The role of the proletarian Party is to lead the revolutionary struggle of the working class and its allies in the overthrow of bourgeois State power. In order to do this, other than the fact that the Party must base itself on Marxism-Leninism, there is one essential condition, and that is that the Party must count among its ranks the vanguard of the proletariat. Otherwise, if the Party remains majoritarily composed of petty-bourgeois, it cannot help but to sooner or later fall into opportunism, because the ideology adopted by a Party in the long run, is not independent of the class interests of those who compose it. And in the era of imperialism, the only revolutionary class is the proletariat.
All communists are in agreement about affirming that the Party must count the vanguard of the proletariat among its ranks. But does this mean that in order to create the Party it is necessary to have already rallied a certain proportion of workers to communism? Posed in such abstract terms, the question doesn’t have much meaning and one could always say that historically there have been parties which didn’t have many workers in their ranks at the time of their creation. This is undoubtedly true, but the question which currently confronts communists in Canada is quite different.
First of all, there is the fact that in our country there is a revisionist party which claims to be communist. Even if its influence within the Canadian masses remains extremely limited, this party is no less active in the workers’ movement. By means of infiltration it controls certain unions, in particular, some in English Canada, as well as certain communities of immigrant workers.
As well, there is the fact that since 1970, a certain number of parties have appeared, claiming to be Marxist-Leninist, in particular the CPC (ML) and the CPL. These so-called communist parties were created in an utterly opportunist way and based themselves on largely erroneous lines. No protracted long term work of communist agitation-propaganda was done in the working class. After almost 8 years of existence, these parties remain fringe groups with no real hold in the workers’ movement. Finally, there exist a considerable number of revisionist and Trotskyist groups and organizations across the country, which claim to adhere to Marxism to one extent or another, and which try to win the support of the workers’ movement in the name of the struggle for socialism.
In this context, to create the Party, on the pretext that communists are united around a Marxist-Leninist program, and that the conquest of the workers’ vanguard could take place later, would be a serious tactical error which could result in the party’s remaining a fringe group isolated from the proletarian masses for a long time. And because of that, the party would be an easy victim for right-opportunism – because concessions would be made to win over workers as quickly as possible – or else for adventurism – because it would be tempted to “make revolution” without the masses.
The proletarian Party will not merit its name simply because it will have proclaimed itself the revolutionary vanguard. It will merit its name if it really represents the political direction which the workers’ vanguard has adopted. If the party were to be created without having realized the conditions necessary to rapidly assure it its leading role, it will inevitably find itself in the camp of the fringe groups of idealist intellectuals.
There are some who have wanted to avoid the difficulties related to the winning over of a first contingent of workers to communism, by massively transplanting communist intellectuals into the factories, on a number of pretexts. First it was said that this practice allowed us to compensate for the absence of communist workers. In face of the criticisms which this type of compensation aroused, a new motive was found. Then it was a question of proletarianizing intellectuals. Today, everything leads us to believe that the role of the “implantees” is to create factory cells in the places where they are implanted, and, this, as quickly as possible.
The experience gathered during the past 8 or 9 years has clearly illustrated the erroneous character of this practice which has been elevated to the level of a tactic for the merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers’ movement. In all known cases of “implantation” in English Canada or in Quebec, it has always been a failure. Either the intellectuals barged into the factories like lions and declared open war against the existing union leadership, and thus were thrown out without having obtained the support of the working masses, or else, conscious of this danger, they reduced their intervention to its lowest level, to the level of immediate economic demands and completely subordinated and even totally abandoned all political work among the working masses. They sought acceptance by the union and sought to make friends with everyone so that later they could talk about communism... without being rejected! In short, they fell into economism and opportunism and didn’t really help the penetration of communism into the workers’ movement go forward.
Incidentally, the League adopted the implantation line, thus stupidly repeating the errors of the RCT in Quebec and of certain study groups in English Canada. Conceived in this way, implantation is the expression of a political line, a line which says that it is only on the grounds of the immediate economic demands that workers can be won over to communism. This point of view is completely erroneous, because it leads to abandoning political questions and it always leads to radical reformism, anarcho-syndicalism or “political unionism”, which carry with them the implicit negation of the absolute necessity of a party, before everything else, to lead the socialist revolution.
This leads us to asking the question of what exactly “rallying the workers to communism” means. A question which is all the more important since the revisionist CP hasn’t been able to reply to it since at least the early 1940’s, when it adopted a bourgeois line faced with a war situation (incidentally, there are some who should study this chapter in the history of the revisionist CP with particular care!) and then, again faced with the postwar situation. Since that time the CP has almost worked solely within the unions and economic struggles, with the exception of the denunciation campaign against US imperialism and the support for certain liberation struggles, such as those in Vietnam and more recently, Zimbabwe. In passing, this is also very instructive on the practice of the revisionists which leads them to abandoning the mobilization of the working class against its principal enemy, the Canadian bourgeoisie and its State’s power, and this is another chapter of recent history which the League should get down to studying as soon as possible.
The CP’s revisionism gave birth to offsprings, even among those groups which were at the origin of the struggle against revisionism in Canada. Thus the RCT and the PWM, to take but two examples, always concentrated their intervention in the unions, adopting the point of view that it’s on the economic terrain that communists penetrate the workers’ movement, because the unions, and this can’t be repeated often enough, are organizations for economic defence... which sometimes, certain people would like to transform into para-political organizations, into some kind of pre-party “class struggle” organizations.
Again today, revisionism is doing enormous damage in this area. One need only think of the majority of the political parties and organizations which are to the left of the Liberal Party and which give much importance to union struggles, starting with the NDP, or at least at its origin, right up to the League, not to forget the RMS, the SOC, the Saskatchewan Waffle, and of course the revisionist CP!
What we have here is a fundamental problem of political line. The rallying of workers to communism is their adherence to a Marxist-Leninist point of view on the proletarian revolution, a point of view which states that the proletariat must overthrow bourgeois State power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of its vanguard party. All points of view which reduce this rallying of workers to simply their adhesion to questions related to radical, combative or “class unions”, to the necessity of workers’ solidarity or to the co-ordination of the economic struggles is not a communist point of view. The rallying of workers to communism is a political question upon which will hinge the level of the politics of the working class in the struggle for socialism.
Having said this, the central character of the communist program in the rallying of workers becomes obvious. Either we give way to opportunism and try to rally workers on the basis of some sort of reformist platform, trying to lead the workers in the building of “class struggle” unions, daycare centres, food co-ops, etc. which are more democratic and militant, whether that’s the real stated aim or not, or else, adopting an essentially Marxist-Leninist position, we aim at rallying the workers to communism and involving them in the struggle to build the party. There’s no middle path. The path of “class struggle” unions as transitional types of organizations on the road to the party, is an erroneous and opportunist path which betrays the essentially economist positions of those who put this forward.