In leading the people in struggle against the enemy, the Party must adopt the tactics of advancing step by step slowly and surely, keeping to the principle of waging struggles on just grounds, to our advantage, and with restraint, and making use of such open forms of activity as are permitted by law, decree and social custom; empty clamour and reckless action can never lead to success.(Mao Tse-tung, “Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party,” Selected Works, Vol. II [Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967], p. 318.)
Mao’s words are no less true for Canadian Marxist-Leninists and others sympathetic to Marxism-Leninism. As yet without revolutionary leadership, lacking experience, and only beginning to realize the immensity of the tasks ahead, those seriously interested in revolutionary socialism have to work hard, patiently and carefully, avoiding superficiality and the easy road of quick solutions. The only successful method: to go “step by step slowly and surely,” that is, with the use of the most advanced theory, to analyze what has come before, and then to work with this knowledge to define present and future tasks and to carry them out in a principled, practical way.
Quite the opposite is the case for the “new communist movement”. Instead of slow and patient work, they engage in exhibitionism. Not for them careful analysis and the development of work suitable for the time and place; their tasks have already been defined by formulas which they apply hither and yon, right or wrong, come hell or high water. There is hardly any aspect of their politics which so fully exposes their crass, amateur and fundamentally opportunist nature as does the new “theory” they’ve woven around their same old action-freakism. Disdaining reform work, rejecting all forms of organization other than what they consider the highest and most pure, they have jumped headlong into a simplistic “agitation/propaganda” formula. Here’s how it goes:
To build the party means above all to link Marxism-Leninism with the working-class movement. At this present, very early stage in our development, this means principally carrying on explicitly communist agitation and propaganda among the whole working class with the immediate aim of winning over to Marxism-Leninism the most advanced workers. This vanguard of Marxist-Leninist workers will, on the basis of its programme, then be able to win over the class as a whole and also rally behind it all the oppressed sectors of society. (HCG, To develop conditions locally. . . , p. 1.)
The folly of this mechanical plan is compounded by the fact that in their attempted implementation the authors pay not the slightest heed to their audience, nor do they give proper consideration to what they are propagating or why they are agitating.
So far we have given a lot of attention to CCL and IS, and rightly so since those who set themselves up as “leading centres” require the closest scrutiny. But there is also much to be learned by looking closely at the local manifestations of ultraleftism. The main difference between the ultraleftists in the smaller cities and their mentors in the big city where they are headquartered is that the local groups are less sophisticated and therefore more obvious in their opportunism.
As has already been described in section 3, in order for the above-quoted Halifax Communist Group to gain acceptance into the “Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement”, they had to announce that the major danger to the “movement” is economism. This they did by distributing (“for struggle and debate among Marxist-Leninists, advanced workers and other progressives in Halifax and nationally”, p. 1) an essay entitled To develop conditions locally for the building of the National Vanguard Party: Struggle against the Economist Error in our midst, an attack on a local workers’ support organization, the Nova Scotia Labour Research and Support Centre (NSLRSC). This pamphlet assails community organizations like the NSLRSC–which doesn’t claim to be communist–for not being communist enough. Their argument centres around the theme that doing specifically economic or trade union work is economism because all such work denies the necessity of linking Marxism-Leninism with the working class, is social democratic, falls prey to small groupism, etc., etc. A messy blend of misquotes, made up history, and half-baked theory, this pamphlet concludes that those who do concrete trade union and support work in their communities instead of joining the ultraleft’s “party-building, agitation-propaganda” activities are fundamentally economist.
In contrast, Lenin offered a clear description of what sets economism apart from revolutionary Marxist practice: “the basic error that all the Economists commit, namely, their conviction that it is possible to develop the class political consciousness of the workers from within, so to speak, from their economic struggle, i.e., by making this struggle the exclusive (or, at least, the main) starting-point.” [emphasis in original] (V.I. Lenin, “What is to be Done?” Collected Works, Vol. 5 [Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961], p. 421.)
Trailing behind the spontaneous trade union activity of the working class, holding and acting on the illusion that economic struggle automatically has a revolutionary political character, believing that pure economic activity creates a “stage” wherein workers suddenly become ready for their first dose of socialist ideas–this is the stuff economism is made of.
Economism is not the same as economic activity, contrary to what the ultraleftists–when their words and deeds are added up–are really saying. Of course economism is a real and present danger for those engaged in practical activity; of course it is bound to arise over and over in trade union work, in reform work of all sorts and in alliances with progressive forces. But the alternative presented by the ultraleftists–to shy away from systematic economic activity for fear of catching the economist disease–is tantamount to avoiding revolutionary activity in the first place. If some notion of abstract political purity is the goal, then the best way to avoid economism probably is to concentrate on bombarding the working class with bad imitations of communist agitation and propaganda. But if the goal is to achieve revolutionary transformation, all progressive forms of activity must be used, and must be used well.
The task of the Social-Democrats,[1] ... is not exhausted by political agitation on an economic basis; their task is to convert trade-unionist politics into Social-Democratic political struggle, to utilise the sparks of political consciousness which the economic struggle generates among the workers, for the purpose of raising the workers to the level of Social-Democratic political consciousness, [emphasis in original] (Ibid., p. 416.)
A concise statement of the job of Marxist-Leninists in their economic work: to convert, to utilize, to raise–words describing a process by which the working class becomes politically a class for itself.
In opposition to the idea of raising political consciousness by means of a process involving political and economic work, by means of “advancing step by step slowly and surely”, avoiding “empty clamour and reckless action”, is the “movement’s” mechanical “agitation/propaganda” plan. Any other course of action, they assert, is just
a “stages” theory of development. The adherents of this theory hold that the workers must pass through a “stage” of purely economic and reform struggles before they become ready for M-Lism; that only through the “maturing” of objective conditions and the spontaneous response of the working class to these conditions can there arise the basis for a “leap” to socialist consciousness sometime in the future. (HCG, Basis of Unity, pp. 2-3.)
Here we see Lenin’s conception on the dialectical relationship between trade union work and political education mechanically reduced to a meaningless either/or proposition which empties Marxism-Leninism of its revolutionary content. The two possible alternatives the ultraleftists advance amount to this: either there are advanced workers ready to rally to their brand of “communist agitation and propaganda,” or the working class is not ready for political ideas and thus a long stage of purely economic struggle is necessary before any ideas of socialism can be introduced. To fall for this “choice” instead of studying and comprehending revolutionary theory and present circumstances is to fall into their trap, forced to select between two equally counterrevolutionary alternatives–adventurism or economism.
Without so much as a gesture in the direction of any concrete analysis, HCG declares:
The objective conditions already exist for the integration of M-Lism with the working class movement. They have been created by capitalism, itself, through centuries of exploitation of the working class. To bemoan the backwardness of objective conditions is to miss the point. (Ibid., p. 3.)
And that’s it, period. A good lesson in how to transform truth into banality. That capitalism creates the general conditions for working class militancy is a truth applying to the whole historic epoch of capitalism, but by itself tells nothing about specific class consciousness in specific conditions and cannot be taken as an instruction on what to do. To think that capitalism in and of itself automatically creates the conditions for advanced working class consciousness is an economist idea with dangerous spontaneist dimensions, an idea which they share with ordinary social democrats and revisionists.
IS, perhaps because they are more enmeshed in the rarefied “two-line struggle” of the “leading centres” than are the smaller local groups, have felt obliged to do somewhat more. But instead of basing their pamphlet Against Economism on the Canadian working class situation of the 1970’s, they rely on a contrived analogy with the Russian working class at the turn of the century, implying that the Canadian working class is even more ready for revolution than was the Russian working class.
Actually, the proportion of advanced workers in our country is most probably higher than it was in Russia in 1895 ... the Canadian proletariat is considerably more important numerically in relation to the whole of the labouring masses; the Canadian proletariat is not illiterate; . . . there is in Canada a tradition of union organizing going back over three quarters of a century, and workers have led struggles, sometimes important ones, in most of the large enterprises in the country; for more than half a century now, there have been “a working-class intelligensia”. . . (IS, Against Economism, December 1975, p. 37.)
with the only momentary demurral being that,
even if the Canadian and Quebec workers’ movement is more developed than the Russian movement of the 1890’s, there are extremely important negative characteristics, stemming principally from the bribing of the workers’ aristocracy and from the monopolizing by bourgeois ideology of the leadership of the union movement. (Ibid., p. 38.)
This kind of remarkably superficial assessment of the working class, together with unsupported assertions like MREQ’s “today, a growing number of workers are beginning to understand that they must face not only their own bosses, but the entire capitalist class which uses its state to exploit the workers” (MREQ, Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization, January 1975, p. 2), makes up what the ultraleftists boldly call concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Such statements should be contrasted with two things: the actual situation of the Canadian working class, and the real rootedness that we can find in Lenin (those who have really read his work know how much it reflects the wide sweep as well as the detailed grasp of his own society).
In the absence of any concrete evaluation, then, an elucidation of the relationship between actual Canadian working class conditions and the ultraleft’s notion of agitation and propaganda can nowhere be found. When pressed, the ultraleftists respond with formulas: since there are always advanced workers under capitalism (no mention of which sectors, how advanced, why, and in what ways), explicitly communist agitation and propaganda must always stand first and foremost on the agenda for linking Marxism-Leninism with the working class movement. Nonetheless, they are obliged from time to time to back their “theory” with a working class of their own invention, one which is a standard mixture of advanced, middle and backward elements (a classification that could be used for just about anything), featuring a host of advanced workers who are everywhere and increasingly taking the Marxism-Leninism of the “leading centres” to their breasts, and with militancy everywhere and increasingly bubbling to the surface.
A major problem, according to HCG, is that
bourgeois ideology, especially social democracy and, to a somewhat lesser extent, modern revisionism, dominate the working class today. These are bourgeois ideologies which pretend to lead the working class toward socialism but, in reality, lead it only into the lion’s den. (HCG, To develop conditions locally. . . , p. 1.)
Only the most stultified intellectuals isolated from their social surroundings can, while living in Nova Scotia in the 1970’s, possibly think that social democracy and revisionism dominate the working class. The least bit of honest investigation will reveal, in our estimation, straight bourgeois domination: atomization and often even disinterest in trade union struggles; a working class on which an imposed bourgeois ideology, despite ever-present sparks of spontaneous militancy and rebellion against an oppressive and exploitative system, weighs heavily. So far, most workers have barely begun to move from under the weight. A ton of profit-created needs and fantasies–from Loto Canada to Mary Tyler Moore to new cars–have made a far greater impact on the working class than any reformist movement, let alone Ed Broadbent or William Kashtan. We base this conclusion on our observations of the working class locally and throughout Nova Scotia. We do not presume, as do some others, to tell those elsewhere in Canada what their concrete conditions are. But if the conditions elsewhere are qualitatively different from ours as we describe them, this has yet to be demonstrated.
Where our local ultraleftists claim to find both extensive economism and exploding worker militancy, there is in fact an absence of what could properly be called a real labour movement. Trade union organizations include less than one-third of Nova Scotia workers and represent less the economic interests of their members than the career aspirations of their so-called leaders. Trade union struggles here are infrequent, often poorly led and nearly always isolated from each other. Militant strikes are rare. Cape Breton’s miners and steel workers, the traditional hotbeds of Nova Scotia trade unionism, have been fragmented. During the recent years of reform ferment in the United Mine Workers International, the Nova Scotia district, once the bane of John L. Lewis, sat in Tony Boyle’s pocket. By spearheading a naked anti-union drive in mainland Nova Scotia, Michelin Tire (by far the largest private employer in the province) and the provincial government have thrown down the gauntlet, a challenge the trade union organizations here have virtually ignored except in words. It is true that wage controls led to frustration, but this was never, not even on October 14, turned into militant action. Worse yet, there has been widespread acceptance of the bourgeoisie’s lies about inflation and of the Anti-Inflation Board programme as necessary.
For years, Nova Scotia workers have faced chronic unemployment and underemployment of nearly a quarter of the workforce (and much more in certain localities) with barely a murmur of organized opposition. While provincial and local trade union organizations, in response to the deepening crisis, have attempted to establish a few area committees to combat unemployment, the results of these committees have thus far been negligible. The Cape Breton committee has, in effect, disbanded in exchange for the same false promises which have accompanied thirty years of economic stagnation there, the Pictou County committee was stillborn, and the Halifax committee was undermined at the outset by IS, with a half-hearted trade union “opposition” to IS actually contributing to the process. Despite all this, the misleaders of the trade union organizations enjoy widespread legitimacy if mainly through passive support and are rarely challenged for their programme of inaction.
While the labour movement lies dormant, the ruling class carries on business as usual, and a good part of their business is to hide their own existence. The influence of some of the most backward forms of bourgeois ideological control–monarchism, religion, and old-line political parties–is admittedly stronger in the Atlantic region than elsewhere. Most workers here still give (and many even sell) their votes to the Liberals and the Conservatives; many still heed the words of the priests. And the New Democratic Party (NDP) here, which is largely perceived as too “socialist”, is hardly even social democratic, its leaders no longer advocating much social reform, much less the “socialism” of their Commonwealth Cooperative Federation (CCF) predecessors. Their current platform consists of support for small business, resurrection of the Maritimes rights movement of the 1930’s, and the claim that they deserve more votes because they are more dedicated “representatives” who do more “constituency work” than their opponents. In short, genuine social democrats are few; revisionists are practically non-existent.
We say all this not to undersell revolutionary potential. Wherever and whenever people are exploited and oppressed, they are bound to develop consciousness of their conditions and begin to struggle against them. But potential and realization of potential are two different things. In order to build on potential, we must know just where it is, what are its contours, and what are the obstacles blocking its growth. Before one more familiar misapplication of Lenin is trotted out in defense of the ultraleft viewpoint, let us clarify that we are by no means suggesting that ultraleftists are in advance of the working class. Even in their relatively dormant state, the working class remains in potential, as well as in realized human and political qualities, light years ahead of all the infantiles put together.
By adopting and acting on an interpretation of reality based on wishes rather than investigation, the ultraleftists have denied a fundamental principle of revolutionary socialism: that the questions of where and how to begin and proceed with progressive work are based not on abstracted (and hence useless) theory, but on theory that is marshaled to the service of discovering the problems workers face, the specific mechanisms of capitalism as they operate in the society, the concrete manifestations of exploitation and oppression, and the current forms and influence of bourgeois ideology–theory that is thus refined and usable through such discovery. “Activity” without social investigation maybe personally satisfying for some; it should never be mistaken for revolutionary work.
The ultraleftists’ determination to find widespread militancy has led them to adorn the truth when the historical record doesn’t live up to their desires. IS’s newspaper, for example, wrote that as we saw from the Canso Strait fishermen’s strike of 1970-71, Nova Scotia workers have great solidarity with their fellow workers of the Fisheries. They led numbers of walkouts and wildcats across the entire province to support this militant struggle, especially when the state jailed a number of striking fishermen. (“The situation of fishermen in Nova Scotia: No, the State is not Neutral,” In Struggle!’, April 28, 1977, p. 12.)
Two observations can be made from this:
1) Nova Scotia workers, like those everywhere, can have great solidarity with fisheries workers. But it has to be fostered and well led, as it was in 1970-71, not just asserted. Since that time, the fishing industry has seen walkouts, boycotts, and struggles against plant closures, not one of which has generated much solidarity–one more indication of the need for basic and solid trade union work.
2) “Numbers of walkouts and wildcats . . . especially when the state jailed . . . striking fishermen”? When, other than once at the time of the jailings, did any walkouts or wildcats occur? Isn’t it in fact true that sellout labour leaders quickly and successfully cooled down workers’ solidarity, and that this was the major factor in losing the strike? The real story of what was the best organized, most militant, popular and dramatic strike in Nova Scotia in the last 25 years gives evidence both of the tremendous potential for trade union solidarity and of how little this potential has been realized. IS’s claims would perhaps generate only a minor quibble if it were not representative of an overall falsification of reality.
As we understand things, the development of working class consciousness is a process which, depending on the circumstances, may have to move through any number of stages. Here we separate ourselves entirely not only from the mechanical “laying on” of agitation/propaganda, but also from an equally static two-stage model. Lenin never throws all ideas of stages out the window; nor does he freeze the revolutionary process into some fixed two-stage or one-stage theory. First of all there are definitely stages within the spontaneous movement:
Strikes occurred in Russia in the seventies, and sixties (and even in the first half of the nineteenth century), and they were accompanied by the “spontaneous” destruction of machinery, etc. . . . The strikes of the nineties revealed far greater flashes of consciousness; definite demands were advanced, the strike was carefully timed, known cases and instances in other places were discussed, etc. The revolts were simply the resistance of the oppressed, whereas the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. (Lenin, What is to be Done?, pp. 374-375.)
And, there are stages of consciousness:
Even in the most advanced countries of Europe it can still be seen that the exposure of abuses in some backward trade, or in some forgotten branch of domestic industry, serves as a starting-point for the awakening of class-consciousness, for the beginning of a trade-union struggle, and for the spread of socialism. (Ibid., p. 399.)
At any rate, the crucial point for revolutionaries is not the counting of stages but to see to it that the revolution is led by a proletarian party which maintains both its principles and independence throughout the vicissitudes of the class struggle.
Without adornment, the question is: at this time, is helping to build militant trade union consciousness and to lead and support economic struggles necessarily tailing behind the workers, necessarily falling victim to some crass theory of stages? Or, is it one legitimate kind of activity which, when combined with other aspects of all-round political and economic work, will develop conditions for building class consciousness, and develop as well the capabilities, talents, knowledge, and proletarian class outlook of those who aspire to be revolutionaries?
If we can take the “analyses” of the ultraleftists for an answer to this question, they don’t seem to have much use for basic trade union work. For example, the low point in the political lives of our local late HCG was when, as members of ECSM, they were doing the only useful work the organization can be credited with–a generally good workers’ support campaign involving the above-mentioned Canso fishermen’s strike, under the direction of a competent and militant union leadership. They now decry the memory of their economist behaviour, when their
goal in the fishermen’s strike was only to win the strike–not to win over the men and women to communist ideas through a communist analysis of the struggle. Endless hours were spent organizing support for the strike and doing propaganda for it, but on a trade unionist basis. Marxism-Leninism was kept well in the background even among the fishermen.(HCG, To develop conditions locally . . . , p. 4.)
Two questions beg to be answered. First, what would have been the result of their “communist” work in this strike? Using their distorted conception of propaganda and agitation, the predictable effect would have been complete rejection by all the fishermen, destruction of all the useful support activity, and the furnishing of ammunition for the virulent red-baiting campaign, which was one of the chief weapons used by the bourgeoisie during the strike. (When they kick themselves for economism, do they forget that they engaged in a bit of their kind of agit/prop on the side anyhow which nearly cost them whatever initial confidence the fishermen and their wives had in them–a little campaign to get fishermen’s wives to reject the bourgeois family?)
Second, what would have been the result of “only” winning the strike? Nova Scotia would now have a strong and militant fishermen’s union, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers, undoubtedly incorporating many more fishermen than originally organized. It would have acted as a catalyst for other organizing drives for both offshore and inshore fishermen. It could well have become the focal point of progressive union activity in the province and the region. Those who had played a part in supporting the fishermen would have enjoyed continuing practical activity with some of the more militant trade union leaders around. The loss of the strike “only” meant the loss of their union, demoralization, and continued miserable working and living conditions for the fishermen. When the government, fish companies, press and churches ganged up on the fishermen to ensure that they would “only” lose the strike, the bourgeoisie knew what it was doing even if the ultraleftists do not.
Trade union work for the ultraleftists means the blanket application of self-approved methods, whether or not they benefit workers, whether they help build socialist consciousness or discredit it. Marxist-Leninist trade union work, in contrast, involves raising both economic and political class consciousness through appropriate agitational and propaganda work, doing each only when you have some idea of what it is you are doing, and doing each in connection with the actual situation of the concrete struggle and to the extent that the situation itself demands.
The fixation on economism as the major danger within the “new Marxist-Leninist movement” can be traced to 1974 when a number of small groups in central Canada suddenly declared their pasts to be totally economist, thus supposedly making a fundamental break with their “intermediate workers’ support organizations”. We know very little about the Toronto organization, Right to Strike, for despite all the seeming self-criticisms of various participants, no actual analysis of this group’s activities has been done.
The other main “intermediate organization” of the day, the Montreal centred CSLO-Comite de Solidarity Avec les Luttes Ouvrieres (Committee of Solidarity with Workers’ Struggles) apparently brought together the bulk of the organizations in Montreal describing themselves as Marxist-Leninist and is now widely held to be the archetype of Canadian economism. It was the topic of IS’s 68-page Against Economism pamphlet and has been alluded to in a number of “self-criticisms” since; nevertheless, we have yet to see any detailed and concrete analysis of its composition, debates, and work–what ought to be the first step towards understanding the past, rejecting what was wrong, and changing in order to do better political work. The pamphlet does say enough, however, to tell us that the famous CSLO, whipping boy of all those who oppose what they call intermediate organizations, never was an intermediate mass organization at all. “The majority of the member groups of this so-called ’mass’ organization . . . are Marxist-Leninist, or identify themselves with Marxism-Leninism” (IS, Against Economism, p. 17), who never did the work appropriate to this kind of organization. “During this last year,” IS admitted in 1975, “the C.S.L.O. gave no real mass support to any workers’ struggle.” {Ibid., p. 21.)
The local version of IS’s attack on the CSLO was the previously mentioned pamphlet (To develop conditions locally for the building of the National Vanguard Party: Struggle against the Economist Error in our midst) by the Halifax Communist Group, the “economist error” being the Nova Scotia Labour Research and Support Centre. Familiar in this case with both the attacker and the attacked organizations, we are in a better position to comment at greater length about the quality and content of the ultraleftists’ attack on what they call economism.
It was to be expected that, as a workers’ support organization, the NSLRSC would be attacked by the HCG for being an economist organization, for falling prey to their two-stage theory, for “refusing to carry out the task of integrating Marxism-Leninism with the working class movement” (HCG, To develop conditions locally p. 9), etc. What was less expected was that the NSLRSC’s “Statement of Purpose” would be rewritten by the HCG, with words changed, dropped and added–all to the convenience of the attacker. For example: “When the Centre speaks of support for working people, it means that it will take seriously the task of bringing basic information and interpretations about labour to workers” (NSLRSC, “Statement of Purpose,” p. 2) became, under the pen of HCG: “When the Centre speaks of support for working people, it means in the first instance that it will consider as fundamental the task of bringing basic information and interpretation about labour to the workers.” (HCG, To develop conditions locally . . . , p. 9.) Furthermore, not only is this section rewritten, but one of their own new words, “fundamental”, is emphasized by the revisers, and then becomes the focus of their attack: “The LRSC makes it appear that the principal obstacle preventing workers from gaining ’control (over) their own destiny’ is their lack of information about their own present conditions.” (Ibid.) This manipulation piled on top of falsification is in sharp contrast with the opening pep talk they give their readers: “It is in [the] spirit of ’unity-criticism-unity’ that we now put forward our own criticisms and positions for struggle and debate.” (Ibid., p. 2.) Presumably the “principled struggle” and “open debate” they talk so much about.
One more example, out of many–this time not a direct misquote but a direct misinterpretation. “The Centre can prove itself worthy of working people’s trust only by responding to their needs and desires, not by imposing false ones on them” [emphasis in original] (NSLRSC, “Statement of Purpose,” p. 3) is misconstrued by the HCG: “This position states that it is exclusively the workers’ present self-perceived ’needs and desires’ that should and will determine both the occasion and the content of the LRSC’s interventions in mass struggles.” (HCG, To develop conditions locally . . . , p. 3.) Not only is the content mutilated so that a comment on how to build trust becomes a full prescription on “the occasion and the content of the LRSC’s interventions”, but the insertion of words like “exclusively”, “present”, and “self-perceived” gives a once simple statement a much different flavour and meaning.
As well, the pamphlet devotes a great deal of space to trying to link the NSLRSC with the defunct East Coast Socialist Movement, the organization about which, it will be recalled, this Halifax HCG/IS branch has manufactured five totally different interpretations. They have apparently forgotten that many of the present IS members were the same people who frantically clung to every rottenness the group represented, trying to breathe life into the corpse after it was proven dead; they have also conveniently forgotten that it was some of those who they now accuse of reviving ECSM in the form of the NSLRSC who were instrumental in first diagnosing the disease, and ensuring its justifiable demise. Despite all these dishonest efforts, HCG/IS gives itself away when it combines its current verdict of ECSM: “Economism marked practically all of the group’s activity and goals in mass work” (Ibid., p. 4.) with its contradictory illusions about its formation, which, they say, “marked a distinct step forward” (Ibid.,) and resulted from a recognition of “the necessity of . . . developing a disciplined organization.” (Ibid.)
In their new enlightenment, these Halifax ultraleftists have made sure that they will no longer open themselves to the charge, accurately or inaccurately, of economism by tirelessly foisting their brand of “explicitly communist agitation and propaganda among the whole working class.” (Ibid., p. 1.) This current kick proceeds from a false idea of communist agitation and propaganda, and, as it is carried out, it is a constant insult to the working people they are imposing on. Introducing inappropriate issues in inappropriate ways, issues based on muddled theories with no appreciation of actual conditions or of workers’ experience and concerns only damages the cause supposedly being propagated.
Yet this is exactly what our local In Strugglers and others like them across Canada do. In Halifax, their first “public intervention” was the HCG’s leaflet, “Mobilize the General Strike, Organize the Struggle Against Capitalism”, distributed in October, 1976 (which, incidentally, was the first and last that was ever heard of their “campaign” to organize a general strike); this leaflet stands at the apex of the species. Among the specific targets attacked are: Joe Morris and the labour bosses, social democracy, Soviet social imperialism, U.S. imperialism, the AIB, the bourgeois state and wage controls. It also exhorts workers to build the proletarian party, throws in a warning about another world war, and goes on about the nature of the economic crisis, the current attack on democratic rights, etc. It makes the obligatory call for the dictatorship of the proletariat. All this in two pages! This leaflet was passed out at events ranging in nature from the October 14 day of protest to a union contract-voting meeting. Its authors didn’t even seem to notice that it was received with only indifference and derision.
Contrast these actions with what they say they are doing:
The communist conception of the mass line is summed up in Mao’s phrase, “from the masses to the masses”. This correctly links the two aspects of the mass line–the respect which communists must have for the correct ideas and experiences of the masses: the principle of learning from the masses; and the responsibility of the communists to correctly sum up and synthesize these ideas and experiences in order to guide the further development of class struggle: the communist principle of leadership. (HCG, To develop conditions locally. ... p. 9.)
Let’s look at another example of how their “mass line” works in practice by looking at an HCG “intervention” which featured a former ECSM leader, then a central figure in HCG, now an IS regular. During a Dalhousie University maintenance workers’ struggle, this long-standing ultraleftist was present as an observer at a meeting of the workers’ strike committee. The question under discussion was the university’s reneging when it tried, at the last minute, to avoid signing a contract it had already negotiated on the flimsy pretext that the Anti-Inflation Board would reject the wage raise in the contract. All the workers agreed that the university was using the government as a cover and that preparations for a strike against the university should be made immediately. The IS member vehemently disagreed and delivered a tirade proclaiming that the workers’ position was a sellout and that they should concentrate their attack not on the university but on the AIB and the bourgeois state. Knowing that this position would actually have played directly into the university’s hands, the workers unanimously and strenuously disagreed, whereupon the ISer, angry and muttering, stomped out.
This new version of the “mass line” appears to be: go in frenzy to the masses, tell them what to do, get mad if they don’t listen. The only difference between this new phase and their earlier so-called economist phase is the greater degree of frenzy, caused by and reproducing their failure.
Typical, or a single aberration? From all that we know of the new infantiles–their unexamined pasts, their recent uncritical “changes”, their disrespect for the theory they claim to use, their avoidance of hard concrete study, and above all, their deep ideological attachment to their petty-bourgeois roots–this kind of behaviour has become the rule. There is small consolation in the knowledge that their current infatuation will fade–small consolation, because the next questions will be: what kind of mess will they have left in their wake, and what kind of opportunism will they adopt as a replacement?
[1]This is what revolutionary Marxists were called at that time.