Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Hardial Bains

What Is the Issue?

On Questions Concerning the Strategy and Tactics of the Canadian Revolution 

 

Part II: Revisionism and Proletarian Struggle

Let us now deal with certain questions on which the revisionists and anarcho-syndicalists are creating maximum confusion. One of these questions concerns three forms of proletarian class struggle, that is three forms of the proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie. All three forms of proletarian struggle –economic, political and theoretical –are commanded by the politics of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Politics is the commander, the very soul, of proletarian class struggle against U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism, Canadian monopoly capitalism and all reaction.

According to the modern revisionists, the so-called “Communist” Party of Canada: “There are three forms in which class struggle is waged.”[11] But Lenin reminds us that “Engels distinguishes three basic forms of the proletarian struggle: economic, political and theoretical ...”[12] And Marx explains that the “struggle of class against class is political struggle.”[13]

The Leninist thesis is: Three basic forms of proletarian struggle. The revisionist thesis is: Three forms in which class struggle is waged. The Leninist thesis has one whole, that is proletarian struggle, which exists in three basic forms. But all three are forms of proletarian struggle. According to the revisionists there are two things: “class struggle” and “three forms”. Their notion of class struggle is detached from the class struggle of the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie. It is detached from real life, up in the air and abstract. It is merely a dead and woody concept, a paraphrase, to deprive proletarian struggle of its content. The revisionist thesis of “three forms” is thus detached from class struggle. This is an example of the unprincipled eclecticism of revisionists.

We can go further. According to the revisionists, not only ”class struggle” and ”three forms” exist in isolation from one another, but the ”three forms” –economic, political and theoretical –also exist in isolation from one another. Further, according to the revisionist thesis, there is ”class struggle”, ”three forms” and some mystical force is ”waging” it. But this ”mystical force” is not that mystical at all. It is their bourgeois parliamentary cretinism and class collaborationist politics. Politics is the commander. Either revolutionary politics commands, or non-revolutionary, reformist and reactionary politics commands. There is no middle ground. But the revisionists mystify this in order to fool the people. Revisionists push the theory that:

– revolutionary theory is detached from revolutionary practice, and
– revolutionary culture is detached from revolutionary politics.

What they really carry out in practice is bourgeois politics but they use phraseology and put on airs to present themselves as “revolutionaries”. Take for example their behaviour in the struggle against Bill C-73. The revisionist party states: “There will be no relief for the working people until the present disastrous so-called anti-inflation policies of the government are changed and replaced by new policies, radical anti-monopoly policies which are geared to effectively combatting inflation, ensuring high employment and rising standards in a world of peace.”[14] For the revisionists, the same state whose executive committee has implemented the “present disastrous so-called anti-inflation policies” will one day have an executive committee which will implement “new policies”. Here they preach their reformist parliamentary politics. But to confuse the matter, the revisionists then take up a “revolutionary posture”. They write: “There will be no serious advances for the working class and trade union movement until right-wing policies of class-collaboration are replaced by left-wing policies of class struggle.”[15] Now what are these “left-wing policies of class struggle”? ”... radical anti-monopoly policies which are geared to effectively combatting inflation, ensuring high employment and rising standards in a world of peace.”[16] Against whom are these “left-wing policies of class struggle” directed? Against “monopolies”! So the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is “reformed” to get rid of the “monopolies” and then everything will be just lovely!

According to the revisionists, the “three forms” in which class struggle is waged are “three sectors”, “with one or the other form assuming greater importance in accordance with the specific conditions and circumstances.” How can this be? It can only be this way when the three forms exist in isolation from one another. Thus the workers sometimes can give less importance to one “form”, and at other times, to another “form”. The revisionists here totally mystify the question of “importance” and present it in a totally metaphysical manner. The “importance” of one or the other form of proletarian struggle is determined by the “struggle of class against class”, that is, by politics. The Marxist-Leninist communist party is the tool/ instrument/leader/commander of this “struggle of class against class”, this politics. Thus it follows that it is the leadership, the Party, which decides the significance, or if you please, the “importance” of one form of proletarian struggle over the other. But according to the revisionists, this “importance” is automatic, a mystical process. One day the workers decide to put their “class struggle” in one “form” and wage it, while another day, they come up and say “enough of that, let us take our class struggle out of this form and put it in another form”.

By distorting a basic Leninist thesis, the revisionists then advance their theory that “economic struggle” is the “lower form of class struggle”, and equate it with bourgeois trade union consciousness, exactly in the same manner that the anarcho-fascists do.

Revisionist thesis: “In the political struggle, which is a higher form of class struggle, the workers move from defence of their own immediate, daily interests, to defending their own fundamental class interests. In doing so, the workers and capitalists confront each other as classes.”[17]

Leninist thesis: “The trade union struggle is one of the constant forms of the workers’ movement, one always needed under capitalism and essential all the time...”[18]

The revisionists tell us that “workers move from defence of their own immediate, daily interests”. This is just empty phrasemongering. First of all, when we say that there are three forms of proletarian struggle, we mean that all these struggles are political. Politics is their commander. Then what does this phrase amount to when the revisionists utter “workers move from defence of their own immediate, daily interests” to “political struggle”? How do the workers move from political struggle to political struggle? Here the revisionists are confusing the entire issue. The issue is that the proletariat, through its over two centuries of practice, has moved from perceptual knowledge, from “the period of machine-smashing and spontaneous struggle”, to “the period of conscious and organized economic and political struggles”, that is, when “the proletariat was able to comprehend the essence of capitalist society, the relations of exploitation between social classes and its own historical task; and it was able to do so because of its own practice and because of its experience of prolonged struggle, which Marx and Engels scientifically summed up in all its variety to create the theory of Marxism for the education of the proletariat.”[19]

But this movement from the perceptual level to the conceptual does not eliminate the economic struggle, nay more, it deepens and broadens it. The proletariat advances militantly, waging one proletarian class struggle against the bourgeoisie after another. To talk in the manner of the revisionists is to miss the issue entirely. The following quotation further exposes the treachery of the revisionists because it reveals what they call “political struggle”, to be mere trade union and parliamentary cretinist politics, i.e., bourgeois politics. “Nowadays, with increasing state intervention into the bargaining process, the economic struggle tends to assume certain political characteristics.”[20] What are these “political characteristics”? “... the fight-back against the federal government’s wage-cutting Bill C-73”.[21]

First of all, the nonsense of “increasing state intervention in the bargaining process” merely conceals the fact that this “bargaining process” is the result of the integration of capitalist trade unions into the state apparatus. Even this “bargaining process” is not available to close to seventy percent of the work force in Canada, the non-unionized. Secondly, the “intervention into the bargaining process” by the state is nothing new, as the state has always interfered with the “bargaining process” and any trade unionist knows that. So when revisionists say “economic struggle tends to assume certain political characteristics”^ they mean merely bourgeois trade union politics. They are one and the same thing. The revisionists make a distinction by calling one aspect of bourgeois trade union politics “pure” economic struggle, and another portion “political struggle”. Otherwise there is no distinction between the two. The issue here then is straightforward: either revolutionary politics in command, or bourgeois trade union and parliamentary cretinist politics in command. Revisionists have taken up the latter, and they are concocting theories to mystify this fact.

Let us go over the same question in the following manner. The working class movement without socialism is a spontaneous working class movement; it is an unconscious movement. Because of the surfeit of bourgeois ideology in the society, this spontaneous working class movement without socialism, without consciousness submits to bourgeois ideology and comes under its sway. The form it takes is trade union political consciousness, and workers participate in bourgeois trade union politics. Lenin explains that the working class develops this trade union consciousness on its own. Revisionists mystify this historical fact.

While the working class movement without socialism, the unconscious movement, submits to bourgeois ideology and partakes in trade union politics, this does not mean that another inherent gravitation of the working class movement, that is, the gravitation towards socialism, is totally eliminated as a class characteristic. Despite the influence of bourgeois ideology, the working class does gravitate towards socialism. This is another historical fact the revisionists mystify. In short, the revisionists mystify the dialectical unity and struggle of opposites between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat which takes place within the working class itself, as a reflection of class struggle within the society as a whole. They do not grasp the nature of the inter-penetration of opposites in struggle, nor see the tendency of things to turn into their opposite.

Let us go further and grasp the relationship of the theory of Marxism and programme of Marxism to the working class movement.

Stalin points out that: “the working class movement has two elements: the objective or spontaneous element, and the subjective or conscious element.”[22] Comrades Marx and Engels analyzed the “objective or spontaneous element” and provided the proletariat with the theory and programme of Marxism on which proletarian strategy and tactics, that which deals with “the subjective or conscious element”, must be based. The proletariat now has “the conscious and systematic movement... towards a definite goal”. But the revisionists are still chirping about the “spontaneous” struggles, the “pure” economic struggles, ad nauseum.

Marxism was born with the publication of the great historic world-significant Manifesto of the Communist Party. All its basic principles are as valid today as they were in 1848 when the great teachers of the world proletariat, Marx and Engels, wrote it. Its basic principles will remain valid for the entire historical period of transition from capitalism to communism. The basic principles of Comrades Marx and Engels are eternal. The success or failure of a revolutionary movement depends on how solidly the revolutionary movement is based on these principles.

The proletariat now has its own historical mission, the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by armed revolutionary violence, and establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a prelude and transitional period to communism. Soon after the Manifesto of the Communist Party was published, proletarians in various countries inscribed on their banners the stirring programme of Marxism: “... their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKINGMEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!”[23]

Comrade Marx led the formation of the First International Working Men’s Association in 1864. Engels founded the Second International in 1889. Socialist parties existed in several European countries, as well as in North America, during the 19th century. Parisian workers performed an immortal act with the Paris Commune in 1871. Comrade Lenin founded the Bolshevik Party. He inherited, defended and further developed Marxism, led the first successful proletarian revolution, and established the first proletarian socialist state. This is why Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. This is another historical fact the revisionists deny.

With the rise of Marxism-Leninism, the victory of the Great October Revolution in 1917, and the subsequent founding of communist parties all over the world, the revolutionary movement deepened and broadened on a world scale. One of the features of this process was the massive organization of the workers into their trade unions. These trade unions first appeared on the scene as the defenders of the working class. But with the transformation of competitive capitalism into Imperialism and monopoly and state monopoly capitalism, the state began to incorporate the trade union apparatus with its labour aristocracy as part of the repressive bourgeois state dictatorship over the proletariat. This process of incorporating the trade unions as part of the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie has been completed for some time now. It constitutes one of the features of imperialism, the highest and final stage of capitalism, the eve of proletarian revolution. The revisionists mystify this well-known historical fact as well.

But the fact that the trade unions have been incorporated as part of the reactionary state apparatus exercising dictatorship over the proletariat in no wav means that the economic form of proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie has been eliminated and that it is no longer class struggle against the bourgeoisie. Nor does it mean that the proletarians should abandon these organizations and establish “pure ” working class associations which are dedicated to overthrowing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nor does it mean that Marxist-Leninists should over-emphasize the role of “transforming” the trade unions as a decisive task of the proletariat. What is decisive is revolutionary politics. What is decisive is waging revolutionary class struggle against the bourgeoisie. This is the issue. The revisionists mystify this fact as well.

But one cannot complain that revisionists are revisionists and that they continue to be so. But we have those who call themselves “genuine” Marxist-Leninists and are promoting the same line as the revisionists. We must also oppose them and declare loudly and clearly: If you are going to call yourselves Marxist-Leninists, then you had better follow Marxist-Leninist political and ideological lines. One group of such “genuine” Marxist-Leninists is En Lutte! They have been shrieking themselves hoarse about the “spontaneous workers’ movement” and the necessity to merge socialism with the “workers’ movement”, etc., etc. Here I quote from them: “The Marxist-Leninist movement links itself with the workers’ movement when, through participating in their struggles, it spreads Marxism-Leninism, not only as a general doctrine of class struggle, but also as a ’guide to action’, specifically a guide to correctly leading short-term political and economic struggles as a means of developing class consciousness, the essential condition for the development of the long-term struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”[24]

Here we are presented with a muddle of the first order. First of all they have two kinds of Marxism-Leninism in stock: one, “a general doctrine of class struggle”, and two, “a guide to action”. Lenin long ago pointed out: “ ’Our doctrine’ –said Engels, referring to himself and his famous friend –’is not a dogma, but a guide to action’ ”[25] But En Lutte! has two kinds of wares, one real, one false. Their real wares, like those of the revisionists, are Marxism-Leninism as a “general doctrine of class struggle”, a dogma divorced from the life experience of the Canadian and world revolution, a phrase to mystify everything. Their other kind of ware is sham because in practice they do not use Marxism-Leninism as a guide to action. En Lutte! , like the revisionists, also divides struggles into “short-term economic and political struggles” and a “long-term struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie”. This is not Marxism-Leninism as a “guide to action”. Marx teaches us that “Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the elementary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”[26] Now, if we go by what En Lutte! is writing, the “movement of the present” consists of “short-term political and economic struggles”, and in this “movement of the present” there is no “class consciousness”. After all, En Lutte! is going to use “short-term political and economic struggles as a means of developing class consciousness”. Furthermore, they are going to “correctly” lead these “short-term political and economic struggles”. Now, what are these “short-term political and economic struggles” if not straightforward bourgeois trade union politics? When Marx and Engels write in the Manifesto of the Communist Party about the “movement of the present”, they are talking about the movement, an actual objective class struggle, the proletariat in motion against the bourgeoisie. Let me quote from Comrade Marx as to what he thought of that class struggle. Marx says: “After a thirty years’ struggle, fought with most admirable perserverence, the English working classes... succeeded in carrying the Ten Hours’ Bill... Most of the continental governments had to accept the English Factory Act in more or less modified forms...” And Marx concludes: “This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labour raged the more fiercely since, apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class. Hence the Ten Hours’ Bill was not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumed to the political economy of the working class.”[27] We ask En Lutte!: What does it mean “correctly leading short-term political and economic struggles”? It can only mean in practice “correctly” leading bourgeois trade union politics, nothing more or less. This is precisely what En Lutte! wants to do when they use Marxism-Leninism as a “guide to action”. This is precisely what the revisionists have been doing for years, turning their party into a faction of the bourgeoisie competing in bourgeois trade union politics against other factions. But like the revisionists, En Lutte! keeps their real wares on hand, their “Marxism-Leninism” as a “general doctrine of class struggle”. This they haul out while participating in bourgeois trade union politics to show how they would like to see the sprouting of a “long-term struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Thus, like the revisionists, they hope this sleight-of-hand trick will pass them off as “revolutionaries” and distinguish them from other bourgeois factions competing for influence in trade union politics. They hope this Marxist-Leninist sign-board will give them some credibility amongst the workers who are waging class struggle against the bourgeoisie. En Lutte! states that Marxism-Leninism exists in two forms:

1. Marxism-Leninism as “a general doctrine of class struggle”, and
2. Marxism-Leninism as a “guide to action”.

What does this thesis of En Lutte! mean? It means that En Lutte! has not only abandoned materialism and embraced idealism, but they have also turned their back on the theory of scientific socialism. En Lutte! has great difficulty in grasping that “the objective and spontaneous element” and “the subjective or conscious element” are two elements of the working class movement. There is only one working class movement which has two elements. The “objective or spontaneous element” is “the group of processes that take place independently of the conscious and regulating will of the proletariat” and “is a field which has to be studied by the theory of Marxism and the programme of Marxism” while the “subjective side of the movement is the reflection in the minds of the workers of the spontaneous processes of the movement; it is the conscious and systematic movement of the proletariat towards a definite goal.”[28] It is the subjective “side of the movement that... is entirely subject to the directing influence of strategy and tactics.” But En Lutte!, in the absence of any “strategy and tactics”, concocts their nonsense about “Marxism-Leninism” as “a general doctrine of class struggle” and a “guide to action”. It is very clear from what has just been said that En Lutte! has great difficulty in grasping the two elements, objective and subjective, of the working class movement. Otherwise they would have known that it is through the “study of the objective processes of capitalism in their development and decline, the theory of Marxism arrives at the conclusions that the fall of the bourgeoisie and the seizure of power by the proletariat is inevitable” and that “Proletarian strategy can be called truly Marxist only when its operations are based on this fundamental conclusion of the theory of Marxism.” Proletarian strategy cannot do otherwise except to base itself on the theory of Marxism.

What En Lutte! calls “a general doctrine of class struggle” is lifeless dogma, and is not the “theory of Marxism” and “programme of Marxism” which studies the “objective processes”. Their “guide to action” is also a dogma, in which they try to impose on the concrete conditions of Canada – 1976 – historical parallels dragged out of Russia – 1900-1902! Thus actually they neither deal with the “objective or spontaneous element”, nor do they deal with “the subjective or conscious element”.

En Lutte! has their metaphysics of “a general doctrine of class struggle” and “a guide to action” to obscure and mystify both “the objective or spontaneous element” and “the subjective or conscious element” of the working class movement. This is why Charles Gagnon, the ideologue of En Lutte!, on whose pamphlet For a Proletarian Party En Lutte! is based, neither talks about “the objective or spontaneous elemenf’ nor “the subjective or conscious element” of the working class movement in Canada or internationally.

But the story does not end here, because these En Lutte! chieftains are tricksters of the first order. In their latest self-criticism published in September 1975, they feign to be opposing “economism”. Having chased after a number of workers’ strike struggles like earnest school children with their “support committees” (1973-75), and having been rejected by the workers because of their amateurism and ignorance of Marxist theory, they have now decided to “grow up”.

Overnight they had a flash of “right consciousness” regarding the nature of the working class movement. This flash of genius is revealed in a fairly long quotation from their mock “self-criticism” in which they abuse one of their own supporters. En Lutte! says: workerism and spontaneism... lead to the adulation of workers and to the assumption that all workers’ struggles are revolutionary. More exactly, they (En Lutte!’s “misguided” followers – HB) say that ’all workers’ struggles are ’anti-capitalist’. Either we understand ’anti-capitalist’ in its strictly economic sense, of all that opposes the realization of profits by capitalists in a purely immediate way, thus revealing an economist conception of workers’ struggles; or else “anti-capitalist” is equivalent to ’revolutionary’, revealing the incorrect assumption that all workers’ struggles are revolutionary, that they constitute attacks aimed at the bourgeoisie (sic) power.”[29] Here we have metaphysicians conjuring up some formulae through their heads instead of actually investigating certain concrete workers’ struggles and social conditions, and then seeking truth from their investigation, a field which as Stalin tells us, “has to be studied by the theory of Marxism and the programme of Marxism”.

We raise the question once again: If “we understand ’anti-capitalist’ in its strictly economic sense, of all that opposes the realization of profits by capitalists in a purely immediate way, thus revealing an economist conception,” then what are En Luttel’s “short-term political and economic struggles” which they say are “a means of developing class consciousness, the essential condition for the development of the long-term struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat”?

Further, what are, according to En Lutte!, “the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class”? If “we are to understand” all “short-term political and economic struggles” which En Lutte! is talking about “in the strictest economic sense of all that opposes the realization of profits by capitalists in a purely immediate way”, then it is “revealing an economist conception, the incorrect assumption that all workers’ struggles are revolutionary, that they constitute attacks aimed at the bourgeois power”. This reveals, in its most ugly form, the trickster nature of En Lutte!

En Lutte! cannot grasp that there is only one Marxism-Leninism: a guide to action! That is, on which are based proletarian strategy and tactics. En Lutte! has no strategy and tactics. It is not the political party of the proletariat and it bends over backwards to mystify its social practice. This is why it has to employ tricks to fool the people. This is precisely the stock-in-trade of the revisionists. This is the reason why En Lutte! does not see the necessity of opposing modern revisionism. It has yet to write one comprehensive article against the revisionist party in Canada. While it offhandedly dismisses the revisionists as “insignificant”, the real reason it has failed to attack the revisionists is because in their line and practice it sees an all-too-clear reflection of its own political soul.

From 1921 when the Party was founded in Canada, the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism has been continuous and sharp. This two-line struggle is a reflection of class struggle within society. But En Lutte! does not recognize the fact that the Party was founded in 1921 and that in 1970, the Party was reorganized on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought in order to oppose modern revisionism. For En Lutte!, the struggle to oppose modern revisionism was not a “good enough reason” to found the Party. Its refusal to sum up the historical experience of the Canadian proletariat is further evidence of its revisionist political practice.

Let me return for a moment to the modern revisionist theories themselves. The revisionists present a thesis, duly ratified by their “congress” every two years, which states that the workers may decide to pick up their “class struggle”, put it in an “economic struggle” bag, and then “in accordance with specific conditions and circumstances”, take it out of the “economic struggle” bag and put it in the “political struggle” bag and, finally, they have their magic bag, the “ideological struggle” bag which “constitutes the means by which the working class bridges the gap between the ’pure’ economic struggles and the conscious political struggles to become a ’class for itself ’.[30]

By concocting the thesis that the “workers move over from defence of their own immediate, daily interests, to defending their own fundamental class interests” (a thesis I henceforth call the “move over” theory), the revisionists state that in the “political struggle, the working class develops a truly class, i.e. socialist consciousness. That is, a true understanding of its fundamental general class interests, of its historical mission to end forever the exploitation of man by man and, in order to accomplish this, the absolute necessity to replace the rule of capital with the rule of the working class and its democratic allies.”[31] The author must have been in an utter trance when he fetched this divine formulation from heaven to earth!

Lenin points out that the working class is incapable of developing proletarian socialist consciousness on its own. It has to be brought to the proletariat from without. Marx scientifically summed up the entire historical period of class society and the practice of class struggle to prove: “1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”[32]

But the revisionists get entangled in their own eclectic maze. They say “in the political struggle, the working class develops a truly class, i.e. socialist consciousness. That is, a true understanding of its fundamental general class struggle, of its historic mission...” etc. But later on, in the same article, the revisionists state:

“The theoretical, ideological struggle of the working class and of its party, has the historical task of freeing the workers’ minds from capitalist views, ideas, illusions and prejudices (a real missionary! – HB). The introduction of socialist ideology into the spontaneous working class movement raises the movement to a higher level of development.”[33] But we have already read that in “the political struggle, the working class develops a truly class, i.e. socialist consciousness...” This is pure sophistry from the revisionists to obscure how the working class has come to know the nature of capitalism, and come to know how to set about achieving its historical task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to build socialism and eventually communism. According to the revisionist formula, first the “working class develops a truly class, i.e. socialist consciousness”, then along comes the “theoretical, ideological struggle of the working class and its party”, which “has the historic task of freeing the workers’ minds from capitalist views, ideas, illusions and prejudices...” etc. Thus the theoretical form of proletarian class struggle is waged by the revisionists against the workers, “freeing the workers’ minds from capitalist views, ideas, illusions, and prejudices”. It is the same thing with En Lutte! with their slogan of “ideological struggle”.

Chairman Mao teaches: “In its knowledge of capitalist society, the proletariat was only in the perceptual stage of cognition in the first period of its practice, the period of machine-smashing and spontaneous struggle; it knew only some of the aspects and the external relations of the phenomena of capitalism. The proletariat was then still a ’class-in-itself’. But when it reached the second period of its practice, the period of conscious and organized economic and political struggles, the proletariat was able to comprehend the essence of capitalist society, the relations of exploitation between social classes and its own historical task; and it was able to do so because of its own practice and because of its experience of prolonged struggle, which Marx and Engels scientifically summed up in all its variety to create the theory of Marxism for the education of the proletariat. It was then that the proletariat became a ’class-for-itself.’”[34]

According to the revisionist schema, first we have earthly workers participating in economic struggles. They decide to have trade union consciousness. Then sometime in 1975, Trudeau comes along with his “wage-cutting Bill C-73”. So the workers decide – enough of this economic struggle. Let us “move over” to political struggle. In the process, they give themselves a “truly class, i.e. socialist consciousness”. Then they decide to have their “theoretical, ideological” struggle in order to free their minds of “capitalist views, ideas, illusions and prejudices”. Then they decide that this level is not high enough, and drink a potion of “socialist ideology” thus raising their “spontaneous working class movement” to a “higher level of development,” en route to Nirvana.

Here the readers can clearly see that the revisionists, like En Lutte!, are not dealing with the working class movement, and that they cause maximum confusion on its “objective or spontaneous element, and the subjective or conscious element”. Revisionists and En Lutte! both follow the reactionary “Deborin School” of thinking which “maintains that contradiction appears not at the inception of a process but only when it has developed to a certain stage”. Chairman Mao teaches that if “this were the case, then the cause of the development of the process before that stage would be external and not internal. Applying this view in the analysis of concrete problems, the Deborin school sees only differences but not contradictions...”[35]

Endnotes

[11] Dewhurst, Alfred, “Ideology and Class Struggle”, Canadian Tribune, 54th Year, No. 1974, November 26, 1975, p. 3.

[12] Lenin, V.I., “To S.I. Gusev”, Collected Works, Volume 34, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 356.

[13] Marx, Karl, The Poverty of Philosophy, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, p. 166.

[14] “Abolish Bill C-73”, Canadian Tribune, No. 1990, March 22, 1976, p. 2.

[15] Ibid., p. 2.

[16] Ibid., p. 2.

[17] Dewhurst, Alfred, “Ideology and Class Struggle”, Canadian Tribune, 54th Year, No. 1974, November 26, 1975, p. 3.

[18] Lenin, V.I., “To S.I. Gusev”, Collected Works, Volume 34, p. 356.

[19] Mao Tsetung, “On Practice”, Selected Works, Volume 1, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1967, p. 301.

[20] Dewhurst, Alfred, “Ideology and Class Struggle”, Canadian Tribune, 54th Year, No. 1974, November 26, 1975, p. 3.

[21] “Abolish Bill C-73”, Canadian Tribune, 55th Year, No. 1990, p. 2.

[22] Stalin, J.V., “Concerning the Question of the Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists”, Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 164.

[23] Marx, Karl; Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972, p. 76.

[24] “Against Economism”, En Lutte!, December 1975, p. 47.

[25] Lenin, V.I., “Certain Features of the Historical Development of Marxism”, Collected Works, Volume 17, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, p. 39.

[26] Marx, Karl; Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, p. 74.

[27] Marx, Karl; Engels, Frederick, “Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s International Association”, Selected Works in Three Volumes, Volume 2, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 16.

[28] Stalin, J.V., “Concerning the Question of the Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists”, Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 164.

[29] “Against Economism”, En Lutte!, December 1975, p. 11

[30] Dewhurst, Alfred, “Ideology and Class Struggle”, Canadian Tribune, 54th Year, No. 1974, November 26, 1975, p. 3.

[31] Ibid., p. 3.

[32] Cited in Important Documents of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1970, p. 5.

[33] Dewhurst, Alfred, “Ideology and Class Struggle”, Canadian Tribune, 54th Year, No. 1974, November 26, 1975, p. 3.

[34] Mao Tsetung, “On Practice”, Selected Works, Volume 1, p. 301.

[35] Mao Tsetung, “On Contradiction”, Selected Works, Volume 1, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1967, p. 318.