The analysis of the preceding groups and organizations shows that our movement is not simply suffering from confusion and amateurishness, is not simply bearing the marks of every young and inexperienced movement, but in addition has been dominated throughout its existence by consolidated opportunist tendencies who have directly fostered such backwardness and lack of clarity. Each opportunist trend attempts to capitalize off the ’mistakes’ of the others and, by taking advantage of the general confusion of views generated by its competition, tries to rally sections of the movement behind its own. Thus the CPC(ML) initially attracted many elements who had opposed (on various grounds) the revisionism of the CP Canada. The MREQ/CCL(ML), in turn, has attracted sections of the movement who likewise oppose both the CP Canada and the CPC(ML). And we are now witnessing an opposition tendency of sorts that has developed opposed to the CPC, CPC(ML), and the CCL(ML). This tendency’s main advocate has been the En Lutte! organization, which being one of the larger and well-known ’ML’ groups has managed to rally much of the anti – or at least non – CCL(ML) forces for a Party-building effort of its own. It should be clear that the mere fact of ’opposition’ to some specific form of opportunism does not at all mean that such opposition is waged from a principled stand. Neither the CPC(ML)’s opposition to the CPC, nor the CCL(ML)’s opposition to the CPC(ML), in any way represents a positive development of Marxism-Leninism. Just the opposite. The CPC(ML) and CCL(ML) have in fact only pioneered new shades of opportunism, new means to advance and defend the interests of the petty bourgeoisie under the pretense of ’Marxism-Leninism’. In considering the development of the anti-CCL(ML) trend, and in particular the role of En Lutte!, we must therefore determine on what grounds this opposition is based, what, specifically, distinguishes the various-trends, and whose interests each in fact serves.
Since its founding, En Lutte! has been one of the most important organizations in the young Marxist-Leninist movement. Because of its relatively longer history and size, its newspaper and pamphlets, and because it has a more wide-spread and varied practice than most of the smaller circles, En Lutte! has been and is still looked to for guidance and leadership by much of the movement. Today, it is the CCL(ML)’s major antagonist. The struggle between them has thus taken the form of each waging a concerted campaign to place themselves at the head of the movement, a ’two-line struggle’ between two separate versions of the pre-Party and Party organizational ’plan’. The League sparked this struggle by its sudden declaration as the ’vanguard organization to create the Party’. En Lutte! was thus forced into sudden declarations of its own in an attempt to attract those put-off and left straggling by the formation of the League. The competition between the two has reached the point that virtually the entire movement views their struggle as the two poles of a decisive ’two-line’ exchange that will determine the ’correct’ position on the unification of Marxist-Leninists and Party building, and will thus seal the outcome of our movement’s development within a short time. Both the League and En Lutte! foster this view, since regardless of the outcome of the struggle between them, each can declare afterwards that their line was, after all, the only correct one. As long as everyone is convinced that the struggle between them is a showdown between right and wrong, then ’obviously’ one of the two has been ’right’ all along. The CCL(ML) can thus use En Lutte! as a springboard for its own ’party’ efforts, while En Lutte! attempts the same. The likely outcome of this struggle is not that one line will win out over the other, but that both will declare themselves the victors. And being ’victorious’, both can then proceed to declare themselves the true ’party’. The CCL(ML), having ’won’, can declare the “Canadian Communist Party (ML)”; while En Lutte!, having ’won’ just as much, can declare something on the order of the “Canadian Proletarian Party (ML)”, And what with three ’ML’ parties, we will no doubt ’rise’ to the level of the Americans in no time.
As we will see, the En Lutte! organization does not offer a principled opposition to the CCL(ML)’s opportunist maneuvers, but simply advances its own as an ’alternative’. In putting forward its own ’unity’ line, En Lutte! has in fact only ceased whatever motion it had towards Marxism-Leninism, and has simply chosen to battle the CCL(ML) on its own opportunist grounds. In essence, both organizations appeal to the same petty bourgeois bias in our movement, the same narrow interests, the same willingness to compromise our movement before its real work has even gotten under way. While the CCL(ML) has been much bolder in its appeal, En Lutte! has, under pressure of the League’s call, begun to consolidate its efforts so as not to be left ’behind’. En Lutte! since its inception has held to the same ultimate ’unity’ of petty bourgeois and working class interests that has characterized the League. The only difference between the League and En Lutte! in this respect is that the League is far more adept at turning its opportunism into concise catch-phrases, whereas En Lutte! is content to present its own in more wordy form: “Nowhere in the world has the proletariat been, nor is it today, the only class to wage the struggle for socialism” we are told in CR #1 (p.20). “These social strata”, i.e. the petty bourgeois elements, “constitute a considerable force in support of the revolutionary movement led by the proletariat, a force that may even prove decisive in certain conditions” (Ibid). In its newspaper, En Lutte! has further elaborated this line by fawning over the struggles of various petty bourgeois strata with blanket support. As would be expected from such a class view, En Lutte!’s work in the proletariat follows the League exactly. Both share the declaration of ’two-lines in trade unionism’; ’class against class trade unionism’; the declaration of the general strike as “an important step...in the struggle for our liberation”; the “struggle for socialism”; ’party’-building through Economism; and so on. In terms of “national defense”, En Lutte! stands shoulder to shoulder with the League’s nationalist and social-chauvinist view, but, as follows from its fundamentally Centrist orientation, attempts to cover its position by merging ’principle’ and opportunism a la Kautsky. Thus while En Lutte! shares many ’unities’ with the League, and in its class basis is identical, it is distinct enough to pose as a separate trend. However great the ’differences’ En Lutte! and the League may find between themselves, we must treat these two organizations only as two variations on the same theme. The criticisms developed in the previous section on the CCL(ML) therefore equally apply to En Lutte! In addition to the opportunist positions they share in common, we need only consider En Lutte!’s unique contributions to the side-tracking of our movement, and in particular its Centrism.