First Published: August 1977
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
The class struggle of the Canadian proletariat can have only one result: socialist revolution that will put an end to capitalist exploitation and all the forms of oppression that inevitably accompany it.
There are many people in the working-class and progressive movement in our country who say that they are for socialism and claim to be in favour of the emancipation of workers. However, we mustn’t be taken in: many of these “socialists” are in fact agents of the bourgeoisie, revisionists who have abandoned the principles of Marxism-Leninism; and history has proven many times in many countries that the socialist revolution can only develop victoriously through the rigorous application of Marxism-Leninism.
The increasingly important proportion of Canadian workers, women, youth, small farmers, craftsmen and progressive intellectuals who aspire to socialism, and the oppressed national minorities who aspire to liberation, must thus reject these social-democrats, revisionists and trotskyists who are false socialists. They must realize that only the Marxist-Leninist movement can provide a correct orientation for the struggle for socialism and the liberation of oppressed people. It is by rallying the ranks of the Marxist-Leninist movement that sincere partisans of socialism will be able to undertake concretely the struggle against exploitation and oppression, and to take an active part in the building of the Party of the socialist revolution.
The Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement is still young, even though it has developed greatly all across Canada in recent years. Presently, one task is central for communists in our country: the building of the Party of the proletarian revolution, the Party that will be able to lead the Canadian masses to the taking of State power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Three conditions are essential for the fufillment of this task: the formulation of the programme of the revolution in our country, the unity of all communists around this programme, and the rallying of the most class-conscious workers to Marxism-Leninism, to the programme of the socialist revolution.
These conditions are in the process of being met. The groups that make up the Marxist-Leninist movement have in effect realized important steps in the struggle for the Party, and as a result Marxism-Leninism already has a certain influence in the working-class movement. However, there are still many contradictions to be resolved; the positions and action of Marxist-Leninist groups are still very much marked by manifestations of opportunism. The struggle against opportunism must thus remain a central preoccupation for communists, for if opportunism should happen to develop and overpower Marxism-Leninism, the revisionist path would once again come to the forefront, and the socialist revolution could once again be jeopardized in our country, as it was in the 1950’s when the Communist Party of Canada sank definitively into revisionism.
The group IN STRUGGLE! is one of the oldest and most fully-developed groups in the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement. On many occasions it has played a determining role in the advancement of all the communist forces in our country, and today it still constitutes, in the eyes of many in the movement, the most advanced part of the movement.
In the following pages, we present, very briefly, the history and political line of the group IN STRUGGLE! On most of the important questions we have been careful to indicate what distinguishes us from other so-called socialist tendencies, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, from other lines present in the Marxist-Leninist movement which represent important opportunist deviations. We hope that this pamphlet will be widely distributed, particularly in readers’ circles, for it gives a fairly good general idea of our group and how it is distinguished from other groups in the movement.
We also hope that it will be an incentive to read the other publications of our group, especially the newspaper IN STRUGGLE! and the journal PROLETARIAN UNITY, which provide the reader with more substantial and complete statements of our positions, and which acquaint him/her with our work within the ”Canadian masses, the working-class, and the Marxist-Leninist movement itself.
IN STRUGGLE! Montreal, July 27, 1977
* * *
The Equipe du journal, the EDJ, was formed by militants from different progressive groups in Montreal who joined together around the pamphlet Pour le parti proletarian, published October 29, 1972.
From January to September 1973, the main task of the EDJ was to prepare the political and practical conditions necessary for the publication and distribution of a Marxist-Leninist newspaper within the working class. Among other things, the EDJ worked at developing an analysis of Canadian, and especially Quebec, society from a communist point of view.
The first issue of the newspaper IN STRUGGLE! appeared in French on May Day 1973.
In September, the EDJ began publishing the newspaper in French every two weeks and distributing it across Quebec. In the same period, the militants of the newspaper were involved in the creation of a committee to support workers’ struggles (the CSLO) and the Atelier ouvrier (AO: the workers’ workshop). Involvement in these two organizations was seen as the way to develop links with the working class.
The first congress of the group IN STRUGGLE! was held in November 1974. The group was then constituted around a specific political line, presented in the supplement of issue no 29 on the newspaper under the title Creons I’organisation marxiste-leniniste de lutte pour le parti, the English version of which can be found in the former newspaper Western Voice (under the title: “Create the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Struggle for the Party”). The group also adopted a constitution and a considerably reinforced democratic centralism.
The political line adopted at this first congress constituted a definite break with the Quebec nationalist tendency by asserting that the proletarian revolution would be a Canada-wide revolution. This congress also firmly reasserted that the struggle for the creation of a proletariat Party was the central task of all Canadian Marxist-Leninists at this time, a strategic task in the carrying out of the socialist revolution. The path towards the creation of the Party, i.e., the unification of Canadian Marxist-Leninist communists around a revolutionary programme and the creation of a communist working-class vanguard, was also put forward at that time.
Defining these conditions allowed the group to break with the EDJ’s previous spontaneousness concerning both the unity of communists and the rallying of workers.
From 1974 to 1976, the group IN STRUGGLE! applied this line in its work of agitation, propaganda and organization.
During this period, we should note the publication of two important pamphlets. The first one, published in September 1975, was Against economism. On the basis of a criticism of the non-communist work done within the CSLO, it clarified the Marxist-Leninist tasks of agitation and propaganda in the period of the building of the Party of the working class.
In August 1976, IN STRUGGLE! published Fight the sectarianism of the CCL(ML), a pamphlet denouncing the small group mentality and the self-proclamation of the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist) (CCL(ML)) as the “organization of struggle for the party”.
We should also note that the newspaper IN STRUGGLE! became bilingual for May Day 1976, and in September of the same year the first issue of the theoretical journal PROLETARIAN UNITY, in which IN STRUGGLE! presented its line on the unity of communists, appeared.
The second congress of IN STRUGGLE! was held in November 1976. This congress rendered more precise the strategic line of the revolution in the context of the international situation and the struggle begun against right opportunism – more specifically, against the tendency towards social chauvinism and conciliation with the bourgeoisie.
By putting forward the importance of the revolutionary unity of the Canadian proletariat, and by mandating the leadership with the task of drawing up a draft communist programme and organizing discussions around it within the group and the masses, the , second congress also marked an important step in the group’s development in terms of its intervention within the masses.
The group also amended its constitution which was published as amended in May 1977.
Following this congress, several collectives in English Canada rallied to IN STRUGGLE!, which now has bases all across the country, principally in Halifax, Montreal, Quebec, Rouyn, Hull-Ottawa, Toronto, Regina and Vancouver.
These then are the major dates in the history of IN STRUGGLE!, a history which reflects the growing strength of the camp of the revolution throughout the country!
Since human communities have become class-divided communities through the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a minority of people who constitute themselves as the ruling class, class struggle has been the motor of history, and it will remain so as long as the class division of society has not been abolished from the surface of the globe.
Canada is a class society. It has been so since European and British colonization, and even before among different Native peoples.
For a few centuries, from the 16th to the end of the 19th century, the evolution of class relations and class struggle in Canada was largely determined by what was going on, first in France and then in England, because our country was then under colonial rule: class relations here were principally an extension of class relations in the metropolis.
With the conquest of New France in 1763, England became the metropolis of a network of colonies which would later become Canada. These colonies were at first a profit-making territory for merchants and traders, and then later, for small industrialists as well; trappers, farmers, loggers and craftsmen served the interests of that developing bourgeoisie.
Two main factors contributed to the emancipation of the British North American colonies: first, the constitution of a faction of the bourgeoisie – merchants, bankers and industrialists – whose interests were mainly in the colonies; second, the transformations in the class relations taking place in England where the industrial bourgeoisie constituted itself as the ruling class over the mercantile bourgeoisie during of the 19th century. So the English ruling class was less interested in colonies, and the bourgeoisie of the colonies was most interested in independence.
The path towards the independence of the colonies is marked by important dates: 1837-38: the rebellion; 1840: the Union Act; 1848: responsible government; 1867: Confederation.
In that period the bourgeoisie in Canada, particularly its industrial faction, was still a progressive class with the proletariat, in the sense that it was a positive factor in the development of the productive forces of Canadian society, while the landowners and aristocrats had become a totally reactionary class.
Canadian independence was, by the end of the 19th century, of historic importance for the class relations in our country. This meant that the motor of Canadian history was to rapidly become the struggle mainly between the Canadian proletariat and the Canadian bourgeoisie, even if this bourgeoisie kept important links with England and began at the same time to develop growing links with the American bourgeoisie.
In other words, with the constitution of an independent Canadian bourgeoisie, the struggle for socialism was placed on the agenda of class struggle. This coincided, need we recall, with the creation of many workers’ parties and organizations, and with the creation in 1921 of the Communist Party of Canada which had as its fundamental goal the abolition of the reign of capital and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Many things have changed in Canada since 1921: Canada has won its total independence from England and has developed its economic relations with the US to a very high level; huge steps have been made in the industrialization of the country; monopolization of capital has become the main trend in the capitalist class; Canada was directly involved in the first and second World Wars and profited greatly from them, internally, but also on the international level.
All these developments have produced new essential elements in the class relations of our country. First of all, the Canadian proletariat now is not only the leading revolutionary class, it is the main one; secondly, Canada has evolved to the status of an imperialist country; thirdly, the Canadian bourgeoisie has concluded an alliance with US imperialism which has been used as a basis for consolidating its dictatorship in this country and its imperialist ventures abroad.
As well, contradictions developed in the ranks of the proletariat: the stage of imperialism is also the stage when a faction of the proletariat is corrupted, when, in most imperialist countries, the working class comes under the ideological domination of the social-democrats and the revisionists. Canada has been no exception to this general trend. Also, the CP has progressively taken up revisionists positions and has completely degenerated. This is why we are now struggling against revisionism, for the victory of Marxism-Leninism in the working class.
Imperialism, particularly when inter-imperialist contradictions become more acute, is also an age of growing reaction, both domestically and on a world scale. That is also what is happening in Canada where the national oppression of the Quebec nation, of the Native peoples and of the Acadians is endangering the national rights of these sections of the Canadian masses, just as, on another level, imperialism denies the rights of Canadian women whose oppression, though formally reduced, is actually increasing.
Reduced to its essential elements, IN STRUGGLE!’s line can be put in the following terms: the contradiction between labour and capital is the fundamental. All contradictions, all forms of exploitation and oppression can only be resolved by socialist revolution, by the violent overthrow of bourgeois rule and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is the dictatorship over the bourgeoisie and democracy for the whole people.
This demarcates us from ail revisionists (Communist Party of Canada), all social-democrats, represented by the New Democratic Party, trotskyists and bourgeois nationalists like the Parti Quebecois, who pretend either that capitalism evolves progressively towards socialism and that revolution (the violent overthrow of bourgeois rule) is no longer necessary, or that we must fight for reforms only, and that we must first to get rid of national oppression in Quebec and/or in all of Canada, or that we must try to radicalize workers’ struggles through different immediate means or through an “all workers’ party” formed by the unions.
Concretely, IN STRUGGLE! holds that:
1. Socialist revolution in Canada is the task of the revolutionary class, that the working class is this revolutionary class.
2. The two most important enemies of the Canadian revolution are: the Canadian bourgeoisie (a monopolist bourgeoisie, an imperialist bourgeoisie) and US imperialism, both of which exploit and oppress the proletariat and the masses in this country.
3. The Canadian bourgeoisie is the principal enemy of the revolution, because Canada is an independent imperialist country ruled by the Canadian bourgeoisie which holds State power. So the principal contradiction in Canada is the one opposing the Canadian bourgeoisie and the Canadian proletariat, and it will be resolved by overthrowing that bourgeoisie and its State of dictatorship.
This strategic line is the exact opposite of the neo-revisionist line of the CPC (ML); this phoney party of the proletariat wants to form an alliance with certain segments of the bourgeoisie, including the national bourgeoisie which is supposedly “weak” in Canada! No, our line is not to reinforce Canadian exploiters against American ones, our line is to destroy all forms of exploitation!
In the Marxist-Leninist movement, this line demarcates our group from Bolshevik Union, the Red Star Collective and the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist). BU and RSC say that the principal enemies of the Canadian socialist revolution are both US imperialism and the Canadian bourgeoisie taken together; they hold that US imperialism is actually the more important because of its economic strength.
This is a profound misunderstanding of Canada as an independent country under the rule of its own bourgeoisie. The Canadian bourgeoisie is, in effect, allied to US imperialism but not under its rule as a “comprador” or a “puppet” bourgeoisie would be.
The League, for its part, makes the mistake of underestimating the importance of US imperialism which they represent solely as a superpower threatening Canada’s independence, whereas in fact the US is already involved in the exploitation and oppression of the Canadian working class and people.
There are many other contradictions to be resolved by the socialist revolution. Some of the most important include the Quebec national question, the Native peoples’ national question, and the national question of the Acadians and other French-speaking people in the English-speaking provinces.
IN STRUGGLE! resolutely upholds the defence of the democratic rights of all oppressed national groups in Canada. More specifically, its struggles for the recognition of the Quebec nations’ right to self-determination, including the right to separate. It also supports the Native peoples’ struggle for their historical rights. But what is fundamental, in both cases, is the possibility of equal rights for all Canadian workers: English-speaking, Quebecois, Indian, Acadian, in a society in which oppression, be it in terms of language, the right to work or political rights, etc, is eliminated.
This demarcates IN STRUGGLE! from the League’s “ultra-nationalism” in the case of Quebec: for example, their position on the Quebec independence referendum where they say that only French-speaking people should vote, and their position according to which everyone in Quebec should attend French schools and speak French. It also demarcates from Bolshevik Union in the case of the Native peoples who, according to BU, form a single nation and should struggle for their national liberation. Why? Because the Canadian proletariat is supposedly too “corrupt”, too “aristocratic” to defend the rights of the Native peoples!
Canadian women are oppressed; equality with men does not exist for them.
The oppression of women originated in the emergence of private ownership of the means of production, in the division of society into social classes with a privileged minority monopolizing the means of production. Today, the entire capitalist system maintains this oppression.
That is why IN STRUGGLE! rejects the false solutions of the social-democrats who say that women must strive to improve capitalism if they want to improve their lot. In opposition to “radical” feminists who make man,, “the male”, the main enemy, and in opposition to “Marxist” feminists who limit women’s struggles to the specific demands of women, IN STRUGGLE! calls upon oppressed and exploited women to take up, together with their class brothers, the struggle against our main enemy, the Canadian bourgeoisie, for the abolition of capitalism and all forms of private property of the means of production. At the present time, the most dedicated and class-conscious women must become involved in the struggle to build a true Marxist-Leninist Party.
Canada’s independence is threatened. American imperialism is in many respects a real danger for the Canadian people: on the economic, political, cultural, diplomatic and military levels, the USA submit the Canadian people to numerous vexations which are attacks on our country’s independence. Furthermore, the eventuality of a war to the finish between the two superpowers increases the danger of a foreign takeover of our country.
IN STRUGGLE! considers that the Canadian people have a strict right to their full sovereignty. For this reason, they must struggle, not only against foreign threats, but also against the manoeuvrings of the Canadian bourgeoisie which will not hesitate to barter our country’s independence in its own interests, in particular in order to satisfy its American ally.
But the struggle to preserve Canada’s independence must never be confused with the defence of the interests of Canadian imperialism in relation to other imperialists. Unlike the CCL(ML), which mystifies the menace of the superpowers to the point of forgetting the struggle against imperialism, and which has already made the denunciation of the danger of a third world war the centre of its agitation, IN STRUGGLE! holds that the sovereignty of the Canadian people depends upon the struggle against imperialism, foreign imperialists and in particular the superpowers, certainly, but also against Canadian imperialism, whose fundamental interests lie, not in the defence of the people’s interests, but rather in the realization of greater profits.
The leading role of the working class in the socialist revolution is focused in that of the proletarian Party (ML). Since the party does not exist (the “C”PC and “CPC ML” are not Marxist-Leninist parties), the principal task of the Canadian proletariat is to build it.
The creation of the party requires, at present, three essential conditions: a communist Marxist-Leninist programme, the unity of Canadian communists and the fusion of Marxism-Leninism with the working class. IN STRUGGLE! is engaged in activities which aim at realizing these three conditions.
1. In its publications, newspaper, journal and pamphlets, our group puts forward its positions on the fundamental questions of programme, which all Marxist-Leninists, progressives and workers are invited to discuss in public conferences, both national and regional. In a few months, IN STRUGGLE! will publish its “draft programme” and submit it to criticism by the whole movement and its sympathizers, workers and others.
Our idea of the programme is opposed to the League’s, for whom the programme is the sum of particular platforms and tactics. The League forgets that all our short-term struggles and demands must be linked to our struggle to overthrow the State power of the bourgeoisie.
2. The conferences of Marxist-Leninists have also been put forward with the purpose of intensifying the struggle for the unity of the movement. Like the upcoming “draft programme”, they must be seen as tools to demarcate and unite. As well, the struggle over strategic and tactical questions in our press is intended to serve the same purpose: demarcate in order to unite.
IN STRUGGLE! calls for the unity of all Marxist-Leninists on the basis of a common political line which finds its formal expression in a programme. This unity must lead to organizational unity. Already IN STRUGGLE! has united with many groups and individuals on the basis of a common understanding of the application of Marxism-Leninism to the Canadian revolutionary struggle.
In the question of unity we demarcate strongly from BU and the! League. BU, consistent with a splitting and wrecking line, puts forward a “plan for unity” which aims at shattering the Marxist-Leninist movement into numerous circles and factions. The League dogmatically refuses to debate with the Marxist-Leninist movement; unity, for the League, consists simply in rallying to the League.
3. It is through agitation, propaganda and organizational activities on the basis of the current main struggles of the working class and masses that the fusion of Marxism-Leninism and the working class can be achieved, as we learn from the history of the communist movement since the days of the October Revolution as related in the History of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (Bolshevik).
The line of IN STRUGGLE! in this regard also demarcates from that of BU and the RSC both of which pretend that it is “too soon” for workers to organize on a communist basis, the communist movement not being sufficiently developed to take on this work. BU clearly negates that agitation and propaganda tasks are the central activity of Marxist-Leninists in order to build the Party. IN STRUGGLE!'s line also demarcates from that of the League which, on the other extreme, advances the immediate winning of leadership within unions and mass organizations through the implantation of communist intellectuals and students to radicalize workers’ and unions’ struggles, a practice which serves to lower their work to the level of the purest reformism, and which leads to economism. This is a direct continuation of the opportunist errors of the RCT (workers’ committee), CLM (Canadian Liberation Movement) and PWM (Progressive Workers Movement), and their “stagist” tactics; this is a reproduction of the revisionist line which separates revolutionary and “reformist” struggles, and fails to take part in the struggle for reforms on a genuine communist (ML) basis.
Therefore, the central task of the Canadian proletariat at present is to build a revolutionary party. Through their activities of agitation, propaganda, and organization, Canadian communists (ML) will pursue one main objective, an objective which must have priority over any other: the building of the Party through the rallying to communism of class-conscious workers especially and other progressives as well; and their integration into communist structures, to do communist work and build the basis for the creation of factory cells composed of shop workers.
At this level, communist work clearly demarcates from revisionist, social-democratic and trotskyist ideas, which see workers’ political organizations as merely electoral organizations once every few years and as the organization of ”special events” such as May 1st, big strikes, or actions around specific questions like support to third world struggle or women’s emancipation, but never as the organization on a permanent basis of communist workers engaged in leading all the immediate struggles of the proletariat and the masses.
On the international level, communists must put forward proletarian internationalism. They struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and hegemonism.
Thus, IN STRUGGLE! denounces all forms of domination of one country by another, and in particular, the imperialist activities of the Canadian bourgeoisie. We struggle against the hegemonism of the two superpowers and their aggressive designs that threaten to plunge humanity into a third world war even more cruel than the first two.
We fully support all the struggles for the liberation of oppressed peoples and for socialist revolution everywhere in the world.
IN STRUGGLE! clearly demarcates from the trotskyists and revisionists inasmuch as, like the Chinese and Albanian communists, and like all authentic Marxist-Leninists throughout the world, it no longer recognizes the USSR as a socialist State or a “workers’ State”. Since Stalin’s death, a gang of capitalists has seized power in the USSR and transformed the socialist regime into a regime of the bourgeoisie’s fascist dictatorship, socialist in words but imperialist in practice. For instance, the “aid” that it pretends to give to the peoples of the world is nothing more than a means of infiltrating and looting all these countries.
Russia’s transformation into an imperialist power has considerably changed the balance of power in the world.
Since the beginning of the 1970’s, the world has been divided into three worlds: the first is made up of the two superpowers, the USA, which has never abandoned its plans of aggression and pillage of the peoples, and the USSR, the rising imperialist country; the third (the Third World) is formed by the developing countries; and the second includes all the advanced capitalist and imperialist countries other than the superpowers, that is, the European countries, Japan, Canada, Australia...
This analysis of the three worlds developed by the Chinese comrades is conjunctural; it expresses the current form of the four fundamental contradictions which govern the entire imperialist era:
1. The contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations, on the one hand, and imperialism, principally the imperialism of the two superpowers, on the other hand.
2. The contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the capitalist and revisionist countries.
3. The contradictions among imperialist countries, principally between the two superpowers.
4. The contradiction between the socialist countries on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the imperialist countries and social-imperialism.[1]
IN STRUGGLE! holds that we must take inspiration from the principles and analysis of China and Albania, but that Marxist-Leninists must apply these analysis in the light of the necessities of the revolution in their own country. However, the League, which has mechanically supported the Canadian bourgeoisie’s military policy, and even applauded the imperialist agreements concluded between the Canadian exploiters and Third World countries on the pretence of supporting the united front of second and third world countries, has not acquired this fundamental point of view.
IN STRUGGLE!’s point of view on domestic and international issues is very clear: the socialist revolution is always the goal for which we must aim. In regard to danger of a world war, IN STRUGGLE! puts forward the necessity for the proletariat to intensify its revolutionary activities, since the best way to put an end to imperialist war is to put an end to imperialism, rather than supporting one country or block of countries against another.
Here again IN STRUGGLE! demarcates from the League in the Marxist-Leninist movement. The League advances the inevitability of the third world war, and says that in this situation, the proletariat must be prepared to defend “its homeland”. The League simply forgets that our country is dominated by a bourgeoisie which has imperialist interests to promote and defend, and that this bourgeoisie will do its best to convince the proletariat to sign up and be slaughtered for it. Faced with this third imperialist war, the Canadian proletariat must continue its revolutionary struggle to overthrow the domination of the bourgeoisie.
Tactics must serve strategy. At any stage of their development the revolutionary forces grow through their participation in the struggle between the progressive and reactionary classes in this country and on the international level. It is through their positions on the main questions which preoccupy the working class movement that communists will succeed in implementing their strategic line.
While the central task of Canadian communists is the building of the Party, for which three essential conditions must be realized, their action must right now be oriented for the defence of the interests of the Canadian proletariat and people.
On the internal level, the present imperialist crisis is characterized by a growing tendency to reaction within the bourgeoisie whose interests call for a greater exploitation of the working class, a higher level of oppression of the national minorities and the abuse of the democratic rights of most strata of the masses: women, youth, unemployed, immigrants...
It is in the interests of the bourgeoisie to create divisions between the Quebec and Canadian people, between Native peoples and the Canadian people, between women and men... At the same time the workers’ movement is still dominated by reactionary elements who, in the name of progressive reforms, cultivate divisions among the masses and advocate collaboration with the bourgeoisie... “because all classes suffer from the crisis”. Nationalism, chauvinism, social-democracy and revisionism are important trends in the workers’ movement.
Canadian communists have an immediate task: to overcome the divisions cultivated by the bourgeoisie and its agents and to unite the Canadian proletariat and masses in the struggle against the Canadian bourgeoisie and its ally, American imperialism.
With this perspective, IN STRUGGLE! is actively involved in the struggle against the crisis measures of the Canadian State, which affect all Canadian workers (wage controls, unemployment, Bill C-24 which attacks immigrants’ rights...), in the struggle against bourgeois nationalism in Quebec and chauvinism in English Canada, and against Canadian nationalism which sees US imperialism as the main enemy of the Canadian revolution.
IN STRUGGLE! demarcates clearly from trotskyists and revisionists who support bourgeois nationalism in Quebec as “a positive factor”, as does the NDP. Yes, it is a positive factor... for the bourgeoisie!
In the Marxist-Leninist movement, IN STRUGGLE! criticizes the League’s positions, influenced by bourgeois nationalism, on the question of Quebec, and which present the superpowers as direct enemies of the Canadian revolution and foresee a national liberation struggle against them. IN STRUGGLE! also demarcates from the RSC which currently sees US imperialism as the main enemy of the Canadian revolution.
Far from being based on its strategic line, which nevertheless situates the principal contradiction as being between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the League’s tactical line does not concentrate the struggle against our main enemy and its State. The League proposes particular tactics in each situation, thus helping to dilute and disperse our forces.
According to the League, each person must struggle “class against class” in his/her factory, his/her industrial sector,, his/her union, his/her food co-op, his/her daycare centre... But what’s happened to the struggle against the bourgeoisie and its’ State? In practice, these positions resemble those of the union: bosses, with their tactics of dispersing struggles and isolating workers’ and the masses’ struggles from each other.
In its daily struggles, the working-class movement must struggle firmly against the social-democratic and revisionist ideologies that constitute important factors of division, and unmask the fine words of bourgeois parties like the NDP, the PQ and the Canadian and Quebecois “Communist” Party, whose social base resides in the labour aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie.
Presently in Canada, and indeed since the degeneration of the Canadian Communist Party and its passage into the camp of the bourgeoisie, the lack of a vanguard party of the working class, the Canadian Marxist-Leninist Party, has been felt cruelly.
While spontaneous struggles attain considerable dimensions, the working-class movement, deprived of a class-conscious proletarian leadership, remains on the defensive within the narrow framework of capitalism, and cannot develop into the revolutionary struggle against the bourgeois State to defeat capitalism and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in order to put an end to the private ownership of the means of production.
It is the Marxist-Leninist movement, made up of the best elements of the working class and other strata of the people and also of intellectuals who agree to serve the socialist Revolution, that must rebuild this Party. But even if it is gaining strength every day, this movement is still divided in both political and organizational terms, and there is still a hard struggle to be waged to defeat what divides it on all levels and to unite on the basis of a line which defends the interests of the proletariat.
As a Marxist-Leninist group engaged in this struggle on a Canada-wide level, IN STRUGGLE! calls upon all Canadian workers, and all progressive people who share its point of view on the various questions treated in this pamphlet, to join its ranks and take up the struggle to build the Party, the indispensable instrument of the proletarian Revolution.
JOIN IN STRUGGLED READERS’ CIRCLES TO DEEPEN OUR UNDERSTANDING!
READ THE NEWSPAPER IN STRUGGLE! AND THE JOURNAL PROLETARIAN UNITY! MAKE THEM KNOWN TO OUR WORK COMRADES!
TAKE UP THE STRUGGLE TO BUILD THE PARTY OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN CANADA!
[1] Concerning IN STRUGGLE!'s positions on the division of the world in three, we invite our readers to read the Declaration of our group on the occasion of the Third Conference of Canadian Marxist-Leninists on the international situation, which was held in Montreal on September 9, 10 and 11, 1977.