Up to now our translation and presentation have followed closely the original. At this point in the original text there remained two short sections (“Groups after the Collapse of FRAP”, and “The Wokers’ Committees”) and a conclusion. We have chosen to present a brief synopsis of these remaining sections rather than as originally published. Our reasons for doing so are as follows:
1. Beginning with the section, “Groups after the Collapse of FRAP”, the original document becomes more and more a defense of one particular orientation within the socialist movement (this point is developed in the Critical Commentary which follows), an orientation with which we have profound disagreements and whose positions on the evolution of the socialist movement we consider to be, at best, partial.
2. The historical data presented in this part of the original on those groups operating outside the workplace, in communities or schools, is of very little use, since it contains no information on the specific dynamics and activities of these groups, nor on their importance in an overall strategic perspective.
Nonetheless we felt it necessary to present some of the information from these sections. In the first place, the critiques made in this part of the original towards specific groups remain partially valid. Secondly, in order to understand the Critical Commentary and Afterword which follow, this information is necessary.
Thus we have concentrated exclusively on the “Political Action Committees” (CAPs) which emerged from FRAP, and from whom emerged the “Workers’ Committees” orientation (see Afterword). We have omitted the discussion of community, education, and research groups that existed during this period, such discussion being, in any event, very inadequate in the original. (Although we recognized this as a limitation, we were unable to modify the text in such a way as to present correctly these groups. Nor were we willing at this time to write our own presentatnion of them.)
For all intents and purposes, the only CAPs which continued to develop after FRAP’s collapse were those which had existed before FRAP itself; that is, CAPs St-Jacques and Maisonneuve. Within these groups the progressive petty bourgeois intellectuals became dominant, taking the leadership from the community organizers. Two major political currents were present throughout this period: the dominant one at the beginning can be categorized as “theoreticism”, that is, the idealization of the role of theory and the revolutionary intellectual, and the minimization of the role of the working class.
This orientation had both positive and negative aspects. On the one hand, its insistance on the necessity of acquiring a solid understanding of Marxist theory was a step forward in comparison to the amorphous, reformist ideology of FRAP. As well, the need to build links with the working class was seen as the central priority, and in order to accomplish this the general directive of “implantation” among the masses was put forward. That is; the task of socialist militants was to go and work directly with the working class, either by working in factories or other workplaces, or in working class communities.
On the other hand, both the tasks of theoretical development and “implantation” were conceived of one-sidedly. The CAP’s activities were subordinated to an academic, dogmatist conception of Marxist theory. The role of revolutionary intellectuels was over-estimated. Any progressive workers contacted in the workplaces of communities were immersed in theoretical debates on a level beyond their existing capacities and became isolated from their fellow workers in the process. On top of all this, the CAPs became very bureaucratized, with a central apparatus out of proportion to the actual work being done.
The second political current in the CAPs in this period tended to develop in reaction to the first. It is this second orientation which characterized in general the document, “Beginnings of a Socialist Movement in Montreal”. It also had positive and negative sides to it.
This orientation emerged from the section of the CAPs which dealt with workplace organizing (the other sections being concerned with organizing in the working class communities and in the educational institutions). The basis of its criticism was the “intellectualism” and “theoreticism” of the CAPs, and their resulting isolation from the mass of working people. A large gap was seen between the theoretical objectives of the CAPs and their practice. This was attributed to the following factors:
– an inadequate understanding of working class reality,
– a basic tendency to take as a starting point the needs of the CAPs and not the needs of the working people,
– a false conception of the CAPs as developed political organizations with a political line, and with the task of recruiting workers to this organization.
All these factors had led to an impasse which was preventing any real link with the working class from developing.
According to this second orientation, the response to this impasse was the creation of workers’ committees in the workplaces. These were to bring together the most militant workers and become an organizational and ideological reference point for all the workers in a given shop. Socialist militants in the workplaces were to participate fully in these committees and thus would be solved the problem of how to link progressive intellectuals directly to workers’ struggles. This was the terrain on which could develop, in an organized form, a political intervention in the workplaces.
It was also claimed that the workers’ committees corresponded to the level of development of the workers’ movement itself, and was not merely the brainchild of isolated intellectuals. The workers’ committees would lead economic and trade-union struggles and attempt to situate them in a wider political context.
Lastly, the workers’ committees were to represent the foundations of the future political organization of the working class. On the basis of their preliminary organizational and ideological work, and through the gradual unification of the workers’ committees, the party of the working class would emerge.
The essentially positive aspects of this orientation were in its criticism of the CAPs’ “theoreticist” errors and their resulting isolation from the working class. Despite the one-sidedness of the criticism and its lack of concern with its own limitations, it did state clearly the necessity of breaking down this isolation. Secondly, it insisted on the necessity of working within the working class, and finding organizational forms that could concretize this work that would correspond to the level of development of working class consciousness.
However, this orientation, which came to dominate an important section of the socialist movement and continues to exist in organized form, has demonstrated important errors and clearly reormist tendencies. In the Critical Commentary and Afterword that follow, an attempt is made to examine the fundamental errors of this orientation and how these have affected the socialist movement, and the document “Beginnings of a Socialist Movement... ” itself.