The formation of a “new Marxist-Leninist movement” these past few years constitutes one of the major events of the class struggle in our country. The reconstruction of the party for proletarian revolution, which has become necessary following the Communist Party of Canada’s total downfall into revisionism in the fifties, is now in process. This constitutes a great victory for the forces of progress in our country, and in the world. Indeed, already the most progressive and combative elements of the proletariat and the masses recognize that the Marxist-Leninist movement offers the sole authentic path to socialism, to the abolition of the capitalist exploitation of workers, and of the various forms of expression which result, in the Imperialist era.
The “rebirth” of the Marxist-Leninist movement across Canada, this new victory of the Canadian revolutionary forces, is the result of an important struggle with which IN STRUGGLE! was closely associated, and at certain moments played a determinant role. It was due to the resolute action of IN STRUGGLE!, mainly, that the opportunist leadership over the progressist forces in Quebec, wielded by the “work sector” of CAP St-Jacques and Maisonneuve and later by the R.C.T., was destroyed.[1] It was also thanks, to a large degree, to IN STRUGGLE!’s action that numerous study groups in English Canada broke with their isolation amongst themselves, and from the masses.
The publication of “Against Economism” in September 1975 was a landmark in this struggle for the constitution of the present Marxist-Leninist movement. In Quebec it coincided with the victory over the theory of “intermediary organizations” exposed by the C.M.O. in June 1975 in their pamphlet “De quelques questions brulantes...”, a theory shared by the M.R.E.Q., the C.O.R., Mobilisation, and others[2], who all proved at that time the continuation of the Comite de Solidarite avec les Luttes Ouvrieres (C.S.L.O.). In English Canada it was to play a decisive role in the beginning of the numerous study groups’ rupture with their previous economist practice.
If we re-edit today, in March 1977, “Against Economism”, it’s because the errors denounced in it haven’t been completely defeated. On the contrary, economism today constitutes an important deviation within the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement. To speak clearly, the main carriers of economism are the same gang in 1977 as in 1975, and in 1973, the only difference being that they changed their name and... language!
As we stated in “Against Economism” in 1975
In every capitalist country, the road to socialism is unique, it is the proletarian revolution. It consists of three great strategic tasks: first, to achieve the merger of Marxism-Leninism and of the workers’ movement, or in other words, to build the Party which gathers together the communist vanguard of the proletariat; second, to unify the broad masses under the leadership of the Party of the proletariat in the struggle for socialism which can take the form of a united front; and lastly, third, to overthrow the power of the bourgeois state and to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, a task for which the aming of revolutionary forces is an essential condition.
(...) From a strategical point of view, the Canadian revolution also depends upon the achievement of these three tasks: to build the Party of the proletariat, to unite the broad masses under its leadership, and to arm the people. This is how the bourgeois power will be torn down and the dictatorship of the proletariat established. Then the building of socialism in our country will be undertaken.
At the present stage in Canada, when the Marxist-Leninist movement is young and barely linked to the workers’ movement, on the one hand, and when, on the other hand, the workers’ and people’s militancy is increasing, due mainly to the worsening of the imperialist crisis, the central task of communists (M.L.) is to achieve the merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers’ movement, or, in other words, to wage the struggle to build a communist vanguard in the working class and to build the revolutionary Party of the proletariat.
The entire Marxist-Leninist movement in Canada is in agreement, at least formally, with the position advanced in “Against Economism”. It’s in it’s application that divergences appear, it is in the way some people apply these lessons that economist deviations appear; it would, however, be more correct to say that economist deviations persist because they are in effect old ones: we find them in the CP’s actions in the 40’s and 50’s when they constituted one of the elements of their degeneration; we find them again in the C.A.P. St-Jacques and Maisonneuve, in the “work sector” which become the R.C.T., and all the groups in its wake which were to suffer, in an important way, the former’s influence, such as the A.P.L.Q. (which published the Bulletin Populaire), Mobilisation, the Noyau des Petites Entreprises which became the C.C. (m.-l), the C.R.I.Q., later the G.A.S. and also the C.M.O. and the C.O.R... Most of these group’s members have joined the ranks of the C.C.L.(m.-L).
We also find them in the action of numerous groups and circles in English Canada, who came out of the Progressive Workers’ Movement (P.W.M.) which itself hadn’t totally eliminated right opportunism from its line and practise, even if it was the product of the struggle against the C.P.C.’s revisionism in the sixties.
Essentially, economism consists of seeking to reach the masses, especially the advanced elements, mainly and often solely on the basis of immediate economic demands, and to minimize, and eventually to totally abandon the struggle for socialism, the struggle to overthrow the bourgeois state. Economism, if it isn’t rectified when it is only a tendency within the Marxist-Leninist movement or party, inevitably leads to revisionism. The proof of this has been repeated often in many countries, and at all the different eras, as for example at the beginning of the century with the Second International, or in our country as well with the CP., which in the 40’s and especially the 50’s concentrated on taking over the leadership of certain union, all the while increasingly abandoning the struggle against the bourgeois state, and the rallying of the broad masses around this struggle; the same holds for the R.C.T. which fundamentally followed the same opportunist path with, on the one hand, the implantation of “Marxist-Leninist” militants in the factories, the constitution of workers committees (around them), and whose task was to intervene in strikes and workers’ struggles with the aim of taking over the leadership of the union, and as well, on the other hand, their numerous attempts to infiltrate directly or via the groups it controlled, the greatest number of mass organizations possible, with the support aim of making the revolutionary leadership triumph... to end up with a “workers’ party”.
It so happens that in 1977 there still exists a similar tendency among Marxist-Leninists, a tendency which perceives party building, and more generally the revolutionary struggle, in the same erroneous way as the CP., and to a large extent, the P.W.M. in the 60s and early 70’s, in the same erroneous way as the groups like Mobilisation, the A.P.L.Q., the G.A.S., the N.P.E. (later C.C.(m.-L) etc... who were the successors of the R.C.T. until recently they dissolved, and their members rallied the C.CL.(m.-L).
We must be aware of the magic of words which still causes much damage among the young Marxist-Leninist forces, and in the workers’ movement. When a group changes its name, or dissolves and its members join another group, when certain activities change labels, when all this happens, it doesn’t automatically mean that a qualitative change has taken place. In other words, we shouldn’t conclude that the union in a single organization of the members of 3, 5 or 10 groups gangrened by economism and right-opportunism alone guarantees the victory over opportunism!
In the same way the fact that no Marxist-Leninist group any longer puts forward the necessity to develop ”intermediary organizations” as was the case in 1975 doesn’t mean that the practice attached to this objective has disappeared, that the line underlying this practice has been smashed. The claim by certain Marxist-Leninists that their current practice of implantation is essentially different from that of the R.C.T. remains to be demonstrated even if those who uphold this practice hide behind the statement that “the political line determines everything” and that their correct Marxist-Leninist line can in no way be assimilated to the opportunist-to-the core line of the R.C.T. Such an argument, moreover can easily rebound against those who use it; isn’t it possible, indeed, in their case as in others the “tactic of implantation” was “determined” by an opportunist line... if it is really true that a line is revealed by the practice it leads to?
These are questions of the highest importance for the future of the Canadian revolutionary movement. Finally, they all come down to the question of determining, at the present stage, how to achieve the fusion of the Marxist-Leninist and workers’ movements, how to rally the advanced elements to communism, how to form the proletarian vanguard and advance party building.
These questions are in no way abstract. At this time they take on a particular form in our country. For example, there is the question of implanting intellectuals in factories and the formation of what we call “factory cells” composed mainly or uniquely of these intellectuals (thus “factory cells” must be concretely differentiated from the R.C.T.’s “workers committees”), as another example, there is the question of “class struggle” community groups (which must concretely be distinguished from the “intermediary organizations” advocated by the C.M.O. and Mobilisation not so long ago), and as a final example, there is the question of the “leadership” of workers’ and people’s struggles which communists must busy themselves with exercising right away, using different methods, among which certain border on infiltration and manipulation.
We already know the argument which is brought out to answer these questions, the argument of the ”correct line”. Implantation is bad when it’s opportunists who implant and it’s good when it’s Marxist-Leninists; the struggle to be elected to union executives is bad when carried out by opportunists and good when carried out by Marxist-Leninists; the struggle to gain control of citizens’ groups is bad for the opportunists and good for Marxist-Leninists.
Here is the answer given by certain Marxist-Leninists, because, they say, “the ideological and political line determines everything”. But, in this type of argumentation, there is something which should draw our attention and that is the fact, which up until now has remained unexplained, that the opportunist line, on one hand, and the Marxist-Leninist line, on the other, can both lead to identical practices in the proletariat and the masses.
With regard to this “still unexplained fact” we would specifically ask the comrades of the C.C.L.(m.-l.) to furnish a dialectical materialist explanation and not only an explanation which has been paraphrased from a few quotes taken from Marxist-Leninist classics.
In IN STRUGGLE! we believe that “the ideological and political line” determines everything; we believe that a group’s practice reflect its line. For example, we believe that an organization which supports the arming of the Canadian bourgeoisie expresses a social-chauvinist line which places the country’s independence above the proletarian revolution and that in doing so, this organization strays from Marxism-Leninism and lines itself up with an opportunist position corresponding to the class interests of the petty-bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy.
Another example – we believe that an organization which principally wages struggle in the citizens’ groups to win their leadership in order to turn them into “class struggle” groups, “intermediary organizations” with a new mask, we believe that this organization is drifting into economism, that it gives priority to taking over peoples organizations. This secondarizes the question of rallying advanced elements to communism, when we are at the stage where party building must remain the principal task of Marxist-Leninists.
Yet another example – we believe that an organization whose “factory cells” (alleged, if not real) make their central objective the struggle to win the leadership of the unions, even at the price of compromising on the contents of their candidates’ “electoral program”, we believe that this organization is dangerously deviating onto the path of economism, right opportunism, because it tends to confine the workers to economic struggles.
Could it be that we are opposed to the intervention of Marxist-Leninists in struggles? Could it be that we are opposed to communist action in unions and citizens’ groups? Just the contrary, we advocate communist intervention in the struggles, in the unions and citizens’ groups and not economist and opportunist intervention. It’s a question of line, comrades. It is the Marxist-Leninist line which must determine our intervention in the proletariat and the masses. And it is impossible to defend a Marxist-Leninist line with struggle tactics and organizational forms stemming directly from an opportunist and economist line. This must be plain and clear.
Watching certain Marxist-Leninists in action, particularly those of the CCL(m.-l), we have to conclude that the opportunist and economist line of the decadent C.P.C. from the ’50’s, taken up by the R.C.T. which also profoundly marked the P.W.M., is steel present in the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement; for the erroneous practices and tactics of the former just like those of the others, are still being used and are even being developed. Thus, the struggle to be waged against these deviations which are on the way to being consolidated, takes or increased importance and urgency.
At this level, how can we decide between those practices which express a Marxist-Leninist line and those expressing an opportunist line? The question, we repeat, is not one of knowing if communists should take part in struggles, if they should intervene in unions and mass organizations in general; the question is that of the nature of their intervention.
Seeking to reply to this question, we musn’t hesitate to reaffirm what we said in “Against Economism”:
The merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers, movement depends essentially on the winning over to communism, to Marxism-Leninism, the advanced elements of the proletariat. It is indeed only when the most conscious workers, the most militant, the best working leaders, not only acknowledged the value of Marxism-Leninism as the theory of the struggle of the proletariat, but also assimilate it, become its spokesman and its upholders among the working masses themselves, it is only then that the merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers movement is actually irreversibly started. Only then can the ideological domination of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat and the working masses, be attached without respite and can be more and more often checked. (p. 14)
And, let us add, the fusion or merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers’ movement is at the present time based on communist agitation-propaganda.
Communist propaganda, even if it is addressed to all workers and progressive intellectuals, must first of all reach the most advanced elements amongst them, those who are the least dominated by bourgeois ideology. However, communists musn’t agree to any compromise on the content, on the pretext of reaching and interesting the greatest possible number, because it’s not by lowering the level of their work that communists are going to educate the workers, just the contrary.
Communist agitation, on the other hand, should be directed towards the workers and broad masses, but in particular, at this stage, the industrial proletariat. Agitation should reach the largest possible number of workers in each case; it should be concerned with concrete situations; a conflict, a social injustice, a struggle, a demand, etc. and aim for a mass mobilization, without being afraid to appeal to their feelings, to their ideals of justice, to their class solidarity, all without lowering the level of its political line, in comparison to that of propaganda. (...)
It is therefore by means of agitation and propaganda that Marx-ism-Leninism will merge with the workers’ movement. And this merger will occur through the “conscious” winning over the advanced workers to communism on the one hand, and by the growing support for the communist interventions on the other. Because, the Marxists’ link with the masses is not the result of special techniques of propaganda, agitation or organization, but only through the political activities of communists, carried out in the framework of workers’ struggles. (“Against Economism” p. 49-50).
“Against Economism”, published in September 1975, was a landmark against that specific form of right-opportunism which is economism. The same for “For the Proletarian Party ” published in October 1972 (translated in the Western Voice, Nov. 76 issue), which was mainly directed against the opportunist errors of the work sector of CAP St-Jacques of Montreal, which changed its name the following year and became the R.C.T. and finally dissolved in 1975. “Against Economism” was mainly directed against the economist errors of the CMO, the COR, the MREQ, Mobilisation, the APLQ, the NPE... who all dissolved one after the other. And they changed their name: they are now called... the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist). Which also rallied former members of the RCT. These groups never truly recognized In Struggle! s criticism of them, despite their formal self-criticisms these past few years. These groups have always defined themselves in opposition to In Struggle!
The Quebecois economist groups of 1972 and 1975 have all changed their names now, and they have all gathered under the wing of the CCL(m.-L). This doesn’t mean that they’ve broken with their economism, they simply dressed it up in new clothes. The “workers committees” have become “factory cells”; “intermediary organizations” have become “organizations of class struggle”; the “reformist implantation” of the RCT has become the “Marxist-Leninist implantation” of the CCL (m-l.); the infiltration and manipulation of unions and community groups of the RCT and Mobilisation have become the manipulation and infiltration of the CCL (m.-l.). Of course, according to the League, it’s the group In Struggle! which is economist and opportunist. We know the tune, the League has been singing it every key in its newspaper for the past year: as soon as In Struggle! acts, without hesitation the League answers the following week in The Forge that it was an opportunist act. But this type of song quickly grates on one’s nerves, especially when not even are ounce proof is provided to back up their conclusions.
If the League had really broken with economism, of which it amply accuses In Struggle!, it would never had published a pamphlet Against Reformism! For an ADDS of class struggle published at the end of 1976, a pamphlet which is a perfect example of those two bedfellows, dogmatism and economism, a most beautiful example of the lowering of communist agitation-propaganda, the best example of the League’s mad desire to take over the leadership, the control of any organization in which it pokes its nose. This is where economism and opportunism leads to: the lowering of communist propaganda to its lowest level, and to confound formal control of mass organizations (and of unions) with a political and ideological leadership. The latter should be essentially achieved by agitation and propaganda, by the education of the masses, in a general way on the class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat... or on particular points, through struggles, in the choice of slogans, the publishing of leaflets...
If the League had really broken with economism, it would have taken less pains to get their members and sympathizers elected in unions and community groups; they would have taken less pains, and done less wheeling and dealing to impose their platforms and programs wherever they happened to be; they would take greater pains to educate the masses on Canadian imperialism, on the role of the state, or that of the unions, etc. In other words, they would take greater pains to convince, to raise the consciousness level of the masses. They wouldn’t seek to hastily impose “their” communism because these kind of victories pave the way to crushing defeats.
Marxist-Leninists know that “the masses make history”, they know that “the party raises their awareness. Marxist-Leninists don’t therefore run about producing bogus cells, nor advanced workers by transplanting intellectuals; they have confidence in the working class, along side which they struggle to transmit Marxism-Leninism, an essential factor of revolutionary class consciousness, by using persuasion, by frank and open discussions, by agitation-propaganda.
To conclude, let us say that instead of creating “bogus factory cells”, instead of getting “intermediary” platforms voted by methods resembling intellectual terrorism (things like “reformists are counterrevolutionaries”) in community groups and in unions. Instead of using tricks and manipulations ranging from “intellectual terrorism” all the way to “electoral” reformist platforms, to assure formal control of community groups and unions, Canadian Marxist-Leninists should rather concentrate first of all on assuring the diffusion of Marxism-Lenin-ism in the masses by propaganda and agitation, by persuasion, not pressures and compromise; they should concentrate on gathering workers in appropriate organizational frameworks, those who are willing, where they are, and who base their daily action on the teachings of Marxism-Leninism without necessarily being ready to formally adhere to a communist group or organization.
Workers’ circles and readers’ circles are such organizational frameworks. But they are not the only ones possible: one need only think of the caucuses within unions and mass organizations put forward by the Comintern and the “Internationale syndicale rouge” (Red Labour Union International); one can think of those committees that are in particular struggles and unite all those who, in the circumstances, accept communist leadership... These organizational objectives are perhaps less attractive than the creation of factory cells and the transformation of labour unions and mass organizations into unions and organizations “of class struggle”; but for Marxist-Leninists, they have the advantage of taking into account the contradictions that exist within the Canadian working class movement which is not ready to adhere to communism tomorrow and they also have the advantage, no less important, of taking into account the lessons of the Canadian and international communist movements.
The new forces which have recently rallied to Marxism-Leninism are often impressed by the easy victories of certain practices based on an apparently “clear” language. One should look at this a bit closer: easy victories and “clear” language generally cover up practice which has the major disadvantage of not being communist.
The history of the Canadian working class movement is full of examples of this sort... which show how easy victories turn out to be dead ends. Canadian Marxist-Leninists do not have the right to act as if the history of class struggle began the day that they adhered to Marxism-Leninism! The CPC, the PWM, the RCT and many other organizations achieved victories in their day. To say at the same time that they were finally defeated and that their defeat was the result of the opportunist line they carried is not to deny their real successes nor to falsify history.
This danger exists today for the Marxist-Leninist movement. It is all the greater when one sees Marxist-Leninists, dressed up in ideological purity, reproduce with exceptional fidelity the same errors as their predecessors and embark on the road which leads to revisionism. The criticism of the League’s economist and opportunist practice and of its apparent victories must be based on the history of the movement and the concrete analysis of the present situation. We will then see that the League hasn’t invented anything new: as with many before it, it often has a left vocabulary and a right practice. Even if they hide behind the most dogmatic verbiage, even if they engage in the most sectarian and ultra-left practices, economism is still economism and opportunism is still opportunism.
The Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement has won important victories over economism over the past few years... but it is far from having won the war. The struggle must be continued: more precisely, it must be directed against the erroneous practices of the League which, under a new name and with a corrected vocabulary continues in many matters to apply the opportunist line of the ”Family of Five” which has rallied to it over the past months.
In a recent editorial of the Forge (Vol. 2, no. 14, February 17, 1977), the League rejoices, in effect, in having rallied to it what it calls the “Family of Five”, opportunist groups from Quebec close to the RCT.
As for us, we are far from rejoicing over this bizarre “family reunion” because the League, in not having broken in practice with the economist and opportunist practices of all the groups today re-united in it, has effectively become the main carrier of an erroneous line within the Marxist-Leninist movement. The formal self-criticisms of some of these groups do not impress us in the least for it is one thing to say “we were opportunist” and then to line up Marxist-Leninist principles and it is quite another, and far more important in defeating opportunism, to truly correct one’s errors, to adopt and practise a line which leads to the creation of an authentic communist party and not to the lowering of communist work nor to the so-called “unions and groups of class struggle”. Would not the first organization “of class struggle” to build in our country at this time be the communist party?
Hasn’t the time come to recognize that the party will not be built by the repetitious adoption of so-called platforms “of class struggle”, which are thoroughly reformists, by dozens of unions and community groups but rather by the winning of the advanced elements of the proletariat and the masses to a communist programme...?
Today economism shows, as it did yesterday, the existence of an opportunist line on party-building. Blinded undoubtedly by the “electoral victories” it has won in some unions and community groups during the past years, the League is increasingly concentrating its energies in the assembly-line production of platforms “of class struggle” and of reformist electoral programmes for unions and community groups... But since its creation, it has not advanced by one inch any of the essential questions in the elaboration of a communist programme of the Canadian proletariat, the programme of the party. Instead it has limited itself to repeating awkwardly, but with a disconcerting assurance, the general principles of Marxism-Leninism and to decreeing, with no shadow of proof, that all those who are not for it are against it... i.e., are counter-revolutionaries!
The Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement must resist this easy road which the League offers it because it is becoming increasingly evident that this easy road, which is based on a “clear” line, is a road that leads directly to the repetition of opportunist errors already identified which have nothing new about them, except for a fresh coat of paint.
Thus the struggle against economism is still a task for Marxist-Leninists.
March 1, 1977
[1] The R.C.T. stands for Regroupement des Comites de Travailleurs (Group of Workers Committees). C.A.P. designates the Comites d’Action Politiques (Political Action Committees).
[2] The M.R.E.Q. (Mouvement Revolutionnaire des Etudiants du Quebec), the C.M.O. (Cellule Miiitante Ouvriere) and the CO.R. (Cellule Ouvriere Revolutionnaire) fused November 1975 to form the C.C.L. (m.-l.).