For some time now, a large number of politically-conscious working men and women and sympathizers of the Canadian communist movement have rejected the group In Struggle (IS), considering it to be nothing more than a gang of saboteurs.
They have seen IS, once an important member of the Marxist-Leninist movement, doing nothing but harm to workers’ and people’s struggles.
They have seen it spreading anti-communism, openly attacking Chairman Mao and socialist China, and slandering the international communist movement.
They have seen IS degenerating day by day.
But why is IS doing this, they ask. Why did it deviate from Marxism-Leninism so rapidly? How can we explain that IS has changed its nature while it still claims to be Marxist-Leninist? What does the League mean when it calls IS revisionist?
This special issue of October aims to answer all of these questions.
The degeneration of IS is further proof that revisionism is the principal danger for the communist movement, not just on the international scale, but in Canada as well.
Revisionism is an ideology that serves the capitalists. It will exist as long as classes and class struggle exist. Of course, once one form of revisionism is unmasked another more subtle and pernicious one springs up.
IS bears this out. The “Communist” Party of Canada is being increasingly rejected by the working class and no longer suffices to turn workers from the revolutionary path. The bourgeoisie, and the two superpowers, needed a new variety of phoney Marxist-Leninists at their service. IS’s opportunism, its lack of firmness on questions of principle, left it wide open to being undermined by bourgeois ideology.
Our struggle against revisionism has just begun. Throughout the life of the communist party soon to be created, we will have to fight this ideology which misleads the working class. Our Canadian communist movement is young and inexperienced, but we have already learned many lessons from our experiences with IS’s degeneration and through the struggles we led against its opportunism.
“Marxism develops in the struggle against that which is anti-Marxist.” This is as true for us as it is for the international communist movement.
In this special issue of October, we will show how IS’s line and practice as regards the major political questions make it an enemy of the working class. We shall see how its radical phraseology and “Marxist” vocabulary hide a total betrayal of the socialist revolution.
We shall examine its positions on: the international situation; the strategy for the revolution in Canada; the Quebec national question; the struggle to create the party; and finally, work in trade unions and other mass organizations.