in immediate struggles”, the League means engaging in reformist activity, cultivating and perpetuating the backward spontaneous level of the workers’ movement by calling it “revolutionary practice” and by calling what they are doing “communist agitation and propaganda”; making a mechanical materialist vulgarization of dialectics by insisting that practice is always the principal aspect of the contradiction between theory and practice; and attacking the role of propaganda and political line in the first stage of building the party.
If you won’t “participate in immediate struggles” in the way the League means it, then you are “right-opportunists” and “the main danger” in the Marxist-Leninist movement and the workers’ movement.
This is very convenient for our friends from the League with their old revisionist and Economist histories. Always they had maintained, in theory and in practice, that the “ultra-left” (i.e., Leninism) was the main danger in the struggle to build the party. Now they maintain that “right-opportunism” (the same Leninism, it’s been there all along) is the main danger in the struggle to build the party. This is the way they give themselves a cheap “left” cover.
For our part, we prefer to stand with Lenin’s “right-opportunism” than the League’s so-called “Marxism-Leninism.” (Or shall we say “Marxism and Leninism.”)
Leninism is definitely the “main danger” to the politics of the League, i.e., the politics of Economism and right-opportunism. Leninism is the “main danger” to the attempt by the League to achieve the hegemony of the petit-bourgeoisie over the workers’ movement and it is the “main danger” to the attempt by the petit-bourgeoisie to sabotage the formation of a Marxist-Leninist party that is guided by the most advanced theory and is made up of the vanguard of the proletariat.
The League tries to give legitimacy to its attempt to discredit Leninism by referring to what communists do in the second stage of building the party, after they have built a party based on a scientific revolutionary programme, a core of professional revolutionaries and the vanguard of the proletariat rallied to it.
The League, like “Rabocheye Dyelo, has said nothing that is material to the subject, but has only tried to confuse the question by a whole series of unseemly, demagogic sallies.” (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 190) And they represent “the combination of pettyfogging practice and utter disregard for theory.” (Ibid., p. 224)
All those who talk about “overrating the importance of ideology”, about exaggerating the role of the conscious element... all worship of the spontaneity of the working class movement, all belittling of the role of “the conscious element”, of the role of Social-Democracy, means, quite irrespective of whether the belittler wants to or not, strengthening the influence of the bourgeois ideology over the workers. (What Is To Be Done?, Peking, p. 46)
It is with the understanding of the League’s position on its two fundamental demarcations – the principal contradiction and implantation – that we can gain a better understanding of what the League means when they talk about the struggle for the unity of Marxist-Leninists.
As we have demonstrated in “On the Principal Contradiction” in LD no. 1, the League’s line on the principal contradiction is a dummy political line. It in no way represents an application of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of Canada. The League does not use Marxism-Leninism nor does it analyse concrete conditions. As we have shown this is a cover, and the logical theoretical consequence to its profound opportunism in the working-class movement. The cornerstone of this opportunism is thorough Economism and a consistent attack on Marxist-Leninist theory. The class basis of this is well known.
The League carries the same line on the question of the unity of Marxist-Leninists, but its frequent cries about “the correctness of ideological and political line determines everything”, “demarcation”, and the “need for debate” in the movement, etc., obscure this to many people who, under In Struggle!’s tutelage, consider this just the foamings at the mouth of a mad sectarian and dogmatic dog.
This is an incorrect view of the League because the League is in no way “leftist” and its position on unity is no exception.
Consider what the League says about how people are rallied to a group.
Nor is it by reading articles from these two groups in CR that militants across the country can decide if they agree with one group or another. It is through the open struggle in their respective newspapers that these organisations can consistently and comprehensively explain their stands. Most importantly, it is by examining their practice and their revolutionary work, that militants can judge In Struggle! and the CCL(ML). (Canadian Revolution 6:51)
The League is telling the movement that longer theoretical articles of the type that would be published in a theoretical journal are not of much importance; that what is more important is the occasional one-page “comprehensive” pot-shots that the two groups take at each other in their newspapers. But what is of most importance is “practice and revolutionary work.” We have seen what the League means by these terms – implantation and “lending the economic struggle itself a political character.”
Although the method of winning the workers over by personal example in spontaneous struggles will never win the vanguard of the proletariat, it is great to win over “militants across the country.” Who are these “militants” – petit-bourgeois who have gone into the working-class as worker-priests and/or have been thrown into the working class by the advance of capitalism and are inclined to orient to opportunists who seek hegemony over the growing movement of unrest deep within the proletariat.
It should come as no surprise that the League rallies people on the basis of attraction to its opportunism, because if it rallied people on the basis of theory, the League would only expose itself.
In fact, when the League talks about the Marxist-Leninist movement, it must be understood that this is not primarily an ideological and political category for the League, but a way for the League to identify opportunists.
The League incessantly attacks In Struggle! for not having a “scientific” conception of what the movement is and who is in it. The League attacks both In Strugglel’s ideological line of definition of the present movement and its minimal programme of the organisation of struggle for the party as inadequate to define the movement or who is in it.
But even then, it takes more than adherance to a correct platform to define who is a Marxist-Leninist. A demonstration of resolute struggle against opportunism and attempts to put their ideas into PRACTICE IN CLASS STRUGGLE are also necessary. (Forge, no. 6, p. 11)
We always knew that the League never really upheld that the correctness or incorrectness of the ideological and political line determines everything – it’s nice that they have openly admitted that it has little to do with being Marxist-Leninist. What is primary to the League as to whether some one or some group is Marxist-Leninist is the question of whether they will “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.”
In its speech at In Struggle!’s Unity conference on October 9 in Montreal, the League tells us that “we must know how to determine precisely who the authentic communists are” and then goes on to give us their “precise criteria.”
We use three criteria in order to determine if a group is a genuine communist group: (1) firmly basing oneself on the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism; (2) resolutely fight against opportunism; and (3) undertaking revolutionary practice, especially in the struggle for the creation of the party. (Forge, no. 20, p. 12)
We have seen what the League means by the “fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism” – i.e., the fabricated principles of the League. We have seen what the League means by “resolutely fight against opportunism” – i.e., resolutely fight against Marxism-Leninism. We have seen what “revolutionary practice” means to the League – i.e., to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.”
In fact, the League informs the world that “with no practice in the working class, for MF (May 1st Collective – Vancouver) to advance its position paper as a contribution to the Marxist-Leninist movement is pure opportunism.” (“Response to May First”, Canadian Revolution 1:6, p. 42) Presumably if May First were to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles” then their contribution would be “pure Marxism-Leninism.”[18]
The League even attacks Canadian Revolution, which the League is a part of, because it “is not actively engaged in the working class revolutionary struggle ” (CR 1:6, p. 51) and because it is “not engaging in its own revolutionary practice in the proletariat” (p. 50). The reasoning is that CR should liquidate – not because it has sabotaged the open ideological debate in Canada (in which sabotage Workers’ Unity eagerly participated), but because it does not “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles.”
It is the League who decides who is and who is not in the movement on the basis of whether or not they are opportunist, particularly Economist. The only group that the League has openly declared to be in the movement is In Struggle! We quite agree that In Struggle! fits the League’s conception of “Marxism-Leninism”! We also consider it quite an honour that the League has made such a point of excluding the Bolshevik Union from its “Marxist-Leninist movement”, because the League’s version of the movement is an opportunist movement. Although the League’s movement doesn’t include anywhere near all the opportunists in the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement, it certainly includes the most consolidated ones.
For example, let us take Workers’ Unity (Toronto). We have shown quite extensively that WU(T) was a thoroughly opportunist formation and had been for years. Not only did they have a long history of Economism, by their own admission, but they also took a position on the nature of CR which runs directly counter to the League’s current position that CR is a coalition.
But not only does the League consider that WU(T) was a genuine Marxist-Leninist group. WU(T) actually stated in their position on rallying to the League that their long history of opportunism was their most important contribution which they were making to the League.
Most importantly, we bring to the Canadian Communist League (ML) a contingent of revolutionary militants committed to applying Marxism-Leninism in the concrete conditions of our struggle, dedicated to struggling for the emancipation of the working class and all oppressed people. (CR 1:6, p. 38)
Resolute commitment, all along. They just had the wrong line, that’s all!
The League criticises In Struggle! for failing “to rigorously define who belongs to the Marxist-Leninist movement”. (Forge, no. 20, p. 12) It could be reasonably concluded from this that the League operates upon a “rigorous” definition of who belongs in the movement. In fact, the League states that:
The League considers that it is the responsibility of Canadian communists to analyse the political line and the practice of the different groups in our country in order to determine who in fact belongs to the Marxist-Leninist movement. (Ibid.)
Apparently, the League does not consider that it is its “responsibility” to do this or at least the League can keep its “rigorous” “analysis” secret (just as they kept the development of their perfect political line a dark secret). On the very next page the League gives this incredible statement about In Strugglel’s Unity conference.
In Struggle! applied an erroneous definition of what is a Marxist-Leninist group, inviting practically everyone who claims to be a communist. In fact many of those who gave speeches were not genuine communist groups. By brushing over the differences between communists and opportunists, by giving a vague, wishy-washy definition of the communist movement. In Struggle! is abandoning its responsibilities before the working class. In particular we wish to underline that In Struggle!’s invitation to Bolshevik Union helped to legitimise this opportunist group of saboteurs as part of the Marxist-Leninist movement. It is disgusting that such a group whose work is simply to divide and wreck the Marxist-Leninist movement should be allowed to speak. (Forge, no. 20, p. 13)
The League tells us that “many of those who gave speeches were not genuine communist groups.” The League does not bother to tell which groups are and which aren’t “genuine”, instead leaving this to everyone’s intuition. An excellent example of how the League “rigorously define(s) who belongs to the Marxist-Leninist movement”!
The conclusion which we draw from this is that, because “the correctness or incorrectness of political line determines everything” and because the League has “the correct political line”, therefore the League decides everything!
We have confronted cadre of the League on this question and asked them which groups are in the movement. They have told us on several occasions that they would only name the League and In Struggle! What has become clear is that the League probably doesn’t consider any of the groups who spoke, besides the League and In Struggle!, in the movement. They have told us that the don’t consider Mobilisation, the Cercle Communiste (ML), the G.R.P., the May First Collective and the Bolshevik Union in the Marxist-Leninist movement. Not surprisingly, these were the only groups who spoke at the conference that had taken public positions before the conference other than the League and In Struggle!
In the case of the Bolshevik Union, we were the only group openly named. But has the League openly demarcated against us? No, it just hurls some slanderous epithets and calls this “rigorously defin(ing) who belongs to the Marxist-Leninist movement.”
It should be clearly understood that all of the League’s hoopla about having “public debates among Marxist-Leninists to further the cause of unity” (ibid.) and its calls to “intensify the debate over line” represent nothing but a debate between the tweedledum and tweedledee of our movement, the League and In Struggle!
Concretely in Canada today this can be achieved ONLY by direct and open debates between in Struggle! and the League. (Ibid.)
The League wants to liquidate the struggle for the unity of Marxist-Leninists and simply have a beauty contest between two organisations. After all, this is the two-line struggle – which opportunist group to join! In fact, the League is so terrified to open its political line to broader examination that it does not even allow any questions or comments from its audience at its public forums!
It should be kept in mind that the League does not consider all of this very important because “most importantly, it is by examining their practice and their revolutionary work that militants can judge In Struggle! and the CCL(ML).” The “practice and ... revolutionary work” of the League is to “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles” and their principal task is to rally “a certain number of advanced workers.”
We have seen elsewhere in this issue what In Struggle!’s “practice and ... revolutionary work” consist of: competing with the League to “lend the economic struggle itself a political character”, “attack the bourgeois state on October 14”, and “getting fully involved in the class struggle of the toiling masses.”
A real choice indeed! For our part, we have “judged” and have decided to go against the tide.
Lenin has pointed out that “the method of exposition (or study) of dialectics ...” is “to begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., with any proposition.” (“On the Question of Dialectics”, LCW 38:361)
This is what we have done with the League. We have taken the League’s simple question, “Should Marxist-Leninists participate in immediate struggles?” and their answer that Marxist-Leninists must “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles”. “We separate the essence from the appearance and counterpose the one to the other.” (Ibid.)
In the case of the League we have separated its opportunist and nascent revisionist essence from its Marxist-Leninist appearance. We have separated its claims of upholding Marxism-Leninism from the reality of its political line and practice.
It should never be forgotten that the history of the international communist movement has time and time again revealed that
the more gains the Marxist score against their ideological enemies in the ranks of the workers’ movement, the more refined and camouflaged the opportunists become, taking the shape of distorted Marxists, the shape of revisionists. (The Party of Labour of Albania in Battle With Modern Revisionism, Tirana, 1972, p. 348)
The League has attacked and attempted to negate Leninism by assuming a “more refined and camouflaged” form than the opportunists of Lenin’s day. The opportunists in Russia openly attacked Lenin but the League embraces Lenin only to put forward the line of opportunism, sometimes in exactly the same form as the opportunists of Lenin’s day, sometimes “a more refined and camouflaged” line through the complete misuse of Leninist terminology, “retranslations”, very “selective” quotation, and so forth.
People in the Marxist-Leninist movement and cadre of the League are going to have to make a choice between this essence and appearance. If it is more important for people in the movement to have the appearances of being Marxist-Leninist while looking for cheap popularity, then the League puts on a good appearance, of that there is no doubt. But where will that appearance lead? We know well of the appearance of Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao, and Teng Hsiao-ping. They appeared to be communists for many years, but what was their essence? What would have happened if the people had followed their appearance, as many did, instead of exposing their essence and defeating their essence as the people did under the leadership of Mao?
But this problem of appearance and essence is not confined to the dictatorship of the proletariat; it is universal in the struggle for socialism. Let us look at the Communist Party of China before 1927. It had grown from a membership of 45 at its founding in 1921 to over a million in 1927. But because under incorrect leadership the party had only the appearance of following the line of the Communist International but in essence was following a counter-revolutionary right-opportunist line, around 90% or 900,000 communists were butchered. Is this the sort of disaster which people in the Marxist-Leninist movement in Canada want? Why is it that Mao says that “the correctness or incorrectness of the ideological and political line determines everything” – because it does!
Do people in the movement, and do cadre of the League, want to accept the ideological and political line of the League because it “appears” correct or because the League says it is correct? Why is it that the League wants to avoid the type of examination that will scientifically settle the question?
Is going to a meeting of 1,500 people on the evening of October 14 and “feeling” the appearance of Marxism-Leninism “fusing” with the workers’ movement more important than the essence of the kind of opportunism the League represents?
The League can have 1,500 or 15,000 people at a rally that is attended by 15 or 15,000 workers. None of this makes the League anything more than the appearance of Marxism-Leninism. History is full of examples of opportunists thriving on the backwardness of many workers.
The League, or the “party” it will form after it “rallies a certain number of advanced workers”, will never lead the Canadian proletariat to socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat because the League denies the class struggle necessary to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat.
As Marx said: “What I did that was new was to prove ... that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Marx to J. Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852, Selected Correspondence, Moscow 1965, p. 69) The League and other opportunists define trade union struggle – either individual skirmishes in factories or countrywide strikes led by the CLC – as “class struggle” and define as the “political struggle” of the proletariat the struggle for political reforms granted by the government. Lenin of course called this trade union politics, pure and simple.
And so, what the League is saying is that this trade union struggle – which they define as “class struggle” – will lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In so doing, they are denying the dictatorship which the proletariat exercises over the bourgeoisie by seizing state power under the leadership of an independent vanguard party guided by the most advanced theory and to which the class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat has been rallied.
Granted the League does not think that the dictatorship of the proletariat will happen spontaneously – that would be “pure” or “vulgar” economism. The League thinks it needs to be done by petit-bourgeois militants who call themselves Marxist-Leninists and who “participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles” and who at the same time talk about the necessity for revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat (which they call communist agitation and propaganda).
The League tries to tell us that Economism and reformism consist in not mentioning socialism, not talking about revolution. But for Stalin, reformism is just the opposite: it is the work of people who do talk about revolution, while in their actual practice they put reformist work to the principal level.[19]
To a reformist, reforms are everything, while revolutionary work is something incidental, something to TALK about, mere eyewash. (Foundations of Leninism, Peking, p. 98)
The League and other opportunists “substitute ’the independent social and political activity of the workers for the class struggle of the proletariat.” (“A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social-Democracy,” LCW 4:275) and they call this the revolutionary struggle of the working class, spreading the illusion that if it is led by the League then it will lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
As Lenin stated,
One cannot be a revolutionary in fact unless one prepares for dictatorship.... This truth is feared by people who are capable of recognizing the dictatorship in word, but are incapable of preparing for it in deed. (“A Contribution to the History of the Question of Dictatorship”, LCW 31:344)
We are all familiar with the League’s recognition “in word” of the dictatorship of the proletariat; it is just that “in deed” the League is engaged primarily in bourgeois trade-union politics and not in organizing and preparing the conscious class struggle for political power, the conscious class struggle that is built when the vanguard of the proletariat rallies to a concrete programme for revolution and that will alone lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
To deny and oppose the class struggle waged by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is bound to deny and oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat. (Peking Review, June 24, 1976, p. 14)
We should never forget that “practice has shown that the active people in the working-class movement who adhere to the opportunist trend are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie itself.” (“The International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International [July 19,1920] ”, LCW 31:231) This is not just because the opportunists make “errors” in their thinking. It is because opportunism has a social and economic base in capitalist society. “Objectively the opportunists are a section of the petit-bourgeoisie and of a certain strata of the working class who have been bribed out of imperialist superprofits and converted into watchdogs of capitalism and corrupters of the labour movement” (“Imperialism and the Split in Socialism”, LCW 23: 110)[20]
We have no doubt of the good intentions of many members of the League, but as long as they follow the opportunist politics of the League we can only observe, as Lenin did: “These socialists, even where individual persons among them are absolutely sincere, in reality prove to be either a useless ornament or a screen for the bourgeois government, a lightening rod to divert the people’s indignation from the government, a tool for the government to deceive the people.” (“One of the Fundamental Questions of the Revolution”, LCW 25:369)
The League’s social composition is petit-bourgeois and its politics are opportunist. The League actively seeks the hegemony of the petit-bourgeoisie over the Marxist-Leninist movement and the workers’ movement. It seeks this hegemony by disguising bourgeois ideology and defending the Economism of the labour aristocracy (no doubt seeking to render it more militant so as to win over the most dissatisfied elements of the proletariat to its drive for hegemony over them).
The League is nothing but a right-deviationist wind attempting to reverse the correct verdicts of history, especially the verdicts against opportunism. The League is a right-deviationist wind attempting to divert the Marxist-Leninist movement from the task of building the party, attempting to restore revisionism in the Canadian communist movement.
The League’s right-opportunism ideologically, socially and politically represents the interests of the bourgeoisie inside of the Marxist-Leninist movement. We cannot speak of building an authentic communist party in Canada without purging the right-opportunism of the League. It is an absolute precondition to the building of the party.
One of the essential conditions for preparing the proletariat for victory is a prolonged, persistent and ruthless struggle against opportunism, reformism, social-chauvinism, and similar bourgeois influences and tendencies, which are inevitable as long as the proletariat is operating in a capitalist environment. If there is no such struggle, if opportunism in the working-class movement is not utterly defeated beforehand, there can be no dictatorship of the proletariat. (“The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, LCW 30:275)
We remain confident that there are many within the League and sympathetic to it that desire proletarian revolution and who wish to help prepare for it but who are misguided by the phony “Marxism-Leninism” of the League. We are confident that many of these will be won to the proletarian line. But of the leadership of the League, we can only say that they are unrepentant opportunists who are still on the road to revisionism.
Much of the core membership of the League via MREQ comes from the CPC(M-L). Much of the rest of the core membership of the League comes from the CAPs. Although these people have become more sophisticated at covering their opportunism and neo-revisionism with Marxist-Leninist terminology, they in essence have always repudiated the dictatorship of the proletariat. They now have a “left” cover because of their demagogic phrase-mongering and because In Struggle! has moved to the right. We should not, however, be confused. Right-opportunism represents the bourgeoisie inside of the movement which, while in word praising the dictatorship of the proletariat, in deed works against it by its political line and practice.
The League may well go on to achieve a considerable degree of influence in the working class. As Lenin pointed out, the labour aristocracy and their “petit-bourgeois fellow-travellers” form a definite “stratum” in the workers’ movement.
These elements were able to gain control of the labour movement only by paying lip-service to revolutionary aims and revolutionary tactics. They were able to win the confidence of the masses only by their protestations that all this “peaceful” work served to prepare the proletarian revolution. (“Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International”, LCW 22:111)
The League’s practice of calling trade-union struggles “political struggles”, “revolutionary struggles” and “class struggles” for “state power”, and their demarcation over the issue of immediate struggles, is nothing but “their protestations that all this ’peaceful’ work serve(s) to prepare the proletarian revolution.”
Combined with the League’s political line on the principal contradiction, a line which is objectively in alliance with and a cover for the Canadian bourgeoisie and American imperialism (see LD no. 1) – as well as its opportunism in questions of international significance (these will be dealt with in future issues) – the League’s line on building the party represents the political essence of the League despite its “red” appearance.
Fight against the social-traitors, against reformism and opportunism – this political line can and must be followed without exception in all spheres of our struggle. And then we shall win the working masses. And the vanguard of the proletariat, the Marxist centralised political party together with the working masses, will take the people along the true road to the triumph of proletarian dictatorship, to proletarian instead of bourgeois democracy, to the Soviet Republic, to the socialist system. (“Greetings to Italian, French, and German Communists”, LCW 30:62)
* * *
(Section IV-C of Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization published by M.R.E.Q., a founding group of the League.)
The principal task of the Marxist-Leninist organization is to work for the creation of the Marxist-Leninist party; to accomplish this, it must define a correct strategy. In our view, the very characteristics of the party we wish to create determine our strategy.
We feel that the mass work of the Marxist-Leninist organization will have to take place at the heart of the proletariat, that work at the point of production (factories and mines) will be its priority.
We have already seen that a proletarian party must have a militant base inside the factories. This characteristic is equally true of the Marxist-Leninist organization.
It is in the workplace that the working class is exposed to capitalist exploitation on a daily basis. It is here that workers are concentrated in large numbers. It is thus rn the factories that communists must concentrate their work and build their links to the masses of workers.
With the current crisis of imperialism, we are witnessing, on the one hand, the rising tide of working class struggles. This is a spontaneous movement, often quickly co-opted by the social-democratic trade union leadership. On the other hand, we are also seeing the growth of a young Marxist-Leninist communist movement, a movement which is basically outside of the working class movement. Until now, few workers have been won to Marxism-Leninism. In the period of struggle to build a revolutionary party, if is absolutely essential that the most advanced elements of the working class be won over to Marxism-Leninism.
The question is exactly how is this linking of Marxism-Leninism with the working class to be accomplished?
We feel that the correct way in which a revolutionary organization should bring about this link is to join with the working class, to have militants inside the factories and other workplaces. This practice of placing militants in factories is often called implantation. There are many reasons why this practice is necessary in the first stages of the struggle to build a Marxist-Leninist party. We will note three of these:
1) To spread Marxism-Leninism among the working class.
The most effective way for communists to spread Marxism-Leninism among the proletariat is to be present in its midst and to do agitation and propaganda work in the factories. It is not enough for an organization to simply have contacts with the workers’ movement. In order to develop from mere support for the working class struggles to direct involvement in struggles for the purpose of leading them, a communist organization must be based principally in the points of production and secondarily in othe workplaces. It is in the factories, working and struggling with the workers, that Marxist-Leninists will show that they are the best defenders of the interests of the working class.
2) To learn from the workers by linking up with the masses.
With its militants involved in factories and other workplaces, the revolutionary organization will have a better understanding of the concrete situatuin if the workers. At the present time, this is a much a matter of understanding the subjective situation (class consciousness, political maturity, etc.) as their objective situation (wages, working conditions, etc.). Communists must try to learn from the masses in order to get to know their needs, their problems, and in order to defend their interests while consolidating their own links with the masses. Communists must put proletatian politics in command, take the correct ideas of workers, systemize them, and bring them back to the masses in order to help them advance. It was in these terms that Chairman Mao defined the mass line: (Two quotes are given that are well known and will therefore, not be reproduced here. They may be found in “The United Front in Cultural Work”, MSW 3:119 and 186.)
The mass line is the Marxist-Leninist style of work that Communists adopt to link themselves with the masses. It is not the mass line which defines the basic line of the party (which is the Marxist-Leninist line) but the mass line which allows us to put it into practice and to develop it. Of course, one can always object that it is possible to build links with workers from outside the factory. Nonetheless, in this way it will always be more difficult to link oneself with the masses and to lead mass struggles because one will not be participating in the practical activity of the masses.
3) To transform the ideology of revolutionary militants At the present time, the overwhelming majority of militants in progressive groups are of petty-bourgeois origins, and the majority of those of working class origins are strongly influenced by petty-bourgeois ideology because of the education they received in the bourgeois school system. For the most part, they are students, professors or other types of intellectuals. Even if a militant recognizes the necessity to overthrow the bourgeoisie, this does not mean that he or she is immune to the petty-bourgeois tendencies. For important form of re-education through contact with the masses. It is only through the integration and constant linking of its militants with the masses that a Marxist-Leninist organization will take on a truly proletarian character. Finally, this does not mean that a militant who has not worked in a factory cannot have a proletarian world view; but it certainly does mean that a revolutionary organization cannot really be proletarian while the majority of its militants are not implanted in the midst of the proletariat.
These three points are thus all parts of the same process – building the roots of the Marxist-Leninist organization in the masses in order to fuse the Marxist-Leninist movement with the working class movement.
This process of integration with the working class is a dialectical one. On the one hand, revolutionary militants must educate and advance the workers, while, on the other hand, they must learn from the experience and knowledge accumulated by the mass of workers.
In addition, we would like to clarify some points in order to prevent any misinterpretations to which our positions could give rise.
First of all, we are not advocating a general movement of integration into factories. Implantation must be the application of the political line of a revolutionary organization. If militants who work in factories are not members of a Marxist-Leninist organization they run the risk of falling into economism or localism, and of being co-opted by the reformist-dominated trade union structures.
Furthermore, even if work in other sectors (among certain strata of the petty-bourgeois – i.e., among students, in communities, etc.) is secondary, it cannot be neglected. A Marxist-Leninist organization will have to decide on the division of its forces in order not to abandon the struggle on other fronts.
Finally, we must also underline that implantation is only appropriate in the first stage of party building. A proletarian party will not be built only by the implantation of militants who have acquired Marxism-Leninism outside the factories. On the contrary, the party will put the accent on the development of revolutionary cadre from the working class. At this point, implantation will have become secondary. This is another characteristic which distinguishes the Marxist-Leninist organization from the Marxist-Leninist party.
Several arguments have been made against implantation in the past. Some militants have maintained that there are other ways to make the tie between Marxism-Leninism and the working class (for example, the distribution of a newspaper of propaganda material at factory gates in order to raise the political consciousness of the working class).
It is presumed that the most advanced elements of the working class will in this way be won to Marxism-Leninism and that they will then begin doing work among the workers inside the factory. Indeed, this can happen. We should, however, realize the limitations of such work. First of all, the use of a newspaper to make contacts with workers inside a factory is certainly useful, but the question is whether or not this tactic is enough. A newspaper is an essential tool for a revolutionary organization, but militants must also be able to take over the organizational work that must be done inside the factory, as well as the work of propaganda and agitation. A great many different papers can be sold at the gates of a factory and all can call themselves revolutionary. How do the workers tell the difference? In the final analysis, the mass of workers can only be won to revolutionary propaganda when they see the militants of an organization at work practically defending their class interests.
We must admit that both propaganda and agitation are necessary, while not sufficient, to lead the workers to revolutionary action. Workers learn from their own experience who are their friends and who are their enemies. They will acquire this experience in the practice of class struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state. It is during these struggles that communists must prove themselves. They must prove that they are capable of leading workers’ struggles correctly and firmly, and that they can advance the interests of the whole class. To do so, Marxist-Leninists must participate in the day-to-day struggles of the working class and link themselves to the masses. Communists cannot direct working class struggles from the outside. It is through direct involvement in struggle that they will win the respect and confidence of the masses.
Other criticisms have also been raised. Among those who advocate directing propaganda at the working class without being implanted in the proletariat, there is a trend which considers the process of winning over advanced workers to Marxism-Leninism as something completely apart from communists’ participation in mass struggles. But how can we identify the advanced workers and convince them of the correctness of a Marxist-Leninist line – and so begin political work among the working class – if first of all communists don’t participate in mass struggles? This is impossible because it is only in the mass struggles that revolutionaries can identify the advanced elements and move them forward.
It must be stressed that implantation isn’t just one tactic among others, but the correct tactical line for Marxist-Leninists to develop links with the working class, taking into account the concrete situation in the Marxist-Leninist movement today.
It has also been suggested that implantation presents the dangers of localism and economism. To back up this argument it is quite easy to point out past errors of certain groups. There’s no doubt that the danger of falling into economist errors exists while working among the masses, but we cannot refuse to take on task just because others have made mistakes that we may repeat. The way to get past this difficulty is first of all to recognize past mistakes and to define their political origins. In this particular case the error was one of political line.
Furthermore, a Marxist-Leninist organization with a correct political line and which practises the mass line would not make such mistakes, or would at least be able to correct them quickly. Those who made this error did not make it because they were working in factories, but because they were following an incorrect line in their political work.
A further argument raised against implantation is that it is too time-consuming or that there are not enough militants at present to-do it. Following this line of reasoning, it is said implantation is necessary but not right now since it would mean losing precious time because there are too few cadres to work in factories. In the same vein, it is argued that it is better to spend time studying and preparing propaganda material than working in factories (and ending up exhausted at the end of the day...).
These arguments just don’t stand up. If there are only a few revolutionaries in work places then at the beginning our political work will be done at first in only a few factories. It’s also true that a worker has less free time than a student or other intellectual to do research. But in the final analysis, a Marxist-Leninist cadre working in the factories will carry out the best political work among the workers, if the workers and the intellectuals’are united around the same political line in a revolutionary organization. To bring up arguments about “time” and “numbers” shows a lack of understanding of the need for communists to struggle in the heart of the proletariat, to link up with the masses, and for the communist organization to be firmly rooted among the masses to carry out its role as vanguard of the proletariat.
To conclude this point, we once again underline that a Marxist-Leninist organization cannot achieve its goal of creating the party if it does not set itself the task of taking Marxism-Leninism to the working class by linking itself to the masses in their day-to-day struggles against capitalist exploitation. That is why we attach so much importance to the position of communists toward trade unions.
To defend their arguments, their passivity in the class struggle, these comrades quote the great leader Stalin: “In this period (period of the creation of the party) the party is weak; it has a programe, general tactical principles, but as a party of mass action, it is weak.” (our translation) However Stalin didn’t say that Marxist-Leninists should not intervene, act and direct the movement. He said that the are weak, that their possibilites are limited.
This same Stalin led a group at Tiflis in 1900 which led strides; Lenin, the great leader and fighter against economism in Russia at that time, directed the class struggles of the St Petersburg textile workers and wrote in What is to be done? “(the economists) consider that the party should not get involved in the spontaneous movement of the working class, and even less direct it, but rather it (the communist movement) should follow it, study it and learn lessons from it.” (our translation)
Isnt’t this exactly what those who want to restrain Marxist-Leninist activity to study and propaganda and thus cut it off from the working class are doing? Worse still, they want to cut off the leaders of the movement, the most advanced workers, from their class brothers and Sisters by pulling them out ot the factories, and out of their struggles, to restrain them to study.
Marxist-Leninists must show that they are the best defenders of the interests of the working class not only in the long term but also in the short term. Their task is to participate in the immediate struggles to bring revolutionary consciousness. Communists must put forward slogans which subordinate the immediate struggles to the long-term struggles as a part to the whole, but they must also show that they can propose correct tactics to win the immediate struggles. Not to do communist education about socialist revolution is to cut off the socialist movement from the workers’ movement. Not to participate in the immediate struggles of the working class is to leave the direction of these struggles in the hands of the actual reformist leaders and to limit ourselves to a propaganda outside the movement; it means maintaining the same division between socialist consciousness and the workers’ movement.
(The Forge, no. 11, May 20, 1976, p. 11.)
Today there is a debate inside the Marxist-Leninist movement on this question. Some Marxist-Leninists pretend that communists must distribute their newspapers and tracts but must not participate in or attempt to initiate or direct immediate struggles. They want to restrain Marxist-Leninist education to book learning. These people pretend that they are above immediate struggles. They think that is is economist to participate in these struggles. But how will the masses recognize that Marxism-Leninism is really their science if communists do not show this concretely, if they do not lead struggles against the effects of capitalism, democratic battles (for the defence of the country’s independence, for the right to strike, etc.) and if they do not link these struggles to the fight for socialism.
According to these people, because the Marxist-Leninist movement is on its first legs, it should not try to propagate its influence among the broad masses in the heat of struggle, but only restrain itself to educating a small number of advanced workers, outside of the class struggle.
Others don’t even do this but limit themselves to studying amongst themselves and leading debate amongst Marxist-Leninists. This is the case of a large number of groups across the country like Bolshevik Tendency in Toronto which limits its political work to debate and parlour room discussions and to propaganda in Canadian Revolution.
This phenomenon is not new. We only have to refer ourselves to the history of the Albanian Party of Labour. At the time just before the creation of the Party, one Niko Xoxi put forward “the theory of cadres”. According to this theory “communists should not act, penetrate among the masses and organize them, but remain locked up in their cells and busy themselves solely with theoretical education.” (History of the Albanian Party of Labour, Tirana, 1971, our translation)
These people think that you can’t act before you have mastered Marxism completely. They don’t understand that “to learn Marxism, it is above all by class struggle, practical work and contacts with the working and peasant masses, that we can really assimilate it.” (Mao Tsetung, our translation)
To carry out communist education, we must combine study and practice. If not, we are not Marxists.
* * *
[1] The League now feigns surprise that people claimed it was formed in secret. Says The Forge: “Contrary to what In Struggle! says, the League was (not) created in secret.... It came out of a process of struggle over political line for unity between three Quebec based Marxist-Leninist groups.” (Nov. 4, 1976, p. 3) After all, the contents of struggle over line, by being opened to the MREQ, the CMO and the COR, was open to anybody who was anybody! Because there is no record of this struggle for the rest of us nobodies in Canada to study, however, the gems of ideological profundity which went into creating the “Statement of Political Agreement” are lost to history. We do not consider that “The Struggle for the Creation of the CCL(ML)” corrects this problem.
[2] This is a reference to the League’s distinction between “pure” Economism and something else (impure Economism?), to be dealt with later in this article.
[3] A public leaftlet which we distributed on this subject is available from the Bolshevik Union.
[4] As noted in LD no. 1, we are holding the League accountable for all statements of its founding groups which have not been explicitly self-criticized, because of the nature of the League’s formation.
[5] For a discussion of this point, see LD no. 1, “Defeat Economism: A Reply to Workers’ Unity (Toronto).” Workers’ Unity has now “rallied” to the League.
[6] For example, some information about the struggles which went into the formation of the League! or is that information reserved strictly for the “intellectuals”? (Aside from a few perfunctory references, the document, “The Struggle for the Creation of the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist)” does not provide this information.)
[7] Also, The Forge no. 2, p. 2, refers to strikes as “class unity and the class struggle.”
[8] Lately the League has been lying on this subject to cover its tracks. We learned on November 4, 1976 (p. 3): “As for the . . . criticism that the League proclaimed itself THE organisation or thinks secretly that it is THE organization, this is also completely rubbish. Never have we said that we are THE organization.” (Emphasis in original) Just “the vanguard organization of the working class!” Much more humble!
[9] As far as we have been able to tell, the quote they are referring to is taken from the Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work (March 12, 1957), 1st pocket edition, p. 12, also to be found in Quotations of Chairman Mao, p. 312. It reads as follows in the authorized translation: “In order to have a real grasp of Marxism, one must learn it not only from books, but mainly through class struggle, through practical work and close contact with the masses of workers and peasants.”
[10] In their article on “right-opportunism” they specifically single out our group as the leading negative example of “right-opportunism” for this reason. See our response to this slander in LD no. 1, p. 58.
[11] See, for example, LD no. 1 on the subject of “Workers’ Unity and Implantation”, pp. 29-31.
[12] In their recent “Response to May First” (CR no. 6), the League becomes indignant that May 1st Collective does not recognize their “self-criticism” for making implantation “the correct tactical line for Marxist-Leninists.” We feel we are showing, however, that this “self-criticism” is phony and that this continues to be the League’s question of principle. This becomes obvious when we read that it is “pure opportunism” for the May 1st Collective to even dream of writing a paper to the Marxist-Leninist movement when it does not have a “practice in the working class.”
[13] What better example of the League’s blind empiricism and contempt for the intelligence of the working class. Our friends and enemies are not analyzed and pinpointed through scientific investigation; rather, we learn “from (our) own experience”!
[14] We admit that this does present some problems. See “Proletarian Puzzle” in this issue.
[15] Or, the “Marxism and Leninism.” See LD no. 1, p. 39.
[16] What the League means by the “labour aristocracy” is the Social-Democratic factions of the labour bureaucracy and others who do not conceal that they are a part of the bourgeoisie. The League’s concept of the “labour aristocracy” is, of course, absolutely structured to exclude them selves and their followers. (See “Not With Whom to Go, But Where to Go”, Section 4, LD no. 2, for more comment on this subject.)
[17] In fact, deliberate misuse of this pamphlet by Economists is nothing new. See What Is To Be Done?, Peking, pp. 54-5.
[18] As far as we know, the May 1st Collective’s “contributions” since the writing of their article have included collaborating in an Economist article about a strike and organising tactical unity to “make October 14 a real general strike.” Apparently the May First Collective has taken the League’s criticisms to heart and is making more of a “contribution” to “pure Marxism-Leninism.”
[19] Compare also Workers’ Unity (Toronto): “The Canadian working class needs a party that is capable of leading all struggles against oppression and exploitation, and that never fails to indicate the necessity for a proletarian revolution.” (Canadian Revolution 1:3, p. 4)
[20] For further development and substantiation of this point we refer readers to “The Native National Question and the Marxist-Leninist Movement” in this issue, where we show that the League has been actively seeking an alliance with the labour aristocracy by supporting the annexation of the Native Canadian North.