Comrades and friends,
Welcome to the Second Conference of Canadian Marxist-Leninists. Despite the difficulties that result from the concrete conditions of the situation of the movement in a country as vast as Canada, and despite the localism still very much present in the movement, and especially despite the effects of sectarianism and small-groupism that marked the debate around the conference itself, it is fair to say that this conference is taking place in conditions which are more favourable than the first.
Because we learned from the experience of the first conference and because this time, everyone was able to study the positions of several groups in advance and, compare one to the other, we can say that this Second Conference is sure of being an even greater success. This will be especially true if the comrades and the friends of the Marxist-Leninist movement present here today put the superior interests of the Marxist-Leninist movement and even more important, the superior interests of the Canadian proletariat, in command, and work in a spirit of fraternal criticism and comradliness. Which in no way excludes – on the contrary, it presupposes – a lively and well-argued polemic, a debate over line on that ever-so-fundamental question, the path of the revolution.
Before moving on to the work of this conference, it would be timely to recall the meaning of the conferences themselves. What role do such conferences have in the struggle to rebuild the party of the Canadian proletariat? What are our objectives in getting together in this way to debate these questions?
Comrades, these conferences must always be placed in the perspective of the reality of the Marxist-Leninist movement, which, from one end of the country to the other, has in the last four or five years just barely begun to reconstruct itself and to work at building unity on clear political bases at the same time as working to link itself more and more to the masses, and particularly to the conscious workers who are rallying to communist ideas. These two processes cannot be separated from each other, and that is why many conscious workers are participating in these conferences and are calling on Marxist-Leninists to achieve their unity.
Think back to what the situation of the movement was three years ago. It was turned inwards, and localism, amateurish methods of work and the persistence of economist errors characterized it. Demarcation on the principal questions of the communist program was still weak. Since then, great steps forward have been taken, even if right opportunism and dogmatism still play havoc within the movement. The line struggle allowed the establishment of the fact that the question of the reconstruction of the Canadian proletarian Party had become the central goal of the movement as a whole, even if the movement remained marked by important differences on what course to follow to get there.
It is in this context that IN STRUGGLE!’s plan, and in particular the public conferences, take on their full meaning. These conferences have precisely as an aim intensifying the polemic and demarcation of Marxist-Leninists with opportunism on the questions of the communist program. By starting from the actual level of unity which currently characterizes the Marxist-Leninist movement, and which distinguishes it from revisionist, Trotskyist and neo-revisionist counter-revolutionaries, the conferences are aimed at raising the level of unity through the struggle against that which is anti-Marxist, and through the polemic around the communist program on which Marxist-Leninists will build a solid unity of steel. Far from being conciliatory, such a plan seeks to publicly and broadly unmask the diverse currents of opportunism, in particular right opportunism, today a powerful obstacle in the reconstruction of the party of the Canadian proletariat. It is most important never to isolate these debates from the deep responsibility that Marxist-Leninists have to build the headquarters for the struggle of the working class, that historic necessity to smash the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and build the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to arrive at communism and the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.
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Last October 9, more than 1500 Marxist-Leninists, workers and intellectuals from both nations, as well as progressive individuals and delegates from Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist groups, participated in the first public gathering of Marxist-Leninists from across the country since the degeneration of the Communist Party of Canada. A debate on the basic points and a confrontation of the positions current in the movement on the subject of the unification of Marxist-Leninists and the reconstruction of the proletarian Party, took place. Within the context of an organized debate, each group took a stand, and each demarcated itself from the positions it found erroneous in the movement, thus contributing to the clarification of what’s involved in the polemic for all Marxist-Leninists and for all conscious workers.
That is how, positions and arguments until then not expressed, or else known only to a small handful of militants throughout the country, came to be known widely, both through the conference itself and through the integral publication of the speeches of each one of the groups afterwards.
Thus the conference concretized the strength and vitality of our movement before a high number of conscious workers and progressive individuals, and it sharpened the demarcation within the movement which is a prerequisite for a higher form of unity. In brief, the conference, far from being one big “show”, was a genuine triumph over localism and small-group mentality within the movement and that has had deep and concrete effects since then.
Despite the fact that a certain idealism in the organization, as well as weak discipline on the part of each group, led to the cancellation of the discussion workshops, we can none-the-less say that the First Conference was by and large a positive event. A detailed assessment of it appears in No. 3 of the journal PROLETARIAN UNITY. Today, following in the wake of a vast public debate, one which has intensified since the recent publications of the positions of IN STRUGGLE! and that of Red Star Collective, we are going to undertake this fundamental debate on the path of the revolution in our country.
In 1939, when Mao Tse-tung wrote a text designed to instruct the Communist Party of China as a whole on, as the title indicates, THE CHINESE REVOLUTION AND THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA, he furnished the Chinese revolution, and the world proletarian revolution, including the Canadian revolution, with a brilliant model of the application of the Marxist-Leninist position and methodology to concrete reality. Mao Tse-tung said: “Only when we grasp the nature of Chinese society will we be able clearly to understand the targets, tasks, motive forces and character of the Chinese revolution and its perspectives and future transition. A clear understanding of the nature of Chinese society, that is, of Chinese conditions, is therefore the key to a clear understanding of all the problems of the revolution.”
Understanding the character of the society we live in, that is the key to understanding all the problems of the revolution. That is what Mao Tse-tung said.
And that is what the dogmatists never understood; the dogmatists, who, as Mao Tse-tung put it, are lazybones and do not seek a concrete analysis of a concrete situation, but who are content to repeat incessantly the great principles. Those, for example, who clamour “imperialism” without bothering to furnish one ounce of analysis proving what they’re clamouring about so loudly.
This method isn’t going to move us forward. On the contrary, today we must furnish clear answers to the following questions:
Who are our friends?
Who are our enemies?
What is the principal contradiction of Canadian society, that contradiction whose resolution by the proletariat will permit the creation, or will create, the conditions to resolve all the other contradictions?
What are the links that unite the general conditions of the current international situation to the conditions in Canada?
What are the tasks and what is the character of the revolution in Canada?
We should answer these questions, not for ourselves, not to develop a line which is correct in and of itself, something which in any case does not exist, but rather because we have the historical responsibility to provide a concrete revolutionary orientation to the struggle of the Canadian proletariat for its emancipation. Also because we know that incorrect answers to these questions can lead, and have in the past led, to revisionism, to the betrayal of the interests of the proletarian class, as the history of the Communist Party of Canada indicates so clearly.
Let the comrades from the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist) and those from the ex-Vancouver Socialist Group rest easy... there will be no vote taken at the end of the conference to establish the path of the revolution in Canada. This conference does not claim to settle this debate; it claims to intensify it, in spite of what those comrades say. And let me add in passing, in the name of all the groups present up front here, that I ask the spokesmen from the League and from the Regina Marxist-Leninist Collective to come and take their place on the stage to participate in the debates and defend their positions in full view of all the movement.
Good work to all!