First Published:The Forge, Vol. 1 No. 7, March 25, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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The Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist) participated actively in the mobilization for the March 22 demonstration in Ottawa.
Along with others, it organized a regrouping on the basis of a Marxist-Leninist platform (reprinted below) of Marxist-Leninist, political and community groups – including En Lutte!, Mobilisation, Groupe pour la Revolution Proletanenne, Centre de Recherche et Information Centre-Sud, Clinique du Peuple de St. Henri, Groupe d’lntervention Quartier, Toronto Communist Group, Bolshevik Tendency, Groupe d’Action Socialiste, and others.
The CCL(ML) agreed with En Lutte’s proposition to form a regroupement of diverses groups to intervene in a common action during the day of struggle against the Trudeau law organized by the union movement. This regrouping of different groups organizations and cells around a correct platform helped the diffusion of revolutionary ideas in the working class and the development of the struggle against the union bureaucrats who undermine the struggle of the Canadian proletariat against the anti-worker measures of the bourgeoisie.
We think that En Lutte! showed a correct initiative in presenting a proposal for a platform (which was later worked on collectively). This gesture marked a considerable progress on their part, as compared with their attitude around the March 8th celebration, when En Lutte! presented no platform to support its initial proposal.
This regrouping was not a Marxist-Leninist coalition as it contained a wide spectrum of different kinds of groups from Quebec and Ontario, some communist and some not.
The participation of different Marxist-Leninist groups in this type of united action along with other political and progressive groups however is not the way to build a solid unity of Marxist-Leninist forces – this solid unity to build the Marxist-Leninist Party must be based on unity around ideological and political line.
1. The Canadian working class and people today face the crisis measures of the bourgeoisie – the latest being the Trudeau law. These measures are only the effect of the current aggravation of the general crisis of capitalism In the stage of imperialism. The Canadian working class and people must unite and fight for the withdrawal of the Trudeau law by mobilizing widely and consolidating unity of action against the ceilings Imposed by Bill C-73. To gain the withdrawal of the law means weakening the bourgeoisie. But as long as capitalism is around, the Canadian people and the people of the entire world will suffer Its inevitable and continual crises.
2. This capitalist crisis on a world scale is inseparable from two facts: on the one hand, the bitter rivalry between social-imperialism and US imperialism for the division of the world; and, on the other, the irresistible rise of the struggles of the third world countries. The rivalry which increases every day between the two superpowers will inevitably result in a new world war. The two superpowers, also hit by this crisis, try in every way, to make the countries of the second and third world shoulder the burden of their crisis, thus aggravating the situation of the peoples of these countries.
3. To put an end to all the capitalist crises, the Canadian working class must continue its struggle against the bourgeoisie for socialism, and struggle to defend the independence of the country against the hegemonistic aims of the two superpowers. It must overthrow the Canadian bourgeois state, expropriate the capitalists and build a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat capable of constructing socialism. To accomplish this, the central task of the proletarian vanguard is to build its own party, a genuine Marxist-Leninist communist party in Canada.
4. The reformist bourgeois parties are the avowed enemies of this historic task of the proletariat. The NDP, a pseudo-socialist party with its half-solutions and its desire to “humanize capitalism”, hides the reactionary nature of imperialism, sows division within the working class and serves to stifle the revolt of the people. In Quebec, the PQ tries to play on the Quebec people’s just sentiment against national oppression to hide class struggle. As the PQ itself admits, if it were in power it would have brought in Bill C-73 three years ago. And the “C”PC, a revisionist party, agent of social-imperialism and traitor of the proletariat, is right now busying itself collaborating with the union bureaucrats and fighting the development of a proletarian line within the trade unions. The same goes for the so-called “CPC(ML)” a saboteur of the revolutionary movement and collaborator with the class enemy.
5. The Quebec nation is an oppressed nation which has the inalienable right to self-determination, up to and including separation. The Canadian proletariat today has every interest in denouncing those who seek to divide it; it must continue to fight to forge the unity of the workers of the two nations and of the entire Canadian people against its enemies. The proletariat must fight against all forms of great nation chauvinism as well as narrow nationalism.
6. The reformist union leaders are nothing but the agents of the bourgeoisie within the workers’ movement. Their role as class collaborators, as sell-outs to capital, as bureaucrats without any scruples, only helps to hide the solution from the proletariat, to disarm it in Its battle against the bourgeoisie and to liquidate worker unity. Only by waging a struggle In the unions against this bourgeois line can the working class transform the unions into real organizations of class struggle. The fight against the Bill C-73. is another occasion to denounce these traitors who limit the horizon of the working class in its battle for socialism.
7. To force the bourgeoisie to withdraw this law, it is essential that the Canadian working class develop a powerful fight-back movement. The general strike is the principal means to develop this massive and unified fight-back of the Canadian proletariat. This particular struggle against the Trudeau law is part of the struggle of the working class to achieve its fundamental interests.