With the various strata of the working class suitably re-arranged and the content of the ’Party’ pared down to its own level, the CCL(ML) is now freed for its “main concern”: “...work in the working class, particularly providing leadership in the big factories” (p.75). Having briefly examined the League’s apologetics for itself, the petty bourgeoisie in the communist movement, and its theory of Party-building, it is no surprise to see this same incisive grasp of ’Marxism-Leninism’ extended into its analysis of the trade union movement, the centre of its work in the class. It is to be expected that an organization which goes to such great revisionist lengths to justify a bourgeois labour party under the banner of Marxism-Leninism will also pose the tasks of Marxist-Leninists in the class solely within the bounds of trade unionism. As we will see, this is exactly the League’s intention. Its trade union programme offers a highly instructive view of the CCL from the standpoint of practical activity as well as theory. Here the League undergoes its own “ultimate test of practice”, and while it passes with brilliant colours in the direction of opportunism, in the direction of Marxism-Leninism it remains a miserable flunky.
To properly situate our analysis it must be noted initially that what we are dealing with throughout is merely an updated, ’refined’ version of implantation. As we have seen, implantation was not simply the practice of sending militants into the factory. It was a program based on denial of the advanced workers and the ability of the workers to discern correct theory. From this typically student attitude towards the working class, it blatantly rejected bringing political knowledge of the relations of all social classes into the working class, replaced this communist activity with an Economist appeal to the masses of workers, and hailed the ’communists’ as the “best defenders” of the workers’ “interests” and thus their best ’providers’. That is, an appeal on the basis of palpable results, of developing political knowledge “from within” the economic struggle, the promise of a more vigorous, militant fight than the trade union bureaucrats could ever organize to “add a kopek to the ruble”. In short, implantation was a comprehensive plan to replace communist political work with trade unionist politics, that is, with slavish reformism. It does not take an excess of insight to see this theory reborn in the League’s present cry for “class struggle trade unionism”. Previously, the League groups put forward two sections in their pamphlets: one on trade union work, which amounted to little more than stock repetition of generalities; and another on implantation, which laid out the real content of their trade unionist work. But with the exposure ’implantation’ has received, the League has now taken to re-arranging its arguments. In place of open implantation, the League commences to tell us all about the importance of factory cells. Nevertheless, the League cannot resist the call of its ’creativity’. In summing-up its brief exercise in partial transcription directly from the V Congress of the Comintern, the League instructs us that:
Under current conditions, it is important to send some militants of the organization into the factory in order to promote, by their work of agitation and propaganda, by their direct participation in struggles, the creation of factory cells. Statement of Political Unity p.79
Why all this fuss? Because, as we know, and as the League wants to be sure that we know, those “current conditions” which make sending “some militants” necessary are “the virtual absence of communist workers in Canada” (p.69), by which is meant the ’absence’ of advanced workers. And the League must be sure that we ’understand’ that sending some of its militants into the factories is not merely “important” but “necessary”. Thus, the theory of implantation has been ’replaced’ by the theory of ’sending some militants’, and the ’implants’ themselves replaced by the League’s notion of ’factory cells’. But it should be clear that given the League’s failure to correctly understand and criticize the opportunist theory of ’implantation’, its ’sending some militants to create factory cells’ is nothing more than ’implantation’ snuck into the factories incognito.
Communist work in the trade unions is vital in all three broad periods of revolutionary development: in preparation for and carrying out the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and in the consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship. Trade unions spring from the basic conditions of life of the modern proletariat, from the exploitation of wage labour. They are the most simple, elemental, lowest and most easily understood form of organization of the working class. They are consequently the broadest form of organization of the class, encompassing all workers, regardless of political belief, for carrying on the economic struggle. That struggle is a purely defensive, reformist, spontaneous and, from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, entirely acceptable one, since it operates entirely within and does not question the framework of capitalist relations. The trade unions, as one American socialist put it, are an arm the workers instinctively raise to ward off the blows of capital. It is the instinctive and narrow framework within which the trade unions function, their defensive and immediate focus, that makes trade unionism and trade unionist consciousness bourgeois. This is true of all trade unionism, no matter how passive or militant. So long as the workers’ struggle is confined to such a narrow framework, so long as the struggle for immediate interests is not a by-product of the struggle for political power, the trade union struggle can only perfect the chains that bind labour to capital.
As we have seen, Marxism-Leninism views the class struggle as an integral unity of the economic, political and theoretical forms of struggle. This unity is not brought about by the simple addition of the economic struggle + communism, for this leaves the narrow framework of the economic struggle intact and attempts to combine two qualities of grossly different proportions. In order to fuse the economic struggle into one integral class struggle it is necessary to abolish the narrow framework within which the struggle for immediate interests had grown, and subordinate that struggle to the demands of a comprehensive and consistently waged class struggle for political power. Once such fusion is attained, the economic struggle is no longer trade unionism, but is waged as one facet of the workers’ revolutionary class struggle. To this end, the general principle of relations between the trade unions and the Communist Party must be the closest, most permanent alignment of the unions to the Party. Such association is mandatory if the Party is to exert its influence over the masses of workers and rally them to the struggle for communism. It should be clear that the closer the trade unions draw to the Party, the greater is the organized fusion of the economic struggle with the workers’ class struggle, and the broader and more profound is the direction and leadership given to it.
The fundamental principle guiding all communist trade union work must be to bring about this fusion. The core of this work lies in elevating the consciousness of the masses of workers and extending the area of their activity. To do this, the workers must clearly understand the content and limitations of the spontaneous economic struggle, i.e. trade unionism, must understand why it is necessary “.. ._to combat spontaneity, to divert the working class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie...” (V.I. Lenin What is to be Done? CW Vol. 5 P.384) and must see the struggle for immediate economic interests as a component part of the struggle for the workers’ objective class interests. It should be clear that such understanding, as with all class political consciousness, cannot be developed ’from within’ the economic struggle, cannot be shown simply by the participation of communists in trade union struggles. Our task is not to “lend the economic struggle itself a political character”, for this amounts only to making a fetish of reformism and exaggerates its role. To teach the broad masses of workers the limitations of trade unionism, it is necessary to show how this spontaneous struggle evolved, how it relates to other aspects of the workers’ struggle, how it manifests itself in political life, what use the bourgeoisie makes of it, how it relates to the struggles of other classes and strata, how it figures into the efforts of the system to stabilize itself, and so on. In short, such understanding is an integral consequence of the totality of communist propaganda, political exposures, and organization. To the extent that the workers become class conscious become aware of the relations of all social classes and of the objective interests of the working class, they understand the function of trade unionism and trade union consciousness. But it would be a mistake to think that the work of communists in the trade unions and their efforts to expose the limits of trade unionism is somehow separate from or only ’linked up’ with the other facets of communist work. Such a view invariably leads to making the trade union struggle the sole or the main basis of communist organization and education, and thus leads to Economism. And yet, as we will see, this is precisely the view of our vanguard Economists of the League.
To combat the “trade-unionist striving” of the working class is made even more complex in the imperialist countries, since such striving has, on the one hand, become institutionalized in the openly class collaborationist trade union bureaucracy and labour aristocratic unions, and on the other hand, also broken out in the form of militant rank and file movements to reform the unions. The overtly corrupt trade union bureaucracy is the natural outcome of trade unionism in general, of the spontaneous striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie. What drove the trade unions under the bourgeoisie’s rather comfortable wing was the desire to win better terms for the sale of labour-power, to negotiate the recognition of the unions’ rightful place in bourgeois society, to lobby for labour legislation, and so on. Of course, such a close relationship involves some ’give and take’ on both parts. The bourgeoisie agrees to deal with the labour bureaucracy, encourages it to line its pockets at the workers’ expense, occasionally negotiates a ’favourable’ contract, trades off benefits for wage increases, allows the bureaucracy to dominate the rank and file, and so on. The labour bureaucrats, on the other hand, agree to ask as little as possible, consent to forced overtime and speed-up, limit their organizing campaigns, make occasional ’sacrifices’ in contracts when times are hard, promise to keep the rank and file under control, abide by the contracts, and so on. Such are the natural and inevitable ’fruits’ of trade-unionist striving. And it is every bit as natural and just as trade unionist when, feeling the pinch of the sacrifices, speed-ups, overtime, and loss of benefits, rank and file elements in the trade unions begin to revolt against the trade union leadership and demand a greater voice in the unions’ affairs. But this militant reformism is as far from breaking with the bourgeoisie as an isolated economic strike is from ’the revolution’. The militant rank and file movements are aimed, not at breaking from under the wing of the bourgeoisie but at striking a better deal, compromising on better terms, and undoing some of the generous excesses of the trade union leaders. No matter how militant, no matter how extensive the rank and file participation, no matter how democratic or equalized, and no matter how greatly opposed by the bourgeoisie and its social props, the fact remains that the militant rank and file reform movements are nothing more than “trade unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie” but on better terms and are meant only to ’uplift’ the conditions of the masses of workers within the framework of wage-slavery.
While it is of course preferable that the trade unions be under rank and file control rather than under a bureaucratic clique, that the workers themselves decide issues of wages, benefits, strikes, and compromises rather than having these things decided over their heads, and that the workers be able to appoint their own officials rather than being subject to appointments from the top, it should not be forgotten that such reforms are as much the sum and substance of trade unionist, workers’ bourgeois consciousness as is open collaboration. It should not be forgotten, and yet this is precisely what our Economists, including the League, ’forget’ at every turn. Where it is the task of communists to show that even the most militant trade unionism cannot lift the chains of wage-slavery, our Economists think that if only the rust and crud are removed these chains will somehow be easier to bear. Such is the opportunist task the League has taken up in its Forge.
It is the task of communists, and not of opportunists who are so overwhelmed by simple militancy that they lose all perspective, to show that even the most militant, ’revolutionary’ trade unionism still operates within entirely acceptable (to the bourgeoisie) limits of wage-slavery. It is our task to show that the root of the problem is not corrupt leadership, not anti-democratic manipulations, not behind the scenes compromises, not the lack of palpable results, not the integration of the unions into the state apparatus, not the lack of mobilization for resistance, and not even the restriction of the right to strike or any other curtailment of the ’rights’ of labour under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but the wages system itself. We struggle for democratic reforms, not because we believe such reforms to be ’class struggle’, but solely to educate the masses of workers to see that their problem is the entire system and not some particular injustice within it. Reforms are a by-product of our real work. To confuse the struggle for reforms with the struggle for socialism, or to put both on an equal plane, is the common error of all opportunists and petty bourgeois ’communists’. And it is precisely this error that the League indulges in when it turns its attention to the trade union movement.
The League begins its analysis of the trade union movement and the tasks of communists therein with a brief history lesson. Paraphrasing Lenin from various sources, the League starts off nicely, pointing up the unions as representing “the first traces of class organization”, repeating the now well-worn phrases on the fact that trade union consciousness is not communist consciousness, and of course stating the necessity for the Party to conduct the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. Such stock and trade principles are mandatory if the League is to get a hearing before the movement. But once it has repeated the usual generalities on work in the trade unions, the League is quick to get on with its by now very familiar ’modifications’. Rather than follow Lenin’s clear and unquestionable analysis that on its own the working class can develop only trade union consciousness, a consciousness still subordinated to bourgeois ideology the League embarks on its own point of view:
As the workers’ movement developed and gained political and social influence, two opposing trends appeared within the trade unions. The bourgeois trend, manifested by opportunism, reformism and revisionism, seeks to make the unions a tool of class collaboration, to integrate them into the capitalist state apparatus; and the proletarian trend, which aspires for class struggle unions –unions which far from limiting themselves to economic demands, prepare, educate and mobilize the working class in the struggle against capitalist exploitation – unions which support the communist party and struggle for socialism. Statement of Political Agreement p.80
Obviously the CCL’s consolidation has borne fruit. Where formerly it described communists as, one the one hand, the “best defenders of the workers’ immediate interests” and on the other hand, fighting for “proletarian politics” (TMLO p.45), the League has now outgrown such grossly Economist formulations. Now all the “direct participation in struggles” (Statement p.79) and agit/prop has become the “proletarian trend”, a unified aspiration and fight for that very ’original’ conception: “Class Struggle Trade Unionism”. But what is this “proletarian trend” and “class struggle trade unionism” that the League describes with such authority? There were, after all, communists active in the trade unions even in Marx and Engels’ time, and surely it had become something of a commonplace by Lenin’s. There has been openly class collaborationist and militant reformist currents in the trade unions since the very beginning. And yet, what are we to make of the fact that there is not a single word in Marx, Engels, or Lenin about the existence of “two trends” in the trade unions, let alone such a thing as “class struggle trade unionism”, and yet our League has so much to say about them? What are we to make of the fact that contrary to Lenin’s very clear distinction between trade unionism and communism, the League has introduced an entirely new species of trade unionism that is somewhere inbetween? Has the League, perhaps, stumbled onto some “third ideology”?
Formerly we had thought, accepting Lenin’s uncommonly good sense, that there was a definite relation between communism and the workers’ movement. On the one hand, the spontaneous workers’ movement develops independently of communism, and on its own can only develop a narrow economic struggle against the capitalists that does not at all challenge the system itself. This trade unionist struggle may even take a political form, may attempt to influence the bourgeois state and thus win concessions for labour. But even this trade unionist politics, however militantly waged, is working class bourgeois politics, is the “ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie” as Lenin puts it. We had thought, following Lenin, that that was all there was to trade unionism. On the other hand, the communist movement develops independently of the workers’ movement, is petty bourgeois and bourgeois in its class basis, and on its own exists only as an ideological trend until it has achieved fusion with the working class. It had been our impression, following Lenin, that it was the task of the communist movement to effect that fusion, to bring political knowledge to the workers’ movement, to combat the spontaneous trade unionist strivings of the workers, make their struggle conscious and comprehensive, fuse the workers’ economic struggle with the political struggle for state power, and thus organize the workers’ movement into a conscious and consistent revolutionary movement for communism. Clear, it would seem. If one learns from Lenin, it would also seem grossly incorrect to talk about “trends” appearing in the trade union movement without also talking about the sources of such trends. Trends, after all, are political phenomena; they have definite origins in definite social classes. It is clear from Lenin’s analysis that trade unionist politics does not simply “appear” in the workers’ movement, but represents the influence (the ideological enslavement) of the bourgeoisie over the working class. The workers strive to improve their immediate conditions, but having been reared in a capitalist system and lacking any class conscious understanding of it, do not on their own strive to overthrow that system. And yet the workers’ objective interests lie precisely in overthrowing capitalism. Trade unionist striving is bourgeois precisely because it does not put the system itself in question, but accepts its existence as the natural and eternal order of things. If by “bourgeois trend” is meant trade unionist politics, it did not “appear” at some point within trade unionism: it is the sum and substance of trade unionism. The entire spectrum of trade unionist striving, from the most militant to the most passive, is precisely the “bourgeois trend”, is precisely the range of “the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie”. If, on the other hand, by “proletarian trend” is meant the political trend which represents the workers’ objective interests, then this “trend” should be properly named as Communist. Communism in fact “appears” in the trade union movement, but not as an indigenous or spontaneously evolved “trend”, not as something which “appears” unbeknownst with a “bourgeois trend”. Communist politics is deliberately introduced from without, by the action of conscious communists. To fail to state the sources of the various politics at work in the trade union movement, how they were introduced and by whom, and how they relate to trade unionism in general, to fail to state this is tantamount to advocating the notion that these “two trends”, bourgeois and proletarian, are the spontaneous outcome of the workers’ trade unionism, and that there are in fact two forms, not one, of trade unionism. But this is the betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, its complete rejection! It amounts only to “lending the economic struggle itself a political character”, to inventing a trade unionist politics that is somehow not bourgeois, but is even ’revolutionary’. From here it is only a small step to equate militant trade union reformism with “class struggle”, and with that to thus liquidate the class struggle altogether. While the reader may by now have come to expect as much from the League, few will expect how pervasive this opportunist formulation has been.
Anyone at all familiar with the recent literature of the international communist movement will know that the CCL, without stating its references, is paraphrasing its conception of “trends” from Two Opposing Lines in the World Trade Union Movement by Filip Kota of the PLA. Kota, in turn, draws upon, without stating his references, the conception of “trends” from the former leader of the former Profintern, A. Lozovsky. Lozovsky’s book, The World’s Trade Union Movement, developed the notion of “trends” in the trade union movement as early as 1924. The reader may ask, given that the League is merely drawing on a rich heritage of “trends” from a theoretician of the PLA and one of the prominent figures in the Comintern, perhaps there is something to this business of “class struggle trade unionism” after all. With such authority on its side, surely the League knows whereof it speaks. But what, then, are we to make of the authority of Lenin? Could it be that all these gentlemen + Lenin are speaking of the same thing?
However much the League would like us to share this fantasy, we are not, after all, children to be spoon-fed on the ’gospel truth’ or sermonized on the virtues of ’faith’. We do not share the comfortable myth that the world communist movement maintained its innocence and purity until the spring of 1956, that only after Khrushchev had tempted it did the majority of Parties ’fall’ into revisionism, that the CPC and PLA immediately rose to its defense, and that their every word henceforth has been a beacon and standard of Marxism-Leninism. Not at all. We do not believe in fairytales. We see by the facts that opportunism has been rife in the world movement from the beginning, that this has been reflected in the history of the Comintern as well as in the various Parties, and that this preponderance of opportunism, particularly since the middle 1930’s, has ’rubbed off’ on even the most principled efforts to date. Thus, we are not so concerned with anyone’s rank or affiliation as with the content of their line.
The fundamental error of both Lozovsky’s and Kota’s works is that in speaking of trends within the trade union movement they do not base their analyses on the elementary principle of Marxism-Leninism that reformism, trade unionism, and its political expression in trade unionist politics, is the natural and inevitable content of the spontaneous working class movement. Trade unionism is completely indigenous to the working class; it is ’brought in from without’, historically, not by Labour Party bureaucrats, but by the totality of conditions in capitalist society. It is not situated within any particular strata of the working class, is not introduced by the petty bourgeois new arrivals or labour aristocrats, but is the common, spontaneous striving characteristic of the entire working class. By failing to emphasize this, both Kota and Lozovsky tend to put trade unionist politics on a par with political trends, such as anarcho-syndicalism and revisionism, which are deliberately introduced from without, and thus make it appear that the ’trends in the trade union movement’ are all the spontaneous development of that movement. Both authors unwittingly foster a conception of different levels of spontaneous trade union consciousness, i.e. “trends”, as if these various trends were the indigenous products of the working class itself. Such a view completely confuses the relation between the form of consciousness the workers spontaneously evolve on their own, and the forms which are brought in by the petty bourgeois new arrivals and opportunist ’socialists’. This confusion in turn allows for a conception of a spontaneously evolved, and yet ’non-bourgeois’ form of trade unionist consciousness, i.e. it allows for Economism.
The two authors exhibit this tendency somewhat differently as would be expected given the different objective conditions at the time of writing. Lozovsky’s work greatly reflects the still recent split in the socialist movement and the trade unions, and the revolutionary upsurge of the period. He has so thoroughly broken with the Social-Democratic traditions of the Second International that his analysis of the trade union movement does not even bother with the contributions of Marx and Engels on this question. So it is made to appear that there were no truly communist influences amongst the trade unions until 1917. The pre-1917 trade union movement is, by Lozovsky’s analysis, divided between “those having a class conscious point of view” and those not. By “class conscious point of view”, he states unions which “...in their programs, resolutions, etc. pointed out the class struggle and...theoretically at least, were opposed to class collaboration...” (WTUM p.10). This is certainly an ’interesting’ characterization of trade union consciousness, but what, may we ask, has the recognition of class struggle, something which even bourgeois historians appreciate, to do with “a class conscious point of view”? Is class consciousness, after all, simply equal to liberalism? Lozovsky does not even stop to consider the categories he has pulled into play, but pushes on with what he calls the “class trade union movement”, which he divides into three “clear political divisions”: 1) trade unionism, which by his reckoning “...does not have in its programme, in theory or practice, the overthrow of capital...” (p.11); 2) anarcho-syndicalism, which calls for the overthrow of the system but rejects political struggle and every form of state including the dictatorship of the proletariat; and 3) the “social-democratic trade union movement” which “had socialist ideas” but did not put them into everyday practice. Lozovsky’s “fourth factor” is the appearance, in 1917, of the Communist trade unions. While it is well and good to distinguish between the various political tendencies at work in the proletariat, it is completely incorrect to make these distinctions as Lozovsky has done here. It is incorrect, in the first place, to equate “a class conscious point of view” with ’pointing out the class struggle’, since this reduces class consciousness to simple reformism. It is incorrect, in the second place, to group together the trade unionist, anarchist, and ’socialist’ opportunist influences under the heading of “class trade unions” and thus demarcate these against the religious and state influences, since the objective function of all are exactly the same. There is nothing at all “class” about Lozovsky’s “class trade unions” except that they are variations of bourgeois influence within the working class. It is incorrect, thirdly, to put trade unionism or trade unionist politics on the same plane as anarcho-syndicalism or social-democracy, since the origins and means by which such trends occur within the working class are radically different. And lastly, it is grossly incorrect to discuss the trade union movement in general and the various political trends within it without centering on the nature of trade unionism as the natural content of the workers’ spontaneous striving and how the failure to understand this leads to Economism. The history of the Profintern and the role of the CP’s in the trade union movement during the 1920’s and 1930’s shows graphically the harmful consequences of such confusion.
Kota’s work shows even greater inconsistencies. His analysis assumes, not that trade unionist striving is from the start bourgeois in content due to its narrowness and acceptance of wage-slavery, but that it is somehow ’proletarian’ until a reformist content is directly introduced into it. Kota speaks of the “appearance” of the “reformist line” only “from the time the trade union movement came into being as the centre of resistance against the bourgeoisie...” (TOLWTUM p.83) which he dates elsewhere as being “the last quarter of the 19th Century...” (p.22). If, as Kota states, the reformist line “appeared” only in the late 1800’s, then clearly some other ’line’ must have been at work previously. The conclusion from this can only be that if the trade union movement was subjected to a “reformist line” only during the late 1800’s, all trade unionism prior to that time must have been instinctively revolutionary, or at least ’non-reformist’ , or Lord knows what. A ’non-reformist’ trade unionism! This is a truly unique ’contribution’ to Marxism-Leninism. Kota’s error is further elaborated in his conception that the trade unions undergo “qualitative transformations” not solely on the basis of communist influence within them but “...with the growth of the proletariat and its class awareness, and its education with socialist ideas...” (p.9 our emphasis), or “...with the development of capitalism and the uplift of the class consciousness of the proletariat, and particularly with the propagation of socialist ideas...” (p.167 our emphasis). We would agree completely if it had been said that it is precisely communist propaganda and organization alone that is able to ’qualitatively transform’, to divert the working class from trade unionist striving. But Kota’s formulation makes communist activity only an “and”, “and particularly” influence contributing to “qualitative transformations”. It should go without saying that the only “qualitative transformation” the trade unions can undergo is their participation in conscious class struggle, their close alignment with the Party, their becoming ’schools of communism’. And it should also go without saying that such a transformation, such a diversion from the normal, trade unionist striving that the unions fulfill, can only be brought about by conscious effort, by the work of communists. The “growth of the proletariat and its class awareness” are factors which lead, not to “qualitative transformations”, but to trade unionism, to reformism, to more of the same. The “development of capitalism”, if by that is meant the development of productive forces, does not at all lead to “qualitative transformations” of the role of trade unions. To state so, one would have to include in “development of capitalism”, the development of communism, the development of communists, the propagating by communists of ’socialist ideas’ and so on, in short, one would have to abstract to the point of absurdity. Too, it is incorrect to talk about the “uplift of the class consciousness of the proletariat” as if it were a spontaneous phenomenon, a result of the growth of ’productive forces’, unless by “class consciousness” one means only trade unionist consciousness. And if this is what is meant, then the development of trade unionist consciousness in no way contributes to the “qualitative transformation” of the trade unions. If, on the other hand, by “class consciousness” we mean real class consciousness, then it is clear that such consciousness is no spontaneous or objective phenomenon, but is the love and labour of conscious communists. The “uplift of the class consciousness of the proletariat” is not a factor alongside the “propagation of socialist ideas”; it is its consequence. It is only the latter that brings about the “qualitative transformation” of the function of the trade unions.
Kota further states, when speaking of the role of communists, that only the Party can give the “...working class political awareness and the force of organization to prevent it from slipping into reformism, economism, and spontaneity...”(p.163 our emphasis) and that “...Experience shows that the trade union movement can escape being infected with reformism and revisionism only when it is guided by the Marxist-Leninist party of the working class.” (p.169 our emphasis). Kota also states that the working class does not “become aware of its mission all by itself”, but that such awareness is the function of the Marxist-Leninist Party. Then what can we possibly make of the relationship Kota has drawn between the trade unions and the Party? One thing or another. Either, as Lenin states, the working class movement is already in the grip of “reformism, economism, and spontaneity”, in which case it is the Party’s duty, not to keep the working class from “slipping into” what it has been in all along, but to combat spontaneity, combat trade unionist striving, and bring the working class the light of political knowledge. Or, as Kota states, the working class exists, as the Party finds it, somehow in a ’non-reformist’, ’non-spontaneous’ state, in which case it is simply a matter of ’preventing’ the workers from “slipping into” reformism and spontaneity. But, if the latter is the case, it should be clear that the workers’ consciousness, being ’non-reformist’ and ’non-spontaneous’, must to some degree already be political consciousness, even before any communist lays hold of it. And if that is the case, then the content of the Party’s work in relation to trade unionism is not nearly so difficult nor complex as Lenin would have us believe. The masses of workers, from Kota’s line of reasoning, have ’non-reformist’ consciousness, have been brought by “the development of capitalism” et. al. to the very verge of communist class consciousness. All that is needed, from such a point of view, is to “prevent it from slipping into” reformism. Such a view is a gross distortion of Marxism-Leninism, and while we are sure Mr. Kota set out with the best of intentions, it is obvious he could not prevent himself from “slipping into reformism, economism, and spontaneity”. Admittedly, the workers do, on their own, develop a degree of political consciousness. But this ’political consciousness’ is precisely trade unionist politics. It is not ’above’ reformism or ’non-reformist’ or on any higher plane where it would be subject to “slipping into” reformism. Trade unionist politics is the very highest limit which the working class as a whole can attain on its own, and trade unionist political consciousness is reformism, is working class bourgeois political consciousness. To portray it otherwise, as Kota does, is to issue a permit to all and sundry entitling them to substitute trade unionist politics in the working class for Marxism-Leninism, to substitute in place of the task of raising the workers to communist class consciousness, the task of merely ’preventing’ the workers “from slipping into” reformism. And that is precisely the license that the CCL(ML) desperately needs. Given that Kota also discusses “new Marxist-Leninist parties” as if they were an accomplished fact and a “great success” for the working class, and given that he lists, evidently as valid references, such noted social-chauvinist ’parties’ as the CP(ML)France and the CP(ML)Australia, it should be clear that even spokesmen of the PLA are not immune to “being infected with reformism and revisionism”.
The inevitable danger of even the slightest confusion on the relation between spontaneity and consciousness is that trade unionism, trade unionist politics, will be raised to a higher level of political consciousness than it actually possesses. Such an ’alteration’ of the level of the spontaneous movement has been proven historically to mean the lowering of communism to the level of trade unionist politics, the interchange of militant trade unionism and communism, and thus Economism. Neither Lozovsky nor Kota overtly draw this conclusion, and so their works do not represent a trend of, but only a deviation towards, Economism. But such deviations and confusion of categories are the building blocks from which full-fledged Economist trends, such as the League, are ’forged’. On the basis of the ’prestige’ of such a confused work as Kota’s, the League can proceed to talk in a knowing way about “two trends”, the “proletarian trend”, and then to the heart of the matter, “class struggle trade unionism”. The League,, of course, has ample confusion and ’imagination’ of its own, and its inventions in no way depend upon what Kota or anyone else says. Still, it helps to have friends on one’s side.
Within two pages of its profession de foi, the League leaves us several ’clues’ as to what this “proletarian trend” is actually about. According to common sense, the only possible meaning that “proletarian trend” in the trade unions could have would be the influence of communists within the trade unions. But the League long ago broke with common sense. By “proletarian trend” it means the militant, ’non-collaborationist’ trade union upsurges that now and again occur within the established unions, or during militant union organizing drives. Thus it lumps on the one side the overt reactionaries, bureaucrats, misleaders and class-collaborationists; and on the other side the militant, progressive, rank and file based, ’non-collaborationists’. As we would expect, the CCL views the tasks of communists to build up, reinforce, and spur on this mighty militant movement, and that is precisely what the League undertakes in The Forge. It has, in addition, as a ’standard of excellence’, the ’revolutionary’ heritage of militant unionism conducted by the CP during the 1920’s and 1930’s. This is a very pretty picture, is it not? It is precisely the sort of thing we would expect the League to be attracted to. The League makes militant over the fact that the union bureaucrats seek “...to make the unions a tool of class collaboration...” (Statement p.80). Whereas, we are to suppose, the “proletarian trend” seeks the opposite. The League ’fails’ to see that all trade unionism is essentially reactionary, is essentially class collaborationist, and essentially contrary to the workers’ objective interests. The collaborationist nature of the trade unions has nothing at all to do with the existence of labour hacks or the domination of a bureaucracy over the masses of workers. Even the most democratic union is forced by circumstance to compromise and collaborate with the bourgeoisie, to settle on a particular wage or working time. The sole difference between the reactionaries and militants within the trade union movement is that the former are willing to settle for less, while the latter demand more. The labour bureaucrats accept the bonds between labour and capital, and by working hand in hand with the bourgeoisie attempt to improve only their own position over the masses of workers. The militant trade unionists also accept the bonds between labour and capital, but by taking a more militant posture towards the bourgeoisie, seek to improve the position of the masses of workers. It is not the task of communists to tail after this militancy or egg it on through childish and stupid catch-phrases about “class struggle trade unionism”. It is the duty of communists to show that this, too, is still only trade unionist striving to strike a better deal with the bourgeoisie; that this, too, is a form of ideological enslavement of labour by capital; that this, too, is not class struggle, but reformism, and can in no way resolve the workers’ fundamental Interests. Militant trade unionism, no matter how much one may embellish it, is not at all a “proletarian trend”. It represents the workers’ interests only within the framework of trade unionism, only within the framework of winning, better terms for the sale of labour-power. But it takes as its starting point the acceptance of the legitimacy of that sale, and this is precisely what constitutes the “ideological enslavement” of the working class. Only when a section of the working class understands the necessity to wage a consistent struggle for political power, for the overthrow of the entire system and the establishment of socialism, only then is it possible to speak of a ’proletarian trend’ at work in the trade union movement, not as some variation of trade unionism, but as a force which attempts to divert the working class away from the narrow confines of trade unionism. Such a ’proletarian trend’ would not be a spontaneous development of the workers’ movement, but would be the Party.
The League does have some difficulty explaining how there can be “two trends”, two forms of trade unionism, given that the bureaucrats often resort to ’militancy’, and the militants to bureaucracy, but this does not stop it from ’pushing on’ the science of Marxism-Leninism. The League states that the “bourgeois trend” is
...represented in the unions by the union bureaucracy – the full-time officials, the functionaries in the union apparatus, press, teaching institutions, and in the different services attached to the centrals... This stratum comes from the labour aristocracy (e.g. Louis Laberge... Joe Morris...) as well as the petty bourgeoisie (e.g. Marcel Pepin...). Statement of Political Agreement p.80
The “bourgeois trend” is thus the sole property of the “big union fat cats”, while opposed to these forces of evil we find, in the “proletarian trend”, the “honest union militants” and “workers who aspire for fighting unions”. The role of the League’s ’party’ is, of course, to be the “best defenders of the proletarian trend” and help the workers to oust the “reactionary bureaucrats”. But as to how ousting the union bureaucrats and putting in their stead “honest union militants” will advance the workers’ struggle for political power remains a mystery. How it will be possible for the masses of workers to understand that even the most militant trade unionism is still not enough, is still bourgeois politics of the working class, remains unknown, since the League’s ’party’ itself has sworn to be the “best defender” of “class struggle” reformism. How it will be possible to train the masses of workers in an undying hatred of wretched opportunism and slavish reformism under a ’militant’ guise remains a problem, unless we use the League’s shameless opportunism as our object lesson. It should go without saying that communists struggle to expose and oust the labour aristocrats. But communists are not at all satisfied to oust dishonest trade unionists and replace them with honest trade unionists. What we want at the head of the trade unions are not “honest union militants” but dedicated communist workers. We do not want ’democratic’ wage-slavery, or ’honest militant’ wage-slavery, or even the workers to ’aspire for fighting unions’ to get a better deal under wage-slavery. We want, first and foremost, an end to wage-slavery, and this cannot be accomplished by pushing on the militant trade unionist struggle.
The League is careful to caution us that certain representatives of the “bourgeois trend” may, in the event of militant efforts by the rank and file, “...take on a combative disguise and lead strikes only to better control them...”(p.81), that is, they may appear at some point as the “proletarian trend” in order to fool the workers. But who is attempting to fool the workers if not the League itself? It is precisely because it is so easy for the union bureaucrats to strike a militant pose, or for union reformers to eventually strike a bureaucratic pose, that the masses of workers can see, much better than the League, that between the “bourgeois trend” and the “proletarian trend” there is only a shade of difference; and while it is preferable to have union democracy than not, one must not mistake this for ’the revolution’. It should be clear that not only labour fat cats can temporarily hide behind a front of militant trade unionism; as the League has discovered, there is ample room for opportunists.
“Class struggle trade unionism”, which the League punctuates with such ’revolutionary’ calls-to-arms as “fight-back”, “strike-back”, “scrap the wage freeze”, “control our unions”, “resistance to the Trudeau law”, defend “fundamental rights such as the right to strike”, and so on, and which the League itself is the “best defender” of, amounts to nothing more than an opportunist tailing behind the sort of militant trade unionist issues the workers have always been very capable of handling themselves. But our ’militants’ from the League, fresh from the isolation and complacency of university life, are so impressed by the ’combativeness’ of even average workers, they mistake this for the class struggle. But they are, in addition to their childish impressionability re the trade union struggle, impressed by their own claims to be ’communists’, and so must make some effort to “link up” Economism with ’socialism’. This they accomplish by simply tacking on a few general phrases, as if union democracy + a dime an hour were the summa summarum of the communist workers’ movement. But whereas every liberal labour bureaucrat who is willing to affix a few general phrases of ’socialism’ to his reformist utterings knows very well that this has nothing to do with communism, our League is still in the dark.
The League formulates the tasks of Marxist-Leninists firstly as: 1) “struggle against reformism and bourgeois ideology in the trade union movement” (p.82); and 2) “defend and reinforce the workers’ and trade union movement against the attacks of the bourgeoisie and its state” (p.83). These two broad tasks are then broken down into six. Under its “struggle against bourgeois ideology”, which at this point in the movement’s development must be the primary concentration, we find that first of all the League will be “developing communist agitation and propaganda” (p.82), that is, it will “put forward and defend” its program. Certainly what one would expect from a self-proclaimed ’vanguard’ organization. The difficulty, however, lies in the content of the League’s programme and agit-prop. However much the League may wish to struggle ’against’ bourgeois ideology, its Economism and social-chauvinism will prove to be poor weapons.
As to the five remaining ’tasks’ which the League proposes for ’communist’ work, each of them is already being carried on by non-communist and even anti-communist union militants. Task number 2 calls for the formation of a “large united front of workers in order to isolate the reactionaries” (p.82). The League has no shame in elaborating this opportunist formulation. Not only does it fail to expose the limitations of trade unionism in general, not only does it draw an inflated distinction between the labour bureaucrats and the militant reformists, but the League is actually stupid enough to say that:
This is why communists must try to unite with the small number of the most advanced elements, and win over the intermediate elements in order to rally the backward elements. Ibid. p.83.
Quite bold! Formerly we had thought that fusion with the advanced workers, winning the middle strata and rallying the backward had something to do with Communism. Formerly we had thought that this activity had as its purpose the winning of political power. But not at all. As the League has it, all this uniting, winning, and rallying is meant to deliver, not political power, but ’clean’ trade unionism! What a pleasant world that will be. Imagine: millions of workers will be punching in daily, secure in the knowledge that when the union contract expires, they themselves will be able to negotiate the dime an hour. Socialistic, is it not? But however overwhelming the League’s stupidity may be, it is a stupidity with a purpose. They cannot stomach real communist activity, but on the other hand, some attempt must be made to reconcile their student s mentality with their ’communist’ pretensions. The net result is demonstrated above. We could ask for no greater contribution to “isolating, the reactionaries” than the CCL s own unintended self-exposure.
For the rest of its ’tasks’, the League makes no pretense of ’linking’ anything to the struggle for communism. Rather, it concentrates its energies on strengthening the trade unions. Thus it proclaims the struggle against union-busting drives, against raiding, for defending the democratic rights of immigrant and women workers, and for the unionization of the non-unionized. Such is the essential content of the CCL’s “proletarian trend” in the trade unions. It is as if Lenin had never warned against making the economic struggle the sole or main basis of communist activity, for the League tells us quite the opposite:
“...it is only through this struggle...” that is, the struggle to ’defend the proletarian trend’ and achieve palpable results in the trade union struggle “...that communists will penetrate the proletariat, gain influence rally the vanguard...” the vanguard is won, mind you, through palpable results “...and thus establish the necessary conditions, initially for the creation of the party, and then for building it into the Party of the proletarian masses.” (Ibid. p.85) Thus the League’s ’party’ is built on a solid foundation of...trade unionism.
This is the basic framework within which the CCL(ML) has been conducting its agitation and propaganda in the pages of The Forge. The only peculiar feature of the development of the League’s Economism in its organ is that its line undergoes an occasional ’modification’ to suit the demands of ’the struggle’. The most apparent shift occurred about six months after the League’s formation, in response to criticism of the League’s bowing to spontaneity.
A. PHASE ONE: AGAINST THE REACTIONARIES
In proving itself the “best defender” of the “proletarian line” of militant trade unionism, the League waged a seven-issue ’total war’ against the top trade union bureaucrats in the pages of The Forge. But given the League’s poor arsenal, this ’exposure’ of the labour bureaucracy was ’extremely’ one-sided; so one-sided, in fact, that it missed the mark altogether. Just as the League had distorted the class content and aims of the 1960’s movement in order to portray itself in a ’revolutionary’ light, so in its handling of the top trade union misleaders it has taken to distorting the content and aims of trade unionism in general in order to evolve its “proletarian trend”. It attacks the labour bureaucrats for, of all things, failing to raise the question of socialism and political power before the workers. Never mind that such questions are the domain of communists, not trade unionists. Never mind that it is the very nature of trade unionism, even the most militant, to always fall short of the question of state power. This will not suit the League’s ’moral’ assault against the bureaucrats. Once it has criticised and ’exposed’ the bureaucrats for failing to do something they were never meant to do, the League can then pose its own form of ’socialist’ trade unionism, that is, a dime an hour + a few general catch-phrases on the future good life.
In its second issue, the League sets the tone which remains unchanged for four months. We are informed that, wonder of wonders, Joe Morris “...thinks like a capitalist...”, that is, “Even the thought that the working class will one day rise up and overthrow the bourgeoisie makes him tremble in his boots.” (The Forge #2 p.1)Further to this, we learn that the theory put forward in the Quebec centrals’ program against inflation “...tells us nothing about how to get rid of the root cause of inflation and economic crisis – wage slavery and capitalist exploitation, which the centrals did not even see fit to mention.” (The Forge #2 p.1)
All such unavoidable incidents, open collaboration by the likes of Morris and Laberge, leads the League to the outstandingly ’perceptive’ conclusion that “...while the bourgeoisie is launching a big attack on the working class and is ready to use any means, our union bosses are revealing their true nature.” Once this ’great discovery’ is made, the League shows no mercy is branding these bureaucrats:
By trying to keep millions of Canadian workers in a state of disorganization by putting forward purely reformist demands they are betraying our interests. These big union fat cats act as a brake on the class against class resistance to the attacks of the bourgeoisie. They play the bosses game; they put themselves on the same side as the bosses – the enemy’s side. We can have absolutely no confidence in these traitors to our cause. The Forge #2 p.1 (emphasis added)
Imagine. Our ’Marxist-Leninists’ of the League launch an open attack against the labour bureaucrats for putting foward “purely reformist demands”, for failing to mention “the root cause”, and so on, in short, for failing to be...Marxist-Leninists! But since when has any worker thought that the role of the labour bureaucrats was to lead the overthrow of the capitalist system? Since when has any worker needed to be shown that the labour bureaucrats are nothing more than well-paid misleaders? These “fatcats”, after all, are not just now “revealing their true nature”; they have been revealing that nature for some 80 years, through two world wars, and innumerable strikes and contracts. All this is well-known to the masses of workers, if not to our ’messes’ in the League. Of course, ’comrade’ Morris or ’comrade’ Laberge will tremble at, not “even” the thought, but especially the thought of the dictatorship of the proletariat, since it would immediately put an end to their aristocratic existence. And of course, the CLC, QFL and their like do “not even see fit” to mention “root causes”, but then the League should not find that so shocking. Even Social-Democratic unions, which have so much to say about “root causes”, the “class struggle”, and “socialism”, – something which the League would, no doubt, find inspiring – do not thereby advance the real class struggle one whit. Why, then, does the League get so carried away? If we cannot expect even the most militant, honest trade unionists to have a fully clear class conscious outlook on the tasks before the working class, surely the League is making much ado about nothing to expect such knowledge from the outright reactionary labour bureaucrats. Surely no one, except those who have specific ’designs’, could make such a cry and huff over the fact that the labour bureaucrats are doing just what they have always done. It is precisely the role of the bureaucrats to “see fit” to tie the workers to the trade union struggle alone. It is precisely the role of such bureaucrats to preach class peace and the steady ’improvement’ of the workers’ conditions. It is precisely the function of such bureaucrats to attempt to rally the masses of workers behind themselves, though they have been so badly exposed by their own doings that they are rarely successful in rallying anyone except the most backward strata. To call such historically proven agents of the bourgeoisie “traitors to our cause”, a conception that assumes them having at one time fought for the workers’ cause, is to ignore the entire historical development of imperialism that generated the labour aristocracy as a special strata. This history proves conclusively that such open reactionaries as Morris and Laberge have never stood close enough to the workers’ cause to betray it. One cannot, after all, betray something one has never upheld. But the League is driven to make it appear that the labour bureaucrats are in fact “traitors”, since by so doing the League is then able to contrast ’traitorous’ trade unionism to ’patriotic’, or “class struggle” trade unionism, and advance against the “traitors” its own unique, Economist, Social-Democratic conception of ’principled’ working class leadership. This ’leadership’, which the League itself assumes, is nothing more than a militantly waged trade unionist struggle for ’palpable results’, which the League, in its boundlessly opportunist imagination, is bold enough to call “class struggle”.
As the upsurge of militant rank and file movements clearly shows, the working class is entirely capable, by its own efforts, of not only exposing but ousting top trade union bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats may be replaced by militant trade unionists, but this in itself does not at all mark any transformation of the trade union movement. The militant trade unionists may fight to the end for the workers’ immediate interests, may rely upon and rally the rank and file to long and bitter strike battles, may be entirely above-board in their negotiations, may repeatedly break the barrier of bourgeois legality, and so on. But however impressive this may be to our petty bourgeois new arrivals, the fact remains that such militant struggle still operates entirely within the bounds of capitalist relations and does not threaten the foundations of capitalist exploitation. The history of militant reform movements has also shown that the militant trade union leaders however ’honest’ and self-sacrificing, may also be downright anti-communist, may fight communist agitation and propaganda as ardently as any labour bureaucrat. But this is not the League’s concern, since its conception of ’agitation and propaganda’ is itself limited to militant trade unionism. It will not ’cross’ the militant reformers by showing that even the most militant unionism is still bourgeois in content. Not at all. It will on the one hand, egg on the militant reformist struggle and encourage the workers to make this the center of their activity, and on the other hand, explain to the communist movement that this militant activity is, after all, “class struggle”. It attempts to convince all and sundry that ’socialism’ is the sum and substance of militant trade union ism, and if we would only rally behind this militancy we will surely deal the mortal blow to the bourgeoisie. The League does not pause to ponder the fact that this ’strategy’ it has evolved is identical to that long ago proposed by Social-Democracy and revisionism that it leads in practice only to tailing behind the spontaneous workers’ movement and reinforces trade union narrowness. But as we will see, the League has no great investment in maintaining its opportunism in such an ’unrefined’ state, and when, in later issues of The Forge, it comes under criticism for its self-exposure, it is only too willing to offer a few unkind remarks to the militants as well.
In attempting to show up the labour bureaucrats, the League demonstrates that only ’communists’ of its own kind can win ’real’ results. In a two-page spread in #2 of The Forge, the CCL ’contrasts’ its approach to that of the bureaucrats. On the question of the wage freeze, the League states that the union hacks propose only modification, whereas the CCL proposes to go “all the way” for repeal of Bill C-73. The labour hacks say they will only use the general strike as a last resort of protest, whereas the League calls for the general strike as the “only possible means” of struggling against the ’cursed’ Trudeau law. The union hacks, we learn, are only a lot of hot air, make only “earth-shattering speeches”, whereas the League proposes “concrete actions”. The hacks are perfectly content to let the workers “bang their heads against the wall” with unprepared and undirected action, whereas the League proposes that “communists and rank and file workers must take the lead”. That is, ’communists’ who bow and scrape before trade union militancy, should “take the lead” in winning palpable results. But the ultimate comparison, the line that fully ’demarcates’ the labour bureaucrats from the League, is that the bureaucrats intend to channel “the energy and discontent of the people” into “reforms to patch up the capitalist system”, whereas the League intends to organize “direct unified action” to “cutting out the cancer” of capitalism. Quite a ’stark’ comparison! But just how winning the repeal of the Trudeau law, whether through a general strike or not, is going to bring about the downfall of capitalism remains a mystery. How the League’s “direct unified action” in the direction of a typical militant trade unionist issue is going to “cut out the cancer” of capitalism is something we can only guess, at. Aside from the League’s standard catch-phrases on ’class-struggle’ and ’socialism’ which it affixes to its ’militancy’, there is not a clue as to how all this ’activity’ is going to lead the working class one step closer to overthrowing the system. But despite the League’s bombast and ready catch-phrases, any thinking worker will know that all this talk about “cutting out the cancer” and “direct unified action” is really nothing more than an attempt to ’give the economic struggle itself a political character’ and thus to mislead the workers into thinking that their emancipation can be won through a more militantly waged trade union struggle. It is the CCL’s ’misfortune’ that such thinking workers do in fact exist, and that far from exposing the labour bureaucrats, the League only manages to expose itself.
This stupid obsession with the trade union struggle is further elaborated by the CCLers who have managed to ’replace’ the labour bureaucrats they oppose. One such ’communist’, a duly elected CUPE local president at the University of Toronto library, reported that:
They (the workers) knew that they had to fight back; they knew they needed a democratic and fighting organization to defend their interests; and they knew that it is the communists who defend the interests of the workers and not the sell-out business unionists. The Forge #5 p.4
Such “cutting out the cancer”! The business unionists, you see, negotiate “...without hurting the capitalist system too much...which keeps them well-fed...” (#3 p.2). The League, on the other hand, intends to shake down the capitalists in the most menacing manner, even to the point of threatening them with ’socialism’. But what does all this ’defending of interests’ actually amount to? Only that what the union bureaucrats refuse to do within the trade union struggle, the League will take up with a vengance. And all the while the League is defending the most immediate and narrow interests of the workers, and during all its fanfare on the general strike and “direct unified action”, the League will consent to occasionally mention the ’minor’ fact that the real solution, after all, is socialism. As to how, concretely, socialism is to be won, the League has little more to offer than its hazy conception that militancy + militancy is bound to lead to something. Since the League is so taken with trade union militancy, the real content of its criticism of the labour bureaucrats is simply that they are not militant enough. If, as is not unusual, the labour hacks should suddenly take a militant posture, scream at the top of their lungs for a general strike and so on, the League would indeed be hard pressed to differentiate themselves. At the most they could say that the labour bureaucrats are inconsistent trade union militants, whereas the League will prove itself the. most consistent tailer behind of the working class imaginable.
But just what is it that the League hopes to attain? Clearly its talk of ’socialism’ is only a lever it uses to secure itself a place within the trade union struggle. Clearly in not exposing the limits of trade unionism in general, the League wishes only to ’situate’ itself as a vanguard detachment of militant trade unionism. But what is the benefit of that? From the workers’ standpoint, it is better to have increased benefits than none at all, or a 30% raise rather than 4%. It is because the labour bureaucrats consistently settle for less, or make undue compromises with the bourgeoisie, that they become exposed in the workers’ eyes. The rank and file discontent, lacking clear communist guidance, is aimed not at overthrowing the entire system, but only at ousting the bureaucrats and replacing them with responsive, militant trade unionists. It is in the role of ’militant trade unionists’ that the League offers its services. But while workers may support such militants, whether they call themselves communists or not, and may actually benefit from it through increased wages or better conditions the militants may achieve, the question still remains: what is in it for the League? Are we to believe that such die-hard opportunists as the CCL(ML) are merely misguided, and wish to place themselves in the trade union struggle only out of selfless devotion? Are we to believe that their fetishism for militant trade unionism is simply the product of misdirected good intentions? Not at all. Contrary to the League’s analysis, it is not the working class that has been “strongly affected” in the direction of bribery, but the petty bourgeoisie. It is the petty bourgeoisie, through the development of imperialism, that is forced into a frantic search to maintain a privileged position over the working class, to stay free of factory life, and by one or another means avoid the drudgery of wage-slavery. A portion of the petty bourgeoisie, including sections of the intelligentsia, is constantly thrown down into the ranks of the working class, and just as constantly attempts to rise again into the ranks of the comfortable petty bourgeoisie. One of the phenomena of imperialism is that it creates, in its attempt to control the proletariat, a petty bourgeois strata within the working class, the labour aristocracy. To this strata, which includes both the top craft unions and labour bureaucracy, imperialism gives a series of economic and social advantages over the masses of workers, in exchange for which imperialism receives the labour aristocracy’s undying, if occasionally ’critical’, support. It is only ’natural’ that the petty bourgeois new arrivals, in their attempt to ’uplift’ themselves, should, in addition to saving money to open small businesses or going to night schools to master petty bourgeois professions, also attempt to situate themselves in this existing petty bourgeois, aristocratic strata within the working class. This is done in a variety of means, partially through competing for apprentice training in the craft unions, partially through ’rising’ to managerial or foremen’s positions, and partially through simply hiring on as functionaries of the labour bureaucracy. Such positions, which elevate their holders above the conditions of the masses of workers, are a natural and strong attraction for the recently ousted petty bourgeois. But while imperialism makes use of such social props, and rewards them accordingly, it cannot possibly make use of every petty bourgeois who would volunteer for such ’services’. The mass of petty bourgeoisie who are daily ousted from the ’good life’ always far exceeds the number needed to stock the ranks of imperialism’s bribed social props. Thus even for these ’working class’ aristocratic employments, the competition amongst the petty bourgeois new arrivals is intense. The new arrivals are therefore forced to invent more sophisticated means to eliminate their competition and secure those ’valuable’ positions for their ’precious’ selves. The Social-Democrats of the opportunist Second International long ago invented one such means. Using the discontent of the rank and file workers as their lever, they managed to ’replace’ a portion of the overt labour bureaucrats, and with ’socialist’ phraseology, forged a new variety of ’socialist’ aristocrats within the trade union movement. They were, of course, no less servants of the bourgeoisie than the open reactionaries, but they had managed to find a means to serve imperialism, and thus themselves, posing as a ’socialist’ opposition. While it is widely accepted that the various Social-Democratic and revisionist elements who have wormed their way into the trade union apparatus are actually petty bourgeois elements who, like the standard labour bureaucrats, only serve to mislead the workers, we should not think that this phenomenon is limited in any way to just those elements. The same petty bourgeois incentive that generated the Social-Democratic and modern revisionist species of social props, is now, as is glaringly evident in the League, generating an ’anti-revisionist’ species. Following the general pattern established by Social-Democracy, the League advertises itself as an enemy of the “sell-outs”, “reformists”, “traitors”, and so on, and drawing on the abundant evidence, proves that the labour bureaucrats are not fulfilling the workers’ immediate interests. It then shows that if only the workers will rally behind the CCL(ML), it will deliver the ’palpable results’ with unheard of ’militancy’. But as is evident from the CCL’s view of trade union militancy, it has no intention of taking the workers beyond the struggle for ’palpable results’, but instead make it the ’real’ center of struggle. This is true even though the League, like the revisionist CP, may load their propaganda with superficial catch-phrases on “only socialism” winning the ultimate in ’palpable results’. By making such appeals, the League can then hope to oust its competition – the labour bureaucrats and revisionists – and secure the trade union leadership for itself. It is then in a position to bargain with the bourgeoisie for its own share in the more ’palpable’ benefits of imperialism. This may seen like a petty and utterly disgusting way to pass the time, which in fact it is, but we must understand that nothing is too low, too petty, or too small for the petty bourgeoisie. Every advantage, however slight, is nonetheless a step away from the daily drudge of wage-slavery, and it is wage-slavery, above all else, that the petty bourgeoisie fights ’heart and soul’ to avoid.
The League will protest such a ’crass’ materialist estimate, such an ’undignified’ view of its motives. But in fact the only thing crass and undignified is the League’s attempt to hide its narrow petty bourgeois strivings behind ’Marxist-Leninist’ phrases. If the League were in fact Marxist-Leninist, if it strove to represent the objective interests of the working class, if its ambition was to actually overthrow imperialism and establish actual socialism, then it would not devote so much energy to grovelling before the trade union struggle nor attempt to pass militant trade unionism off as some ’concrete step’ towards socialism. But it is precisely because the League has taken to bowing and scraping to trade union militancy, and has advertised itself as an alternative to the overt labour reactionaries, that we conclude its ambition has nothing at all to do with socialism, but is simply aimed at achieving ’palpable results’ for itself. Despite its talk of ’linking’ the militant trade union struggle to ’socialism’, all that the League has accomplished is to ’link’ itself onto the tail of the spontaneous movement. For all its talk of the ’traitors’ of the labour bureaucracy, all that the League has proven is its own treason to the workers’ cause. And what does the League achieve from all this? The promise of ’uplift’, the petty benefits of a few trade union positions, the chance to create its own ’anti-revisionist’ bureaucracy, and the hope of gaining the social basis necessary to influence the bourgeoisie on its own behalf.
We find the clearest statement of the League’s trade unionist opportunism in issues #6 and #7 of The Forge. In #6, in a full editorial directed to ’forge’ “class struggle unions”, the League attempts to show the glaring ’differences’ it finds between itself and the labour ’traitors’:
The unions must be weapons to defend the working class but instead we have: negotiations for collective agreements based on private discussions with the boss instead of on the mobilization of the mass of workers; empty consultations which are supposed to organize the fight-back – without information or explanations to the union members, without any real discussions at the base; unions which hold general assemblies once every six months or every year or even every two years; union officials whc sit on government commissions or councils, call on ’unbiased’ mediators to solve the problem, thus trying to hide the real nature of the capitalist state; tactics which lead to demobilization and a strategy which is planned not much beyond the noses of the union bosses. The Forge #6 p.3
And, in one brief passage in issue #7, the League ’extends’ its militant assault against the union bureaucrats with the ’brilliant’ observation that “The working class does not want more ’cooperation’; we want struggle – class against class – to defend our interests.” (The Forge #7 p.3)
“Defend our interests”, indeed! While this is worthy of a trade union militant, of someone utterly lacking in political understanding, of someone still caught up in the trade union struggle, it is not at all worthy of those who pretend to be Marxist-Leninists. Communists take as their starting point the fact that the struggle to “defend our interests” alone is not enough. Communists begin with the fact that so long as the working class only wages the economic, trade unionist struggle, there can be no end to wage-slavery. Communists also begin with the knowledge that it is impossible to make the trade unionist struggle the main or sole basis for developing political knowledge, since class political consciousness must be introduced from outside the sphere of relations between capital and labour, must involve the totality of class relations. And while it is perfectly understandable that militant trade unionists may lack such insight as to the limitations and narrowness of trade unionism in general, it is also perfectly understandable that when ’communists’ speak only at the level of militant trade unionists, they are fostering opportunism and slavish reformism within the working class. However much the League may shout about “class against class” struggle, it is in fact only advocating a brassy and overdone struggle for immediate, reformist interests. The point at which communist work begins, and which distinguishes communists from militant trade unionists, i.e. the propaganda, agitation and organization necessary to divert the workers from the spontaneous trade unionist striving to simply get a better arrangement under capitalism, it is precisely at this point that the CCL(ML) stops. Thus it carries into the working class, not real communist propaganda and agitation, not consistent communist organization necessary to build a revolutionary workers’ movement, but reformist illusions that militant trade unionism alone is sufficient to lay the groundwork for the overthrow of capitalism. In so doing it attempts to blind the working class to the totality of class relations, particularly the narrow and selfish strivings of the petty bourgeoisie.
It should go without saying that communists should in fact be in the leadership of the trade union struggle, should fight for the workers’ immediate interests, union democracy, the right to strike, oppose wage freezes and the like. But communists should lead such struggles, not as an end in themselves, but only as one component part of the struggle for political power. Communists fight to attain and defend democratic rights, not because such rights really improve the conditions of the masses of workers (since in fact they do not), but in order to train the masses of workers to see by their own experience that their problem is capitalism, not lack of rights. Communists fight to advance the immediate conditions of the workers, not because we believe such petty reforms to be significant, but because we strive for every gain, however small, at the expense of the bourgeoisie. The trade union struggle is not our main or sole focus in our struggle to educate, organize and lead the class; it is simply one front of that struggle. We do not strive simply to organize the workers for a more consistent and militantly waged economic struggle; we strive to organize the workers to respond to every case of oppression, to take part in all of political life, to strike and demonstrate not only for trade union issues, not only for their own immediate demands, but for a wide range of both international and domestic issues. The trade union struggle, however militant, is only one aspect, and often a subordinate aspect, of the struggle for political power. And yet the common error of all Economists, including the League, is that they mistake the trade union struggle for that political struggle. They thus advance, not the struggle for political power, but trade unionist politics. The League’s first campaign in this direction was launched in opposition to the labour bureaucrats. But it soon found this line far too wide to sufficiently demarcate itself, and soon opened a second front.
B. PHASE TWO: AGAINST THE ’COMBATIVES’
By issue #8, it became apparent that the League’s “class struggle unionism” was not sitting well with all who observed it in action. In this issue the League had to run a short article in response to questioning as to whether it wasn’t tailing behind the masses, and even behind the trade union bureaucrats it had so strongly attacked, in its efforts to organize the “revolutionary resistance” of a general strike for repeal of Bill C-73. The League replied with some particularly absurd parallels, comparing the call for a general strike (which it had initially pronounced as being “no insurrection” in #2) with the armed, really revolutionary uprisings of the peasant masses in China in 1927; posing the question as either taking up ’leadership’ or not participating at all, but avoiding the real question of the sort of opportunist ’leadership’ the League had proposed, and so on. But aside from such stupid evasion of the question, the article is significant since it marked a turning point in the emphasis and direction of the CCL’s struggle ’against’ the “bourgeois line”. The League apparently understood that such a criticism of its tailism had, after all, some substance, and so began to ’modify’ its attitude towards the militant trade unionists that it had formerly given such blanket support. Starting with issue #9, the League began to re-orient its polemic, and attempted to draw a non-existent line between itself and militant trade unionism. This campaign has had three discernible aspects: 1) the attempt to ’concretize’ its slogans, its ’linking’ technique; 2) a more extensive revival of the CP Canada of the 1920’s and 1930’s as its example of “revolutionary unionism”; and 3) articles directly intended to distinguish itself from the “combative” unions, using the CSN as its primary example.
Having thrown down the gauntlet to its sceptics – either support of the general strike, or one has not “joined” the class struggle – the League is quick to point out that its conduct in organizing for the general strike is, despite all appearances to the contrary, not at all separated from its struggle ’for socialism’. Heaven’s no! Why, the League has always been directing its efforts at “rallying the advanced workers, who also want to struggle” against the wage freeze, to communism. Apparently, however, the League is not content to take any chances, and so goes out of its way to advise us of its subtle technique of rallying the advanced to communism:
It is by advancing and concretizing the slogans ’Forge our Party’ and ’struggle for socialism’, and it’s by linking these to the slogan ’prepare the general strike’ that we can best rally the advanced workers... The Forge #8 p.5
So that’s how it’s done! One rallies the advanced workers by...advancing and concretizing slogans, and by...linking...these slogans to others! What could be easier? The League hastens to remind us, in case we had missed it along the way, that the League’s “ agitation and propaganda work consist in...especially explaining the need to fight for socialism, and the party which will lead this battle...”(#9 p.5). Surely every attentive reader has noticed how the League unfailingly tacks on a few general phrases on the need for the Party and for Socialism. Surely we have noticed that unlike the so-called “combative” unionists, the League consistently “talks about” and “points out” the need for socialism, and even makes so bold as to call for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Why, surely we have noticed that “linked together these slogans permit us to link the working class’s immediate interests to those of the long-term.” (#9 p.5). Surely we could not doubt the League’s committment to “ those of the long term...”?
But how is this all-important ’linking’ to occur? Well, first one should compile all the items to be ’linked’, and reduce them to slogans. The items are still separate, of course but it is through ’links’ that a facsimile of an integral worldview is produced. Then once one has strung together all the disjointed parts, “advancing and concretizing” them, one proclaims that one has achieved communist propaganda-agitation. Thus the ’advanced’ are won. Simple, is it not? A very ’efficient’ technique. The League demonstrates such “linking up” in the pages’ of The Forge by stringing together article after article on the ’economic struggle against the employers and the government’ + urgings for a massive reply in the form of “revolutionary resistance” + pushing “all the way” to a general strike against the wage freeze + advocacy of “concrete” programs for winning the various “just demands” of the trade unions + general reminders that although the general strike is already “part of the struggle for socialism” + what the working class really needs is a ’party’. But in all this flurry of ’linking’, the League ’overlooks’ the fact that it is reduced to such superficial and one-sided ’linking’ precisely because it itself lacks a harmonious and integral worldview, views reality only in bits and pieces, and in the vast, damp caverns of its imagination can connect those tiny bits only through the most mechanical ’links’. Such ’linking’ is not science, but only a pathetic attempt by those who are incapable of science. Even in this stupid ’linking’ process (which was earlier perfected by ’missing links’ who founded and serve on the CC of the RCP USA) there is ample room for apportioning the various ’links’ according to their relative ’importance’. Thus while the League allocates innumerable ’links’ for binding together its various slogans in support of trade unionism, it runs a little short on ’linking’ its notion of socialism and the ’party’. While it ’concretizes’ its Economism on the various questions of “class struggle trade unionism”, its ’concretizing’ on the question of the ’party’ yields little of substance. But never mind. What is important, from the League’s point of view, is not the content of what it ’links’, nor even their proportion; all that matters is that the ’essential’ key phrases are mentioned, and by some manner, however abstract, ’linked’ into the semblance of communist agitation and propaganda. And this the League attempts to pass off as science.
Lenin stated the problem with this sort of eclectic and imitative brand of ’socialist’ propaganda as follows:
The struggle for socialism lies in the unity of the struggle for the immediate interests of the workers (including reforms) and the revolutionary struggle for power...
What have to be combined are not the struggle for reforms + phrases about socialism, the struggle ’for socialism’, but two forms of struggle. V.I. Lenin Notebooks on Imperialism CW Vol. 39 p.271
And this is precisely the form that the League’s opportunism takes. It does not view the struggle for socialism as an integral class struggle, does not see the actual connection between the struggle for daily interests and the struggle for political power. From a communist standpoint, these two forms of struggle must be fused into one, comprehensive and fully harmonious class struggle, into the struggle for socialism. From the CCL’s standpoint, on the contrary, it is not necessary to fuse, but merely to ’link up’, and what one ’links up’ is an entirely disjointed, Economist view of the relation between the struggle for immediate reforms and the ’struggle for socialism’ (sic). Despite all its ’advances’ and ’contributions’, it is self-evident that the League has yet to raise itself to the level of mere ignorance from its present depths of unabashed stupidity. The only thing the League has successfully ’linked up’ here is its own ’precious’ self + such noted opportunist ’linkers’ as the RCP.
In its effort to differentiate itself from the “combative” unionists, who, of course, are lacking in petty bourgeois aggressiveness and arrogance, the League draws on the historical legacy of the CP Canada. In its Statement of Political Agreement, the League had mentioned the Trade Union Educational League and Workers Unity League as examples of “class struggle trade unionism”, obviously indicating its identification with the work of these organizations. Now, in the post-#8 issues of The Forge, the League places itself squarely on the side of the WUL and its creator the CPC, categorically presenting this work as the model, to be followed by the young communist movement. And, it must be admitted, the early CP Canada certainly is a fitting model for what the League has in mind. It is true, as the League says, that “the complete history of the Party remains to be written by Marxist-Leninists of today” (#9 p.7). But too, that entire history immediately becomes suspect the moment such inventive opportunists as our CCLers relate to it en to to.
The WUL was a federation of unions which, to be a member of the Red International of Labour Unions as it was, in theory had to openly “talk about” and “point out” the “struggle for socialism”. Indeed, it was supposedly bound by the constitution of the RILU to “...carry on a wide agitation and propaganda of the principles of revolutionary class struggle, social revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and revolutionary mass action for the purpose of overthrowing the capitalist system and bourgeois state.” (Constitution of the RILU, The American Labour Union Education Society: The Voice of Labour p.2)
Certainly unions which “supported” the struggle for socialism and the Party were, in fact, under the leadership of the Party, the kind of leadership the CCL is emulating. And yet, even favourable analysis of the work of the CP Canada at the height of its influence in the workers’ movement reveals the following interesting information about the work of the League’s self-adopted forerunner.
In a mid-1934 article dealing with the strike movement and the tasks of the Party, we hear not one single word about the task of overthrowing capital, about how the strike struggles under the leadership of the WUL or the CP were meant to heighten revolutionary consciousness among the proletariat, nor even how these struggles had any relation to that consciousness. Instead we find that “in many of the strikes we have led, the face of the Party has been hidden” (Barnes Strike Struggles in Canada CI Documents 1934 p.697). Accompanying this admission, there follows, not an analysis of the root causes and course of rectification, but a recommendation that “the inner life of the local Party and union organizations must improve so that they deal mainly with the daily problems of the workers. The political level of the membership of the Party and unions must be raised” (Ibid p.699). And, according to this article, what constitutes the “raising the political level” of the cadres? Breaking with the “...narrow conception of the united front tactics...”, making a “...most careful analysis of each strike, popularizing the lessons among the broad masses of workers in the Party and trade union press...”, laying “...main emphasis...” on the “...large monopoly-controlled plants...” and other strictly trade union tasks. There is no question that such work is necessary. But there is also no question that it is not communist, but trade unionist, work.
In a much broader article dealing with the general work of the CP Canada between the VI and VII Congress of the Comintern, we find a little more background detail on the content of the League’s model Party:
The Party has as a chief danger, Right opportunist lagging behind the masses, a failure to take advantage of the expanding radical mood of the masses, a pronounced tendency to hide the independent position of the Party in united-front actions and to cease active, practical exposure of the social-fascists. Our Party in the course of building the united front of struggle on the basis of pressing, immediate needs of the masses, has still to learn how in practice to politicize the scattered economic struggles, and to link them up with the revolutionary way out of the crisis, with the central slogan of the Party, ’For a Soviet Canada!’” Porter Work of the CP Canada Between the VT and VII CI Congress CI Documents 1935 p.426-427
Such a long legacy of ’linking up’! In ’concretizing’ this tendency, Porter lists out several errors, one of which is particularly important in terms of the League’s present work:
Our Party has also trained a number of trade-union cadres, who are occupied in the revolutionary unions and opposition work in the reformist unions. Serious tendencies to stereotyped leadership by these comrades must be checked. Our Party has placed its finger on a tendency to ’trade unionism’ in the work of these comrades – a tendency to look upon their trade-union work as divorced from the ’political’ work of the Party. This opportunist position must be sharply combatted. Ibid p.429.
And, of course, as is known, the Party ’rectified’ these many errors very shortly after this article appeared, simply by liquidating the WUL and its struggle for ’revolutionary unionism’. A more pressing task was at hand, the social-chauvinist renegacy of the second world war.
The League’s praise of the ’revolutionary’ CP’s trade union work is not motivated by simple ignorance. While urging us to learn from the history of the CP and offering the CP’s trade unionist work as a model, the League has the wherewithall to state: “The CPC played an important role in this fight for the right to trade unions. But what role did it play in the fight for socialism?” (The Forge #9 P-4)
This question, a question that is pivotal in assessing if there is in fact anything positive to learn from the CP’s work, a question that would first have to be answered before advancing any of the CP’s techniques in the trade unions, is answered by the League with the bold conclusion that “this question remains for us to examine”. We have not examined the work of the CP, states the League, and we really have no idea of if or how it fought for socialism. Nonetheless, we will hold up the CP’s trade union work as a model for our own, and thus ’link up’ ourselves to the CP’s ’revolutionary’ traditions. Such a superficial and opportunist identification with the CP’s work, even while admitting that the connection between its work and the ’fight for socialism’ remains unclear, is perfectly suited to the League’s own notion of the content of ’communist’ work. Simply engage in the militant trade union struggle, and leave questions of ’socialism’ to the future. The League has had so little problem passing off its own trade unionist striving as ’socialism’, as fit and proper ’revolutionary work’; it is no surprise that it should also have so little problem with doing the same with the CP’s work. Despite its own errors, the League assures us, it is really ’communist’ after all. And as to the CP Canada, why:
The CPC made numerous errors in its early history: for example it had a weak and often non-existent position on the right of the Quebec nation to self-determination. Often it failed to link the immediate struggles of the working class to the struggle for socialism. But in spite of its errors, which remain to be examined in a serious fashion, the CPC was a genuine revolutionary party in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The Forge #9 p.7
The CP Canada, you see, often “failed to link the immediate struggles... to the struggle for socialism” (sic), failed to raise certain vital principles and so on. But we should not be bothered by the fact that the CCL, which has proclaimed itself a vanguard and stands on the verge of declaring itself the Party, has not dealt with the CP’s opportunism “in a serious fashion”. After all, the CCL has not even dealt with its own opportunism “in a serious fashion”. No, that is not necessary at all. All that matters is that we take the CCL(ML) at its word, and if it states that the CP, despite all the opportunism in the world, was a “genuine revolutionary party”, then we should be ’assured’ that this will also be true of the CCL when it so chooses to declare itself.
Given the CCL’s fascination with militant trade unionism, it is hard pressed to explain how its own variety differs from the other ongoing militants. It conjures up the militancy of the CP’s early trade union work, but this alone, of course, is not enough. It is easy enough for the League to distinguish itself from the likes of Morris and Laberge, since these trade union bureaucrats are well-known collaborators and make no bones about their allegiance with ’reform’ capital. But the spontaneous movement in Canada and Quebec is far more developed than to be restricted to Morris-Laberge & Co. Militant unionism is extensively developed across the country, and is not limited to rank and file opposition movements. Unlike the 1930’s, when the CP Canada had the field of militancy virtually to themselves, now the CCL(ML) stands stiff competition from several already entrenched ’radical’ unions. For the League to establish an independent toe-hold in the union movement, it must somehow differentiate itself from the many militant unionists already operating in the movement and following essentially the same program as the League. So, starting with issue #11 of The Forge, the CCL opened its second front with a campaign against the CSN’s “combative” trade unionism.
Initially, the League attempted to ’combat’ the “combatives” through theoretical criticism of the CSN’s document, Towards Militant Class and Mass Unionism. The CCL held that this document posed a “false debate” between militant and business unionism. It seems that the CSN document defined business unionism “...as being anti-democratic, collaborationist, and pro-capitalist...” (#11 p.8). The League, of course, finds this a bit offensive, having the CSN steal its thunder like that. And even the League’s standard exposure of the labour bureaucrats as ’not even seeing fit’ to mention socialism does no good against the CSN, since the CSN too talks about socialism and the need for a party. In fact, there is so little to distinguish the CSN’s program from the CCL’s that the CCL is forced to nit-picking over whose program is ’less vague’. The CSN, admits the CCL, points out the need for socialism, but this is not “...really sufficient to meet the immediate and fundamental interests of the working class...” because it speaks ”...in very vague terms...“. The CSN, admits the League, does speak of socialism, but after all it says nothing of the dictatorship of the proletariat; it speaks of a workers’ party, but in addition to failing to mention the holy League, it did not specify a “...communist party composed of authentic Marxist-Leninists...”; it speaks against government propaganda, but fails to mention the “...ideological struggle against all kinds of opportunism in the workers movement, against bureaucrats in the unions either...”; and so on. Thus while the CCL(ML) is so generous with the early CP (something that occurred so long ago it no longer poses any competition to the League), and grants it all sorts of allowance for errors and weaknesses, it suddenly raises its standard considerably when it comes to the CSN. The CP, you see, was ’revolutionary’, regardless of its innumerable errors. But after all, that is ancient history. The CSN, on the other hand, also has errors, but being a very direct and living competition for the League, the CCL is ’forced’ to conclude that not only is the CSN not revolutionary, it is not even ’militant’. It is, ’unlike’ the League, merely ’vague’.
But this contradiction is the League’s own handiwork. The leadership of the CSN, after all, fully conforms to the League’s definition of the most advanced elements in the working class. Do they not aspire to socialism “in a confused way” and are “undeveloped ideologically, tainted with reformism and nationalism”? By all rights, the League should follow its line and be struggling to unite with these comrades, offer friendly criticism, draw them into communist work, and thus into the ’vanguard’ organization. But this, after all, was not the League’s real intention. It has no wish to share its pie with the likes of the CSN. Not at all. It wishes only to ’differentiate’ itself from them, and thus ’situate’ itself on top. While in no way repudiating or even mentioning its own conception of ’combativity’, the League pronounces that the CSN leadership is not combative after all, is not even militant, and that the whole thing is a hoax. Unable to draw an incontestably clear line between itself and militant trade unionism, the League retreats and declares the impossibility of militant trade unionism unless it appears in the League’s own peculiar form of “class struggle trade unionism”. The League even goes so far as to say that business unionism and militant unionism are only “...opposite sides of the same coin...”. But what, we may ask, is the difference between militant trade unionism of the CSN stamp, and the League’s? What concrete ’proof does the League provide us to demarcate militant trade unionism from “class struggle trade unionism”? The “best example”, in the League’s view, is demonstrated by: Chartrand’s avoiding a possible police confrontation at a demonstration of Valleyfield CIL strikers at the Montreal CIL building. From this the League concludes: “That’s militant unionism? To abandon workers who are on strike in order to avoid the arrival of the police!” (#11 p.8). So! It all becomes ’clear’ now. The militant trade unionists may occasionally avoid a police fight, whereas the “revolutionary”, “class struggle trade unionism” will take the police on any time night or day! In that case we would have to conclude that the CCL’s ’ideal’ “class struggle trade unionists” are embodied in such valiant takers-on of the police as the CPC(ML)! But since when has fighting the police become any sort of criteria for “class struggle”? It is common knowledge to any striker that at some point the police may be involved, and that it may even lead to blows. But this is a frequent occurrence in even the most strictly reformist economic trade union struggles. Surely there are two classes involved here, with the police representing the bourgeoisie, and just as surely there is struggle between them. But this is not, from a communist standpoint, class struggle:
When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realises that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognizes the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle. ...It is the task of the (communists), by organizing the workers, by conducting propaganda and agitation among them, to turn their spontaneous struggle against their oppressors into the struggle of the whole class, into the struggle of a definite political party for definite political and socialist ideals. This is something that cannot be achieved by local activity alone. V.I. Lenin Our Immediate Task CW Vol. 4 p.215.
And yet the League ’hangs’ the CSN, not for inflating a particular strike, but for not engaging in “class struggle”. And what is this “class struggle”? Coming to blows with the police. This is truly worthy of the CPC(ML). Whenever a few bones are broken, our petty bourgeois ’vanguards’ (who care so much for their own bones, and so little for the workers’) think that this is surely ’the Revolution’, “class struggle”, and so on, and egg it on from the sidelines. The League is incapable of leading class struggle of any sort, and so resorts to stupid phrases. It cannot lead class struggle simply because it lacks the wherewithall to win the foremost representatives of the working class and organize a class-wide struggle against the bourgeoisie for political power. It cannot broaden the horizons of the individual worker, simply because its own vision is so petty and narrow. And it cannot, for the life of it, draw any sort of line between itself and militants such as the CSN, because they stand on exactly the same militant trade unionist plane.
Following this, the League made no further pretense of opposing militancy, but simply dealt with the CSN as ’fakers’. In issue #14, the League simply stated this straightforwardly, announcing that the 11th Congress of the Central Council of the CSN “...really missed the boat, remaining the same business unionism that it had been before...” (#14 p.2 our emphasis) And further, “...How could they talk about combative unionism? How could they talk about class struggle unions when they are business unionists?...”(Ibid). Again, in issue #15, the League berated the CSN, declaring that “...there’s a gap between what the CSN pretends to be and what it is...”(#15 p.7). This is pretty stiff criticism coming from an organization, such as the League, which has already proven its expertise in creating ’gaps’ between pretense and reality. But whereas the CSN only pretends to be a militant trade unionist organization, and so really has no need for ’gaps’, the CCL must stretch things a little further to pass itself off as the ’vanguard’ organization to create the ’party’.
The analysis that militant unionism and business unionism are “two sides of the same coin” would be quite right and well taken, if it was meant as a critique of trade unionism as a whole. But this is not the CCL’s intention. It has only set out to discredit the militants in the CSN in order to advance its own variety of militant trade unionism. But it remains to be seen how the CCL will accomplish this when, as with some unions in the CCU, the leadership does occasionally engage the police, relies on the rank and file, mobilizes against laws such as the wage freeze, opposes the Social-Democrats and revisionists, calls for socialism and so on. The CCL will be at a loss when it comes to demarcating itself from consistently waged militant trade unionism, since that is the ceiling of its own ambitions. And yet it is such militant unionism that is the rising and quite spontaneous development of the workers’ movement, and which the workers are quite capable of organizing on their own. And if they are able to do this entirely on their own, of what possible value is the nonsense advanced by the League? In fact, the League offers absolutely nothing to the working class, and when the spontaneous development of the workers’ movement makes this abundantly clear, the League is driven to discredit the workers’ indigenously evolved militancy in order to advertise the ’benefits’ of its own.
The trade union bureaucrats are not so foolish as the CCL would have us believe. They are experienced manipulators, as is proven by the entire history of the international workers’ movement, and will accommodate and even promote virtually any form of struggle short of armed overthrow of capital in order to maintain their positions. The League completely fails to grasp the flexibility of the bourgeoisie, and thinks it can bluff the bureaucrats by demanding ’unattainable’ action. It has convinced itself that it can win the support of the workers by ’linking up’ slogans that the bureaucrats can ’never’ fulfill. But this is only foolish naivete, as has been shown by the League’s own maneuvers on the question of the general strike. The League built its case on the cry of ’no leadership’, ’no general strike’ coming from the labour “fatcats”. The “fat-cats”, cried the League, would never step outside the bounds of bourgeois legality, even for a day. “So What About The General Strike”, ran the CCL’s headlines in early July, again berating the bureaucrats’ “do nothing stance”, their “willingness... to do everything to sabotage the movement of resistance against the Trudeau law” (#14 p.7). But then, despite all the League’s ’evidence’ to the contrary, the labour “fatcats” do begin to act, and declare a one day strike against Bill C-73. What now? In a fine display of some of its “broadest revolutionary education”, the League declares that “October 14 will be a,time to expose our union misleaders, to expose their class collaborationist politics and their bargaining with Trudeau behind our backs.” (The Forge #16 p.3).
By such ’exposure’, the League undoubtedly is referring to its incisive front page analysis of the same issue:
...even if the majority of the leadership supports the ’day of protest’ we have to remember that there’s a difference between their words and deeds.
This day should demonstrate the strength of the working class when it goes militantly into action.
And the rank and file workers should make sure that the fine words of the leadership are translated into concrete action. And this means not in a holiday mood but in the spirit of class struggle and for the total withdrawal of Bill C-73. The Forge #16 p.1
The labour bureaucrats, you see, will have a lot of fine talk about repealing Bill C-73. They may even, in a pinch, go along with “concrete action”. But the workers should not be fooled by this. The workers should follow the “class struggle” spirit of the CCL. And how will the workers know this? They will know the ’communists’, you see, since it is the ’communists’ who will wage the most “concrete”, “class struggle”, ’revolutionary’ fight for the “total withdrawal” of the Bill. And after all is said and done, the workers may justifiably ask of the League’s role, as the League asked of the CP, “but what role did it play in the fight for socialism?” But it will not take too much racking of brains to see that the League, preoccupied as it is in fulfilling the role of militant trade unionist and one-upping the labour bureaucrats in the domain of ’palpable results’, was far too busy to play any part at all in the ’fight for socialism’.
The CCL will, of course, continue its competition with the top “union fatcats”, maintaining the call for an unlimited general strike for repeal of C-73, either until some section of the union bureaucracy organizes such a strike, it develops spontaneously from the rank and file, or the bill expires. And then it will attach its ultra-r-r-revolutionary rhetoric to some other issue, repeating the same procedure, trying to stay one step ahead of the labour bureaucrats and constantly being left with lame responses to the actions of the militants. This is the position the League binds itself to out of its crass and narrow opportunism. In reality, the only real dividing line which differentiates the League from the militant trade unionists is that whereas the militants have arrived spontaneously and can, with the proper communist work, be raised to class consciousness, the CCL has arrived via gross opportunism and by its catch-phrases and petty tailism, has proven itself incapable of class consciousness.
C. A COUNTERPART FOR THE LEAGUE
As much as we would like to credit the CCL(ML) for creativity on its charming contribution of “class struggle trade unionism”, in all fairness we must also credit others who use the same line. For example, the following quotations, minus the League’s garnish of fast catch-phrases, should remind the reader of the territory we have just covered:
In the trade union movement opportunism has been and is the central pivotal problem. In the top leadership it is reflected in open class betrayal. Class collaboration is open opportunism. ...p.84
Agreeing to serve on the Nixon Pay Board was a step along the collaborator’s path for leadership. This action is an acceptance of the principle of state regulation of wages. This is de facto compulsory arbitration by the state. We must see what’s ahead. The workers are not going to accept the deterioration of their living standards as the Pay Board sits on their frozen wages. Strikes will take on a political character. Every economic struggle will now be against the state. ... p. 40 Capitalism on the Skids to Oblivion 1972
Meanyism continues to be the main obstacle to a viable class struggle trade union movement. Under pressure even the Meanys make public statements protesting corporate and government actions. But statements of protest without the organization of struggle only serve as a cover for policies of class collaboration. ... What we are seeing are the beginnings of an important shift to policies of struggle that are pushing class collaboration to the ropes. ... p.55 The Crisis of U.S. Capitalism and the Fight-Back, 1975
Familiar, is it not? Not only are we treated to the ’broad political exposure’ of the labour bureaucrats supporting “this or that bourgeois party” and “integrating into the capitalist state apparatus” for which the CCL is so renowned, not only does this ’dialectical’ analysis also, after the manner of the CCL, lend the trade unionist struggle against a similar capitalist offensive a ’profound’ political character, in addition to this it, as with the CCL, opens the door to the necessary ’new’ approach: ’class struggle trade unionism’.
The challenge (of the capitalist offensive) calls for a new approach by the working class. It calls for new levels of class solidarity. It calls for new levels of class consciousness. It is clear these new initiatives will not come from the top leadership. When Nixon’s Pay Board refused the aerospace workers’ wage increase, Leonard Woodcock announced that the UAW is going to take the case to the Nixon courts. That is not leadership. It should be obvious that the initiatives are going to have to come from the rank and file movements. They will have to come from the left. In fact, that is where they are coming from now.
It is also clear that the initiatives to meet the challenges are not going to come from even the middle-of-the-road trade unionists. They will come from trade unionists who have the class struggle approach. Capitalism on the Skids to Oblivion 1972 p.40
Of course, the ’comrade’ responsible for the above does not at all mean to give any indication that the “class struggle” approach is simply trade unionism. Not at all. In perfect harmony with the League’s view, the author proposes this to be a Party task, as the “centerpiece for the Party’s trade union and shop work...”:
The growth of class consciousness, the struggle against class collaboration, the need to organize rank and file groups, the struggle against racism, the struggle for working class and trade union unity, the concept of class struggle trade unionism, and Communist shop work. The Crisis of U.S. Capitalism and the Fight-Back, 1975 p.56
And, as would be expected, our mystery writer ties this work directly to the rank and file movement, the ’objective’ conditions and the needs of the movement, and even throws in the need to learn from the history of class struggle in the development of this ’revolutionary unionism’. The author, like the League, raises the cry to “Oust the Class Collaborators”, and lest we think this only a theoretical or political task, the author also, like the League, stresses the importance of “concrete” actions:
The policy of class collaboration is based on the overall concept of not recognizing that classes exist or that there is class struggle. Class struggle trade unionism rests on the premise that there is a working class and that the class struggle is unavoidable. It is from such separate bases that the two policies branch off. The struggle against class collaboration cannot be conducted on a philosophical level. It comes down to concretes, to tactics, to demands, to methods of struggle. Therefore, the struggle for the policies of class struggle trade unionism takes place also in the context of concretes. There is a world of differences between class struggle negotiations for the needs of the workers and class collaboration agreements – sweetheart contracts, cocktail negotiations and business trade unionism – where the demands of the corporations for profits and production dominate and the interests of the workers are bargained away. The Big Stakes of Detente 1974 p.34
We must apologize for the use of such lengthy quotations, but it is instructive to follow the various ’points of unity’ that the CCL shares with the line outlined above. True, this writer lacks the CCL’s vitality and immediacy, is much more overt in his class stand, but in all essentials the lines are the same. The author, too, sees business unionism as the main obstacle to a viable “class struggle” trade unionist movement. He, too, cries out against the trade union bureaucrats for only making “earth-shattering speeches”, “without the organization of struggle”. He, too, makes his own momentous realization that “the workers”, whom he holds in as ’high’ esteem as does the League, “are not going to accept the deterioration of their living standards” and advocates, along with the RCP USA and October League, among others, the organization of the great “Fight-Back”. He, too, sees the only solution to out-performing the bureaucrats as being to stay “in the context of concretes”, that is, in “class struggle trade unionism”. And, of course, he too claims the title of communist, and for his party, the title of “the revolutionary party of the U.S. working class”. In short, in all essentials, Gus Hall, the General Secretary of the CP USA, one of the leading professional revisionists in the U.S., truly loved and respected by the bourgeoisie for his loyalty and service, puts forward a line that fully corresponds to the League’s conception of “revolutionary unionism”.
The League will, of course, object to this too-exposing parallel with one of the leading revisionist ’parties’. After all, the League’s main claim to fame is that it is something new, an ’anti-revisionist’ pre-party. But however much the League may issue denials, the fact remains that its “class struggle trade unionism” is so thoroughly Right opportunist in content, it is the match for any overtly revisionist line.
As we have argued above, Marxism-Leninism teaches us that the cardinal point of all communist work in the working class is to divert the class from its spontaneous course of development and struggle, to raise this movement to the level of a fully conscious class struggle for communism. Marxism-Leninism also teaches us that for anyone to develop a communist standpoint, they must acquire a clear picture of the nature, interests and relations of all classes and strata of society. While these basic principles are accepted, at least formally, by all and sundry who claim to adhere to Marxism-Leninism, the question remains as to how such knowledge is actually brought to the working class. For the League, it is clear that its conception of ’political knowledge’ is based, not on objective class relations, but on the class interests it in fact advances. It has convinced itself, and attempts to convince others, that it upholds the true interests of the working class. But in fact, as is shown not only by the various ’plans’ the CCL offers for ’communist’ work in the proletariat but also by its attitude towards other classes, the League despite its ’good intentions’ advances only the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. As demonstrated by the League’s ’curious’ treatment of the 1960’s petty bourgeois movement, the League maintains such an affection for the petty bourgeoisie that it endures through innumerable ’self-criticisms’. This same bias for its own is shown in the League’s view of the relation between the petty bourgeoisie and working class under imperialism. The League’s conception of this relation is fundamental to the actual content of its entire programme, strategy and tactics for ’proletarian’ revolution in Canada and Quebec and thus is a primary determining factor of the ’communist’ education the League presents to the working class.
The key to the CCL’s political education of the working class is found in its emphasis on the necessity for “class against class” struggle, ostensibly for the overthrow of capital and establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It shows the utmost concern and dedication in attempting to convince the communist and workers movements that the CCL is an organization of revolutionary class struggle: “What we want is struggle – class against class”, so rings the League’s tocsin. Even though the League removed this slogan from its banner headlines for a few months from the Spring through the Summer of 1975, this slogan still represented its basic modus operandi, still was its means of distinguishing itself from both the trade union bureaucrats and its opponents in the communist movement, and still was the content of its ’communist’ political education of the class. Its use of such a ’left’ sounding phrase occurs, however, in combination with its initially unexplained position on the necessity for the “unity of classes” in the Canadian revolution. As the League developed its agitation and propaganda organ, this position began to stand out sharply, but not, as one would expect, in contradiction to “class against class”. In fact, these two seemingly contradictory slogans exist in the League’s worldview in a perfectly balanced ’unity’, representing the two ’poles’, as it were, of the League’s opportunism.
The League’s ’revolutionary’ combination is evident from the very first issue of The Forge, when it attests that its political agitation will most certainly not be directed exclusively to the advanced workers, but will “...not only reach the advanced elements but also serve to raise the consciousness of all of the class and of the masses in general” (#1 p.5). “The masses in general”; now there’s an interesting phrase to be uttered by an organization of self-proclaimed ’Marxist-Leninists’, those who are supposedly above all else concerned with the question of class. That the “masses in general” are divided into classes is a commonplace for anyone in the least familiar with Marxism-Leninism. But then why would our champions of ’science’ of the CCL deliberately address themselves so resolutely to such a ’loose’ audience? Quite simply because as the League sees it, “...the bourgeoisie’s offensive is aimed not only at the working class, but also all other strata of the Canadian people...” (The Forge #3 p.5) and because “We’re dealing with a concerted attack by a class, armed with state power, against another class, the proletariat – and the entire Canadian people.” (The Forge #9 p.5)
Thus, since all and sundry are coming under attack by the bourgeoisie, it only stands to reason that the CCL would, in its effort to ’simplify’ things, throw everyone into the same pot. This is a truly remarkable re-alignment of classes, something entirely new to the body of ’Marxist-Leninist’ thought. Regardless of what we had formerly thought, the League enlightens us to the ’fact’ that the ’face-to-face’, “class against class” struggle in Canada and Quebec is between
The two basic classes: the millions of workers on the one side with their allies, the masses of the people, and a handful of capitalists on the other. The Forge #3 p.1
A remarkable reduction! But in the event that, in the midst of all these “masses” someone should remember that in the old days it was common to speak not of just “two basic classes”, but of a third – the petty bourgeoisie – the CCL will consent to speak in the old vocabulary and acknowledge that “...the state attacks all strata of the people who resist, including the petty bourgeoisie.,.” (The Forge #8 p.2)
Thus in the League’s worldview we have on the one side: “all strata of the people”, which “includes” the petty bourgeoisie, and apparently the working class, the former serving as “allies” to the latter under the heading of “the entire Canadian people” or “the masses of the people”, all of whom are being laid low by the state; and on the other: “a handful of capitalists”. Now from this simple splitting apart of society it should be clear that in the CCL’s view, the only enemy of the proletariat is the monopoly bourgeoisie and its direct social props, the state, and so forth; the only enemy of the petty bourgeoisie, who, being part and parcel of “all strata of the people”, and “allies” of the proletariat, are also attacked, is the monopoly bourgeoisie; and, as should be self-evident, the only enemy of the monopoly bourgeoisie is “the entire Canadian people”, or “all strata of the people”, or the proletariat + “the masses of the people”. Thus is the League prepared to struggle “class against class”, having on the one side the “unity of classes”, or, to be more accurate in the League’s terminology, the unity of one of the “basic classes” with the “masses of the people”.
What are we to make of all this? It is a fact that in the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels spoke of “Society as a whole...more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” But for all this seeming support for the League’s notion of “two basic classes”, the Manifesto does not go on to speak of “the entire people”, “the masses of the people” and so on a la the League as all being “allies” against the bourgeoisie. Just the opposite. The petty bourgeoisie is not some poor victim of the system of private property, which as a whole simply merges into “the people” as a revolutionary force, as a natural ally of the working class. Nor is the petty bourgeoisie simply stamped out as a class with its own unique interests in one blow. Although it is an historically fading class,
In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto FLP Peking p.63.
The same point is stated again by Lenin some fifty years later in his analysis of the class roots of revisionism:
...in every capitalist country, side by side with the proletariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors. Capitalism arose and is constantly arising out of small production. A number of new ’middle strata’ are inevitably brought into existence again and again by capitalism... V.I. Lenin Marxism and Revisionism CW Vol.15 p.39
Such a constant revival of a portion of the petty bourgeoisie regenerates not only its existence as a separate social class, but perpetuates the interests of that class in the spontaneous struggle between all classes in society. Thus while more and more elements of the petty bourgeoisie are ruined by competition, declassed, and thrown down into the ranks of the working class, their petty bourgeois class outlook and ambition is being constantly rejuvenated by the success of their ’class brothers’ who have managed not only to survive, but to grow. The class as a whole, even given this constant revival and perpetuation of interests within it, is becoming increasingly obsolete as an independent social force, and so must turn to one or another of the stronger classes to advance its own interests. It is this inability to independently represent its own interests (that is, win favours for itself through demonstrating its own organized, social power, a show of force the petty bourgeoisie is largely incapable of) that constitutes the vacillation of the petty bourgeoisie. Operating on the most fundamental ’principles’ of opportunism, it attempts to attach itself to one or another of the great classes, depending on which great class appears to have the strongest advantage. A portion of the petty bourgeoisie, its upper stratum, successfully allies with imperialism and receives its ’just’ rewards. This includes, among others, the professional intelligentsia and apologists, government and social service bureaucrats, skilled professionals and ’advanced’ technicians, successful petty proprietors (the so-called non-monopoly bourgeoisie), labour bureaucrats and aristocracy, and so on. These are the ’firm allies’ of imperialism, whose positions are completely dependent on the continued and successful existence of the system. The ’turn-over’ within this stratum, or the possibility of creating new opportunities within it, serves as a constant attraction for aspiring petty bourgeois from the middle and lower strata. Thus a portion of the petty bourgeoisie repeatedly leans towards the big bourgeoisie, hoping to fulfill their petty ambitions, so long as it seems possible to realize their dreams by rising through the ranks. But since these secure positions are relatively few, and the number of desperate petty bourgeois relatively large, larger portions begin to turn, not to the big bourgeoisie, but to the working class. They turn, initially, not to abandon their own interests and side with the proletariat, but to advance their own petty intererests in conjunction with or under the guise of working class interests. Thus the role of the petty bourgeois who participates in the Populist movements that now and again break out under imperialism is motivated, not by a desire to overthrow wage-slavery, but to win, in ’alliance’ with the working class, reforms that benefit the petty bourgeoisie directly.
It would be a grave error, but not uncommon to our opportunists, to view this process as any sort of “unification” of class interests, as indicating the “merger” of classes, or as meaning that the working class has become the “representative” of the interests of the “exploited and oppressed” petty bourgeoisie. To maintain such an opportunist view would amount to denying the fundamental contradiction between the interests of the petty bourgeoisie and interests of the proletariat, and would in fact advance the former over the latter. What the working class aspires to and what the petty bourgeoisie aspires to are not only two different, but two diametrically opposed, things. The petty bourgeoisie exists as a separate entity only on the basis of capitalist private property in the means of production, only on the basis of bourgeois economic relations. Its sole interest as a class is to improve and secure its position in capitalist relations at the expense of the modern proletariat. It aspires, as its historical ambition, to turn society backwards to laissez-faire capitalist relations, to petty production and petty entrepreneurship. According to its own interests, it has absolutely no stake in the forward development of history, since monopoly capitalism crushes it and frustrates its interests, and socialism would abolish its interests altogether. Thus while the conditions of broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie may become acutely severe under imperialism, and while petty bourgeois elements may resist the imperialist bourgeoisie, the working class can in no way become the champion or defender of the petty bourgeoisie’s actually reactionary and retrograde interests. It is the function of the political leadership of the working class, the communist Party, to explain the ’bitter’ truth to the petty bourgeoisie that: 1) their position in society is hopeless, that they stand only to be crushed forcibly by monopoly capital, and that the working class offers them, not the perpetuation of their petty interests, but their transformation into truly productive members of socialist society, i.e. their transformation from petty bourgeois into proletarians; 2) that in terms of strata, only the lowest section of the petty bourgeoisie can be viewed as objective allies of the working class, since their conditions of life make it much easier for them to abandon their narrow interests; and 3) that for any strata or individual of the petty bourgeoisie, it is only in so far as they reject their own class interests and place themselves wholly at the disposal of the working class standpoint that they in fact join in the proletarian struggle. The working class stands at the head of the oppressed and exploited masses only to the extent that those masses abandon all petty, narrow striving and place themselves fully at the standpoint of the working class. They must, in short, cease to be petty bourgeois if they are to follow the leadership of the proletariat. This is the only alternative the working class presents: either increasing poverty, insecurity and ousting under imperialism; or, the opportunity to become productive, proletarian members of socialist society. Any attempt to identify the “masses of people” as part of the working class, or to lump together the interests of the “millions of workers” with “their allies, the masses of the people”, is to completely obscure class lines and the various class interests at work within this ’great coalition’, this “unity of classes”. Such a view benefits, not the working class, whose independent interests become adulterated in such an indiscriminate ’unity’ of contrary classes, but the petty bourgeoisie, whose narrow interests are thus snuck in under the guise of ’the struggle against imperialism’. And it is to serve such narrow and petty interests that the League’s “unity of classes” is advanced.
This form of degradation of the interests of the working class is not a new phenomenon in the international communist movement. It is a persistent opportunist conception opposed by Marxism-Leninism from its inception. The Manifesto states clearly that even the lower sections of the petty bourgeoisie fights
...against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat. Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto FLP Peking p.44.
And yet, even despite this clear guiding principle, every midget of ’Marxism’ from the time of the German Social-Democrats has attempted by one or another means to advance as an ’integral’ facet of proletarian revolution, the notion of the ’unity’ between the interests of the petty bourgeoisie and those of the proletariat. One of the clearest statements against such an opportunist formulation, and elaboration of the communist view of the relation between these two classes, is made in Lenin’s article, “Notes on Plekhanov’s Second Draft Programme”, written in 1902. The passages in these notes are of special interest for the working class under imperialism and at a time when the worsening economic conditions of the petty bourgeoisie drives it to active political life, since Lenin is writing of a movement which still has democratic tasks to fulfill and thus which involves the entire and massive petty bourgeoisie as an ally in the democratic revolution. If the petty bourgeoisie is anywhere to be viewed as being so oppressed as to have its oppositional interests ’merge’ with those of the working class, this would seem to be the situation. But as Lenin’s exposition clearly shows, just the opposite is the case. Lenin writes, not of the ’merger’ of the interests of both classes, but of their antagonism. In a capitalistically developed country, when the petty bourgeois opposition to monopoly capital is bound to be extensively developed, it is all the more important to differentiate between what moves the petty bourgeoisie and what moves the proletariat. This passage so clearly states this difference, and the tasks of communists in relation to it, that we will quote it extensively in order that the reader can see whose interests the CCL’s “unity of classes” actually serves. Lenin is directing himself against two paragraphs of Plekhanov’s Draft Programme which, as Lenin states, “...presents the relation of the proletariat to the small producers in an altogether one-sided and incorrect way...”:
...’The discontent of the working and exploited masses is growing’ – that is true, but it is absolutely incorrect to identify the proletariat’s discontent with that of the small producer, and merge the two as has been done here.. The small producers’ discontent very often engenders (and inevitably must engender in them or among a considerable section of them) an urge to defend their existence as small producers, i.e., to defend the foundations of the present-day order, and even to turn it back.
’Their struggle and, above all, the struggle Qf their foremost representative, the proletariat, is becoming sharper...’. The struggle is growing sharper among the small producers too of course. But their ’struggle’ is very often directed against the proletariat. Generally speaking, the proletariat is not at all the petty bourgeoisie’s ’foremost representative’. If that does occur, it is only when the small producers realise that their doom is inevitable, when they ’desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat’. It happens very often, on the other hand, that the anti-Semite and the big landowner, the nationalist and the Narodnik, the social-reformer and the ’critic of Marxism’ are the foremost representatives of the present-day small producer who has not yet deserted ’his own standpoint’. It is least of all appropriate to lump together each and every kind of sharpening, particularly at the present time, when the ’sharpening of the struggle’ of the small producers is accompanied by ’sharpening of the struggle’ of the ’socialist Gironde’ against the ’Mountain’.
...’International (communism) stands at the head of the emancipation movement of the working and exploited masses. ..’. Not at all. It stands at the head of the working class alone, of the working class movement alone, and if other elements join this class these are only elements and not classes. And they come over completely and absolutely only when they ’desert their own standpoint’.
...’It organizes their fighting forces...’. Wrong again. Nowhere does (communism) organize the ’fighting forces’ of the small producers. It organizes the fighting forces of the working class alone. ...
Summa summarum. The draft speaks in positive form of the revolutionary-spirit of the petty bourgeoisie (if it ’supports’ the proletariat, does not this signify that it is revolutionary?) without a single word about its conservatism (and even reactionary spirit). This is entirely onesided and incorrect.
We can (and must) point in positive form to the conservatism of the petty bourgeoisie. And only in conditional form should we point to its revolutionary spirit. Only such a formulation will coincide in full with the entire spirit of Marx’s teachings. For example, the Communist Manifesto...
Let it not be said that matters have changed substantially in the half century since the Communist Manifesto. It is precisely in this respect that nothing has changed: and theoreticians have always and constantly recognized this proposition (for instance, Engels in 1894 refuted the French agrarian programme from this very standpoint. He stated outright that until the small peasant deserts his standpoint, he is not with us; his place is with the anti-Semites; let them put him through the mill, and the more the bourgeois parties dupe him, the more surely he will come over to us)...
Besides, reference to the dictatorship of the proletariat contained in the original draft is missing here. Even if this were done accidentally, through an oversight, it is still indubitable that the concept of ’dictatorship’ is incompatible with positive recognition of outside support for the proletariat. If we really knew positively that the petty bourgeoisie will support the proletariat in the accomplishment of its, the proletariat’s revolution, it would be pointless to speak of a ’dictatorship’ , for we would then be fully guaranteed so overwhelming a majority that we could get on very well without a dictatorship... The recognition of the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat is most closely and inseparably bound up with the thesis of the Communist Manifesto that the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. V.I. Lenin Notes on Plekhanov’s Second Draft Programme CW Vol 26 pp. 49-51.
The principles Lenin outlines above are such an integral part of the communist worldview and are such absolutely necessary guidelines for developing correct tactics for the workers’ class struggle, that it is inconceivable that real communist work is possible without taking this relationship into account. And yet, our movement has been dominated precisely by the error Lenin argues against here, precisely by the merging of the proletariat’s “...class struggle with the struggle of all sorts of weathercocks...” (Vol.6 p.53).
The League’s “unity of classes”, “the entire Canadian people”, “the state attacks all strata of the people who resist”, and so on, are all expressions of this lumping together of class interests in order to ’protect and serve’ the petty bourgeoisie, the class the League itself is drawn from. It is interesting, too, that the League has accomplished its peculiar opportunist phrase-making only after having waged intense struggle ’against’ more overt lumpers-together. The League’s forerunners were the ’shocktroops’ of the anti-CPC(ML) forces, building a reputation and a following for the League on this very question. The MREQ’s trump card was to denounce the CPC(ML) (and, though they never drew the connection, J. Scott and all others who follow some variation of the Canada-as-a-colony line) for its objective denial of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a denial based on the unification of the interests of all non-monopoly capital with those of the proletariat, the proletariat being the only class capable of ’national liberation’ struggle and ’national defense’ in the face of foreign capital domination. To this the MREQ posed the ’class against class’ struggle, the Canadian bourgeoisie vs. Canadian and Quebec proletariat, and has maintained this very ’class’ position against En Lutte! as well as CPC(ML). But as it turns out, the League has built a following for itself by waging intense struggle ’against’ a position that it itself holds in a ’modified’ form. Where the CPC(ML) outrightly calls for an all-class alliance (excluding the monopolists, of course), the CCL(ML) has called for a “class against class” struggle which, only ’by-the-by’, happens to include the “unity of classes” i.e., an all-class alliance of “the entire Canadian people”, the petty bourgeoisie + the proletariat. Excluding, of course, the monopolists. Thus the CCL(ML) differentiates it own peculiar opportunism from the CPC(ML)’s by simply throwing in an additional catch-phrase: “class against class”. This, of course, is such a terrific blow against the CPC(ML) that all and sundry begin to flock to the CCL(ML) out of sheer admiration. The CPC(ML), you see, proposes an opportunist all-class alliance. Whereas the CCL(ML) (and this makes all the ’difference’ in the world) proposes “class against class” and the “unity of classes”. What a dramatic advance!
The CCL further demarcates itself by excluding from that “...basic class: the working class and its allies the masses of people...” such elements as the upper petty bourgeoisie (what the CPC(ML) calls the non-monopoly bourgeoisie), the trade union bureaucrats and the labour aristocracy. But lest we think that the League would heartlessly lop off such next-of-kin without conditions, the League informs us that this cruel and unusual treatment of a section of “the people” applies only in peace-time. And, fortunately for the League, it will not have to offend its ’class brothers’ too much longer since, as we know by the good graces of the Rights who send us endless warnings through the pages of Peking Review, both the ’two contending trends of war and revolution’ are on the rise. And with the official encouragement of those same Rights, the League has already launched its campaign to organize the united front “of the whole people” (Statement p.54) and “...all the forces who can be united against the superpowers” (#14 p.12). Thus the League, through only slightly different maneuvers than the CPC(ML), can accomplish the ’revolutionary’ unity of all and sundry under the signboard of the proletariat. The League even throws a bone to the monopoly bourgeoisie (lest they feel excluded), urging it to demarcate itself from the superpowers (#12 p.3). The League is not so utterly stupid as to invite the big bourgeoisie outright, chastizes it for its “inconsistency and vacillation” in the defense of Canadian nationhood, and lays down the ’harsh’ conditions that it cannot be included “as a class” in the united front (#14 p.12). One by one, perhaps; but not “as a class”. This ultra-opportunism that the League develops with so many ’conditions’ is the logical outcome of the League’s fundamental intention in declaring itself ’with’ and the ’vanguard’ of the working class. Its founders have not, in fact, ’abandoned their own class standpoint’, but have merely modified the means by which that standpoint is expressed. And once that is accomplished, once it has promoted itself as a ’working class’, ’Marxist-Leninist’ organization, then everything – Economism, social-chauvinism, revisionism – is within its reach. And these are the vital ’tools-of-the-trade’ for wretched opportunists who, lacking substance of their own, wish to feed off the working class.
The CCL(ML)’s direct concealment of the petty bourgeoisie brazenly contradicts Marxism-Leninism, which demands that “We must incessantly explain to the proletariat the theoretical truths about the nature of the class interests of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in capitalist society.” (V.I. Lenin Notes of a Publicist CW Vol.13 p.73)
Failing to meet this task amounts to disarming the workers, or rather to maintaining their present disarmament in the face of the enemy. The workers’ understanding of their own role in capitalist society is inseparably bound up with a comprehensive and integral materialist understanding of the interests and roles of all other classes and strata in society. It is only this knowledge and the practical action ensuing from it, organized under the leadership of the Party which embodies the finest elements of the working class and the furthest advances of socialist science, that can free the class from the bounds of trade unionism and turn it onto the high road of independent class struggle for political power. The League will object that it has nothing criminal in mind, and that despite its ’slight oversight’ on the matter of the petty bourgeoisie, it has, after all, declared Party-building the “central task”, has indicated that such a Party must be “really”, “truly”, “honestly” a “genuine” Marxist-Leninist Party composed of “authenic” communists and so on. It will protest that it has, after all, and despite its ’lapse’ into treason against the working class, ’talked up’ the need for “class against class” struggle and so on, and has sworn by the ’independence’ of the working class. But the class independence of the proletariat is not at all accomplished through “linking up” a series of stupid catch-phrases, has nothing at all to do with saying the ’right’ phrases or slogans. In Lenin’s words,
The independence of proletarian politics is not determined by writing the word ’independence’ in the right places ... it is determined only by a precise definition of a path that is really independent. V.I. Lenin The Attitude Towards Bourgeois Parties CW Vol.12 p.499
The path ’precisely’ defined by the CCL(ML), however, is a path that denies the working class the weapon of political knowledge and thus strips it of its political independence This path conceals the strivings of the petty bourgeoisie, merges those interests with those of the working class, and thus destroys the latter in order to advance its own. It attempts to convince the workers that the petty bourgeoisie, the “masses of the peopl have no interests apart from the working class and are the workers’ natural ’allies’. And by this means it hopes to replace the revolutionary proletariat with the petty and narrow strivings of ’its own’.
But what sort of ’revolution’ would such a path bring about? What can be the result of stripping the working class of its independent action, and instead fostering the leading role of an essentially reactionary class as the petty bourgeoisie? It can lead, not to socialism, but to a petty bourgeois ’socialism’, a Social-Democratic or national-socialist ’revolution’. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has studied the massive outbreak of revisionist and ultra-opportunist ’ML’ tendencies that has occurred during the past 40 years. The League has already committed itself to a social-chauvinist strategy in the event of world war, and such ultra-opportunism is in every respect a social-fascist tendency. All that is lacking is for the League to demonstrate to the bourgeoisie its ability to successfully rally “the entire Canadian people” behind a petty reformist and national-chauvinist programme, keep the working class within the bounds of “class struggle trade unionism”, and display sufficient patriotism in the event of war. The bourgeoisie could ask for no better ’ML’ cover to keep business running as usual.
Having liquidated all the essential tasks of the first period of the Party, the CCL is now set to take the leadership of “revolutionary actions”. This is, after all, the self-ordained means of ’affirmation’ that it is “really” a ’workers party’ or on the brink of same.
At its founding, as part of ’rejecting’ its consistent Economism and building up its ’politicization’, the League provided us with a clear theoretical projection of its upcoming practical work, the focal point of which would be the “struggles of the working class”:
Our intervention in economic struggles must contribute to their inseparable fusion with political struggles into a single battle. In taking part in the political struggle for reforms, we seek to clarify the goals of these struggles and to lead them openly against the bourgeoisie and its state. Initiating and leading directly political struggles against the enemies of the proletarian revolution is what is most important for us. Statement of Political Agreement p.69
Although it would certainly have found another, perhaps more limited, struggle soon enough, luck was with the League, even before its formal declaration. In Bill C-73 brought down the month before its formation, Trudeau had provided an act of state repression to which the spontaneous working class movement responded instantaneously. Here was the perfect opportunity for the League to show its stuff, to ’fuse’ the economic and political struggles “into a single battle”. The League immediately rose to the occasion. By the second issue of The Forge, it had informed us that because the fight against the wage freeze was “part of the struggle for socialism”, it was aiming “...to link all the local battles to the country-wide struggle against the anti-labour measures, to concentrate our energies on building a revolutionary resistance to the Trudeau law.” (The Forge #2 p.3)
And further to this, that
It is only through patiently educating, informing and organizing the struggle in each union, each region, and each factory that we will succeed in gaining the upper hand over the bourgeoisie in this battle against the Trudeau law. Ibid. p.3
And that “The general strike is the only possible means for the working class in Canada to struggle effectively against this rotten law.” (Ibid. p.6)
In fact, the League advanced that the struggle to “initiate and lead”, or more modestly, to “prepare” this general strike “...serves to bring the most advanced workers to an understanding of the need for socialist revolution and to draw them into the struggle for the creation of a communist party in Canada.” (Ibid p.3)
In short, the campaign to “prepare” a general strike for repeal of Bill C-73 is designated by the League as being the key to simultaneously win the ’advanced elements’, forge the party, organize and lead the class in “revolutionary actions”, and thus affirm the League’s line and party, declared or not. Such is the sum and substance of the League’s entire orientation in the working class. But this view is fundamentally incorrect.
This heroic “Fight Back” against the wage freeze, while indeed being a political struggle (in that it is directed against the state), is still a political struggle on the economic front, i.e., is still only trade unionist politics. The League’s approach to participation in this spontaneous resistance, a resistance that in no way depends on the catch-phrases of the CCL, in no way raises the spontaneous movement above this level. At best, the League’s flurry of activity around C-73 is simply the best living example of the Economism so thoroughly expressed in the CCL’s theory.
The CCL(ML) presents Bill C-73 as something quite out of the ordinary, as an “unprecedented offensive” by the bourgeoisie against the entire Canadian people. The CCL must play up the Bill as being such a horrendous event precisely in order to make the struggle against it a catch-all for the League’s sloganeering. But the enactment of a wage freeze law is in reality only one facet of the general and prolonged offensive of capital against labour. As any worker knows, and as the League itself points out on the sly, the use of such legal maneuvers is certainly not new nor unique in the history of capitalism. It is part of the all-round political and economic crisis of imperialism, utilized in times of ’prosperity’ as well as during deep and extended crisis. But this particular wage freeze has special attraction for the League. It presents a perfect vehicle for the League to ’test in practice’ the opportunism it has already worked out in theory. Bill C-73 is, after all, something that affects the entire working class, nationwide. And having such a nationwide impact, stirring workers across the country into action, it must be, from the League’s viewpoint, a “part of the struggle for socialism”. The League does not bother proving to us that nationwide trade unionist politics = “part of the struggle for socialism”. It leaves this connection to bold assertion. But once it has stated the ’revolutionary’ implications of the “Fight Back”, all that remains is to spur it on. And this the League sets out to do.
The League demonstrates its conception of “inseparable fusion” by stressing the “...just demands of the workers and other wage earners...” and the need “...to catch up with what we have lost in terms of real salaries due to the inflation caused by the bosses...”. The Trudeau law, we are told, not only stands “...in the way of all workers struggles to preserve and improve their living and working conditions...”(#4 p.7), but also is the basis of a
...global attack by the bourgeoisie...which aims to beat back ’for good’ the just demands of the working class, to take away our fundamental rights such as the right to strike (Bill 253 in Quebec), and in the final analysis to try and crush the whole union movement. The Forge #6 p. 3
This is not, we must remember, an article in some trade union journal, but the voice of the ’vanguard organization to create the party’. This is not the lament of some union hack, but the fruit of ’political knowledge’. So much rallying behind the “just demands” of the trade union struggle, such strong defense of the right to strike, such ’concern’ for the “living and working conditions”. And yet not a single word of substance on the ’just demand’ of the working class to overturn, not just a single law, but the entire capitalist state. If we were to follow the League’s line of reasoning (however painful and cramped that might be) we would have to conclude that if the trade unionist struggle to repeal a nationwide law is “part of the struggle for socialism”, then every trade union struggle within this ’one great trade union struggle’ is also part and parcel of the struggle for socialism. This will of course come as a surprise to many workers who, while struggling for a dime an hour, will suddenly discover that they are actually struggling for state power. But workers know well enough that a trade union struggle, even if it involves the government and so assumes a trade unionist political character, is still only a trade union struggle, and that after all is said and done they’ll be punching in tomorrow as usual. And if some knee-jerk university student should come along declaring that trade unionist politics = “the struggle for socialism”, and that the repeal of Bill C-73 is the be-all and end-all of the workers’ class struggle, the workers would wonder what they had done to deserve such a pestering. It is bad enough to have the bourgeoisie on one’s back, let alone every fool on earth.
The League should at least be credited for its accurate reporting on the intents and purposes of Bill C-73, that is, for adequately filling the shoes of any liberal reformer or trade union crusader. Much of what the CCL says of the Trudeau law is true, just as any trade unionist politics deals with the ’true’ conditions of capital’s exploitation of labour. But from the communist standpoint, the League’s activity only commits the
...fundamental error that all Economists commit, namely, their conviction that it is possible to develop the class political consciousness of the workers from within, so to speak, their economic struggle, i.e., making this struggle the exclusive (or, at least, the main) starting point, making it the exclusive, or, at least, the main basis. V.I. Lenin What is to be Done? FLP Peking p.97
By making the economic struggle the main basis of its work (though it attempts to disguise this by backing trade unionist politics), the League automatically restricts the scope of its activity to essentially reformist issues. But within this, it also attempts to develop “political consciousness of the workers”, such as it sees it. It is thus not simply an Economist trend, whose failing is its restriction to reformism. In its Economist framework it propagandizes its ’political knowledge’, towhit: the “unity of classes”, ’defense of national interests’, and so on, culminating in open social-chauvinism. It is thus a thoroughly Right opportunist, even ultra-opportunist trend taking up “class struggle” against the working class.
This pervasive and complete Right opportunism permeates every facet of the League’s line, despite its occasional use of ’left’ phrase-making to give its ponderous Rightism a little shine. Such is the use the League makes of its brassy calls for “class against class” struggle. This phrase has some notoriety in the history of the communist movement, and was originally and correctly used by Marx in his polemic against Proudhon: “...the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle which carried to its highest expression is a total revolution” (M&E CW Vol.6 p.212). This class against class struggle, when it is meant not as a catch-phrase but as science, is developed spontaneously by the working class movement, but in so far as it remains spontaneous, remains only the embryo of true class struggle. In order to become a true class struggle, in order to achieve “its highest expression”, the spontaneous movement must be given the light of political knowledge, made conscious of its spontaneous nature so that spontaneity can be overcome, and through class conscious organization be raised to the level of a consistently waged struggle for political power. Thus, the fact that the workers may, on their own, militantly resist the onslaught of capital, or wage a struggle to influence the government on their behalf, does not mean that such struggles are class struggles. Various actions against the state, including the
...movement to force through an eight-hour, etc. law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say, a movement of the class, with the object of enforcing its interests in a general form, in a form possessing general, socially coercive force. Marx Letter to F. Bolte November 29, 1871 Selected Correspondence p.271
But this spontaneously developed political movement is not the “highest expression” of class struggle. In the same letter, Marx writes that “while these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organization, they are in turn equally a means of developing this organization”(our emphasis). Such a level of development – trade unionist politics – is a political struggle, but is trade unionist in content since it aims only to influence the affairs of state, not smash it. And in addition, it is a means, but not the sole means, to organize a conscious class struggle. Lenin reminded those who had become taken with trade unionist politics that
It is not enough that the class struggle becomes real, consistent and developed only when it embraces the sphere of politics. In politics, too, it is possible to restrict oneself to minor matters, and it is possible to go deeper, to the very foundations. Marxism recognizes class struggle as fully developed, ’nationwide’, only if it does not merely embrace politics but takes in the most significant thing in politics – the organization of state power. V.I. Lenin The Liberal and Marxist Conceptions of Class Struggle CW Vol. 19 p.121-122
The “highest expression“ of class struggle, and thus its mature form, is the consciously led and organized struggle of the entire working class to smash the bourgeois state and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
For Marxist-Leninists, the “class against class“ struggle is not fulfilled by the spontaneous outbreaks of the working class nor by nationwide trade union political movements to win particular reforms. The class struggle must be built, organized and led by the Party, through the most patient, systematic, professional, and principled communist work. It demands a steadfastness and principled discipline that can be achieved only through proven competence in the science of Marxism-Leninism and fusion with the finest representatives of the entire working class. It should be obvious that a movement as young, inexperienced and spontaneously opportunist as ours is still far short of consistent communist work. To put ourselves onto this path must be the top priority in all our work, for it is only such a tightly unified, politically conscious and coordinated communist working class movement that will be able to maintain and consistently advance the struggle for proletarian dictatorship through the most severe vicissitudes, defeats, repression and setbacks inevitable in a prolonged class struggle.
The CCL, however, sees things somewhat differently. For the League, “class against class“ struggle means the mass mobilization, the simultaneous rising-up of the working class and “its allies the masses of people“ for a single “class confrontation“ around some political, but trade unionist political, issue. It means the “linking“ of local battles for a “united response” of the “masses”, a “revolutionary resistance” to “strike a powerful blow” at the bourgeoisie over something the spontaneous movement can relate to ’right now’, that is, over some reformist issue. It means the General Strike, a “massive resistance” as the “only possible means” of “pushing back” the bourgeoisie, of removing a legal hindrance weakening the workers’ bargaining power and rocking the boat of the big union “fatcats”. It is a view of ’class struggle’ which conjures a picture of the Big Showdown, the Masses vs. Capital, “Class Against Class”, demanding repeal of the infamous Trudeau law. All of this inflated hyperactivity is, from the League’s standpoint, part of the “struggle class against class for socialism, working class against the bourgeoisie”, which as we must deduce is the accumulation and summation of all the previous “united responses” and is “in the end, the solution” (#2 p.7). But the content of all this blazing imagery remains, not the struggle for socialism, but simply a struggle to repeal a particular law. It does not, despite all the “linking up”, relate in any fashion to socialism, except that when ’socialist’ opportunists such as the CCL claim that trade unionist politics is the “highest expression” of class struggle, this only confuses the struggle for socialism and becomes an obstacle to consistent communist work.
The League’s conception of the ’general strike’ reduces to “direct action” of mass mobilizations which, in its childish imagination, is meant to bring about one massive onslaught of “mighty blows” which supposedly will knock the bourgeoisie from the throne. But if the general strike is the “only possible means” not only to resist a national law, but also for such struggles as the Common Front, then it would follow that it is the “only solution” in every sphere of production. Following its reasoning, such as it is, the League would arrive at the general strike as the fundamental and principle means of struggle. This is precisely the path the League is already on, bring the general strike, the single massive upsurge, to the forefront in both of the two main areas of its work. The League’s inflation of the general strike tactic as the “only solution” for the immediate struggles of the class, and its failure to elaborate any other forms of struggle for its supposed “class against class” struggle, amounts to nothing less than
Blind faith in the miracle-working power of all direct action; the wrenching of this ’direct action’ out of its general social and political context, without the slightest analysis of the latter; in short the ’arbitrarily mechanical interpretation of social phenomena’ (as Karl Liebknecht put it)... V.I. Lenin Bellicose Militarism and the Anti-Militarist Tactics of S-D CW Vol. 15 p.195.
The League is a victim of such ’blind faith’, not out of a ’leftist’ fascination for direct action or because they think that the general strike is really the “only possible means”, but simply because this seemingly very ’Left’ call for a general strike is in perfect harmony with their consistent Right opportunist tailing after the trade union movement. With such an ’only solution’ the League is freed of all the ’trivial detail’ of real communist tactics (which would undoubtedly ’interfere’ with the CCL’s bowing to spontaneity), and can at the same time ’prove’ its ’socialist’ intentions by pretending that the
...general strike is the lever employed by which the social revolution is started. One fine morning all the workers in all the industries of a country, or even of the whole world, stop work, thus forcing the propertied classes either humbly to submit without four weeks at the most, or to attack the workers, who would then have the right to defend themselves and use this opportunity to pull down the entire old society. Engels The Bakuninists at Work Progress Publishers Moscow p.9
It is a small matter to the League that its “only possible means” has nothing in common with communist tactics and contributes absolutely nothing, as the League has presented it, to the struggle for socialism. All that the League sought, behind the phrase-making on the general strike, was a suitable demagogic catch-phrase behind which it could practice its Economism and ultra-opportunism.
To adopt such an orientation is to be blind indeed to the real tasks before the movement, to turn away from what is really demanded if we are to develop consistent, stable communist leadership for the working class movement. If the CCL had addressed itself to this question, if it had been at all concerned with real Marxist-Leninist leadership, it would have set its tasks in the context of a disunited communist movement, one dominated by the most diverse forms of opportunism, suffering from extreme factionalism, not yet having answered the burning questions of the day, not yet having developed clear Marxist-Leninist principles, barely even beginning open polemics and still not developing clear and comprehensive criticism and exposure of opportunism. It would have recognized that there has been and still is no principled Marxist-Leninist trend able to win the forces of the movement through consistent theoretical and practical leadership. It would have understood that as a result of such circumstances our movement’s practical work is suffering badly, that we are still unable to win over the advanced workers, unable to establish or consolidate a communist tradition in all local and regional areas throughout our two countries, and thus still unable to lay a granite foundation for our Party. And it would have grasped the fact that to change all of this, our movement should be “concentrating its energies” on the establishment of firm and definite principles and conscientiously developed propaganda to win the advanced.
But all this is simply too much for our “vanguards’ of the League. Why bother with such tasks at all when one can simply declare them fulfilled and get down to business? And that is precisely what the League has in mind. What one lacks in substance one can always make up for in sheer gall. The League has shown it has learned, if from nothing else, then at least from its own petty bourgeois heritage. Just as the 1960’s petty bourgeois movement bowed to the spontaneity of the moment in a variety of ways, the CCL has taken to bowing to the spontaneity of the workers’ movement, tailing behind it, and attempts to pass such subservience off as ’conscious’ communist leadership. Just as the 60’s movement was marked by a drift from one spontaneous action to the next, so here the CCL drifts from one “mighty blow” to the next. Just as the 60’s movement revealed the incapacity of the petty bourgeoisie to wage prolonged, sustained and disciplined struggle, so here the League rejects systematic communist work in favour of the cheap thrills of militant Economism. It is not at all to the League’s founders’ discredit that they participated in the 1960’s movement, nor even that they share a petty bourgeois class basis. The communist movement, until it has achieved fusion with the working class, is invariably petty bourgeois in makeup, and most often its membership has previously participated in some form of purely petty bourgeois politics. But the League discredits itself and the movement it claims to represent when it persists in defending petty bourgeois interests and methods, and at the same time pretends to be the ’vanguard’ leadership of the working class. Then it is not simply an organization subject to opportunist errors, but becomes an obstacle and enemy to the working class movement. Its programme is a testament to its opportunism and bankruptcy, to its contempt for the needs and tasks facing the movement as a whole. Its aim is to advance only the interests of its own factional opportunism in any and every way possible, and thus secure itself a place in imperialism’s social props hall-of-fame. Such is the stand of the CCL(ML).
We have no doubt that the CCL will declare its ’party’, in exactly the same fashion as the CPC(ML) declared its. It may even be, as with the Americans, that we will suffer such a massive outbreak of opportunism that ’parties’ will dot the countryside from Halifax to Vancouver. The petty bourgeoisie has, after all and if nothing else, a mind of its own, and dedicated opportunists will do what they will. But we should not mistake all this ’activity’ for real movement, for in fact it is not. If the CCL(ML) wishes to continue spinning in its own narrow circle, then in fact nothing can be done for it. There is not, after all, a ’Trudeau law’ against stupidity. The CCL(ML), as is evident from its work, is simply exercising its “fundamental right” to advance nonsense in the name of the working class. But the working class, too, has “rights”, rights based not on the petty self-admiration typified by the League, but based on its historical mission and its duty to sweep every opportunist obstacle from its path. As the League stands now, it stands squarely in our way.