A cursory reading of the MREQ’s position may give the impression that its ’pre-Party’ is to be merely one Marxist-Leninist organization among many, joining in the already ongoing work of laying the foundations for the Party. But this is not the case. The MREQ, which bases its ’plan’ on being one step behind the movement to begin with, is proposing to create The Marxist-Leninist Organization, a single Pre-Party. The MREQ states that its “three conditions” for the Party cannot be fulfilled by unorganized communists. Any communist would agree to this commonplace, but how does this relate to ’building’ one pre-Party Marxist-Leninist organization? Evidently the MREQ fears that the existing circles, pre-Party groups and organizations will not be able to accomplish the tasks of laying the foundations for the Party. How this single Pre-Party Organization will be able to succeed where its component organizations have failed is a mystery that the MREQ does not even attempt to solve. Instead it attempts to confound the movement with tautology:
Why must we create such an organization?
Because the three tasks defined above as conditions for the creation of the party can only be assumed by communists organized into a Marxist-Leninist organization. Ibid. p.18.
This attempt to confuse reveals only the MREQ’s confusion over the tasks before our movement and its decision to ’resolve’ them through its own factionalism: We, the MREQ, must create the Marxist-Leninist Organization. We, the MREQ, have been nothing but a student opposition in Quebec. But now, having finally discovered Party-building, we will create the movement in our own image. Such is the motive force driving the MREQ towards its ’pre-party’. It aims to carve for Itself and a few cronies a historic role as The Marxist-Leninist Organization. And why ’historic’? Because “Only this type of organization, once it is created, can undertake the building of the Party. Hence, its creation is urgent.” (Ibid. p.19)
Now the difference between this ’pre-Party organization’ and all the others becomes clear. This ’Marxist-Leninist’ organization, this ’historic’ creation of the MREQ, is the Party-in-embryo. At some point in its development, this ’Marxist-Leninist’ organization will be ’dialectically transformed’ into the Party. That is to say, at some point in the future it will simply declare itself the Party. This ’original’ plan the MREQ has graciously notified us of is in fact not at all original, but the brain-child of the MREQ’s mortal enemy, the CPC(ML). As we trace through the reasoning behind the MREQ’s ’pre-Party organization’ we will see exactly how much the MREQ has learned in its ’opposition’ to the CPC(ML) and how it has charted a course in every respect identical to the CPC(ML)’s. In the MREQ’s version, only the names have been changed to protect the insolent.
The MREQ has conveniently ’forgotten’ someone in its scheme of things. The history of the international communist movement has shown that truly Marxist-Leninist Parties are built by the concerted efforts of the principled circles, groups and organizations within the communist movement. The MREQ’s ’plan’, however, presents us with the stark reality that their ’Marxist-Leninist Organization’ will “immediately” take charge of the process from here on in and prepare the conditions for creating the Party. What role does the rest of the communist movement have in this plan? The MREQ cannot be so overtly sectarian as the CPC(ML). To do so would expose the MREQ as the CPC(ML)’s counterpart. The problem before the MREQ is to avoid that exposure. It therefore issues its invitation according to what is within its reach “at a given moment” and makes its appeal to like-minded ’comrades’. The MREQ states that its ’pre-party’
– will be created only through the unity of all those who are ready to become members of the Marxist-Leninist Organization around a political line.
The struggle for the creation of the Marxist-Leninist Organization should not take place in an endless series of debates lasting a year or longer. On the contrary, we should establish the greatest unity possible at a given moment with those who are ready to move forward and create the Marxist-Leninist organization. Ibid. p.23.
This is the crux of the MREQ’s ’plan’ to establish itself as a ’leading centre’ of ’party-building’ in the movement. The “greatest possible unity” amounts to nothing more than the ’unity’ that exists “at a given moment”. Ideological struggle, the struggle to defeat opportunism and establish firm principles within the movement which the MREQ speaks of so much, is seen as “an endless series of debates”. The struggle to prove the correctness of one’s line and win the movement to it, an integral facet of Party-building, is now given a time limit of no more than “a year”. This is the MREQ’s view of the movement: We’ll give them, say, a year of ’debates’, and then “establish the greatest unity possible at a given moment with those who are ready to move forward.” The laggards will just have to fend for themselves.
Not only is the MREQ going to “begin” and “conduct” its own “debate”; on the same arbitrary basis it plans to end it whence cometh the new year. In the dead silence that follows, the MREQ’s ’pre-party’ will emerge. “Those who are ready to move forward” will, of course, do exactly that. Having nominated itself to open and close the ideological struggle within the movement, the MREQ is at liberty to determine its content. Those who oppose this time-table, who happen to think that ideological struggle should be waged to a decisive and principled end, ,who are not willing to settle for “the greatest unity possible at a given moment”, but who instead demand principled and comprehensive unity, obviously do not fit into the MREQ’s category of “ready to move forward”. Thus, the Marxist-Leninists are simply ’left behind’.
The MREQ’s ’plan’ for Party-building is based on the liquidation of the ongoing work of the Marxist-Leninist movement, and is, in fact, a sectarian ultimatum to the movement to ’accept’ its ’pre-party’ line within the year. One way or another we will be confronted with ’The Pre-Party Organization to create the Party’ , even though it will be comprised only of that opportunist section of the movement “ready to move forward” with the MREQ. The liquidation of the movement allows the MREQ space to establish itself as the ’pre-party’ without having to deal with the source of deviations and opportunism in the movement, and thus in itself. Rather than taking up a principled struggle to defeat the dominance of petty bourgeois outlook in the movement, the MREQ expresses and fosters that outlook. It gives the MREQ an excuse to maintain its Economism and general opportunist bent on the plea that “Only this type of organization ...can undertake the building of the Party”. The only way the MREQ can open the door for its exclusive ’Marxist-Leninist’ organization to build the ’party’ is to close the door on the movement and refuse to deal with it. With the communist movement and principled struggle thus out of the way, the MREQ is free to expand its circle into the ’pre-party’. From this basis it can “immediately take up the work of building the party”. That is it can then expand its ’pre-party’ faction into the ’party’.
But the MREQ’s demolition work is not quite finished. It has ’simplified’ the work of ’building’ its pre-party by liquidating the communist movement and the real struggle over political line. It now turns its sights to its ’party’. Thus far we were presented with three criteria for the transformation of its ’pre-party’ into the ’party’. But what the MREQ says in one breath, it takes back in the next. After setting up its criteria, the MREQ tells us that
These three tasks will of course be far from completed when the party is actually created. Communists will have to apply revolutionary theory to revolutionary practice, to strengthen their links with the masses, and to struggle for unity among Marxist-Leninists. These three tasks are thus also three essential tasks of the party. Nonetheless, we must recognize that an initial definition of the nature of the revolution in Quebec and the rest of Canada, and first links with the masses,and – certain degree of unity must be attained before the creation of the party. Ibid. p.17 (our emphasis).
From the “concrete analysis of the concrete conditions”, the MREQ lowers its standard to “an initial definition of the nature of the revolution”. From an organization that “will include for the most part the vanguard detachment of the proletariat capable of leading the struggle of the entire class” (p.18), established through developing “links with the working class” and sinking “roots in the masses”, the MREQ will now settle for “the first links with the masses”. And, from “the largest possible unity among Marxist-Leninists”, the MREQ descends to “a certain degree of unity”, the “greatest possible unity at a given moment”. It is obvious that the MREQ wants to make its ’transformation’ as smooth-going and imperceptible as possible. So imperceptible, in fact, that the borderline between The Marxist-Leninist Organization and its ’party’, or for that matter, between the MREQ and its ’party’, is virtually nonexistent. According to its watered-down criteria, the MREQ could go ahead and form its ’party’ immediately. It will not, of course, given the uncanny similarity this would have to the CPC(ML)’s declaration. But it will strive for the next best thing.
By liquidating the movement in its ’party-building’ plan, and by liquidating its own criteria, so as to efface the difference between its ’pre-party’ and its ’party’, the MREQ has facilitated its smoothly opportunist ’transition’ into The Party. But if the MREQ’s intention, as we have seen, is simply to declare itself The Party, then we too will join in asking: “Why must we create such an organization?”
It is obvious that the MREQ’s intention is to use its ’pre-party’ as a stepping stone to ’party’ declaration. As we have seen, the dividing line between the MREQ’s ’pre-party’ and its ’party’ divides very little, is only formal, and arises primarily because of the CPC{ML)’s ’precipitate’ example. But this is only one aspect of the MREQ’s opportunism. Another is shown through its immediate excuse for forming this ’pre-party’ organization.
If we apply the MREQ’s ’pre-party’ standards to its present existence, we find that by its own definition it is already functioning as its ’Marxist-Leninist Organization’. The MREQ has already ’analyzed’ concrete conditions, and determined what it “believes to be correct” political line on the “nature of the revolution” in Canada and Quebec. It has already defined and is putting into practice a “strategy for linking communists to the masses”, i.e. implantation. Even though the MREQ confuses its terms and refers to implantation as a “tactical” line also, the meaning is clear:
...implantation isn’t just one tactic among others, but the correct tactical line for Marxist-Leninists to develop links with the working class...Ibid. p.39.
As well, in Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization, the MREQ has put forward “the strategy to follow for the creation of” a revolutionary party of the working class”, and is trying to ’build unity’ around its line with those “who are ready to move forward”.
Marxist-Leninist principle would guide those who were in fact aiming to contribute to Party-building to openly and actively extend the ideological struggle to try to win not “those who are ready to move forward” at any given moment, but the principled elements of the entire movement to its positions. Principle would guide such a group to fully participate in the life of the movement, making an “endless series of debates” a high priority, along with taking up the practical tasks, always trying to prove the correctness of its lines and the consistency of its leadership. But the MREQ opts out of this struggle, seeks to put a lid on debate and polemic by pleading the “urgent” necessity of its organization, seeks to move one giant step closer to its ’party’ without being hindered by the constraints of ideological struggle within the movement. On what grounds? The MREQ claims a peculiar predicament:
And indeed, MREQ...has never been and is not now a vanguard organization of the working class. As such, it cannot pretend to be the organization which, in its present form, will indicate the way toward proletarian revolution in Quebec and the rest of Canada. Ibid. p.3.
The MREQ knows very well what it would like to do, but ’unfortunately’ this cannot be done in its present form. If only the MREQ was in some other form, say, for example ’The Pre-Party Organization to Build the Party’, why then it could “indicate the way”. Evidently the MREQ has stumbled onto a new ’law of dialectics’: when we are in one ’form’ we cannot be principled and consistent Marxist-Leninists; but, when we change our ’form’ we undergo a miraculous transformation and become the vanguard of the proletariat. Obviously, a student organization cannot, at least since the Internationalists be a vanguard organization of the proletariat. Something ’new’ is needed. ’The Marxist Leninist Organization’ provides the needed solution. The MREQ “cannot pretend” to be the vanguard organization “in its present form”, but, rest assured, with its change of form the movement is guaranteed yet another ’pretender’ to that title.