First Published: In Struggle No. 73, October 28, 1976
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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Canadian capitalists and American imperialists are still moaning: in a single day, they lost a month’s worth of work days, over a million days! They moan all the more since this day of political strike reinforced the proletariat. Walkouts all across the country against Bill C-73 showed, more than ever before, the growing unity of the proletariat of the two nations as well as the will to lead our struggles on a political level. Those are evident signs that the camp of the proletariat is getting stronger and the members of the bourgeoisie, in spite of their affected airs, know it well. The October 14 massive repartee against the wage freeze aggravated the political crisis currently dividing the bourgeois camp.
Besides, the worried tone of the last Throne speech is crying proof of this. The content itself is a call for unity, to establish a consensus on the matters dividing the ruling class: Bill C-73, bilingualism, the repatriation of the constitution. A call for unity that was not very successful for the following day the ex-Minister of Defense, James Richardson, resigned his seat.
What’s going on in our enemies’ camp? In fact, certain factions of the ruling class now refuse to have anything to do with the Trudeau solutions.
Meanwhile, Joe Clark, going about as if he was Prime Minister, is trying to form a group of the ruling class that would put him in power, and this, with some success if we judge by the results of the two recently held by-elections. But what are the policies defended by Joe Clark and his Conservative Party? Practically the same as Trudeau’s. More bourgeois solutions. How can we believe that Ministers, high ranking civil servants, whether they be old, new or recycled, working in the capitalist State apparatus and putting profits in command, could create policies assuring the material welfare of the toiling masses instead of freezing their wages? How could they ensure the respect of the linguistic rights instead of discrimination? The defense of a sovereign State instead of surrender before American imperialism?
ANY OTHER SOLUTION, SUCH AS TRIPARTISM OR SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, DIFFERS ONLY IN FORM. IT IS LINKED TO MAINTAINING THE RULING CLASS AND ITS STATE IN POWER, AND IT COULD NEVER SUCCEED IN DOING THESE THINGS!
The proletarian reply especially in the last year, is sharpening the contradictions within the ruling class; but that’s not all. An increasing number of workers, women, welfare receipients and immigrants, are becoming conscious of the dead-end that the bourgeois solutions to the crisis lead them to. And they are favouring the intensification of the class struggle. That is what the exploiters fear most and so they seek to crush this struggle by all means possible.
Never before this last year, have they used their State apparatus, as well as their police and legal power to attack the proletarians so much. In Quebec, for the first time in the history of the CNTU labor union, following a concerted strategy of the capitalists, lock outs are more numerous than strikes. The bourgeoisie’s agents in our unions, when they are not denouncing the most combative workers in factories, never stop telling the proletariat not to mingle with politics, that it’s the business of specialists, of that bourgeois party the NDP, The trotskyists and revisionists are repeating the same thing in different words. We heard it all on October 14 in Ottawa, Toronto and Trois-Rivieres, ALL THOSE TRAITORS ARE TRYING TO LIMIT OUR CLASS STRUGGLE TO THE STRUGGLE ONLY IN OUR FACTORY AND ARE THUS TRYING TO MAINTAIN CAPITALISM.
In the present situation where the ruling class is trying to limit our democratic rights, to strenghten its dictatorship, we have no other alternative except to struggle fiercely to protect our rights, our unions, our wages, in order to reinforce the position of our class.
But the proletariat’s policy cannot only be that of a 10 or 20 year-long struggle against the bourgeoisie’s plans; our struggle must aim at winning victories, by going to the offensive, by creating our own Party, by creating great revolutionary class solidarity in order to overthrow the bourgeois State, establish that will ensure and defend the welfare and rights of the whole of the Canadian people.
Comrades,
On October 14, more than a million workers walked out to oppose the wage controls. A large part of the vanguard became conscious of the great strength of the working class when it unites, and thus the anxiety of the bourgeoisie at the sight of the proletariat attacking the bourgeois State. In fact, the Canadian proletariat took a big step forward in the struggle to build Itself a class Party.
FORWARD IN THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM!
BUILD OUR PROLETARIAN PARTY!