First Published: In Struggle! No. 158, May 15, 1979
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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Finally the League’s draft programme has been published. It’s a great event for the leaders of this organization, who have finally succeeded in printing in one single catalogue, all the goodies the’ve been offering the Canadian people for three years.
The League’s draft programme contains all the essential elements of a communist programme – the necessity of a communist party, of realizing socialist revolution in one stage the necessity of violent revolutionary struggle to seize power, the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc... All these points certainly come in handy to refute all accusations of revisionism. But the hic is that the League’s draft programme also contains all the elements of modern revisionism, of nationalism in all possible forms.
In fact, the League’s draft programme is a handy catalogue for one and for all. In the chapter on the crisis alone, the League puts forward no less than 27 demands...
But catalogues, whether they come from the Bay, from Simpson’s or from the League, have never improved the lot of workers. And the CCL(M-L)’s programme is no exception, as it tries to convince us that only nationalism can still help the struggle of the working class.
The League’s draft programme “very clearly”presents the attitude the working class should have with regard to the Canadian bourgeoisie: it is main enemy, but is also a reserve for the revolution (if it is not monopolist); and, last but not least, it is a force to win over. And to justify the whole thing, the League skips from one united front to the next, facing increasingly bigger enemies...
In the factories, and in the trade unions, everything can be summed up by the slogan “class against class”. The League tells us we must apply the tactic of the “proletarian united front” against the bourgeoisie, although it won’t hesitate to make political unity with the labour bosses. As its sabotage of Operation Freedom in Quebec proves.
On the national question, it is no longer the entire Canadian bourgeoisie which is the main enemy, tut, tut. On this the League’s theorists are categorical: “it is the Canadian monopolist bourgeoisie which is responsible for this oppression” (page 9), even if it so plainly says in the draft programme “but it is the entire bourgeoisie... which profits from national oppression”. So the James Bay Inuit who denounce the nationalist Ouebecois capitalists of the PQ are completely wrong. It’s the monopolies which are solely responsible for chauvinism. Indeed, the Inuit are quite sectarian!
On the International scene, the united front of all classes is in the spotlight. According to the League, workers must win the entire bourgeoisie, monopolist and non-monopolist, to the struggle against the “biggest of the big” imperialists. A title on page 28 of their programme reads: “The second world a force to be won to the struggle against the superpowers.” Their draft programme states that the superpowers take up too much room in the world and prevent imperialist countries of the second world and the capitalist and semi-feudal countries of the “third-world” from establishing a “new world economic order”. Finally, it is the united front of these “two worlds” which will make it possible to hit the “main imperialist giants” and thus “weaken the entire imperialist system” (p. 29).
After the tactic of the “proletarian united front” against the bourgeoisie in the factory, a front which includes the labour bosses, they have moved on to propose a united front with a part of the bourgeoisie on the national question, and now to a united front with the entire Canadian bourgeoisie, the leaders of other imperialist countries, the reactionary cliques of the countries of Asia and South America against the two superpowers, but in practice only against the USSR, since an “appeasement trend” has arisen with the USA (p. 28)! The League even goes as far as criticizing the USA for supposedly lagging behind in the armaments’ race...
If all these fine imperialist gentlemen are working “to weaken the entire imperialist system” (p. 29), as the League suggests, then we have a right to wonder why the League bothers with building a proletarian leadership, a communist party.
These different positions which lead to collaboration with the bourgeoisie are a glaring example of the extent to which the League is corrupted by the same nationalism which has already led the Communist Party and many other groups to utter decadence. On crucial questions, the League always places the interests of the “nation” above the class interests of the proletariat. So it is not surprising that their draft programme calls on “the working class to defend the independence of Canada” puts forward the slogan “stop the export of jobs” and demands that an end be put to “all unequal economic treaties and accords with US imperialism” (p. 14). The League also supports Canadian imperialism on the international scale: “We support the growing unity of the third world and the unity of second and third-world countries” (p. 29), the draft programme repeats...
In fact, the League is not working to lead the struggle of the Canadian proletariat towards socialism and communism. Rather, it is working to have It tail behind the policies of one faction of the bourgeoisie on the national and international levels.
True Canadian communists have now a programme, the programme of the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada IN STRUGGLE, which enables them to fight the revisionism propagated in the working class by all sort of groups. We must intensify the struggle to expose and discredit all the impostors who claim to be Marxist-Leninist.