[Reprinted from EN LUTTE! no. 44, p. 7, September 11, 1975]
On Thursday, September 4, 1975, nine days before the Congress of the C.S.L.O., which is to be held on September 13-14, its Coordinating Committee (C.C.) made public a document in which it proposed the dissolution of the C.S.L.O.
Coming from the leading body of the C.S.L.O., this proposal gives, at first sight the impression of a fundamental rectification of the economist line prevalent in the support for workers’ struggles. But nothing of the kind.
Here is what the C.S.L.O.’s Coordinating Committee says in its paper entitled Contribution du Comite de Coordination pour le Congres du C.S.L.O.: “We believe that support work must be pursued but that it must take on different forms” (p.6). “The C.C. thus considers that the support fronts built around specific actions and particular struggles with a clear political platform, constitute the best organizational form for developing broad mass support for the struggles of the working class against capitalist exploitation.” (p.5)
The drama surrounding publication of this document, just 9 days before the Congress, in no way modified the fundamentally economist character of their “support” line, a line which remains “workerist” and “tailist”.
For it is not in changing its form that you change the nature of an activity; it is not by replacing the permanent Committee by temporary Support Fronts, (as clear (sic) as its platform may be) that we can modify the political line orientating this support. (The extreme clarity of an incorrect line does not alter the fact that it is wrong).
As a matter of fact, on page 6 its paper, the C.S.L.O.’s Coordinating Committee states the following: ”Some, and most particularly EN LUTTE!, who until sow supported the development of broad support work today consider that such work cannot be undertaken before the creation of the revolutionary Party of the working-class. This leads them to withdraw all their energy from the C.S.L.O. and to call for its dissolution. We consider this to be an incorrect conception of the creation of the Party but let’s not get involved in that subject.” EN LUTTE! is thus one of those who, according to the C.S.L.O.’s C.C., “want to liquidate all mass work, support work in particular.” At least things are clear. The accusations that have been circulating behind closed doors for a while on the alleged desire of EN LUTTE! to “liquidate all mass work” are out in the open. They are nevertheless absurd and dishonest.
EN LUTTE! maintains that the best way to achieve the merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers’ movement is by the winning over of the advanced workers to communism, and by the development of the communist organization, are communist agitation and propaganda among the masses and their struggles. Therefore, those who accuse EN LUTTE! of wanting to “liquidate all mass work”, believe (without clearly saying so) that communist propaganda and agitation cannot or must not be developed among the masses and their struggles.
Here is how right opportunists reason in the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement, and particularly those currently at the head of the C.S.L.O. They say that EN LUTTE’. wants to exclusively devote itself to communist agitation and propaganda, thereby wanting to “liquidate all mass work”. Only those people such as the right opportunists who lead the C.S.L.O. could imagine such a ridiculous and anti-Leninist thing as communist propaganda and agitation carried on outside of the context of the masses and their struggles. For these people are convinced that the Canadian proletariat is so backward that it is impossible to spread, in its struggles, communist propaganda and agitation. This is the essence. (For more details on the economist conception of Marxist-Leninists’ tasks in the course of the first stage of the building of the Party, it’s a must to read the pamphlet of the Cellule Militante Ouvriere (C.M.O.), a real gem of economism: “De Quelques Questions Brulantes sur la Ligne Tactique”, edited in June 1975).
EN LUTTE! believes that we must do communist agitation and propaganda among the masses and their struggles, whereas the right opportunists, the “economists” who dominate the C.S.L.O., maintain that we must do non-communist propaganda and agitation among the masses. Here lies the essence of the contradiction which opposes the revolutionary and communist line to the opportunist and economist line in the Marxist-Leninist movement.
Contrary to what the C.C. of the C.S.L.O. says, the contradiction is not between “those who want to liquidate all mass work, particularly all support work, and those who consider that it must be continued” (p.6 of the paper) but well between the right-opportunists who set the tasks of communists as that of spreading a clearly social-democratic political line, and Marxist-Leninists who spread the communist point of view among the masses.
This is what the opportunists of the C.S.L.O.’s C.C. would have everyone believe. But it is completely untrue! EN LUTTE! is neither against “all mass work” nor “support work in particular”. EN LUTTE! is against the adulterated Marxism-Leninism that the right opportunists in the Marxist-Leninist movement are spreading among the masses.
EN LUTTE! considers that the call for workers’ solidarity and for support for workers’ struggles are precisely the forms of agitation that communists can develop on the basis of a communist political line. Consequently these activities must have as an immediate objective, the raising of the level of working-class consciousness, and the winning over of the advanced workers to Marxist-Leninist ranks, thereby bringing about the merger of Marxism-Leninism with the workers’ movement.
Marxist-Leninists must take advantage of all struggle situations in order to intervene and spread the communist political line. For example in a strike, this means to help in the organization of workers’ solidarity by involving workers in the elaboration and the sending out of calls for struggle and solidarity; by denouncing the boss and their tactics, the State and its police. It can even include the setting up of support fronts for a particular struggle.
This kind of intervention which depends upon a particular situation for the spreading of Marxism-Leninism, is called agitation. The broader activity of explaining, in a scientific and revolutionary way capitalist society, imperialism, and the nature of the capitalist State, as well as the organization of study and discussion groups for the communist education of workers, the regular and systematic distribution of journals and pamphlets, etc. all this is called propaganda.
These two aspects of communist work are inseparable from one other, as they are inseparable from communists’ link with the masses and from mass work, being effectively, the means of achieving the merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers’ movement. Agitation is carried out among the masses in order to increase the numbers of advanced workers, thus allowing at the same time, propaganda to be spread more and more widely. We systematically and methodically organize our propaganda in order to win over the advanced workers to communism, to carry out communist education, and generally, to bring socialist consciousness to the workers’ movement. This is how, little by little, the merger of Marxism-Leninism with the workers’ movement is achieved. This is how we win over the proletarian vanguard to communism and that communist organizational work takes on all its concrete and revolutionary meaning. And this is how, finally, the workers’ communist leadership develops itself among the struggles of the proletariat and the labouring masses.
To say, that this amounts to “liquidating all mass work” and “all support work in particular” is totally ridiculous. Only those who refuse to carry out communist propaganda and agitation among the masses and in their struggles could conceive of this in such an anti- Marxist-Leninist way.
The true liquidators are those who spread a watered-down Marxism-Leninism among the masses, watered-down to social-democrat tastes; those who, under the pretext of doing mass work, spread social-democrat ideas instead of the communist line; those to whom mass work means doing work at the level of the backward elements of the masses.
But it happens that in this country, it is the bourgeois nationalists and the social-democrats who ideologically dominate the advanced and militant sectors of the working masses. What could be more natural for the right opportunists than to reduce communist activity to this level, that is to the level of social-democracy and of “militant unionism”.
For EN LUTTE! and for all Marxist-Leninists fighting economism in Canada, the true liquidators in our movement are those who liquidate the struggle for the Party, by liquidating the central task of the hour which is to win over the advanced elements of the proletariat to communism; those who liquidate communist propaganda and agitation in mass work; those who liquidate the task of achieving the merger of Marxism-Leninism to the workers’ movement; and, finally, those who liquidate the debate in the Marxist-Leninist movement under the pretext that communism must not be talked about in front of the masses or in mass organization. This is all the more curious in that the C.S.L.O. is composed, in the majority, of Marxist-Leninists and that it was expressly created to achieve the tactical tasks of Marxist-Leninists.