First Published: In Struggle No. 77, December 20, 1976
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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Our concrete analysis of the political economy of Canada has clearly demonstrated that the Canadian State is not puppet State but the necessary result of the development of capitalism is our country. Since Confederation, our country has been a politically independent one, where the national bourgeoisie controls the State power. All this has been realized despite the economic and political weakness of the Canada bourgeoisie, an illustration of the fact that we cannot make a mechanical transposition between economics and politics.
In the same way, in the Twentieth Century, and particularly after the Second World War, the domination of American Imperialism over our country, never questioned the control of the Canadian bourgeoisie of the State power, nor its transformation into an Imperialist bourgeoisie.
Even more important is the alliance between the Canadian bourgeoisie and American imperialism which has constituted since that time, the principal aspect of the imperialist policy of our bourgeoisie. This alliance has a double aspect: on the one hand, it is the manifestation of foreign domination but on the other hand it is the principal means by which the Canadian monopoly bourgeoisie practices, on an international scale an imperialist policy: its relations with other countries are commanded by the necessity of widening its field of investment.
On a national level, Canada is a bourgeois democracy in which, as it is the rule in the imperialist stage, the reactionary tendency becomes more and more important, the democratic rights historically conceded under pressure from the workers’ movement and the popular forces are dangerously threatened. As Lenin said: imperialism on the economical level is the monopolies and on the political level it is reaction.
The reactionary policy of the Canadian bourgeoisie is directed against all strata of the people but primarily against the proletariat. It is also directed in a significant way against the Quebecois nation, the Amerindians and Inuits, against the women of the people and the immigrant workers, to mention only the more important oppressed strata of the people.
Of at the contradictions in the Canadian society, the principal contradictions is the one opposing the Canadian proletariat to the Canadian bourgeoisie.
The revolutionary camp in our country is made up of the proletariat: both men and women of the Quebecois nation, as well as that of English Canadian nation, also including immigrant workers. It is also composed of large strata of the petty-bourgeoisie and farmers whose existence is threatened by imperialism. Because of the national oppression they suffer, the oppressed strata, of the Quebecois nation, of the Inuits, of the Amerindians are also allies of the proletariat.
Nevertheless, of all the classes opposed to the bourgeoisie, the proletariat is the only class really revolutionary.
Its alliance with all the other classes is always unstable because of the intermediary nature of all these other classes. The proletariat is not only the principal force of the Canadian revolution but also it is the leading force.
The reactionary camp is composed of the Canadian bourgeoisie, principal enemy of the Canadian proletariat, and American imperialism, its ally. The other imperialist States, including Soviet social-imperialism, should equally be considered enemies of the Canadian revolution.
The principal task of the Canadian proletariat, led by its vanguard party, is the violent overthrow of the bourgeois dictatorship in order to build socialism and communism.
It Is the evolution itself of the contradictions which animate the revolutionary camp, that of the reaction and their reciprocal relations that will put our country in a revolutionary situation where the overthrow of state power, today in the hands of the Canadian bourgeoisie, will be possible and will lead to the building of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is unavoidable, but it won’t come out of the blue. For the revolution to happen, the conditions for it have to be there, but even more, the masses have to accomplish it. In the subjective and objective conditions which prevail in Canada, it is up to the proletariat, and more particularly its vanguard party, to assume the leadership of the masses in the struggle for socialism. This is why the central task of Canadian Marxist-Leninist communists today is to pursue the building of the proletarian party, without which the socialist revolution is impossible.