Comrades and friends,
Everyone is aware of the importance of the present conference. To determine the revolutionary path in our country on a scientific Marxist-Leninist basis and to demolish existing erroneous ideas on how to conquer the bourgeoisie and build socialism, is an essential condition for the unification of Canadian Marxist-Leninists, a necessary step to take before the creation of the party that will guide the masses.
There are profound differences in our movement about this question. More concretely, there exist erroneous viewpoints which originate in deviations found in the C.P.C. (revisionist) and more generally in social-chauvinist currents which could be found in several parties of the Comintern, particularly those of imperialist countries.
To get right to the point, we must state that the errors we find today in the positions of Bolshevik Union (B.U.), those of the Red Star Collective (R.S.C.), the Communist League, and the deviations which marked IN STRUGGLE!’s line, particularly at its origins all have in common that they are inspired by more or less important remnants of bourgeois nationalism.
These deviations can be found as far back as the class collaboration line practiced by the C.P.C. on the eve of the Second World War and after, until its total degeneration into revisionism. These deviations can be found sometimes in more subtle but no less dangerous forms in the lines of groups and organizations born in the 1960’s which strove to break with revisionism, for example the lines of the Progressive Workers’ Movement (P.W.M.), the C.P.C.(m-l), and the Canadian Liberation Movement (C.L.M.), in English Canada, or in the Regroupement des Comites de Travailleurs in Quebec. Even though we of IN STRUGGLE! affirmed in 1972 in “For the Proletarian Party” that bourgeois nationalism and social democracy are the two greatest dangers in the labour movement, afterwards we continued to hold for a certain time a line profoundly marked by nationalism.
All of this is not by chance, it is a question of class interest. For a long time now, particularly since Lenin, it has been established that in imperialist countries the petite-bourgeoisie and labour aristocracy are the principal holders of bourgeois nationalism and social-chauvinism in the labour and communist movements, and that these errors lead straight into class collaboration, into opportunism and into revisionism. Is it necessary to state here that these deviations appeared and developed in the Canadian labour movement precisely when our country was striving to establish a place for itself (however small) among the imperialist powers of the world?
The struggle for a just Marxist-Leninist line on the revolutionary path in our country is therefore principally a struggle to weed out opportunist ideas impregnated with bourgeois nationalism which can be found in the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement at this time. It is the struggle to have triumph, without any sort of compromise, a rigorous application of the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint on this matter.
As long as this task has not been accomplished, the danger of sinking into the revisionism that the Canadian Communist movement has once fallen into, will remain a real one, and the task of building the programme of the proletarian revolution in Canada and uniting all Canadian Marxist-Leninists around this programme will be compromised. But the elaboration of a Marxist-Leninist programme is an essential condition in the creation of the party, which alone can definitely lead the Canadian masses in the socialist revolution.
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The task of establishing the path of the revolution in one’s own country is very complex and cannot be reduced to a job of lining up quotations from Marx, Lenin or Mao; nor can it be reduced to what is the same thing, a more or less able paraphrase of their writings. It is a task that cannot be likened to a structure, however impressive, of statistics and raw facts from works of bourgeois economists and historians.
We say that the task of establishing the path of the revolution is complex because it demands that we consider not only class contradictions within our country, but also those contradictions which characterise the present world situation, especially those which concern relationships between Canada and other countries. It is a complex task which we can correctly accomplish only if we rigorously apply Marxist-Leninist principles to the reality in our country.
IN STRUGGLE! does not claim it has resolved all questions on establishing the path of the revolution in our country. Nor do we claim that our present conclusions are definitive on all points. But we consider that our present positions, on those questions we have studied in depth, account for the reality of class struggle in Canada from a Marxist-Leninist viewpoint... until proved otherwise. Until now, no one who holds different opinions has been able to convince us we are wrong on a scientific basis, that is based on Marxist-Leninist analysis of Canadian reality.
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Canada is an advanced capitalist country; more exactly it is a country which has reached the imperialist stage, controlled by monopolies born from the fusion of banking and industrial capital, a country which imports and exports capital as well as merchandise and labour. Canada is therefore a country in which capitalist exploitation of the labour force is the essential characteristic; besides, it is a country in which other modes of production such as small individual enterprises and small farms are disappearing; therefore a country where the bourgeois class is a decadent and essentially reactionary class. This definitely distinguishes Canada from those countries in which the majority are peasants, and where capitalist industrialisation still holds important positive aspects.
In Canada, the fundamental contradiction is that which opposes the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. The Canadian state is a bourgeois democratic state in capital’s service. And in Canada the proletariat is the principal and directing revolutionary class; it is the class which will bring the future and social progress in our country.
Furthermore, Canada is a multi-national country where we find:
1. the English Canadian nation to which is integrated a large number of immigrants, who are an important proportion of the Canadian population
2. The French-Canadian nation, or more exactly according to the territory where its major concentration is, the Quebec nation, which is a nation in the full sense of the term, an oppressed nation which has the right of its self-determination, including the right of secession.
Canada also includes:
3. what we will call for the moment, for lack of an in-depth analysis which remains to be done, “national minorities” be it the Inuit and Amerindian people who are descendants of decimated tribes who populated North America before European colonisation and which are now dispersed in small communities throughout the land, especially in the north; or be it the Acadian issuing from the French Atlantic colonies of the XVII century and which are found principally in New-Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Finally the women of Canada, who, like those of all capitalist countries, suffer a specific oppression whose roots today rest on the capitalist mode of production.
Thus Canada is a country which has reached the imperialist stage, where the fundamental contradiction sets the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, where the great majority of the people consists of the proletariat from industry, commerce, transportation, the extraction of primary materials and agriculture. Socialism is the only path to progress in a country such as ours and in the world dominated by imperialism except in socialist countries such as China and Albania. In such conditions we must not doubt that socialism can only be the result of a proletarian revolution, that is the violent overthrow of bourgeois power and the installation of the dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of the proletarian Marxist-Leninist party.
On first sight this is a trivial affirmation in an assembly such as ours. Not so trivial, as we will see later, for it is this affirmation which established all the strategic lines of the revolution in our country and which demands all the different tactics to be applied in dealing with the Canadian bourgeoisie, American imperialism, Canadian independence, the national question of Quebec, Amerindians, Inuit, Acadians and in dealing with the hegemony of the two superpowers and the danger of a new world war.
In other words, all strategic and tactical questions must be examined in the light of the requirements of the proletarian revolution in Canada. To abandon this viewpoint is to depart from Marxism-Leninism and arrive at opportunist deviationism. The central revolutionary task of Canadian Marxist-Leninist communists is to win the proletariat and Canadian masses including Quebeckers, Inuit, Amerindians and Acadians to the struggle to upset bourgeois state power.
Why is it so? Simply because the principal enemy of proletarian revolution in Canada is bourgeois power, which is also the principal enemy of the Quebec nation and of those we call national minorities, and of all the Canadian people. This central point must be clearly and firmly understood.
But bourgeois power in Canada is the Canadian state, tool of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat and the people; and this state is in the hands of the Canadian bourgeoisie. In brief, Canada is an independent country which has reached the imperialist stage, a country which had accomplished the conditions necessary for its political independence a century ago, and which contains all the characteristics of a country in the imperialist stage.
Is it necessary to remind ourselves here, therefore rejecting the basis of R.S.C.’s erroneous position, that the imperialist nature of a country is not a question of size, population, number of monopolies or banks, but it is foremost a question of the stage of the development of the capitalist mode of production and the forms of its reproduction, whether or not this stage of the mode of production was concretely reached in alliance with other capitalist powers? Is it also necessary to remind ourselves that, always under capitalism, the political independence of a country is not incompatible with its being economically dominated or controlled by a foreign power, even though this situation creates particular conditions which evidently must be rigorously considered when the path of the revolution is being discussed? A concrete analysis, however thorough, which does not respect these theoretical considerations is not a Marxist-Leninist analysis.
The Canadian bourgeoisie, however, is not the only one to exploit the proletariat and oppress the people. At the imperialist stage, there is no country where the national bourgeoisie is the only one to exploit the proletariat. More or less narrow links unite the bourgeoisie today across national boundaries. There is American capital in the U.S.S.R. from which the American bourgeoisie profits. Our country, like all other capitalist countries, is part of this international imperialist network (which results in each individual imperialist bourgeoisie having an interest in a more or less large number of foreign countries. Lenin established, more than fifty years ago, that this would be the end result of the territorial sharing of the globe among several monopolies in fierce competition, and this constitutes one of the important fields of inter-imperialist rivalry. That is the reason we can say that imperialism, and more specifically hegemonism is the principal enemy of all the people of the world.
But there is more than that. In Canada there exists a narrow alliance between the Canadian bourgeoisie and American imperialism. It is perhaps the closest alliance uniting two imperialist countries today, so much so that the proletarian revolution in Canada cannot avoid confronting this “privileged” ally of the Canadian bourgeoisie, an ally so important that it in fact exercises a certain domination over economic life in our country, and can therefore considerably influence political life in Canada. It therefore follows that Canadian independence is limited and fragile, and our strategy must take this fact into consideration.
Moreover, in the era of hegemonism, and growing rivalry between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. particularly and the danger of a new World war, which is the result of this rivalry, the proletarian revolution must scrupulously take into account these important factors which are likely to change the power relationships throughout the world, and therefore modify the conditions within which our revolution must develop, according to which one of the rival imperialist superpowers carries the day.
But the important question is not “which imperialism carries the day?” but “who will win the victory in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie?”
In the same way, when we examine internal contradictions in Canada, it is not the question of independence of the Quebec nation or of the Amerindians and Inuit or even of the Acadians; these questions must also be considered in the light of the central question of proletarian revolution throughout the Canadian territory.
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All this brings us back directly to “nationalist” errors which still exist in the movement concerning the path of the revolution in Canada. R.S.C.’s error, which denies the imperialist character of Canada, considers American imperialism as a fraction of the bourgeoisie in power in Canada and denies, for all practical purposes, our country’s political independence. Considering Canada as an economic colony of the U.S.A., is a serious error requiring a strategy of “national liberation” which can only divert the Canadian proletariat from its historical mission: to wrest Canadian state power from the hands of the Canadian bourgeoisie despite the alliance (of the Canadian bourgeoisie) with American imperialism, despite the latter’s control of the Canadian economy and even if, because of this alliance, the bourgeoisie exercises its power in such a way as to serve the interests of its ally, in addition to its own interest.
B.U.’s positions are even more subtly and dangerously marked by nationalism. On one hand B.U. calls for the national liberation of Inuit and Amerindians after completely failing to prove that the native population form a nation; we could almost say that it proved the opposite, which forced it to deny totally the teachings of Leninism on this subject. It is thus led to study the Inuit and Amerindian question completely apart from the proletarian revolution; it is content to say, as any bourgeois nationalist group:
“The autochthones are a nation; support their struggle for national liberation.” Such a position has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism, which always analyses the national question in relation with the proletarian revolution, which is determining in all cases. B.U.’s position on the autochthones brings us back to the “good years” of the 1960’s, years of radical Quebec nationalism. It is a big step backwards.
On the other hand, B.U. spreads great confusion on the path of the revolution in Canada when it claims that state power in our country is held jointly by American imperialism and the Canadian bourgeoisie.
What is more, it had the gall to say that it was a better defender of IN STRUGGLE!’s line on the matter than IN STRUGGLE! itself! But IN STRUGGLE! has never advanced such a position; since December 1974 we have constantly held that state power in Canada was in the hands of the Canadian bourgeoisie.
B.U.’s position on this subject is very close to R.S.C.’s, which states that American imperialism is an internal enemy to the Canadian revolution, in the sense that it is associated in the exercise of state power. This, as we stated above, is a position that has not broken with bourgeois nationalism, a position that brings with it social-chauvinism.
We will not talk here of the position of Workers’ Unity Collective of Edmonton; it essentially shares R.S.C.’s viewpoint.
But we will discuss the nationalism and social-chauvinism that permeates the League’s position on several questions: that of Canada’s independence from the superpowers; that of the danger of war and the progressive role the Canadian bourgeoisie could play; that of Quebec independence, where the League shows itself to be “more Catholic than the pope” and takes upon itself the task of giving the Parti Quebecois lessons in nationalism because it is, according to the League committing and anti-nationalist error in calling all the inhabitants of Quebec to the referendum, and not only francophones! As communists, we must hope that no Quebecker will be obliged to arrive at the polls for the referendum with his family tree under his arm.
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Comrades and friends,
These are the central question that IN STRUGGLE! invites you to discuss later in the workshops and after to debate in your groups and organizations. There is only one way to handle these questions in order that the debates lead to results that will serve the interests of the proletariat and the revolution, and that is to discuss them in the light of Marxism-Leninism and to place in the center the proletarian revolution in Canada. For us, Canadian communists, there is no other way to face any political question, be it Quebec independence, that of the autochthones, that of American domination, that of the danger of war, etc.
But to undertake the struggle by putting the proletarian revolution at the heart of these preoccupations is to undertake the struggle for conquering state power which today is in the hands of the Canadian bourgeoisie; it is to build the party which will direct the masses on this road; it is to elaborate the programme which will guide this party; it is to unite around this programme the communists that will form this party.
But before creating the party, before attacking bourgeois power, before claiming to rally the Canadian masses around a communist direction (and it is the masses which will make the revolution) there are, comrades, some essential tasks that await us. Among these tasks there is that of our own unity, and to achieve this unity we must have a programme, and the basis of a Marxist-Leninist programme is the determination of the path of revolution in our country.
Herein lies the importance of the present conference and the more theoretically developed debates which will follow it.
Let us make this conference a big victory of Marxism-Leninism over all forms of opportunism which still shackle our political and organizational development.