The emancipation of women is a huge task facing the people of Canada. The exploitation and oppression of women is a basic feature of capitalist society. Where there is oppression, there is resistance. The women’s movement has grown tremendously in the last five years. With this growth, the class struggle within the women’s movement has heightened. The monopoly capitalist class and the state (federal and provincial) have taken a new “interest” in “women’s rights”, promoting various “councils of women” and women’s projects in order to divert the energies of the women’s movement.
At the same time working women are seeing more and more clearly that the liberation of women is tied to the liberation of the entire working class.
The monopoly capitalist class holds economic and political power and is the only class which profits from the degradation and exploitation of women. In order to ensure their profits, the monopoly capitalist class promotes the degradation of women socially and culturally, and also promotes the idea that it is really the people who are to blame. The communist position is that it is the monopoly capitalist class which is to blame and that the entire working class must overthrow the monopoly capitalist class in order to liberate women and the entire class.
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is the only ideology truly serving women. It sums up the experience of real life in an objective and scientific way. In many countries of the world successful struggles are being waged against U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism led by Marxist-Leninist Communist Parties. Canada is one of those countries.
Without a Communist Party based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, the revolutionary mass movement cannot advance. CPC(M-L) is such a Party and is in practice leading the revolutionary movement in Canada.
The neo-revisionist line of Jack Scott still confuses some people. The neo-revisionists claim that it is not yet time to build the Party, that is, a Communist Party will drop from the sky in the unspecified future, and right now people should ignore and slander CPC(M-L). Building a genuine Communist Party is a conscious activity which must take place in the midst of the actual struggles of the Canadian people.
One national working class paper People’s Canada Daily News and one local agitational newspaper in each city are essential if the unity of the revolutionary movements is to be developed. In this way, working people can become familiar with the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint on a long-range basis.
Revolutionary women must oppose the slander that women “can’t understand” PCDN, that the class struggle “doesn’t relate to women’s experience” and that CPC(M-L) is “male chauvinist” and “sexist”.
CPC(M-L) takes as first principle the absolute equality of women and men, and is building a Party based on Marxist-Leninist political line, in service of the entire Canadian people, half of whom are women. CPC(M-L) consistently fights male chauvinism in theory and practice and encourages women to fight against the old ideas that women should not participate in politics, and that women should not be taken seriously.
It is precisely because CPC(M-L) does take the women’s movement extremely seriously that the Party criticises the capitalist line within the women’s movement. It is the capitalist parties and the holy alliance of the “left” that opportunistically support “women’s rights” and attempt to divert women from our task of organising women for revolution.
Many women have experience of fighting the male chauvinism inherent in the holy alliance of the “left”. We must repudiate the so-called “Marxist-Leninists” who use books to intimidate and browbeat people, who invent theories detached from the actual experience of the real world, who promote themselves as super-revolutionaries and heap contempt on ordinary people.
The so-called “Marxist-Leninists” claim to “support” the People’s Republic of China, but deny the crucial role of the Communist Party of China under the leadership of Mao Tsetung. They daim that Mao Tsetung Thought is not “applicable” to Canada and concoct “new” theories in order to avoid discussion of straight-forward communist ideas. At the same time they slander the Marxist-Leninists, and in particular, Hardial Bains who is leading the Canadian working class in building CPC(M-L).
The political report of the 2nd Congress of CPC(M-L) correctly analyses the actual situation in Canada today. I agree with the decisions of the Congress and see it as the culmination of ten years of struggle to build a genuine Communist Party.
My own experience in the women’s movement over the last lour years has led me to the conclusion that it is absolutely necessary to build the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and to expand the influence of PCDN in the actual struggles of working women and the entire class. Revolutionary women must unite under the leadership of CPC(M-L) in order to defeat the capitalist line in the women’s movement.
I am now participating in the BC Popular Election Committee lor CPC(M-L) and seeing day by day the correctness of CPC(M-L)’s political line and methods of work.
I wish to come under the discipline of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and under the discipline of the CPC(M-L).
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY WORKING WOMEN OF CANADA!
LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA (MARXIST-LENINIST)!
(This article first appeared in People’s Canada Daily News, Vol. 3, No. 261, August 29, 1973)