En Lutte! was stung badly by the League’s sharp criticisms and refusal to join in tactical unity with En Lutte! for the March 8 events. The defense En Lutte! threw up at that time was characterized, relative to its normal standards of equivocation, by a quite open attack on ideological struggle, on the struggle for principled unity. Its exchange with the League thus left it open to the League’s charge that En Lutte! sought to “throw principle out the window, and raise the unity of Marxist-Leninists above all else” (The Forge #14 p.11), and so on. But En Lutte!, being no novice to movement doings, soon recovered itself and by the end of April had begun to elaborate a more sophisticated ’plan’. It has retained, but relegated to a secondary position, its attempt at a “united front of Marxist-Leninists” and “tactical unity”. Its encounter with the League had proven beyond doubt that one could not ’regroup’ the movement around oneself simply on the plea of “tactical unity”. As a replacement, En Lutte! suddenly remembered all its grand phrase-making about ’ideological struggle’. Here was just the thing! Now En Lutte! ’recognizes’ the existence of bourgeois ideology as opportunism in the Marxist-Leninist movement; it ’recognizes’ the necessity of one group proving itself as the leading centre prior to declaration; it ’recognizes’ the very ’dialectical’ relations of all its tasks; and so on and so on. But most importantly, En Lutte! has enhanced all this ’recognizing’ with a detailed plan of conferences, meetings, exchanges, polemics in the press (no longer merely ’eventual’), etc. all of which are to constitute a “period of resolute struggle” (En Lutte! Vol.4 #2 Sup. p.4), a period of “demarcation” before the formation of its pre-Party organization. En Lutte! must at all costs avoid the error the League committed, namely, to declare the pre-’party’ organization in relative isolation from the rest of the movement and then attempt to draw in others afterwards. En Lutte! will thus have a ’debate’, but a ’debate’ to which all anti-CPC(ML) ’progressives’ and ’Marxist-Leninists’ are invited. It will account for every possible opportunist ally in its effort, and only after everyone has thus been ’regrouped’ will it then proceed to declarations. In the process, En Lutte! hopes to thus ’demarcate’ itself from the League, not according to principle, but according to timetables.
En Lutte! attempts to embellish its ’plan’ with a superior quality that will command deference and acquiesence from the movement. This it attempts in two ways. On the one hand, En Lutte! pretends that its overriding concern for ’unity’ has nothing whatever to do with the League’s designs on ’leadership’, but simply stems from En Lutte!’s objective dedication to the working class. To precisely express such cosmic dedication, En Lutte! reaches into its storehouse of petty poetic inspiration as follows:
The proletariat cries in fury for the unity of the Marxist-Leninist movement
For now we know it is the only way forward to our dictatorship. Without unity we walk alongside,
With unity we walk in front, ahead towards the Party.
The will of the people is a command – and this is our will.
Proletarian Unity #1 p.32
En Lutte! actually says such things! But unfortunately, it does not limit itself to such shameless ’heart-rending’ epigrams. En Lutte! begins with the commonplace truism that “...the true development of the movement is ultimately to be found in deeper and stronger ties with the proletariat...” and concludes from this, not that therefore we should develop the wherewithall in principle to win the advanced workers, but simply that we must have “...unity of (ML) communists...”. And why is ’unity’ so much more a pressing issue than firm and definite principles? For the truly ’profound’ reason that “The proletariat is bound to lose faith in the ardent defenders of unity that the Marxist-Leninists (are) if the same defenders continue to be divided and engaged in inter-group struggles.” (Proletarian Unity #1 p.30
How, we may ask, is it possible for the proletariat to “lose faith in” a movement that has yet to win its respect? And since when, we may ask in addition, has the primary characteristic of the Marxist-Leninist movement been that it is composed of “ardent defenders of unity”? The entire history of our movement has clearly shown, on the contrary, that the movement has at one or another time been dominated by very articulate and “ardent defenders” of opportunism, has “engaged in inter-group struggles” not over principles, but over various shades of that opportunism, and that precisely for these reasons the working class has had no faith whatsoever in our “ardents” a la En Lutte!. En Lutte! supposes that it can simply avoid all issues of substance by creating a totally false juxtaposition between “struggle” and “unity”. And from this it hopes to deceive us into believing that if we ’truly’, ’really’ wish to be “ardent defenders” of ’unity’, then we should temper our “struggle” so that it does not interfere with what En Lutte! considers to be most precious to the working class, i.e. “unity of (ML) communists”. Thus En Lutte! has simply liquidated the class content of “struggle” and of “unity”, since it should be clear that in order to achieve a principled unity, it is necessary to demarcate against opportunist tendencies, that those tendencies and their proponents are excluded, driven out of the movement (an idea that En Lutte! finds to ’frightfully’ offensive), that our struggle must be waged on principle so as to insure that our unity is truly a unity of communists, and that where we oppose unprincipled splits and unprincipled struggles, we are fully for splits against opportunists and struggles which narrow the definition of our movement to those who are truly Marxist-Leninist in both word and deed. En Lutte!, caught up as it is in its petty bourgeois moralism and hankering to keep all and sundry ’united’, cannot support principled struggle which is essential for principled unity. It cannot support this since if such a struggle were to be waged, and such a unity won, En Lutte! would very likely find itself excluded from the movement. Thus it must define things according to its liking. It will define “struggle” as being valid only when it does not threaten ’unity’; and it will define “unity” as being that harmonious state of affairs brought about by the complete liquidation of principle. En Lutte! can then presume to speak on behalf of the working class, regardless of how little “faith” the workers may have in it, can presume to portray itself as the “ardent defender” of ’unity’, and attempt to intimidate any possible opposition’ whether from other opportunists or from Marxist-Leninists, by stating from the outset that “To work against the unity of the Marxist-Leninist movement, is to work against the proletariat’s unity.” (Proletarian Unity #1 p.27)
This is not Marxism-Leninism, but the height of opportunist hypocrisy! In fact, it is precisely the likes of En Lutte! who “work against the unity of the Marxist-Leninist movement” since to attempt to ’unite’ the movement on a unprincipled basis, to attempt to ’unite’ Marxist-Leninists with opportunists under the cry of ’unity’, engenders the greatest disunity. What En Lutte! in fact wishes to ’unite’ is the narrow interests of the petty bourgeoisie with the interests of the working class, and this can only mean subordinating the latter to the former. It opposes decisive and ’disruptive’ struggle, since it is precisely principled struggle that exposes such maneuvers and deprives our petty moralists of their cover. If En Lutte! were only a little more frank, it would state its real intentions thusly: To work against the unity of opportunism and Marxism-Leninism is to work against the proletariat’s ’unity’, i.e. subordination, to the petty bourgeoisie. Therefore, we must oppose all struggle which attempts to split the two. Otherwise, the petty bourgeoisie “is bound to lose faith” in its ability to hoodwink the working class into being “the ardent defenders” of its own narrow interests. We must not allow, En Lutte! states in effect, our “inter-group struggles” to harm our common cause. That, after all, is the “will of the people”.
Fearing that simple intimidation may not do the trick, En Lutte! assures us that its ’plan’ is not a mere factional whim, as was the League’s, but in fact flows from the entire course of human history. Its ’unity’ position
...is neither gratuitous nor arbitrary: it results from the application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and the teachings of the international communist movement to the present concrete conditions in our country. p.16
and that
In the present conditions any other method is bound to failure and can only lead towards the division of Marxist-Leninist forces and not to their unity. p.15 Proletarian Unity #1
What more could we possibly ask for? Not only does the ’proletariat cry in fury’ for En Lutte!’s opportunist ’unity’, not only does history itself engender En Lutte!’s ’plan’, but should we mistakenly follow any other Party-building plan we are automatically “bound to failure”. The League, you see, was entirely factional in its ’plan’. But En Lutte! has been ’spared’ factionalism. It has no need to go inventing ’plans’ of its own. It has simply cast its eyes towards Heaven, and God and all the international communist movement Revealed to En Lutte! the Only Correct Way. How pleasant to have all of History on one’s side. But then, one can pick and choose from history what one pleases, providing one has sufficiently narrow ambitions. And as we trace En Lutte!’s attempt at substantiation of its line we find, not that history has rendered En Lutte! more profound, but simply that En Lutte! has rendered history to its liking.
En Lutte!’s view of the ’concrete conditions’ of our movement encompasses two aspects: the composition of the movement, and the state of its development. As to composition, En Lutte!, in the first major volley of its offensive for ’unity’, ’raised’ its standards for the movement from simply “putting forward” various positions to “recognition” of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as the “guide to action” and the “firm belief” in the correctness of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the “way towards socialism” in Canada and the world (En Lutte! Vol.3 #19 p.6). By July of 1976, when it was polemicising against the League as the “principal agent of sectarianism within the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement” (Against Sectarianism p.7), En Lutte! saw the necessity of ’raising’ its standards even ’higher’, and advanced the precise formulation that the:
...movement is composed of the various groups, organizations, circles and cells embarked in one way or another on the road of the proletarian revolution in Canada and the application of the strategy that consequently follows. Against Sectarianism p.7
Such are the fruits of En Lutte!’a persistent pursuit of ’science’: from “putting forward”, to “recognition”, to having “embarked in one way or another”. But unwittingly, En Lutte! has indeed produced a ’concrete analysis’ of the anti-CPC(ML) forces here. For within these ranks we can find ’embarkations’ to ’proletarian revolution’ ranging from J. Scott’s Trotskyism, to the League social-chauvinism, to the Bolshevik Union’s ’native solution’, to En Lutte!’s ’popular’ and purely petty bourgeois ’revolution’, to a host of others. It matters little to En Lutte! that the “strategy that consequently follows” from amongst these diverse trends have nothing to do with Marxist-Leninist principle, or that the ’movement’ it has thus defined embraces only the petty bourgeois opportunists who hide behind Marxism-Leninism. En Lutte! is not in a position to question anyone’s good intentions, least of all its own. So it simply lumps together all those who, like itself, have “embarked in one way or another” on the road to consolidated opportunism.
En Lutte! cannot let it go at that, however, since it has already been confronted by the CCL(ML) with the charge of reneging on principle. To give a more ’principled’ flavour to its conception of the movement En Lutte! must therefore find some way to say the same thing in several different ways. We are told, on the one hand, that
What fundamentally unites Marxist-Leninists is their firm desire to defend the fundamental interests of the proletariat and the people, their firm desire to base themselves on the historical lessons of the struggle to defend the interests of the people, on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. En Lutte! Vol.4 #4 Sup. p.4
To “...defend the fundamental interests of the proletariat and the people...”, to “... defend the interests of the people, on the principles of Marxism-Leninism”? This is indeed a clarification. Formerly we had thought that the fundamental interests of the working class, and the interests of “the people”, i.e. other classes and strata, were two separate things. Formerly we had thought that Marxism-Leninism defended and advanced the interests of the working class alone, and that if other classes and strata, i.e. the petty bourgeoisie, should join in with the working class, it was only on the condition of them completely abandoning their own interests and placing themselves at the standpoint of the working class. But not at all for En Lutte! For En Lutte!, not only are the “fundamental interests of the proletariat and the people” fundamentally identical, but it is the “firm desire” to maintain that identity of interests that, in En Lutte!’s view, “fundamentally unites” Marxist-Leninists. Incredible, but true! It is, in En Lutte!’s view, the “historical lessons of the struggle to defend the interests of the people”, that constitutes the “principles of Marxism-Leninism”. We could not ask for a clearer expression of En Lutte!’s peculiar rendition of the “unity of classes”.
In addition to this general definition, En Lutte! also expands and elaborates six basic positions it announced during the March exchanges, and declares its entire elaboration to be a “fundamentally correct ideological line” (PU #1 p.17). It attacks the League for “confusing” ideological and political line (Ibid p.22), and thus promises to drag into the Canadian movement yet another stupid and pointless argument that has been raging in the American movement for some time.
This ’deepening’ of the struggle brings out in stark relief En Lutte!’s incapacity for coherent thought and its slavish striving to portray a common basis for its conception of ’the movement’, a basis for its ’unity’. According to En Lutte!, ’ideological line’ is simply a “...collection of principles on which...analysis of the situation and...action is based...”, as if one could ’uphold’ proletarian ideology by purchasing volumes of Marx and Engels; while ’political line’ is presented as an entirely separate sphere of endeavor, towhit: “...the application of these principles that should be made in the present situation...” (PU #1 p.17). Following this bogus separation, En Lutte! draws the logical conclusion that:
In spite of their unity on the fundamental principles which must guide their action, Canadian (ML) communists are still divided on many essential points of political line. A fundamentally correct ideological line does not automatically guarantee the application of Marxist-Leninist principles to the Canadian revolution, it is not a self-evident matter... Proletarian Unity #1 p.17
Not at all. The only “self-evident matter” here is that En Lutte! is bound and determined to have its ’unity’, regardless of how this sits with Marxism-Leninism. But what can this mean, this assertion that there is “unity on the fundamental principles” and yet division on “many essential points of political line”? What can it mean to say that “a fundamentally correct ideological line” does not guarantee that one will have a correct “application of Marxist-Leninist principles”? If, as En Lutte! states, it is possible for all and sundry to share “a fundamentally correct ideological line” and yet have different, i.e. both correct and incorrect, political lines stemming from it, this can only mean that the principles of Marxism-Leninism are capable of producing both opportunist and correct political lines. That is, Marxism-Leninism is simply an abstraction that gives birth to about anything. Such is En Lutte!’s ’grasp’ of the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism.
But this ’profound’ division into “ideological line” and “political line” is only a caricature of Marxism-Leninism, a crass distortion that En Lutte! must resort to in order to maintain ’unity’. It should go without saying that the principles of Marxism-Leninism are not simple abstractions, but general guiding laws drawn from the history of class struggle worldwide. It is impossible to ’have’ these principles, or adhere to them, without correctly applying them to the specific conditions in each country. In fact, it is precisely in their correct application to our own conditions, that is, in the form of political line, that one’s grasp of those fundamental principles is affirmed. Incorrect political lines do not simply reflect ’oversight’. An incorrect understanding of a particular situation reflects one-sidedness, narrowness in outlook, a failure to take into account the “sum total of facts, without a single exception” relating to a situation, a failure to apply scientific socialism, i.e., if it must be spelled out, a failure to employ the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism. One cannot ’uphold’ or have “basic unity” on the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism when it is proven in practice that one simply fails to understand what those principles are or how they should be used. Those opportunists who swear up and down by the principles of Marxism-Leninism, who never tire of proclaiming their allegiance to those principles and to the “fundamental interests of the working class”, who have so much to say about ’our’ basic unity on “a fundamentally correct ideological line”, and yet who, when it comes to the Canadian revolution invariably draw the most bankrupt and opportunist political lines, lines so bankrupt even they themselves must admit it, such opportunists do not in fact uphold Marxist-Leninist principles, do not ’have’ “a fundamentally correct ideological line”, but rather uphold a caricature of Marxism-Leninism, uphold opportunism which hides behind the working class, and have “fundamental unity” only with other opportunists of the same stripe. Whether or not a particular group actually has a correct understanding of the basic principles will be shown by how those principles are applied. And it should have gone without saying that anyone who claims to have a correct understanding of those principles, and yet draws opportunist political lines, has absolutely no understanding of those principles at all.
En Lutte!’s “unity on the fundamental principles” amounts only to a superficial and strictly formal ’recognition’ of Marxism-Leninism. It follows from this viewpoint that anyone who ’upholds’, that is, formally declares that they accept, Marxism-Leninism the dictatorship of the proletariat, armed struggle, the Party principle, and so on, is a Marxist-Leninist. But such a view has been disproven time and again in the history of the world communist movement. Marxism-Leninism teaches us to judge people, not by what they say of themselves or formally proclaim, but by what they actually do, what lines they actually put forward, and whose class interests they actually defend. It is one of the peculiar features of modern opportunism that petty bourgeois tendencies invariably adopt any form, swear by any set of ’principles’, in order to advance their class interests. Thus it would be at best childish naivete and at worst gross opportunism to pretend that all those who formally held themselves to be Marxist-Leninists were in fact Marxist-Leninists, or that those who in fact only ’unite’ on opportunism have “unity on fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism”. En Lutte! must attempt to convince us that a simple declaration of good intentions, a simple formal allegiance to Marxism-Leninism, is enough to qualify for being ’Marxist-Leninist’, since that is precisely the extent of their own ’adherence’ to Marxist-Leninist principles. It can then pat itself on the back for having a “fundamentally correct ideological line”, and flatter others who fall for such foolishness, while excusing its repeated “erroneous conceptions” on the question of political line. But in reality the only ’ideological unity’ En Lutte! shares with its audience, with those who “embark in one way or another”, is “fundamental unity” around petty bourgeois interests. That this fundamental unity of the petty bourgeoisie is marked by a wide divergence of political line is to be expected from the nature of that class. All opportunists “embark in one way or another” towards the same goal, but they must, being slaves to their narrowness, find innumerable ways to get there.
By stressing the “unity on fundamental principles”, En Lutte! hopes to build a case against the League’s sectarianism and thus attract those who have not fallen into the CCL(ML)’s grip to its own ’party’ scheme. It announces that it will be including as fellow Marxist-Leninists in its conferences, etc., all those who “adhere” to the proclaimed “Marxist-Leninist ideological line” (En Lutte! Vol.4 #4 Sup. p.4). Given that there is so much unity on the ’ideological plane’, En Lutte! informs us that as far as disunity is concerned, “It is the survival of opportunism, or of bourgeois ideology, within the movement itself which is responsible for the existing political divergencies.” (Proletarian Unity #1 p.17)
So! There is bourgeois ideology within the communist movement after all! But we should not think that opportunism thrives in our movement. Not at all. It simply ’survives’. And since ’we’ are all so united ideologically around the “Marxist-Leninist ideological line”, we can rest assured that this last remnant of opportunism is taking its final breath only on the ’political plane’. It will soon, no doubt, simply pass away from acute boredom. In the meantime, lest we think that En Lutte! has given up struggle altogether, we are told that
...real inclusion in the Marxist-Leninist movement will only be confirmed in the struggle on all fundamental questions of ideological and political line of the Canadian revolution. It is in the heat of this struggle that the real demarcation will take place with opportunism in all its forms, and the perimeters will be able to be drawn around those who defend the immediate and fundamental interests of the proletariat and those who betray these interests. En Lutte! Vol.4 #4 Sup. p.4
En Lutte! has not given up the struggle, it has simply put it in the future tense. The “real inclusion”, that is, as opposed to En Lutte!’s present bogus inclusion via those who have “embarked in one way or another”, this “real inclusion” will occur sometime in the future. It will occur when there has been struggle on all fundamental questions of ideological and political line. As if that struggle were not already underway. And as if En Lutte! had not already declared ’unity’ on “ideological line”, it now declares further struggle on it. But you get the general idea. After there has been struggle, the lines will be drawn and this will enable a “real demarcation”. En Lutte! is forced to make such promises of future struggle, in the same way as any penny ante politician who hopes to rally the electors. But at the same time, it must attempt to convince us that there is no contradiction between its promises of future decisive struggles and its present proclamations of ’unity’. There are after all, En Lutte! will say, two spheres: we have already achieved unity on the ideological plane {though we promise a little future struggle on this too), and we will soon snuff the “survivals” of opportunism on the political plane. Admittedly we have not, En Lutte! will admit, given you much evidence of “struggle on all fundamental questions of ideological and political line”; we have not given you “real demarcations”, but merely the fabrications of our fertile imaginations; but all these things will come in good time. In the meantime, do not forget our “fundamental unity” and our “ideological line”.
En Lutte!’s conception of “ideological line” and “political line” is so confused that even En Lutte! itself cannot keep the two straight. Formerly it had told us that “ideological line” meant a “collection of principles”, i.e. recognition of the proletariat as the agent of revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Party principle, and so on. But then as En Lutte! elaborates its “ideological line”, around which ’we’ are all supposed to have so much ’unity’, it becomes clear that by ’ideological line’ it means, not a ’collection’ of formal Marxist-Leninist principles, but simply the ’major lines’ which currently hold sway in the movement. It thus concocts in its “ideological line” a stew of both ’ideological’ and ’political’ lines. On the Native question, for example, En Lutte! includes in its “fundamentally correct ideological line” not simply the right of nations to self-determination, but the right of specific national minorities to secede. On the question of who leads the revolution, En Lutte! ’modifies’ Marxism-Leninism to state that socialist revolution is to be carried out “principally” by the proletariat but as we will remember from its earlier positions, “...the Canadian people as a whole have an objective interest in the overthrow of imperialist domination and capitalist exploitation” (CR #1 p.19). Such positions are common to a number of leading opportunist trends, and it is on this basis that En Lutte! has decided that they are “fundamental” enough to qualify as part of the basis for ’unity’ of Canadian Marxist-Leninists. Even when there are ’differences’, as En Lutte! has with the League over their more blatant social-chauvinism, this does not interfere with the “ideological line”. En Lutte! simply encourages the League to hold back a bit, to join in taking “...the initiative in the struggle for preserving Canada’s national independence” (PU #1 p.16) and calls the rest differences over “essential points of political line”. Thus by simply lumping together the most prevalent and generally accepted positions, En Lutte! can declare this a commonly held “fundamentally correct ideological line” and hope that it will prove sufficient for its much-anticipated ’unity’.
Hand-in-hand with this doctoring of the ideological and political spheres, En Lutte! must somehow prove that the movement has advanced to the point where it can be consolidated into its pre-’party’ and thus move on to further business. Given En Lutte!’s earlier statements on the level of the movement, this will take some doing. In the Spring of 1975, En Lutte! had said of the Quebec movement that “...it cannot correctly fulfill the tasks of the first stage of the building of the Communist Party...”. The situation in Canada was, of course, somewhat worse, so bad in fact that En Lutte! could only state that “Marxist-Leninist groups exist in many large Canadian cities” and that line struggle and polemics were “opening up” (CR #3 p.24). We must also keep in mind that open criticism of the Economism of the CSLO was still months away; that its counterpart, the Right To Strike Organization,was still the only ongoing practical work of aspiring ’Marxist-Leninists’ in the Toronto area; and that throughout the rest of Canada one shade or another of Economism was still the dominant and virtually unchallenged state of the young communist movement. But being a skilled master at ’dialectics’, En Lutte! soon found it possible for the entire movement to make one gigantic ’leap’. By April 1976, barely one year after it had declared even the ’advanced’ Quebec movement so backward, En Lutte! determined that “In spite of its errors and the still very limited character of its actions, the young Canadian marxist-leninist movement has proven its capacity to spread marxism-leninism among the masses, to intervene correctly in struggles and to rally workers to the revolutionary cause.” (En Lutte! Vol.13 #19 p.5)
How did all this take place? That remains a mystery En Lutte! itself has trouble explaining with any consistency.
It seems En Lutte! has developed the peculiar ability to see what it pleases, when it pleases. By September 1976 this talent was so developed that En Lutte! could, in its theoretical journal, state on one page that
Most of the English-Canadian study groups or collectives were created quite recently, their political line is in general less developed, and most of all, their merger with the workers’ movement by the means of agitation and propaganda is only beginning. p.18
and only nine pages later declare that
For those who have been seriously following the movement’s evolution on a country-wide scale, it is obvious that in the last year and a half enormous steps have been taken, mostly in English Canada but also in Quebec: everywhere in Canada, progressive forces until then Marxist-Leninist only in the abstract, are resolutely struggling to advance the present tasks of the movement, that is the building of the Party through rallying the proletariat’s advanced elements to communism; that is the development of agitation, propaganda and organization on Marxist-Leninista bases within the labour movement. These highly important developments, important in quality as well as quantity are themselves a strong uniting factor... p.27 Proletarian Unity #1
Everything, of course, is a “strong uniting factor” for En Lutte!. But what, precisely, constitutes these “enormous steps” and “resolute struggling”; what was it that enabled the entire movement to develop, “in quality as well as quantity” from a state of disarray and confusion, Economism and isolation from the working class, to such a new, pre-’party’ level? As evidence En Lutte! cites
...the fall of 1974 marks a decisive stage in the development of the movement in Quebec and Canada, because the diffusion of the views of the Quebec groups in the rest of the country in the following months pulled Canadian Marxist-Leninists out of their isolation and they, too, started the diffusion of their views, in particular with the creation of Canadian Revolution in Toronto, May 1975. Proletarian Unity #1 p.24
The “diffusion of the views of the Quebec groups” (that is, the diffusion of views that En Lutte! has already characterized as being hardly fit for even the first stage of Party-building and which by objective consideration were overtly opportunist),the diffusion of these views into the rest of Canada “linked up” the opportunists of Quebec with the opportunists of Canada and stirred the latter into action. They, too, started the diffusion of their views, i.e. such ’views’ as expressed by C.R.. But while En Lutte! is correct to say that the fall of 1974 marked a “decisive stage in the development” of the movement, and that “enormous steps” have been taken “in quality as well as quantity”, it is quite wrong to decree these developments as an “advancement” of the movement. In fact, all this ’diffusing’, ’pulling out of isolation’, ’creating’ and so on, has only marked the “qualitative” consolidation of opportunism in our movement and the exit from it of those who have become so ’diffused’ in their views as to directly contradict Marxism-Leninism. It should be damning enough evidence that En Lutte! holds this prodding-on of opportunism to be an “advancement”, and thinks it has ’raised’ the movement to the level of its pre-’party’. And yet this is precisely the case. En Lutte! is in fact pleased with such a ’diffusion’ of opportunism “in the rest of the country” because that is precisely what it needs. Once these young “Marxist-Leninists only in the abstract” become hardened opportunists in the flesh, En Lutte! will be well on its way to the ’Party’.
En Lutte! claims a long tradition of struggle against the ’two-headed monster’, dogmatism and sectarianism. It has in its long history faced many sectarian attempts to isolate, ignore or distort its positions “in front of those less well informed” (PU #1 p.30-31). But although these attacks and criticisms have forced En Lutte! to issue repeated self-criticisms, explanations, re-definitions, clarifications, and so on, the experience has also trained En Lutte! to anticipate further criticisms of its ’plan’ and to block them in advance. Thus before En Lutte! gets down to the material details of how it will ’unite’ the movement, it rails against all the detractors this ’plan’ will inevitably call forth, principled and otherwise, for failing to “...learn from the great revolutionary parties of history...” (Against Sectarianism p.8). Its opposition, En Lutte! states, suffers from an ’anti-dialectical’ view of the degree of unity necessary for both the pre-Party and Party. Those who, on the other hand, have ’learned from history’ and ’dialectics’, will naturally see in En Lutte!’s ’plan’ the quintessence of all that ever has been and ever will be holy in the realm of Party-building. But despite all the world-historical momentum En Lutte! claims to have behind it, its ’plan’ fails miserably on two counts. First, because its arguments go against no one save itself, and only expose En Lutte!’s Social-Democratic bias. And second, because only further exposes the calibre of ’Marxist-Leninists’ that En Lutte! spontaneously gravitates towards and hopes to attract.
En Lutte! employs the history of the world communist movement in precisely the same way the Bolshevik Union did to substantiate its own opportunist ’plan’. The Bolshevik Union, the reader will remember, argued against only the most extreme dogmatism, the conception of “complete correct line”. It was only by opposing itself to such an overtly one-sided view that the Bolshevik Union could hope to create any credibility for its own one-sided views. And, in the course of its profoundly ’gratuitous’ arguments against the “fetishism of political line”, against the ’metaphysical’ “elevating the principle of line”, the Bolshevik Union found time to utter its brilliant ’lesson of history’:
We take the position that what’s good enough for the Chinese masses is good enough for us. ...they formulated basic ideology and strategy – always within the framework of a Party... Perri and Stover Canadian Revolution #1 p.49
What does En Lutte! offer us in this respect? It has raised “dogmatism and sectarianism” to the level of the main enemy, the “main obstacle” to ’unity’, and has posed itself as the standard bearer against the “anti-dialectical view” which calls for “absolute identity of view”, “’absolute’ political unity”, as the basis of any organizational unity (PU #1 p.26-27). Thus like the Bolshevik Union, En Lutte! hopes to rally support for its own ’plan’ by waging a ’ruthless struggle’ against the ’absolutes’. It matters litte to En Lutte! that aside from the sectarian “complete correct line”, it is every bit as opportunist to advocate ’unity’ pure and simple. Its intention is solely to demonstrate that whereas the “absolute identity of views” is a stupid and unrealistic idea, it is far more ’dialectical’ to accept the ’absolute disunity of views’. En Lutte! develops the idea that since there is always class struggle within the Party, always contradiction between correct and incorrect ideas, between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism, there is little harm in establishing a ’party’ on that ’dialectical’ basis. Thus we should not be too concerned about the merging of Marxism-Leninism and opportunism in the pre-Party phase, since surely this will all come out in the wash.
En Lutte! draws its ’lessons’ not only from the Chinese, but the Albanians and Russians as well. In July, En Lutte! stated that
...All these parties experienced, in their early years, a more or less long period when important divergences on basic questions for the future of the revolution existed in their midst. If the communists of these countries had applied ’sectarian logic’ they would have destroyed their parties many times... if they had ever managed in actually setting them up. Against Sectarianism p.8-9
And by September, it had come out even more clearly in its appeal to history for justification of its ’plan’. Listing the existence of the Mensheviks in Russia, “right opportunism which managed to hide itself under a mask of ’left’ tendencies” in China, and Trotskyite factions in Albania, En Lutte! concludes that
Notwithstanding these divergences, the communists of these countries first searched for unity, conscious that unity of communists is essential to the unity of the proletariat and that the unity of the proletariat is essential to the victory of the socialist revolution. Proletarian Unity #1 p.26
It should be clear from these statements that En Lutte! is bound and determined not to learn from history, but insists on dragging the worst of the world movement into our midst. The various divisions that arose within the RSDLP, CPC and PLA were not simply “divergences” between communists, but represented a determined struggle between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism, between communists and traitors to the working class. The RSDLP was not formed as a ’unity’ of Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, and then only split at a latter date. Just the opposite. The Iskra-ists had waged a determined struggle against opportunism before the Second Congress, had ruthlessly opposed Economism and Bundism and made specific principles against these opportunist trends a prerequisite for Party unity. It was only in the midst of the Congress, and in the period afterwards, that a new opportunist trend arose – Menshevism – a trend which in every respect contradicted Marxism, and which for that reason led to a definite split. With the various ’unity’ proposals that followed, including among others Trotsky’s, the Bolsheviks held firm to their principles and demanded that the price for real unity would necessarily be the repudiation of Menshevism and all opportunism. And yet, En Lutte! would have us believe that the Bolsheviks were not at all that concerned with principle and would have ’united’ with the Mensheviks even if Menshevism had been a definite trend prior to the Second Congress. As to the Chinese, it was precisely because the Chinese movement had not experienced a prolonged struggle against opportunism prior to the founding of its Party that the Party was dominated by opportunist lines for a considerable period before Mao Tse Tung’s line managed to defeat them. For anyone who is concerned with building a strong and truly principled Communist Party, the Chinese experience should if anything increase our dedication to combating opportunism as a prerequisite for the Party. But En Lutte! simply wishes to repeat the same old mistakes, allow for the accommodation of opportunism as a ’necessary’ facet of Party-building, and thus insure that we too create a Party whose early life is marked by opportunist intrigues and major blunders. As for the ’slight’ “divergences” among the circles which founded the PLA, En Lutte! has stooped to a complete distortion of the Albanian Party’s history. The Albanians did not simply collect all the Trotskyites, opportunists and Marxist-Leninists into one room and declare the PLA. The principled Marxist-Leninists fought the Trotskyites tooth and nail prior to the Party’s founding and kept the Trotskyite leaders out of the Party’s ranks. When various deviations arose within the Party, the PLA did not simply employ ’democratic centralism’ to keep the opportunists in their place, but expelled them when they persisted in their “divergences”. The history of all these Parties, if we truly mean to learn from them, shows us the absolute (how the word frightens En Lutte!) necessity of waging an open and ruthless struggle against opportunist tendencies prior to the Party’s formation, prior, in fact to any organizational unity. Our basis of unity must be, not simply what trends are already in existence, but the principled trend we must build. We must not allow opportunists into the Party-building process simply because they are around and claim to be “ML”. We must confront them with their opportunism, fully expose them, and if they persist, if they refuse to abandon their petty bourgeois bias, if they fail to prove in word and deed their willingness to uphold Marxism-Leninism, then obviously (obvious to everyone except En Lutte!) such opportunists have absolutely no place in a Party which is in fact, and not merely in words, the vanguard of the proletariat. En Lutte!, like a child fascinated by its first words, has got stuck on its notion of ’unity’, and cannot grasp that the foremost lesson of the world communist movement on the question of unity is that the unity we must build must be a unity based on firm and definite principles. Any “divergences” from those principles have no place in our movement nor in our efforts to build a Party.
Two-line struggle is inevitable in the Party. Quite right. But the Party cannot be built upon two lines. It must be built around a Marxist-Leninist line that has proven itself on all fundamental questions prior to the Party’s official declaration, a line that has demarcated itself against and defeated in theory all efforts to introduce opportunism into the Party-building process, a line that has consistently provided correct practical and ideological leadership in the movement and won the best elements of the movement over to principle. This is what the history of the world movement teaches us. And at a time when the world movement itself is paying dearly for the failure to consistently expose and oust opportunism, at a time when even its leading Parties, the CPC and PLA, have yet to root out revisionists in their leading posts, at a time when we are witnessing an unprecedented epidemic of ultra-opportunist tendencies worldwide, at such a time we must be all the more absolute, all the more ruthless and unyielding in our struggle to oppose all attempts to compromise principle for the sake of ’unity’. There can be no unity with opportunists, however much En Lutte! may rant and rail against the ’harmful’ effects of a resolute struggle against their own kind.
En Lutte! hopes to avoid all this ’unpleasantness’ by pretending that all can be resolved through the mechanism of ’democratic centralism’. It will simply lump together a number of opportunist trends and through majority vote elect the ’guiding line’. This line, being the victor, will thus be declared “correct”. But how it is possible to determine what is correct by a majority vote, when the vast majority of the movement is still under the thumb of opportunism, remains a mystery. This, after all, is not En Lutte!’s primary concern. It wishes first and foremost to establish ’unity’, and in En Lutte!’s view of things, the ’unity’ of opportunists is better than nothing at all.
What are the mechanics of En Lutte!’s scheme? First we are to begin with the present state of the movement, with the “present unity”, which En Lutte! has already informed us has taken “enormous steps” in the past year or so. We then begin “reinforcing what unites”, and thus elevate the movement’s opportunism to yet a higher plane. This “advancement” is to take place through a “large debate” (En Lutte! Vol.3 #19 p.4) on questions of ’programme’, involving all and sundry who “have a contribution, whatever it might be, to make in the development of the struggle for unity” (En Lutte! Vol.3 #4 Sup. p.4). This “large debate” is what En Lutte! hopes will attract others to its ’plan’ and demarcate itself from the likes of the League. Picking up where CR. disintegrated, this period of “intense struggle”, of “demarcation” is to involve the publication of views through various means, including face-to-face confrontations. The result of all this confronting and large debating will be the ’emergence’ during this “few months” period of a line which will “be victorious over opportunism and will compel recognition by the whole movement.” (PU #1 p.31). Et voila, at this point:
The conditions will thereafter be brought together to call for the congress of the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement and to create the Canadian organization of struggle for the Party. Proletarian Unity #1 p.31
This act of ’creation’ is to be a joyous and extremely egalitarian affair, following logically from En Lutte!’s magnanimous approach to opportunism. The ’period of debate’ having come to an end, and everyone in the movement having been given ample opportunity to “form an opinion and take a stand” (PU #1 p.19), the victorious ’correct line’ can then be “finally approved democratically” (En Lutte! Vol.3 #19 p.6). The movement will, as a group of En Lutte!’s misguided supporters put it,
...join together on the basis of a unification platform, submitted to democratic centralism, with a view to adopting the program and statutes of the organization of struggle for the Party. This program and these statutes will be democratically adopted and all will have to rally to the majority’s viewpoint. Democratic centralism will be the method applied for the triumph of correct ideas versus the bourgeois line. En Lutte! Vol. 3 #24 p.5
Indeed. This ’plan’ of En Lutte!’s does in fact “compel recognition by the whole movement”. But in fact we have already had sufficient time to “form an opinion and take a stand”. This ’new’ plan En Lutte! offers us is simply one more in a long and tedious line which attempts to create yet another ’party’ on the basis of utter lack of principle. However ’undemocratic’ En Lutte! may consider our opinion to be, the fact remains that the entire length of its “fundamental line” amounts to nothing more than an effort to create the maximum ’unity’ around a minimum of principle. It is only in this way that En Lutte! can continue to advance and defend petty bourgeois interests under the banner of ’Marxism-Leninism’ and thus carve a ’socially useful’ place for itself in a system that is constantly foreclosing on the petty bourgeoisie.
En Lutte!’s selective use of the experience of the international movement, its distortion of the class content and historical development of our own movement, its exaggeration of the level of principle we have attained, its substitution of liberal lecturing for precise and incisive Marxist-Leninist polemic, its attempted merging of petty bourgeois opportunism and Marxism-Leninism under the heading of ’unity’, and so on, is fully demonstrated in its elaboration of its ’plan’. Having evolved a means to unite opportunists, En Lutte! has thus proven incapable of uniting principled Marxist-Leninists. But even forging the ’unity’ of opportunists may prove beyond En Lutte!’s reach. As we noted earlier, the possibility of striking some sort of compromise with the CCL(ML) and its cronies is, at present, extremely small. At present, the “large debate” between the two seems to be working against, not for, En Lutte!. Thus despite all its cries for ’unity’, En Lutte! only maintains and reinforces the independent status and ’authority’ of its own organization. No matter how much En Lutte! may ’modestly’ prate about only being one of many circles, deny it already has a correct line, or is willing to adopt any line that is “proven to be correct” {PU #1 p.31), it cannot refrain from stating outright that its plan is, after all, the only one that can ’unify’ the movement and that any refusal to go along with it simply indicates “...the weaknesses and errors of the present practice (small group mentality, sectarianism)”. Nor can En Lutte! avoid letting slip that while “appreciable transformations” must take place “in the movement” before its conditions for the pre-Party are fulfilled, transformations “so considerable and so decisive that it is too soon to undertake their realization wherever this has not yet been done” (PU p.29), that nonetheless “a certain number of groups at least in an embryonic way fulfill all or at least a part of the characteristics of the organization” (Ibid p.30). And, as we might have expected, En Lutte! itself just happens to be one of these “certain organizations”. It is in the midst of drafting a program; is already “applying democratic centralism with more and more vigour”; is already organizing “ ’base units’ on the model of cells” to which workers are “joining...in increasing numbers” making the establishment of cells just around the corner; and is already operating a newspaper on a “country-wide scale”. In short, En Lutte! itself will have fulfilled all the necessary criteria for its pre-’party’ organization, so soon as it has determined that the “large debate” has at last come to a close.
With such a ’modest’ outlook, it is natural that En Lutte! would not presume to have all the answers, let alone the ’correct line’. It ’merely’ and ’comradely’ reminds those who it feels might be ’misled’ into using “any occasion”, and especially the occasion of using the “...importance of the principles on one or another matter, differences on this or that...” as a “pretext” to question the validity of En Lutte!’s plan, that this will simply not do. With the same ’modesty’, En Lutte! incites the workers to
...grasp the question of the unity of Marxist-Leninists and make those people who are looking for pretexts to delay it understand that the time for quarrelling over words is over, that the time to build a leading force for the Canadian revolutionary movement has come, and that those who don’t really believe this are about to be overtaken by the events. Proletarian Unity #1 p.31
But no, En Lutte!, it is only yourselves who have been “overtaken by events”, overtaken by the tide of opportunism that is presently sweeping the new communist movement worldwide, overtaken by your own petty narrowness and opportunist designs, overtaken by your own cheap rhetoric and self-importance, and most of all overtaken by your obsession to put all the opportunists’ eggs into one basket. But we quite agree with you: the time to look “for pretexts to delay” your open consolidation as a hardened opportunist trend is long overdue; the time “for quarrelling over words” with your fellow opportunists is over. The sooner you have all declared your various organizations (and it matters little to us whether it is one or many), the sooner you fully elaborate your opportunist programmes, the sooner you cease your stupid and self-righteous appeals to the movement, the sooner you settle down to your practical tailing behind the working class, the easier it will be for us to expose you.
As a political trend, En Lutte! is distinguished from the other opportunist tendencies who have left our movement only by its exceptional ability to resist declaring on its own until it has made every effort to group the largest possible number of opportunists around itself. Before En Lutte! began, in reaction to the League’s formation, to fully elaborate its own unique ’plan’, it was still possible to speak of it having a place within the movement. Had a leading centre begun to emerge at that time, it is likely that En Lutte!’s Centrism would have developed in an attempt to bridge the opportunist trends and the Marxist-Leninists. But as it is, our movement has yet to produce a leading centre, and thus En Lutte!’s Centrism attempts to combine, not a Marxist-Leninist trend with opportunist trends, but simply opportunism in general. Its exchanges with the League clearly shows that En Lutte! acts as a cover for the League’s opportunism, and opposes the League only to the extent that the CCL(ML) threatens to leave En Lutte! out of its ’party’ designs. But on matters of substance they have, as En Lutte! itself declares time and again, a fundamental basis for ’unity’. The tactical disputes between the two have forced En Lutte! to state its position in a bolder form, and it is precisely this fuller elaboration of views that has put En Lutte! outside the communist movement. We “don’t really believe” that anyone who advocates lack of principle and ’unity’ above all else can maintain a “pretext” at being Marxist-Leninist for long. The working class has no need for such ’unity’.