The positive aspects of the text in general:
Firstly, it should be noted that “Beginnings of a Socialist Movement in Montreal” represents a serious attempt to analyse scientifically the recent history of groups of progressive militants in Montreal, while trying to place this analysis in the context of developing economic forces and class relationships in Quebec. In the text, the authors tried to go beyond a simple description or facile generalizations, to analyse concretely progressive political activity (in Montreal). This in itself is a major step forward, even if the analysis in the second part of the text is based on a political line we now consider incorrect.
Secondly, the mass of information in the text on the activities of socialist militants in the citizens’ committees, in FRAP, and in various groups that have followed, is also of considerable importance and useful. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a public document has presented such basic information on the various Montreal groups, and thus enabled those who were not directly implicated to understand their development.
SPECIFIC COMMENTS ON THE ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONTEXT:
The quality of the economic and political analysis and the analysis of the union movement represent a third positive aspect of the text. Though not without faults and over-generalizations, the analysis is an attempt, with the aid of Marxist theory, to understand the relationship between changing economic conditions and the development of class relations, both within the bourgeoisie and between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In this sense the text represents a step forward in comparison to previous texts, both on the level of method and of content.
Nonetheless, certain remarks are necessary concerning various aspects of this analysis.
On the Nature of the Principle Contradiction in Quebec.
Baseing ourselves on the first version of “Travailleurs Quebecois et Lutte Nationale,”[1] we had defined and used the concept of principle contradiction by reducing it to the major political conflict visible on the “political scene” in a given period. This led us to talk of the national struggle between the Parti Quebecois and the federalist parties as the basic manifestation of the principle contradiction in Quebec.
Such a conception is incorrect. We believe that the principal contradiction must be considered above all as a contradiction between classes, whether these are already organized and active on the political level or constituted by social forces, still little organised and absent from “politics” at a given time.
Following on from these remarks, we believe that at present, the principal contradiction is the foreign domination of the Quebec nation and people shown in two interlinked forms: 1) the growing control of American imperialism in Quebec, and 2) the national oppression we suffer inside Canada on the part of the Canadian bourgeoisie. In class terms, this contradiction opposes on the one hand big American and Canadian capital (the dominant aspect) and on the other the Quebec people, composed of the working class, the lower levels of the petty bourgeoisie, and certain elements of the middle levels of the petty bourgeoisie. Between these two poles oscillate the present nationalist forces, (e.g. the PQ) composed principally of the middle and upper levels of the petty bourgeoisie and certain nationalist elements of Quebec’s middle-level bourgeoisie.
On the Pick-Up in the Economy (of 72-73)
In discussing the economic improvement that began in ’72, we said in “Beginnings” specifically that it should have the effect of increasing the economic power of the workers vis-a-vis their respective bosses. That is, given their enormous profits, the bosses would be more prepared to make monetary concessions to their workers rather than waste a prosperous period because of a strike. Although generally correct, these remarks only told part of the story and were incorrect in their narrow economist viewpoint. If things were always like that, how does one explain such long and hard strikes as Firestone, Price, Canadian Gypsum, and United Aircraft, to mention only the most well-known? In presenting the terms of the balance of economic forces between the companies and their workers, we forgot that it was necessary to bring in other factors than the general economic situation: specifically the economic force of the particular enterprise, and the militancy of its workers.
This analysis is clearly the most important part of “Beginnings”. It is equally the part requiring the most criticism.
Firstly, there is a definite gap between the stated intentions of the text and the reality it in fact describes.
The explicit objectives of the text are as follows. Firstly, it tries to see the stages and principle characteristics of the developing link between the progressive petty bourgeoisie and the workers movement and the working class in general. Secondly, it claims to present, via this linking process, the first stages of an organized socialist movement, that is, “the link between socialism and the working class.”
In reality the development of only a part of this progressive petty bourgeoisie is presented by the text: that which was found in the citizens’ committees, in FRAP, in CAPs St. Jacques and Maisonneuve, and finally, in the groups of militants that directly followed them. Certainly this is an important fraction of the progressive petty bourgeoisie. Nonetheless it must be admitted that there exist other fractions, other progressive groups whose importance doesn’t have to be argued.
For example, the text does not present the activities developed at present by militants on levels other than the workplace: in working class communities, for example, via various “services” (e.g. food coops, health clinics, etc.) or with housewives. In the same way it denies the existence of other political tendencies developing through these various practices, particularly that which would become the editorial committee of the paper En Lutte[2]. This is hardly the way to develop unity between socialist militants.
THE DEFICIENCIES AND ERRORS OF THE ANALYSIS
a) Essentially, the Analysis of the Period up to the Collapse of FRAP is Correct.
A basic quality of the text should be recognized from the beginning: it correctly seized the political meaning of militant activity. Above all, this is based on its explicit recognition of the central task of linking with the working class. In effect, the dominant factor in the history of community and progressive groups has been the various levels of their link with the working class, the means they have used to develop these links, and the errors they have committed. Correctly, the text presents this.
On top of this, the text makes a very correct analysis of the periods of the citizens’ committees and of FRAP. It recalls that at the time this task of linking with the working class was conceived of in a very elitist way, and also that we confused the working class, the proletariat, and working people in general. It recalls also that the political content of this time was essentially social-democratic, marked by a very populist attitude. This camouflaged a desire to keep peoples’ struggles under the control of militants from the progressive petty-bourgeoisie.
Nonetheless the FRAP period allowed militants of CAP St. Jacques, and later, Maisonneuve, to develop considerably. The text recalls this clearly enough:
We were led in this period to clarify the position that the basic task of political militants is the struggle to build a political organisation of the workers.
We identified two general tasks that would lead towards this goal. Implantation among the masses, principally in the workplaces, is the first of these tasks. This was not presented in a restricted sense (i.e. to go and work in a shop), but on a wider level (the spread, via different means, of proletarian ideology among the masses). The second task was the acquisition of Marxist-Leninist theory by militants.
b) The Analysis of CAPs St. Jacques and Maisonneuve after FRAP is Partial: the Intellectualist Tendency is Described.
The text “Beginnings” gives therefore a correct idea of the period up to the collapse of FRAP. Where the analysis begins to fall down is in the presentation of the period from 1971, after FRAP, until the summer of 1973, the writing of the text. Let us return to the text.
In general it shows us that the movement of linking with the masses was dominated, in the period 71-72, by an intellectualist deviation.
With some confusion, the authors define this deviation in the CAPs in the following terms:
If Marxism became, after FRAP, a reference point and a useful guide for clarifying militants’ activity, it was a Marxism taken from books and little understood. As a result, many militants were led to subordinate practice to theory, and, via an intense program of individual political education, search for a complete and total political line, while at the same time forgetting that the link with the working class was only just beginning.
There also existed in the CAPs (above all in St. Jacques in 72) a false conception of the relationship between intellectuals and workers, between the so-called revolutionary militants in the CAPs and the workers movement. Based on a fixed conception of Lenin’s positions on the relationship between the conscious element and the spontaneous element, many militants idealized the role of revolutionary intellectuals (their own role) and denied the role of the working class. Such an attitude led militants to see as their first task the recruitment of militant workers into the CAPs, which they saw as essentially the vanguard of the workers’ movement, despite these organisations’ isolation from that movement.
The workers thus recruited were obliged to suffer through a level of political debate much above their own level of development. On top of this, the internal functioning of the CAPs did not allow them to be integrated. Finally, not many workers were interested. For those that were, they risked finding themselves isolated in their own workplaces. Effectively, the type of political education proposed to them by the CAP militants gave them few tools that were useful in raising the class consciousness of their fellow-workers, on the basis of the workers’ own needs and preoccupations.
Finally, the organisation of the CAPs was very bureaucratic; the best militants found themselves mobilized full-time on technical and coordinating tasks that were totally out of proportion to the real importance of the CAPs.
The result of these errors is clear: the process of linking with the working class was slowed down, if not stopped, while the organisations of militants stagnated.
Still according to the text, certain militants, aware of this setback, decided to transform their point of view and work towards the construction of autonomous committees of workers in the workplaces. In other words, everything is presented as if the “workers’ committees” stage followed directly the “intellectualist” stage, and was somehow the correct solution to this deviation.
Unfortunately, these affirmations are not quite correct. By presenting things in this way, the text commits three errors.
c) The Empiricist Tendency is Not Analysed.
The first error is in the analysis of the intellectualist deviation, particularly concerning the links between theory and practice, and the relationship between intellectuals and workers.
In terms of theory and practice, the authors were correct in stating that the basic error was to arrive at the point of subordinating practice to Marxist theory. What they forgot to mention was the confusion existing at the time, between Marxism as a tool for analysing social and economic reality, and Marxism-Leninism as a political guide to the orientation of our practices. Militants with some understanding of the capitalist mode of production were considered “advanced,” even if this understanding was of little use in clarifying their perspectives on how to build up the link with the working class. Such an error laid the ground for the extreme empiricism that would follow. Marxism as it was used having proved its lack of usefulness as a guide to practice, numerous militants concluded in effect that it wasn’t worth bothering with, and launched themselves headfirst into practice.
As for the question of relations between intellectuals and workers, the problem was not in the fact that militants of CAPs St. Jacques and Maisonneuve attempted to recruit militant workers into the CAPs. After all, has there ever been an organisation with the stated objective of overthrowing capitalism and building socialism that has not concerned itself with its progressive proletarianization? The problem lay in the fact that the question of recruitment was never clarified (who are we recruiting, and on what basis?) On top of this, the CAP militants had no political strategy to propose to the workers contacted. Finally, they never made systematic efforts to understand that the proletarianization of organisations of militants (i.e. “recruitment”) was only one condition for the emergence of the party, and not unconnected from others, such as the development of proletarian ideology in the masses.
The second error was an error of method tn the analysis of the historical development of the two CAPs.
In effect, parts 3 and 4 of “Beginnings” (after FRAP’s collapse) refer to the historical development of the two CAPs, even if they don’t state this explicitly. Now, it is an incorrect analysis to state that the CAPs were dominated exclusively by the intellectualist tendency right up to the point where people, in opposing the errors of this tendency, were led to put the priority on the development of workers’ committees.
In fact, if the authors of “Beginnings” had been explicitly analysing the history of the CAPs, on the basis of the internal contradictions of these two groups, they would have been led to a fairly evident conclusion. Throughout the history of the CAPs, above all, St. Jacques, runs a struggle between two political tendencies. On the one hand there is the intellectualist tendency described above; on the other, there was a tendency with often diametrically opposed characteristics, which we will call “empiricist.”
These two tendencies coexisted inside the CAPs for a large part of the history of these groups. Up to the summer of 1972 it was the intellectualist tendency that dominated, while the second tendency was only latent. However, from this time on, the empiricist tendency gradually replaced the former, in reaction to its excesses and the stagnation that had resulted. By the beginning of ’73 this new tendency was dominant, to the point where some militants who had been the most deeply involved in the intellectualist deviation had completely changed their position and become the most articulate representatives of the empiricist tendency.
Let’s examine the characteristics of this empiricist tendency:
In opposition to the intellectualist error which had idealized theory, the empiricist reaction which followed led militants to idealize practice. Militants went so far as to consider that practice determined the orientation of political work, that it created, in some way, its own theory. Certainly none formally denied the importance of Marxist theory, but there was no attempt to use it as a political guide capable of clarifying the practices. Consequently, the link with the working class-was made correctly, the primary form it would take from that time on; implantation directly in the workplaces was made blindly. It had little or no long-term perspective, and implantation became practically an end in itself. One went so far as to quote Mao (On Practice, and Against Book Worship) to denegrate theory.
An example of such an empiricist approach was given by those groups of militants who concentrated their activities exclusively on the exchange of information and technical suggestions on methods for linking with the workers in their respective enterprises. They could have worked towards gradually becoming a basis for the political coordination and direction of their members’ practices, clarifying the general political orientation of their work and how to link the daily practices to this political orientation. Instead they were content to simply become places where one exchanged information and anecdotes from “our respective shops.”
To such an attitude idealising practice to the detriment of theory, there corresponds a similar attitude concerning the relationship between workers and revolutionary militants. This question was presented as if militants had reached the point of considering themselves simply as combatative workers – more combatative than the others – rather than political militants with a specific role to play in the transmission of revolutionary theory.
Finally, in reaction to the very bureaucratic leadership and organisation of the CAPs, people went so far as to practically dissolve them, and as a replacement, put together very loose groups of militants that were more or less isolated one from the other and were themselves considered as transitional structures.
The consequences of this empiricist period were two-fold.
Firstly, a positive result was the recognition from this time on of the necessity to root ourselves concretely among the masses, on the basis of their immediate preoccupations, participating in their struggles, and from this, beginning a slow process of organisation and political development. For militants of CAPs St. Jacques and Maisonneuve this conception permitted a definite acceleration in the process of linking with the working class.
However, after certain initial successes, difficulties began. The link with the workers often operated, in fact, without the aid of Marxist theory as a political guide, and several militants were led to wear themselves out in purely unionist practices, without any real political perspectives. On top of this, the isolation of the groups of militants made exchange difficult, and even less easy was any common evaluation of their practices on the basis of a more general conception of the political tasks at hand. Finally, in the absence of any general political guide, some militants were led to follow uncritically those with more advanced practices; basing themselves on these practices almost unconditionally.
The text “Beginnings of a Socialist Movement in Montreal” does not mention whatsoever this second, empiricist, tendency in the CAPs, nor its characteristics or consequences. As we have said, this was a second error. It led to a third error: the way the text presented the workers’ committees.
d) A False Conception of the Role of the Workers’ Committees.
Basically, the text states that the perspective of primarily developing workers’ committees in the workplaces represents an alternative for militants, a response to their intellectualist deviation. The text also says that these committees are wide organisations, open to militant workers of each workplace, and that they will become the supporting structures of the future political organisation of the workers. Stating this, several things are forgotten.
Firstly, one forgets that all the work of conceptualizing the workers’ committees, basically within the “Committee of Ten,”[3] and by extension inside the text “Beginnings,” must be situated within the context of this empiricist period that affected the activities of militants following the summer of 1972. In a certain sense, this entire effort of clarification had been seen as an attempt to get out of this empiricism.
However, this attempt was itself marked by a very empirical approach and to some extent made attempts to justify it. It is because of this that the text “Beginnings” makes no attempt to situate the task of developing workers’ committees in relation to the strategic objective of socialist militants; the construction of a revolutionary political organisation of the workers. What’s more, it presents this task as an absolute priority, in the short term, which must be followed by all militants. This denies that there are other bases for linking with the workers than the workplace, and other ways of linking than the construction of mass organisations in the workplaces.
Secondly, this way of looking at the workers’ committees leads to an incorrect political position. This consists of making mass organisations, by definition centred on economic struggle in the workplace, the base of the future workers’ party, “a first link in the construction of the political organisation of the workers.”
To take this position makes no sense: mass organisations, even grouped together, are one thing, and the future revolutionary workers’ party is another. The first bring together both militant workers and socialists, while the second is made up only of socialist workers or not. Consequently, to say that the future socialist organisation will come from the workers’ committees, is to wish to replace that organisation by some federation of mass organisations. Historicaly, such a conception has led to an impasse.
The least one can say is that it is an incorrect political conception; however, the authors echo it in “Beginnings....”
The consequences of such a political conception are great: they led to the dismantling of certain groupings of socialist militants in the winter of 1974. In effect, if one takes the position that the future political organisation of the workers will develop from the workers’ committees, what is the point of organisations of socialist militants, and why attempt to develop them? Within this logic, organisations of socialists have no reason to exist. At least that is what is stated by the authors of the text, and it is a serious error.
Such a position is the logical result of the other one, whereby the workers’ committees – presented as wide organisations of militants and combative workers – represent the bases of the future party. To say this is to make the construction of such organisations the first condition of the creation of the future workers’ party.
In our opinion, this is an erroneous position. Certainly, it is not a question of denying the lessons presented by the workers’ committees in the workplaces: to work towards the construction of such organisations is one way for militants to develop their links with the masses. But to make it the only condition for the building of the party is to go too far.
At the risk of being schematic, we identify three basic conditions to the emergence of the revolutionary workers’ party:
– The development of the class consciousness of the workers, notably via the workers’ committees.
– The political development of socialist worker-militants, capable of leading mass struggles.
– The unity of socialist militants.
If “Beginnings” had presented in this way the necessary conditions for the development of the revolutionary workers’ party, they could have avoided the idealization of the workers’ committees. Rather than present them as some “royal road” mechanically leading to the future party, they could have presented them more realistically, as one form of the link between socialism and the workers’ movement, one of the places where militants can, if they work correctly, develop the first of these three conditions: the development of the class consciousness of the workers.
[1] “Travailleurs Quebecois et Lutte Nationale” (Quebec workers and the National Struggle) was a document published in 1972 by militants in an attempt to develop a Marxist analysis of the national question. A revised and developed version has recently been published.
[2] EN LUTTE! is a bi-weekly newspaper aimed at the progressive and militant elements of the working class, with the object of presenting a Marxist-Leninist analysis of workers’ struggle in Quebec, and developing the conditions for the foundation of a revolutionary workers’ party. It has been published for 1½ years by militants of various origins, among them people from the community and education sectors of CAPs St. Jacques and Maisonneuve (which dissolved in early 74)
[3] The “Committee of Ten” was set up during 1973 by the “workplace” section of CAPs St. Jacques and Maisonneuve, including representatives from the various groups of militants (or “noyaus”) within the section and later from some information, research, and other “support” groups which had close connections with the CAPs. Its purpose was to clarify the existing situation and develop a general orientation for the section. It didn’t complete these tasks before the CAPs effectively split and dissolved and its main production was a document called “The Workers’ Committees,” putting these forth as a priority.