What exactly is this “Marxist-Leninist movement” which its adherents make so much of? If by a movement we mean a vital popular force, then calling the activities of the present-day ultraleft groups in Canada a movement is a grossly inaccurate self-designation.
Their immodesty is, however, a much less serious problem than the actual quality of their supposed Marxism-Leninism. Within these groups, there is a lot of talk about “firmness” in grasping Marxist-Leninist principles, about “vigilance” in demarcating from opportunists, about “dedication” to principled work, etc. Yet, how difficult is it to become an acceptable member of this “new communist movement”? Consistent with their intellectualism – the tendency to be impressed with abstract principles disconnected from reality – membership demands little more than the sterile repetition of truisms and unquestioned assertions bookishly learned and applied.
One such assertion to be embraced in order to gain acceptance into the “movement” is that economism is the greatest threat to the growth of Marxism-Leninism today. Passing mention is occasionally made to the possibility of “left errors”, but they are never really taken seriously. Even in the rare case when it looks like left opportunism is about to receive more attention, as with IS’s characterization of CCL as sectarian, it ends up being portrayed as rightist, allowing IS to obscure not only CCL’s ultraleftism, but its own as well.[1]
To discover anything wrong, past or present, is always to discover rightist tendencies. This notion that one can never be too left, along with the ostentatious brandishing of some idea of “revolutionary purity” against any disagreement on this point, is a first “principle” of the “new communists”. Thus when IS attacks CCL for being dogmatic and hegemonistic, they invite this counterattack:
Now, what ever happened to right opportunism? ... If right opportunism is the main danger facing our young communist movement in the party-building process-and the Canadian communist movement is united at least around that point – then doesn’t this hold true for the question of unity, one of the major aspects of that process? (CCL, For the Unity of Marxist-Leninists, November 1976, p. 39.)
CCL then clinches the case by reminding IS of its own words:
In its December 1975 pamphlet Against Economism, In Struggle! concluded with these words: “Indeed, the defeat of the economist deviation (of right opportunism) in our ranks is the essential condition for elaborating a correct political line and thereby building strong ideological unity among Canadian Marxist-Leninists.” (Ibid., pp. 40-41.)
A second principle seemingly holding the “new revolutionaries” together is that the first duty of Marxist-Leninists is to build a communist party. True enough, but in their hands truth becomes banal truism. In their recent new left period, they called any mention of a Marxist-Leninist party anti-Marxist (this is what made their “leftism” new). And now, like good converts, they try to atone for their past by shouting the obvious from the rooftops. But their clamour is superficial and downright dishonest. They have yet to figure out what a party is and to analyze Canadian conditions. Nonetheless, they pretend to be in a position to immediately construct the new and genuine Canadian communist party. Worse yet is the claim that they are engaged in the actual formation of this party. The demise of once viable communist parties in all Western countries and the absence of any successful socialist revolution in the advanced industrialized countries has had no sobering effect on them.
Despite the fact that they, at times, reject all theories of stages as right opportunist, they tirelessly reiterate Stalin’s stages for the building of a party. Their assumption that these stages apply directly to Canadian conditions comes, by their own admission, before (and consequently instead of) an analysis of these conditions. Listen to IS:
From the point of view of organization, Stalin distinguishes four (4) phases of development of the Party in Russia in the course of the period of preparation: “
a) Constitution of the principal nucleus, above all of the group of ’Iskra’. . . Struggle against economism.
b) Formation of the cadres of the Party, as a foundation of the future workers party on the scale of the whole of Russia (1895-1903).” . . . The Marxist-Leninist movement in Quebec is now in phases “a” and “b”. [emphasis in original] (IS, “The Tasks of the Marxist-Leninist Movement,” Canadian Revolution, Vol. 1, no. 3 [October/November 1975], p. 15.)
So – it is seemingly decreed by Stalin himself that the “party builders” in Quebec are in phases a and b! But, it must be asked, did the group which formed Iskra derive from a ten-year unexamined experience of consummate petty-bourgeois anarchism? Were the conditions of the working class in Russia at the turn of the century like those in Canada now? Was the state of working class consciousness so similar? The answer to the first question is simply taken for granted by the “new communists”. As for their answer to the questions about the working class in present-day Canada, they characteristically replace analysis with incantation and blind optimism:
. . . the Canadian working class has distinguished itself by its high level of combativity in the struggle against the effects of capitalist exploitation: this is reflected in the large development of the strike movement in answer to the present crisis. (CCL, The Struggle for the Creation of the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist), November 1975, p. 42.)
The class struggle deepens. The crisis of capitalism keeps growing, making the conditions of the life of the working people always more difficult. The opportunist and reformist leadership which at the present time dominate the working class and the large working masses of people are exposed and discredited more and more.(IS, “The Creation of the Marxist-Leninist Organization of the strugggle for the Party,” CR, Vol. 1, no. 3 [October/November 1975], pp. 18-19.)
Their inflation and falsification of the current state of affairs is all the more ridiculous in the face of their admission that “opportunist and reformist leadership . . . dominates the working class and the large working masses of people.” CCL even admits that “the situation in Canada today differs from that in Russia in 1900.” (CCL, For the Unity of. . . , p. 15.) But these are passing remarks and do not stop the headlong rush to conjure up a party by merely adding a measure of Stalin to the cauldron of supposedly burgeoning working class militancy in Canada. A profound principle about the need for a party becomes trivial in the hands of those who continually distort and misapply it.
A third element in the self-designation of the “new revolutionaries” relates to their major thrust in fighting the supposed main danger of economism and in allegedly fulfilling their first duty of building the party. This is their emphasis on what they call communist agitation and propaganda. Again, by definition, communists must (whenever and however appropriate) do communist agitation and propaganda, but the ultraleftists misshape this principle in a way that empties it of any concrete application to reality.
Consistent with their holier than thou revolutionism, the kind of agitation and propaganda done by these groups must always be in its most bombastic form regardless of the circumstances. Any slight deviation from acting in a way that on the surface looks more revolutionary than everybody else is immediately branded right opportunist, a charge which throws any true blue member of these groups into a panic. Always and everywhere one must expressly assert one’s “communist identity” and must push one’s full political line. There is no end to their complete disregard for concrete circumstances. Look, for example, at this finishing flourish to a small editorial in IS’s newspaper against Bill C-73 on wage controls (an editorial in which, incidentally, the substance of the bill is never explained):
DOWN WITH Bill C-73!
Down with Canadian bourgeois dictatorship!
Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!
Struggle for the building of the Proletarian Party!
(“In Politics, Imperialism is Reaction,” In Struggle!, September 16, 1976, p. 1.)
It was the folly of similar types of ultraleftists which led Mao to caution:
Communists who really want to do propaganda must consider their audience and bear in mind those who will read their articles and slogans or listen to their speeches and their talk; otherwise they are in effect resolving not to be read or listened to by anyone. (Mao Tse-tung, “Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing,” Selected Works, Vol. Ill [Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967], p. 59.)
Yet the ideologues of the “new communist movement” see themselves so much in touch with their audience that they confidently forward “open debate before the masses” as part of their “communist agitation and progaganda”. CCL congratulates Western Voice for its “principled” behaviour with “the masses”: “The honest members of the WVC [Western Voice Collective] have recognized their errors and begun to repudiate them before the masses,” says CCL’s newspaper, The Forge (“Halfway Measures Don’t Work,” June 17, 1976, p. 7.) What masses? Where are the masses of workers in Canada who are listening to such “repudiations”? Where are the masses of workers who pay attention to these groups, to say nothing about sharing their concerns? This is not to suggest that workers are not interested in serious questions. They always are, but if one is after meaningful political education and not arrogant diatribe, it must flow out of the real concerns of workers themselves, not from fanciful illusions. Proclaiming something to be an “open debate before the masses” doesn’t make it so.
Just as they see Lenin’s time to have been all of a piece, so today all social and political situations are the same for these latter-day infantiles, leading them to assume that they already know about reality and its specific demands – even when they also admit that they have not done very much concrete analysis. Thus their only tactical “principle” is to shout the loudest and the most. In a demonstration on International Women’s Day, IS did not mention the imminence of a third world war and was promptly castigated by CCL. Now regardless of one’s belief about the imminence of war between the imperialist giants, surely a decision on whether or not this should be forwarded at a specific event must depend upon the nature of the event and its participants. It is exactly this question which is not asked with regard to agitation and propaganda, and so this very important tactical principle becomes a way for ultraleftists to talk to themselves, to puff up their “revolutionary” importance. This is a far cry from real communist agitation and propaganda which can only come from developing a revolutionary strategy and tactics based on a grasp of real conditions, both general and particular.
These three “principles” – economism as the greatest obstacle, immediate party-building as the first task, and communist agitation and propaganda as the central tactic – are the magic keys that open the gates to the wonderland called the new Marxist-Leninist movement. Anyone who follows the prescribed steps can enter. First you must tell the good fairy in Montreal that everything you have done in the past was right opportunist. (Once in the movement, you must apologize for your right opportunism whenever the good fairy gets annoyed with you; this is called self-criticism in the new Marxist-Leninist wonderland.) Next, say that the communist party must be set up immediately and convince yourself and whoever else you can that the good fairy is in the midst of doing it; this is quite easy – you merely have to close your eyes and repeat several wildly optimistic statements about the good fairy and the present state of the working class. And last of all, memorize and recite these wishes: I am a communist; I will help to smash the bourgeois state; I will struggle to erect the dictatorship of the proletariat; I will alert people to the dangers of a world war between the superpowers; I will tell everyone that Canada is an independent, imperialist second world power just like England and Japan. (If you also memorize some quotations from What is to be Done? that will please the good fairy no end.) These and other such wishes must be recited over and over, in a very loud voice, to everyone you meet in every situation. Follow these steps carefully and you will be accepted into the new world of the Marxist-Leninist movement. But remember, if you deviate, you will be barred from the land of the vanguard.
Not really so fantastic as all that? Let’s look at what happened in Halifax, a case in point. In 1976 a group calling itself the Halifax Communist Group (HCG) was set up. It arose belatedly from the ruins of an earlier outfit – the East Coast Socialist Movement(ECSM) – which lasted from 1970 to 1972. In the summer of 1972, after nearly two years of malpractice of a new leftist variety covered by a thin veneer of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, some members of ECSM attempted a serious criticism of the organization. When it soon became clear that the others would have none of it, and that the group was unsalvageable, they quit, leaving the door open, however, for a critical analysis of ECSM any time in the future when the others might be interested. Despite brief frantic efforts to recruit replacements, those remaining were too few in number and too dispirited to keep it going, and much to their sorrow, the completely bankrupt ECSM died. A couple of years of demoralized inactivity followed for those who had tried to hang on to ECSM. Eventually they claimed that they wanted to understand what had gone wrong, and took up the invitation of well over two years’ standing to conduct a critical analysis with those who had left the group. After months and months of ongoing discussion, all appeared to agree that ECSM had been an opportunist group plagued by petty-bourgeois characteristics of an ultraleft type.
At the same time, word was beginning to seep in from Montreal about the two “Marxist-Leninist centres” that everyone was “rallying to”. There was a series of quick visits to Halifax by emissaries from the two “leading centres”. All of a sudden, the Halifax Communist Group erupted onto the scene– its core members being the ECSM diehards who only a couple of months before had supposedly completed their criticism of ECSM, but now they sang a different tune:
It [ECSM] maintained throughout its existence an economist political and ideological line and posed a two-stage theory of development in its relationship with the working class. (This was not the only error of ECSM, but it was the dominant one.)(HCG, Basis of Unity, April 1976, Appendix I, p. i.)
A summary of the various “analyses” that these same people have put forth on the fundamental nature of ECSM reveals at least five different verdicts between the final days of ECSM in 1972 and their first statement in 1976 after their entry into the “new Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement”: that it was a Marxist-Leninist pre-party formation (1972); that its main problem was that it didn’t understand dialectics (1972); that it didn’t integrate with the masses (1975); that it was essentially petty-bourgeois and ultraleft (1975); and finally, the answer awaited in Montreal – that its central feature was its thoroughly economist theory and practice (1976).
Moreover, as late as 1975, according to their own account, they “engaged in and promoted many forms of activity with a perspective and goals which were not only un-Marxist-Leninist, but actually anti-Marxist-Leninist.” (HCG, To develop conditions locally for the building of the National Vanguard Party; Struggle against the Economist Error in our midst, December 1976, p. 1.) Nevertheless, they formed their “Marxist-Leninist” organization, never turning a hair even when, six months later, they admitted that “spontaneity and economism have, up till the very present, dominated our thinking and activity.” (HCG, Basis of Unity, Appendix I, p. i.)
They have shown themselves willing to be carried to the farthest reaches of every passing current: as soon as economism was being looked for, HCG found it everywhere; as soon as rallying was being asked for, HCG rallied as fast and submissively as possible. By latching onto the ultraleftists in central Canada who were more theoretically sophisticated and had a bigger organization setup, HCG gained a badly needed sense of security and confidence as well as a wider forum for itself.
And how did the “advanced” Quebec groups respond to these new Halifax converts when they visited here? Did they do a thorough study of these long-time “activists” on the Halifax scene? Did they investigate the history of ECSM to discover the form of opportunism which had just been openly acknowledged by those who had belonged to this formation? No, instead of investigating the local situation, they deliberately avoided discussing ECSM’s history with others in Halifax (despite several invitations) so as not to unwittingly discover anything negative about HCG before the pact was sealed.
Everything was going like clockwork; HCG was busy jumping through all the right hoops, all the while repeating the pet phrases that were resonating elsewhere. Yes, the HCG wants to build a party post haste; yes, they eschew their whole past as right opportunist; yes, they are prepared to do communist agitation and propaganda far and wide. Presto! Welcome to the movement.
The capstone of HCG’s instant success was acceptance by both IS and CCL, but with some minor difference. CCL usually appears to have a tougher political line and therefore tends to attract the more hard-headed, while IS has the appearance of being more tolerant. Thus, in this case, IS was apparently quicker in its eagerness to draft the Halifax farm team, and in no time flat, HCG “rallied” to IS. HCG dissolved and became the “Halifax Sympathizers of In Struggle”; weeks (or was it days?) later, they graduated to the “Halifax branch of In Struggle”. So, these Halifax ultraleftists have worn no less than five disguises in as many years – East Coast Socialist Movement, independent Marxist-Leninists, Halifax Communist Group, Halifax Sympathizers of In Struggle, and at present, a local branch of In Struggle. (“At present” because it would be foolish, with such a history as theirs, to view them and the “two leading centres” as anything but transitory.)
Meanwhile CCL, despite its seemingly greater firmness in delineating those qualified to be members of its organization, was not far behind with its stamp of approval:
To mention but two other examples of communist groups without here actually examining them in detail, [indeed!] there is the Halifax Communist Group in the Maritimes. This collective has carried out some study of Marxist-Leninist principles and has written up a document outlining its political line. While this line is not fully elaborated on many questions it is nevertheless based on Marxism-Leninism and is clearly situated in the struggle against opportunism. This group is now gaining its first experiences of communist agitation and propaganda. (CCL, For the Unity of. . .. p. 23.)
This predisposition to collect all the unreconstituted flotsam and jetsam lying around from the new left period and then call the newly packaged debris an organization of proletarian leadership is characteristic.
Groups recruited in this unprincipled manner necessarily behave in an unprincipled way with each other. At one moment, collusion reigns as the two groups create grand images of each other through a barrage of reciprocal congratulations; at the next moment, contention holds sway as each strains for dominance over the other and for the loyalty of smaller groups which often get caught up in siding with what they hope will be “the winner”. There has been a consistent pattern of swings between collusion and contention among ultraleft groups. As long as no one group considers itself strong enough to proclaim victory in the battle for hegemony over its petty-bourgeois ranks, and as long as there remains any illusion that the groups might merge, then they collude. When, however, one group believes that it has the strength of numbers and has the confidence to promulgate a political position with certainty, then it will throw off the cover of “comradeship” and pronounce itself the only true Marxist-Leninist organization.
At first, when the two groups were announcing the success of their “movement”, there was no end to the accolades:
The League and In Struggle!, the two most developed Marxist-Leninist formations in the country, have extended their influence throughout Canada, principally through their newspapers. Both of these groups are also carrying out communist agitation and propaganda in the working class in the two largest cities in the country and now regroup militants in Quebec and English Canada. ... All through Quebec and in many cities of English Canada, the movement is growing. (Ibid., p. 8.)
Or again:
No one would deny that In Struggle! and the CCL(ML) are the most developed and influential groups in the country. This is not so much because of their size, but due to the fact that both put forward relatively precise political lines, publish bi-monthly newspapers with readers across the country and have initiated revolutionary practice in several cities. (Ibid., p. 99.)
However, even while such friendly sentiments were being traded, a strong current of rivalry was evident. While endlessly repeating that “we consider In Struggle! to be a genuine Communist group” (Ibid., p. 22), CCL, in the very same pamphlet, had strange words to say about its “comrades”:
The fact is that since its creation In Struggle! has tried to hawk all kinds of schemes, plans, projects and ways to make “unity” – everything was tried except principled struggle over line. (Ibid., p. 70.)
Despite all the varied forms and colours it has taken, In Struggle’s! line on unity has fundamentally remained faithful to its opportunist essence of abandoning the struggle over ideological and political line. (Ibid., p. 71.)
During periods of collusion, the rivalry sometimes became quite fierce as the thin veil covering their contention for control of this ill-begotten “movement” occasionally slipped. Still calling IS a fraternal organization, CCL later writes:
In their communique issued for the conference, In Struggle’s Central Committee has outdone itself in producing an opportunist, hysterical attack on the work of the CCL(ML). This document, which displays practically no attachment to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, shows that In Struggle is clearly becoming obsessed with the successes the League’s line has achieved in practice, and is frantically attempting to justify its own bankrupt line. (“In Struggle embarks on another dead-end path,” The Forge, April 14, 1977, p. 14.)
Meanwhile, even though IS is more on the receiving end, it is not all take and no give. Fairly early on IS rediscovered sectarianism and wrote a whole pamphlet which basically castigates CCL for doing what IS didn’t quite dare to do – declare themselves a more advanced organization. In the name of “vigorous and enriching debate” (IS, Fight the Sectarianism of the CCL(ML), July 1976, p. 13), IS pokes at its rival:
The League’s foolishness of the last few months has gone on long enough. It’s about time it grasps a correct conception of the polemic between Marxist-Leninists. It’s about time it stops its foolish remarks about IN STRUGGLE! and other Marxist-Leninist groups. It’s also about time it stops taking itself for the universal umbilical cord and takes the time to look around and study reality, including the reality of the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement which the League, in its excessive subjectivism, it is in the process of reducing to itself alone.[emphasis in original] (p. 48.)
These and innumerable other quotes from CCL and IS are not the language of criticism among fellow communists; they are the language of denunciation among opportunist competitors.
Eventually pretenses were dropped and CCL began to contend openly with IS and with no bones about it. In an article appearing in the September 30, 1977 issue of The Forge entitled “In Struggle has Sunk Completely into Revisionism!”, CCL begins with this edict:
In Struggle is no longer part of the Marxist-Leninist Movement.
IS’s leadership has abandoned the basic principles of Marxist-Leninist-Mao Tsetung Thought one after another and dragged the group into the swamp of opportunism and revisionism. In Struggle has engaged in a practice of systematic sabotage which is leading it deeper and deeper down the road of counter-revolution, (p. 15.)
Thus the die is cast in the old game of contention among would-be revolutionaries. CCL cannot be rejecting IS on the grounds of newly discovered opportunism since IS has been opportunist in the same way all along (and whatever else, its form of opportunism has not been standard revisionism). CCL in the past embraced IS on opportunist grounds and now renounces them when their own opportunity for appearing the stronger of the two presented itself.
When they wish to pamper themselves with pompous notions of vanguard status and of progress on all fronts, then anyone who says so is a Marxist-Leninist. When they compete for hegemony, then no one, except those who completely agree with them, is a Marxist-Leninist. They shift from propping each other up to knocking each other down, often with no discernible change in any substantive positions. The inconsistencies are remarkable. All are considered Marxist-Leninists because they are supposedly building the party, fighting economism, and engaging in communist agitation and propaganda, but . . . then again, CCL is “sectarian” while “right opportunism remains the major danger”; IS is a “communist group” but displays “practically no attachment to the principles of Marxism-Leninism”, etc., etc.
The facile designation of each other as Marxist-Leninists and the sudden rejection of each other for things they have all done and continue to do marks this “new communist movement” with all the characteristics of a bourgeois marriage. Groups unite with pious proclamations of principle and enduring affection, but the real reasons – convenience and status – remain undisclosed and un-discussable. Pledging unity, they stay together despite perpetual bickering for power; they don’t admit why they continue the marriage or why they really wish to divorce. And when they divorce, they fail to examine what went wrong and commonly remarry with the same problems and consequences. Unlike a bourgeois marriage, however, ultraleftists, in their collusion and contention, claim to have much higher aspirations – the very reshaping of humankind – and thus they must be taken far more seriously.
[1] Both ultraleftism and rightism are in essence rightist. That which is not revolutionary is counterrevolutionary. But this does not mean that ultraleftism can be reduced to rightism so that they are merely different names for the same thing. Ultraleftism is a definite and distinct phenomenon, and if sufficient emphasis and analysis are not given to this form of opportunism, it will continue to go unrecognized and misunderstood.