It is now unquestionably clear that In Struggle has become a sworn enemy of the Canadian working class. Over the last few years we have seen them more and more openly sabotaging struggles, allying with Trotskyists, making pacts with reformists, joining forces with them in the most vicious anti-communist campaigns, preaching capitulation to the class enemy wherever they go, and spreading the most crass petty bourgeois defeatism among the masses.
It is obvious to increasing numbers of people that In Struggle’s leadership has completely transformed the group into a little gang of saboteurs.
But why do we call IS revisionist? Because they are now enemies of the working class, traitors trying to hide behind a mask of “Marxism-Leninism”.
The essence of revisionism is precisely, as Lenin tells us, the doctoring of Marxism-Leninism to make it inoffensive to the bourgeoisie.
They omit, obscure or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. (Lenin, The State and Revolution, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 390)
This becomes even more the case as the old forms of revisionism, like the Canadian “Communist” Party today, are exposed. Therefore, the bourgeoisie is desperately in need of a group like IS which claims to be “Marxist-Leninist”, “anti-revisionist”, and which goes to the workers in order to blind them, lead them down the wrong road and discourage them from taking up the class struggle. This is particularly necessary for the bourgeoisie now when the Marxist-Leninist movement in Canada is taking up the struggle to rebuild an authentic communist party.
This phenomenon is not limited to IS. Actually, IS is merely one of a new series of agents provocateurs and splittists present around the world – other examples are the “CPCML,” and the “KPD(ML)” of Germany. This trend claims to have grown in the struggle against Soviet revisionism, but in fact it deforms Marxism-Leninism, attacks authentic Marxist-Leninist parties, slanders red China and does perhaps an even better job of preparing the terrain for social-imperialism on the rise.
So it is because of the reactionary interests it protects that IS is nothing but a renegade group playing a counter-revolutionary role in the service of the bourgeoisie.
It is very important to understand that this is true regardless of what individual members of IS may think. Lenin, talking about Kautsky, once a communist who became a revisionist, clearly explained:
Kautsky takes from Marxism what is acceptable to the liberals, to the bourgeoisie (...), and discards, passes over in silence, glosses over all that in Marxism which is unacceptable to the bourgeoisie (...). That is why Kautsky, by virtue of his objective position and irrespective of what his subjective convictions may be, inevitably proves to be a lackey of the bourgeoisie.” (Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 242-3.)
For this reason, because the struggle between Marxism and revisionism is an objective phenomenon, one form of the class struggle, the question now with regards to IS is not “how can they be brought to see their error?” but, “how can we fight them, how can we make sure they do not acquire any influence whatsoever over the masses?”
Further, revisionism has an objective class basis, which is the petty bourgeoisie. This is precisely the social basis of IS.
All during the time the League considered IS to be a Marxist-Leninist group, it waged a determined struggle to make IS realize and understand its errors.
But gradually, we saw that the most scientific explanations, proven in practice, had no effect on IS, which plunged headlong deeper and deeper into opportunism.
One of the best examples is the hard struggle waged for almost two years on the definition of the principal contradiction in our country. After months of refusing to respond to our criticisms, IS at its Second Congress finally opted for a permanent rejection of Marxism-Leninism in order to get out the whole mess and not have to admit its error.
Why did IS do this? Because it now defends the interests of the bourgeoisie, has totally betrayed the working class and therefore has no interest in understanding any scientific proof that could be shown to it.
The responsibility for In Struggle’s having reached this point lies first and foremost with the clique of careerists who lead it. They are the ones who have oriented its work toward systematic sabotage. They are the ones who orchestrated, first among their own ranks and then among the masses, their anti-communist campaign against socialist China and the League. They are the ones who distorted and then totally eliminated all democratic centralism from the group.
Above all, they are the ones who deliberately refused to arm their members and sympathizers with the principles of Marxism-Leninism in order to block them from seeing clearly and being able to fight against the revisionist degeneration of the group.
We have always fought against In Struggle’s opportunism and we will continue to do so. We will fight it as we fight all the bourgeoisie’s agents, by developing our communist work widely in the working class, by better arming men and women workers with their science, Marxism-Leninism, by fighting to give the communist party we are rebuilding in our country a solid foundation based on principles and strong links with the masses.
It is clear that the revolutionary forces in Canada, organized around the League, are growing and getting stronger.
The political liquidation of In Struggle has already begun. It is inevitable. The bourgeois trend, revisionism, will be wiped out, totally swept out of the way of the working class, no matter what new form it tries to take.
Bolshevism would not have defeated the bourgeoisie in 1917-19 if before that, in 1903-17, it had not learned to defeat the Mensheviks, i.e., the opportunists, reformists, social-chauvinists, and ruthlessly expel them from the party of the proletarian vanguard. (Lenin, Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 275).
We too have learned how to expel the In Struggle revisionists from the new proletarian vanguard. And we will continue to learn to ruthlessly fight against them and all the traitors who try to stop the revolution.
And to all the revisionists, we will repeat Lenin’s words to the Kautskyite renegades:
The victory of revolutionary Social-Democracy on a world scale is absolutely inevitable, only it is moving and will move, is proceeding and will proceed, against you, it will be a victory over you. (Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 111)