Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

Two points to remember about class struggle and the class nature of the state – Make the rich pay! The only revolutionary path


What To Do About the Reactionary Violence of the State?

Reprinted from PCDN, Volume 6 Number 37, March 27, 1976

Yesterday, March 26th, a specially trained reactionary force of the state viciously attacked the striking teachers in Montreal with big sticks and terminated the particular form of struggle in whichthey were engaged, that is, blocking the entry to the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. On March 25th three militant workers were jailed by the U.S. imperialist dominated state for persisting in waging their strike struggle in 1974.

On March 19, two supporters of CPC(M-L) were arrested for distributing PCDN in London.

These cases of reactionary violence are just a few of the innumerable daily manifestations of violent attacks by the state on the people especially the militant and progressive people. Besides using the parliament and the courts and prisons, the capitalists use open terrorist methods to end opposition by the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie puts up the facade of “democracy”. Of course, it is not “illegal” to picket or to strike or to distribute Marxist-Leninist literature. But it is the life-experience of the proletariat that all these “democratic” rights are daily denied in practice. In struggle against the bourgeoisie, the proletariat faces not only what Trudeau calls “the full force of the law” but in fact the full force of bourgeois dictatorship, that is, the full force of the written and unwritten laws of the bourgeoisie.

How should the proletariat respond to this? We say: reactionary violence must be met with revolutionary violence. The proletariat must fight the armed bourgeoisie by arming itself through revolutionary struggle. There is no other way.

The revisionists and other opportunists are defenders of “bourgeois democracy”. Last year they all wrote articles masking the real nature of “bourgeois democracy”. The revisionists prostrate themselves in front of the bourgeoisie and follow the line of bourgeois deception: if you do not like the “law” then get elected and “change” the law. But it is not the parliament and legislative assemblies which make the law. These are just rubber stamp bodies to fool the people. It is the law of the propertied class dictated by them which rules this land. Wherever the interests of the propertied class are challenged by the proletariat, the parliaments and legislative assemblies pass laws to protect that particular interest and suppress the challenge. If the workers participate in dogged strike struggle and it hurts the bourgeoisie, the parliament passes a law to force the workers back to work. This “bourgeois democracy” which the revisionists and opportunists laud to the skies is the armed organisationof the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the propertied class, to suppress the proletariat. Innumerable facts prove that it is the interest of the propertied class and not some abstract law, some law above classes, which is protected by this armed organisation of the bourgeoisie called the state. Whether these interests of the propertied class are looked after through bourgeois fraud and through covering up with slogans of democracy etc., or through open terror, it is the interests of the propertied class which dictate the actions of the armed organisation, the state. We cannot change this state, the armedorganisation of the bourgeoisie. It has to be smashed.

But the state cannot be smashed just by uttering slogans. Real, live revolutionary opposition to all attacks of the state has to be organised as a prelude to the smashing of the state. This means that all acts of terror by the state must be met in like kind. Reactionary violence must be met with revolutionary violence. Workers in struggle must not only decide to wage a particular form of struggle but they must also devise ways to defend that particular form of struggle from reactionary violence. There are just too many examples and too many cases to cite as proof that the armed organisation of the bourgeoisie, the state, uses reactionary violence of all kinds to smash all forms of proletarian struggle. Whether it is a practical strike struggle, an economic struggle, the politics of making the rich pay or straightforward struggle to organise economic or political organisations, the state comes with “full force of the law” written and unwritten to smash the proletarian struggle.