Comrades,
Six months ago, at the first conference, we said that the Marxist-Leninist movement was in grave danger. It was in grave danger of being swallowed up by the League and IN STRUGGLE! which were carving up the movement between them.
Since then, IN STRUGGLE! and the League have been vying to divide the movement. Group after group has dissolved and rallied to the League and IN STRUGGLE!. But have we learned anything from this process? When the RCG rallied to IN STRUGGLE!, or when the Cercle Communiste dissolved to rally to the League, did this broaden our understanding of a strategy for proletarian revolution in Canada? Did it lead to a clearer demarcation of positions, to a higher level of politics and principled unity in our movement? Not at all!
The Bolshevik Union does not consider these recent events to be a positive development. We do not see them as a growth of true unity in the Marxist-Leninist movement. What we see is that the Marxist-Leninist movement has been disappearing rapidly. And the unity which results from this does not represent the victory of political line. On the contrary, it represents the victory of organizational manoeuvres on the part of the League and IN STRUGGLE!
Today we have a conference on “the path of the revolution” in Canada. IN STRUGGLE! tells us that this represents the widening of the debate. But we evaluate this conference in the context of IN STRUGGLE!’s practice of the last six months. That is why we say that for IN STRUGGLE! this conference marks the consolidation of an opportunist line on some important questions of the Canadian revolution.
IN STRUGGLE! has recently put forward some positions on the principal contradiction and the “path of the revolution”.
But IN STRUGGLE! is not using its recent work on the principal contradiction in order to develop a strategy for socialist revolution in Canada. IN STRUGGLE! already has its strategy for “revolution” and its program for “revolution” which it has been following for quite a while. IN STRUGGLE!’s principal strategy for “revolution” is to mobilize the masses to fight the wage controls and gain other petty concessions from the bourgeoisie. IN STRUGGLE!’s program for “revolution” is, in Lenin’s words, “the economic struggle against the employers and the government. That is why IN STRUGGLE! more and more drops all talk about a socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat when it attempts to reach the masses.
IN STRUGGLE!’s tactics in the working class do not come from the perspective of the fusion of Marxism-Leninism with the vanguard of the proletariat. Nor do they come from a strategic political line. For IN STRUGGLE!, it is the other way around IN STRUGGLE!’s political line is a tool of its economism. IN STRUGGLE!’s new line on the principal contradiction was born to serve “the economic struggle against the employers and the government.”
That is why IN STRUGGLE! tells us that the principal contradiction is defined by who controls the state. For reformists, the principal contradiction is between the proletariat and the state. This is how they justify why they are trying above all to gain petty concessions from the state. The state passed the wage controls; it is the enemy of the proletariat; therefore the principal contradiction is with the Canadian bourgeoisie because it controls the state. This is the reasoning which leads to a reformist analysis of the principal contradiction.
IN STRUGGLE!’s line on this question is not new, IN STRUGGLE! did not invent it. IN STRUGGLE! did not even learn it from the League. This line has a history to it which can be traced back years in the Canadian communist movement.
In the 1920’s the Communist Party of Canada was taking the line that Canada was not an imperialist country. It said that Canada was a colony. This was not based on an analysis of the economic base but rather on considerations of the superstructure.
In 1928 the Comintern intervened. It said that the Communist Party of Canada was wrong; that Canada had reached the level of imperialism; that it was not a colony. It based its position on the reality of the Canadian economy.
The debate inside the Canadian Communist Party continued. But bourgeois nationalism was never decisively defeated. Maurice Spector, its principal representative, was expelled and became a trotskyist. But within the Canadian communist movement the effort was never made to decisively prove that the Comintern’s line was correct, that Canada was an imperialist country.
Because this correct concrete analysis of Canada was never put forward within the Canadian communist movement, a false two-line struggle arose, a false two-line struggle which continues today in the Marxist-Leninist movement. This struggle was represented historically as a debate between bourgeois nationalism and revisionism.
Tim Buck was a renegade who led the Communist Party of Canada into the pit of Browderism and modern revisionism. He remained at the head of the party until his death. Tim Buck put forward a political line on Canada which remains the political line of the Communist Party of Canada to this day. That line is that the principal contradiction in Canada opposes the Canadian proletariat to the state.
Like the line of Maurice Spector and the bourgeois nationalists, the line of Tim Buck is based on analysis of the superstructure rather than the economic base. Its principal concern is the question: who controls the state? Revisionists take this line because their principal political concern is gaining petty political concessions from the state. The revisionist line is a tool of “the economic struggle against the employers and the government”.
Marxism-Leninism tells us that the state is the executive committee of the ruling class. In Canada the ruling class consists of two bourgeoisies which jointly exploit the Canadian proletariat. Marxism-Leninism tells us that the fundamental contradiction in capitalist society is between the socialist nature of production and its private ownership. The principal contradiction is between those who produce and those who own the means of production. For Canada this means that the principal contradiction opposes the Canadian proletariat, on the one hand, to the Canadian bourgeoisie and American imperialism, on the other hand. It is the objective conditions in the economic base which are primary in an analysis of contradictions in Canada.
For revolutionaries, for Marxist-Leninists, the principal goal is not to gain petty concessions from the state but to seize the means of production and place them in the hands of the proletariat. Therefore the principal enemy is those who own the means of production. That is the difference between the Marxist-Leninist point of view and the revisionist point of view.
In Canada the means of production are owned jointly by two bourgeoisies. The Canadian bourgeoisie and American imperialism collude to exploit the Canadian proletariat. The state in Canada is the executive committee to manage the affairs of these two bourgeoisies. The revisionist line, the line of Tim Buck, denies the primary role of the economic base over the superstructure in Canadian reality.
A century ago, Sir John A. MacDonald told Canadians that the national policy of Canada would be to allow the economic penetration of Canada by the United States without compromising Canada’s sovereignty. Marxist-Leninists know that this is impossible; but to revisionists this is Canadian reality.
The failure of the revisionists, of the Communist Party of Canada, of the followers of Tim Buck, to deal with Canadian reality, to decisively defeat the line of Maurice Specter and bourgeois nationalism, meant that bourgeois nationalism has continually appeared in the history of the Canadian communist movement.
With the victory of revisionism in the Soviet Union and the emergence of China and Albania as the defenders of Marxism-Leninism, bourgeois nationalism made an important comeback. It hid behind the great ideological leadership of China and Albania by representing Canada as if it had the same concrete conditions as the oppressed colonies and neo-colonies of the world. It represented the struggle in Canada as a national liberation struggle against American imperialism. In the last decade this line was represented by the Progressive Workers’ Movement, the “C”PC(“M-L”)[1], the CLM[2], and by groups that do not even claim to be Marxist-Leninist, such as the Waffle, which contained many of the old elements from the revisionist Communist Party of Canada.
Bourgeois nationalism has fallen time and again on its own weight. The Progressive Workers’ Movement and the “C”PC(“ML”) were discredited not by the opposition of any Marxist-Leninist group at the time but mainly on the strength of the better instincts of advanced workers and progressive people. The line of bourgeois nationalism has never been decisively defeated by Marxism-Leninism in Canada, and today again we see its resurgence in the form of the Red Star Collective, whose history traces back to Progressive Worker.
The responsibility for the resurgence of bourgeois nationalism in the Marxist-Leninist movement today can be laid squarely at the feet of the League and IN STRUGGLE!, which have both rallied to the line of Tim Buck instead of dealing with Canadian reality. The Red Star Collective uses the dogmatism and metaphysics of the League and IN STRUGGLE! to bolster its claims.
On the one hand the Red Star Collective justifies its line by propping itself up on the one-sided errors of the League and IN STRUGGLE! On the other hand the League and IN STRUGGLE! justify their dogmatism and metaphysics by propping themselves up on the one-sided errors of the bourgeois nationalism. It is not a coincidence that neither IN STRUGGLE!, the League, nor the Red Star Collective have mentioned a word about article on the principal contradiction in the first issue of LINES OF DEMARCATION, wherein we opposed the one-sided errors of both tendencies.
In that article the Bolshevik Union exposed the League’s perfect little line on the principal contradiction. The League claims that its line is based on inviolable Marxist-Leninist principles. But we showed that the League made up their “principles” for their own purposes and that Lenin opposed these “principles”. And we showed that the League justified its line by consistently covering for the role of U.S. imperialism in Canada.
The League responded to our criticism in the way that opportunists respond to correct criticism. They ignored it. More than that, they instantly decided that we were not in Marxist-Leninist movement. Today, as our public criticisms of the League have deepened, the League takes the position that we are a sect of counter-revolutionary police agents. Yet they never have made one comment about our political line. This is how the League engages in a debate for a revolutionary strategy in Canada.
For a long time, IN STRUGGLE! was silent on the principal contradiction. They were too busy “gazing with awe on the posteriors of the proletariat” and “lending the economic struggle itself a political character”, in the words of Lenin. But the pressure of the movement was too great, and IN STRUGGLE! had to start putting forward a line on these questions. And so IN STRUGGLE! switched to the League’s menshevik line on the principal contradiction.
IN STRUGGLE! and the League have reasons for doing these things. These reasons do not drop from the sky. The line on the principal contradiction which they take is historically the line of economism and revisionism in Canada. It is a tool of opportunism and it serves the needs of opportunism. It is a line which denies the primacy of the economic base over the superstructure in the reality of capitalist society, and it is suited to their most important political tasks.
That is one reason we say that this conference marks the consolidation for IN STRUGGLE! of an opportunist line on some fundamental questions of the Canadian revolution.
Another reason we say this is the Native national question. The Bolshevik Union has often raised the Native national question in the Marxist-Leninist movement. For a year and a half, the two major groups in the movement have refused to respond to it. But today we can say that IN STRUGGLE! has come out with a position on the Native national question which is just one more example of the consolidation of opportunism in IN STRUGGLE! In their position, IN STRUGGLE! rallies to the political line of international revisionism and its application to the concrete conditions of Canada.
In “NOTEBOOKS ON IMPERIALISM” (volume 39 of Lenin’s Collected Works), Lenin recognizes three nations for Canada: English Canada, French Canada, and Native Canada. IN STRUGGLE! and the League, however, recognize two nations for Canada. The Communist International recognized Native people as a colony oppressed by imperialism and therefore with the right of self-determination. IN STRUGGLE! and the League, however, do not recognize this right. The concrete analysis of Canada done by the Bolshevik Union confirms the positions of the international communist movement. Why do IN STRUGGLE! and the League not do the same? Do they divert from the line of the international communist movement on these questions for the same reasons that they divert from it on so many questions?
The Bolshevik Union does not advocate secession for Native Canada. Contrary to IN STRUGGLE!’s lies, we do not advocate a separate party. But we stand by the line of Lenin and the international communist movement that there can be no proletarian revolution, and there can be no dictatorship of the proletariat without recognizing the right of self-determination of oppressed colonies, particularly for colonies oppressed by our “own” bourgeoisie. And if Native people decide to lead a secessionist struggle, we recognize their right to a separate party to lead that struggle.
IN STRUGGLE: and the League part from the line of the international communist movement on these questions because of their opportunism. In LINES OF DEMARCATION, we have shown the fundamentally economist nature of both IN STRUGGLE! and the League. But economism does not drop from the sky. It has a specific social and economic base. It represents the petty-bourgeoisie and the labour aristocracy which benefit from the super-profits of imperialism. Unless we break from opportunism, the opportunism of the labour aristocracy, by firmly upholding Marxism-Leninism, there can be no question of proletarian revolution or the dictatorship of the proletariat. And to break with the labour aristocracy, we must uphold unconditionally that the North Canada’s colony, the principal resource area of Canadian imperialism – has the right to self-determination, including secession.
We cannot chart a correct path to socialist revolution in Canada unless we break from opportunism. We cannot achieve the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat unless we expose and defeat the political representatives of the aristocracy of labour. Our political line on the strategy for socialist revolution in Canada must be formed in the context of the struggle against opportunism, in the struggle against revisionism, in the struggle against anti-Marxism in the ranks of the workers’ movement. And we must not be deceived by the labels that groups assign to themselves.
This conference marks the consolidation for IN STRUGGLE! of opportunist lines on important questions of the Canadian revolution. For IN STRUGGLE!, the path to revolution is the path of economism and opportunism which can only lead in the direction of revisionism. It takes an opportunist line on unity, an opportunist line on mass work, an opportunist line on the principal contradiction, and an opportunist line on the Native question. It tries to take both sides of the two-line struggle wherever it has to cover for itself. But the revolutionary proletariat will not be fooled by intrigues and manoeuvres.
Opportunism can make up a couple of “principles” about Canada and throw together a political line, and be satisfied. Because opportunism is not struggling for the dictatorship of the proletariat; it is struggling for the influence of the petty-bourgeoisie and the labour aristocracy over the proletariat. That is why opportunists avoid debate and attack debate as “intellectualism” and “sectarianism”. But what the League calls “intellectualism”, and IN STRUGGLE! calls “sectarianism”, Lenin called ”revolutionary theory”. And without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.
Here is our line, the opportunists tell the Canadian proletariat. Here is a path to the revolution in Canada. It may not be the best, but it is pretty good. And let’s not debate it too much or too long, let’s not confuse the proletariat with our differences. Let’s get on with the economic struggle, the spontaneous movement, because that is the real path to the revolution. Let’s not get bogged down with “intellectual pirouettes”.
But the revolutionary proletariat will reply: Marxism-Leninism is a science. We are struggling to chart a strategy for socialist revolution. We cannot afford to be wrong. We will not be satisfied with your made-up phony “principles”, with your metaphysics, with your intrigues and manoeuvres, with your lip-service to debate and concrete analysis. We want to know the nature of our enemy and the nature of our allies. We want to know how to recognize opportunism, how to break with the labour aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie in the Marxist-Leninist movement, because without such a clean break there can be no dictatorship of the proletariat. We want to know how to re-establish orthodox Marxism-Leninism within the concrete conditions of Canada.
Six months ago the Bolshevik Union put out a call to go against the tide of opportunism in the movement, to counter the opportunism of the two existing centres. Today a third tendency is becoming a reality. Our call to go against the tide is bearing fruit. Particularly in Quebec, increasing numbers of Marxist-Leninists are beginning to understand that IN STRUGGLE! and the League are principally marked by right-opportunism and that what we need is an open and wide debate toward the development of a program for revolution, toward the rallying of the vanguard of the proletariat, to lay the foundation for the communist party.
The Bolshevik Union is small and IN STRUGGLE! and the League are big. But we are inspired by the shining examples of China and Albania, which stood up to international revisionism to defend the principles of Marxism-Leninism. The revisionists told Albania that it was small and that it was folly to oppose the rest of the socialist bloc. But for Albania, and for China, there were certain questions which were questions of Marxist-Leninist principle and could not be compromised. And the Bolshevik Union will never capitulate to opportunism and revisionism in -the Marxist-Leninism movement, no matter how many representatives it may claim.
Today in Canada we live in a period of a crisis of Marxism. In such a time, it is supremely important that orthodox Marxism-Leninism not be compromised by concessions to opportunism and revisionism. When we talk about revolution in Canada, we must above all recognize that the strategy for revolution can be charted only by Marxism-Leninism and not by opportunism and revisionism.
Comrades,
GO AGAINST THE TIDE!
UPHOLD THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT! UPHOLD THAT CANADA IS AN IMPERIALIST COUNTRY! SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE COLONIES! SELF-DETERMINATION FOR NATIVE CANADA!
OPPOSE THE REHABILITATION OF TIM BUCK’S REVISIONIST LINE! OPPOSE THE RE-EMERGENCE OF BOURGEOIS NATIONALISM! DEFEAT OPPORTUNISM AND REVISIONISM!
TAKE THE STRUGGLE FOR THE PARTY INTO THE WORKING CLASS! LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM!
[1] “Communist” Party of Canada (“Marxist-Leninist”)
[2] Canadian Liberation Movement