In its latest publications, En Lutte! holds that its pamphlet Creons l’organisation marxiste-leniniste de lutte pour le Parti was a “major step” forward in its ongoing struggle against opportunism on Party-building, a “break” of “decisive importance on the ideological plane, as it were (PU #1 p.23-25). The phenomenonal event that gave rise to such ostentatious self-praise is that in this document En Lutte! “...indicated the exact framework we envisioned for the unification of communists for the first time” (Ibid p.23). “Indicated the exact framework”: a tremendous advance indeed! After two years of wandering in the marsh, following like a stray puppy the ’unity’ scent from tree to tree, En Lutte! finally stumbles upon the elementary truth that a plan is needed to proceed further. En Lutte! then ’modestly’ declares that this ’brilliant discovery’ it has made is a qualitative leap from spontaneity to consciousness. But just what exactly did this incisive “indicating” amount to? If we are to judge by the English language version published in CR #1, it was the startling discovery that “...once we have affirmed the historical necessity of the party we should bear in mind that the consciousness of its necessity in M-L activists is not enough to justify its proclamation.” (CR #1 p. 24).
This “bearing in mind” is followed by the ’profound’ conclusion that:
That is why the struggle for the party, the construction of the party, calls for a certain period of time during which a Marxist-Leninist organization struggles with the object of combining all the essential features of the Party...Ibid p.24
In short, En Lutte!’s “ideological victory” over opportunism in this initial work was embodied in the proclamation of the need for a pre-Party organization. But we have already seen enough of the ’pre-party organization’ to know just what a hollow ’victory’ En Lutte! has won.
Even having drawn such elementary and opportunist conclusions, it took En Lutte! some time before it began to realize the implications of the “exact framework” it had discovered. In En Lutte’s words, “It took more than a year for In Struggle! to see clearly all practical consequences of the conclusions drawn in ’Creons...’; one year of gropings, of trial and error...” (En Lutte! Proletarian Unity #1 p.25)
Imagine. A “break” of “decisive importance”, an “ideological victory” stemming from its having “indicated the exact framework”, and yet it took more than a year for this “victory” to finally settle into its “practical consequences”. It does not even occur to En Lutte! that if it took so long to draw the “practical consequences” of its “ideological victory”, then perhaps this was not such a grand “victory” after all. If it could not even understand what it was it had ’discovered’, then how are we to believe it discovered anything at all? How are we to explain this delayed reaction between what En Lutte! ’discovers’ in ideology and only after “trial and error” works out in practice? In fact, there is no way to explain it except as an indication of “the exact framework” of En Lutte!’s opportunism. It would like us to believe that early on it was “breaking” with opportunism, making “major steps”, and indicating “the exact framework”. If we would only believe this, then we would see that En Lutte! has, after all, been a ’vanguard’ element all along. On the other hand, En Lutte! must attempt to explain its past opportunism, must attempt to show that such opportunism does not at all contradict its ’vanguard’ status, and that it was simply the consequence of failing “to see clearly all practical consequences” of its “breaks” and “ideological victory”. If we are willing to believe this, then of course we are willing to believe that there is not, after all, any contradiction between opportunism and Marxism-Leninism. We can then ’appreciate’ what ’valuable’ contributions En Lutte! has made to the movement’s development.
In reality, it impossible to break with spontaneity and opportunism without breaking in all spheres of our work. If En Lutte! chooses to portray its one-sided ’discovery’ that it is not enough to simply declare itself the ’party’ as a “break” and “ideological victory”, and at the same time admits that it failed “to see clearly” what that in fact meant, then such contradictory declarations only testifies to En Lutte!’s willingness to engage in opportunist side-stepping in order to pass itself off as a ’principled’ vanguard element. But in fact there is nothing at all principled about declaring one’s “trial and error” and “year of groping” as any sort of “break” or “victory”. Just the opposite. It is by such opportunist maneuvers that En Lutte! insures that it will be unable to truly break with opportunism and instead becomes a ’vanguard’ of petty bourgeois narrowness and self-interest. This is the example it sets for others to follow. All we must do is continue pursuing opportunism, and if we should inadvertently expose ourselves, simply declare that it was, after all, a minor matter of failing “to see clearly” just what it was we were doing. One can thus advance, a la MREQ, one’s “good intentions” as the fundamental guiding line.
En Lutte! admits that it made “important errors” on the question of the unity of Marxist-Leninists during 1975, but this, it turns out, was not due to opportunism but simply to the “lack of a rigorous plan of unity” (PU #1 p.24). It was still, it seems, ferreting out some of the “practical consequences” of its “ideological victory”. But it is a small matter to En Lutte! that in committing such “important errors” it was actually fostering opportunism and lack of principle in our movement. After all, there are more important things to tend to, such as covering one’s tracks.
These tracks were laid for the Anglophone section of the movement in a series of articles in the Spring of 1975, reprinted in CR #3. As we will see, the problem was not at all a “lack of a rigorous plan for unity”, but an excessive ’plan’ for opportunist ’unity’. En Lutte!’s Centrist and Social-Democratic view of the movement and the question of its unification is expressed in two main ways. In the first place, En Lutte! poses the question of unity strictly within an organizational context. On the one hand it sees the greatest inertia in the movement, the greatest restriction on it, as organizational primitiveness. Thus it states that:
it is becoming more and more apparent that the organizational state of the communists is holding back considerably the potential of communist propaganda, agitation and organization. CR #3 p.17
En Lutte! makes absolutely no mention of the primitive state of the development of principle in our movement, nor does it draw any connection between backwardness in theoretical matters and backwardness in organization. It would, after all, be ’inconvenient’ to bring up such matters as principle or firm lines of demarcation, since En Lutte! would risk alienating its hoped-for audience. Its sole concern is ’organization’. Thus, on the other hand, and following logically from this premise, En Lutte! poses an organizational solution. In answer to its own question of how to advance beyond primitiveness, how to “force the backward elements to march forward”, En Lutte! states with unusual clarity:
By struggling resolutely for the creation of the Marxist-Leninist organization of struggle for the Party; by creating a centralized communist organization (ML), applying democratic centralism in a consistent way, capable of progressively implementing the most strict division of labour, capable also of leading a methodical and merciless struggle against the opportunism manifested either in the workers movement or in the Marxist-Leninist movement itself. This in our opinion is the only way to break once and for all with the primitive period of tiny autonomous groups... CR #3 p.18
The creation of this organization was, according to En Lutte!, the “key link...on the organizational level” for the movement to advance “correctly” during the first stage of Party-building.
This organizational plan for ’uniting’ the movement was based on a number of unspoken or vague assumptions. As to the composition of the movement, it is clear that En Lutte! included all and sundry who officially took the title of ’anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist’ including, had its ’negotiations’ gone according to plan, the CPC(ML). En Lutte! did not view the movement as being dominated by opportunism, as having on the whole failed to break with petty bourgeois outlook, but on the contrary presupposed a fairly high level of political development. It portrays itself only as rising in opposition to “regression” in the movement, against those who “threaten to lead us backward” (Ibid p.17). En Lutte! further assumed that the “period of economist waverings, of tailism and unprincipled (opportunist) links with the workers” was over. This was at a time, it should be remembered, when En Lutte! was still working harmoniously with such ’non-Economist’ organizations as the CSLO. And clearly in En Lutte!’s view, the question of principle was certainly no obstacle since En Lutte! assumed this to be well in hand. Given all these very convenient assumptions on En Lutte!’s part, it follows directly that it would advance such a ’non-sectarian’ scheme for ’unity’ as a mega-’pre-Party’ organization embracing everyone.
Having made every effort not to offend anyone’s feelings, En Lutte! naturally concluded that anyone who opposed its ’plan’ would only be those most sectarian of small circles who “refuse to take the lead in the field of communist organization” (CR #1 p. 17), who wallow in the security of their isolation and reject the “evolution” of the movement, those who, in short, display the “circle spirit” Thus En Lutte! is set, once it has drawn things out so ’clearly’, to wage the decisive ’two-line struggle’: the “Party spirit” versus the “circle spirit”, with the “Party” elements led, of course, by En Lutte! itself. It wages such a ’decisive’ struggle against the “circle spirit” that it manages to ’overlook’ the question of line altogether. For En Lutte!, everything reduces to a simply question of form and ’good intentions’:
’The circle spirit’ is an infantile and retrograde attitude belonging to small groups or isolated collectives which cling tenaciously to remaining isolated, surrounded with THEIR ’masses’ and with THEIR ’workers’. For these Marxist-Leninists, every step forward in the M-L movement toward a higher unity is seen as a crisis. They feel threatened because they resist the evolution of the M-L movement toward the party, because they are afraid to lose their local ’hegemony’, because they prefer the narrow structure of the friendly family circle to the greater and more difficult demands of the larger organization and to open and often bitter struggle of political confrontation. CR #3 p.19.
The “circle spirit”, if we are to believe En Lutte!, is simply a matter of small size, isolation and selfishness, whereas the “Party spirit” has something to do with largeness, “evolution”, and “political confrontation”. But how does any of this lead us to real communist unity? What are we to say of definite bearers of the ’circle spirit’ who, far from being ’small isolated groups’ are rather large formations such as the CPC(ML)? What are we to say of those circle spiriters who do in fact engage in “often bitter struggle of political confrontation”? En Lutte! does not raise such situations since its real intention is not to give us a scientific definition of ’circle spirit’ and how it relates to party-building, but is rather to tie us up with this imagery of ’two-line struggle’ in the hopes that we will not notice it has abandoned principled line struggle altogether. As long as it can convince us that Party-building is simply a matter of the ’Party form’ versus the ’circle form’, of ’bigness’ versus ’littleness’, of ’isolation’ versus ’everyone in the same pot’, then of course we will all be only too willing to join in the En Lutte!’s ’pre-party organization’. No one wants to be accused of the “circle spirit”. This, in turn, will enable En Lutte! to create the biggest circle of all.
But “there are circles and circles, gentlemen!” It is only natural that our movement would develop as a conglomeration of larger and smaller circles. And it is true that the isolation between these circles, the lack of coordinated work between them, the lack of a common plan, a common programme, and so on, does in fact retard the movement’s development. But it is no solution at all to simply advocate that the various circles in the movement dissolve into one pre-Party organization. It is no solution to advocate such a thing, no matter how many times En Lutte! may remind us of the drawbacks and disadvantages of circle existence. Everyone in our movement is keenly aware of the isolation and narrowness associated with circle life. But to merely point this up, and then propose as a ’solution’ the simple liquidation of circles is actually a step backward from our present low level. In order to advance our movement beyond its circle existence it is first of all necessary to “draw firm and definite lines of demarcation”, to establish clear Marxist-Leninist principles to guide our work, to define which trends represent Marxism-Leninism and which represent opportunism. En Lutte! is incapable of drawing such lines, since it wishes to include opportunist trends within its conception of the ’Party’ and place itself in the lead. The ’line’ it draws is thus only one between those who for various reasons will go along with En Lutte! and those who for various reasons will not. And since En Lutte! has disguised this sectarian maneuver under the name of the “Party spirit”, it can turn the epithet of ’anti-Party element’ against anyone who opposes its ’unity’.
The history of the movement shows clearly that En Lutte! is not at all in the ’vanguard’ with this ’unity’ proposal. The CPC(ML) “took the lead in the field of organization” five years previously with just such a ’solution’. And yet, while the CPC{ML) managed to ’combat’ the “circle spirit” and declare the “Party”, i.e. CPC(ML), “spirit”, En Lutte! is conspicuously silent on this point. Just as the CCL(ML) was forced to ’differentiate’ itself from the CPC(ML}’s ’party-building’ plan, En Lutte! is forced to do the same. But it achieves this, not through a full elaboration of views, but simply by pretending that the CPC{ML)’s ’plan’ had never existed. En Lutte! can then present us with something entirely ’new’, ’original’ and ’profound’, a ’discovery’ and “ideological victory” it has made all on its own. But in fact all we are given is the same old sectarian hash under a ’new’ name.
The current factionalism that characterizes our movement’s development is not the cause but the surface expression of divisions springing from the strength of petty bourgeois opportunism in our movement. The situation is not, as En Lutte! would have it, that our organizational level is lagging behind and holding back our political level. Just the opposite. It is our political backwardness, confusion and pervasive opportunism that is holding back our organizational consolidation. Thus, the solution to the organizational primitiveness of our movement is not to be found in the advocacy of any organizational forms, however much En Lutte! may have convinced itself that all that is needed is the “Party spirit”. The principle of democratic centralism, for example, can be used by opportunists and Marxist-Leninist alike. No organizational form is higher than the principles around which it is based. But from En Lutte!’s standpoint, all that is necessary is to ’apply democratic centralism’ and ’unity’ will follow of itself. En Lutte! fails “to see clearly” that its ’democratic centralism’ would in fact only ’democratically centralize’ the prevailing opportunist tendencies in our movement, giving the leading role to the numerically stronger opportunist trend. And yet this is sufficient for what En Lutte! has in mind, since it has already reckoned itself the ’vanguard’ in any such ’pre-party’ organization.
While drawing out this organizational ’solution’, En Lutte! is perfectly clear in presenting its case against the “circle spirit”, and yet when it coraes to ideological struggle En Lutte! is reduced to generalities such as the need for a “...vigorous and permanent criticism against opportunist deviations...”(CR #3 p.20). “Vigorous and permanent” indeed. But against, for instance, En Lutte!’s own opportunist deviations? Against obscuring questions of principle and substituting in their stead superficial organizational schemes? Given that En Lutte! has advanced a ’solution’ that in fact liquidates the necessity of ideological struggle prior to organizational unity, it follows that En Lutte!’s “vigorous and permanent” criticism of opportunism is something that will occur only after it has attained its organizational ’unity’; that is, will be waged from a standpoint of the defense of opportunist deviations, and particularly En Lutte!’s own. Once it has won its ’democratic centralism’, a discipline based not on firm and definite principles but on the strength of one’s particular opportunist trend, En Lutte! can then put the lid on its opposition, ’vigorously and permanently’, and proceed with business as usual.
This de facto rejection of ideological struggle springs directly from En Lutte!’s view of the movement. This second main expression of its opportunist ’unity’ plan is brought into stark relief by the following. Under the bold title of “Against Gentlemen’s Agreements, For Open Struggle and Large-Scale Polemic”, En Lutte! states:
For En Lutte! the M-L organization of struggle for the Party will never see the day unless from the two-line struggle which is presently being carried out, and which must absolutely be intensified, an orientation and a leading centre emerges, in other words unless democratic centralism is applied as the M-L method to arrive at unity. CR #3 p.20.
An innocent enough looking passage, at first glance. After all, En Lutte! has supplied us with all the “key” phrases: ’struggle for the Party’, ’two-line struggle’, ’absolutely be intensified’, ’leading centre’ and so on. But lest we get carried away with all this soft-core catch-phrasing, we should consider what En Lutte! is actually saying. In the first place, En Lutte! assumes that “the” two-line struggle is already in progress, “is presently being carried carried out”. As noted above, this ’two-line struggle’ can only mean, from En Lutte!’s point of view, its struggle against the “circle spirit”, i.e., against anyone who opposes En Luttel’s conception of ’unity’. This struggle, states En Lutte!, must “absolutely” be intensified, and since we do not suppose En Luttel is so anxious to have itself proven wrong, we must assume that it wishes “absolutely” to be proven victorious. And in addition to this, En Lutte! hopes to see “an orientation and a leading centre” emerge. En Lutte! will not make so bold as to state that this role should be filled by itself, but since it has already portrayed itself as a ’vanguard’ of organizational affairs, guided by its “fundamental line”, it follows that this is exactly what En Lutte! has in mind. But En Lutte! cannot rest content with a simple string of implications. Somehow it must insure that its ’plan’ bears fruit. En Lutte! provides such ’insurance’ through its ’Linking up’, via “in other words”, of the emergence of a leading centre with “democratic centralism is applied as the M-L method to arrive at unity”. This is indeed something ’new’. Formerly we had thought that the leading centre emerged by virtue of its correct theoretical and practical guidance to the movement, through the confidence it inspired among Marxist-Leninists throughout the movement by its proven leadership. Formerly we had thought that the leading centre emerged as simply one circle among many, that as its influence grew more and more circles would turn to it, that a core organization would develop and that this organization would be (as with the Iskra organization) the major force in building the Party. Formerly we had thought that a viable democratic centralism, one based on principle, would develop first within the leading centre and would extend to the rest of the movement only as the various circles became attached to it, leading up to the declaration of the Party. But En Lutte! sees all this differently. En Lutte! speaks of the emergence of the leading centre as synonymous with the application of ’democratic centralism’, and that this organizational arrangement is in fact the “M-L method to arrive at unity”. What can this mean? Only that in En Luttel’s view, the ’two-line struggle’ is to be conducted within the confines of its proposed organization, and that its ’leading centre’ will emerge through this ’struggle’ by the application of democratic centralism, i.e. submission of the minority to the majority. This is the sum and substance of En Lutte!’s view of ’ideological struggle’, of that “open and often bitter struggle of political confrontation”. We first form an organization of all and sundry, a veritable marketplace of ideas. Each participant, of course, has the ’right and duty’ to put forward their ’line’, and afterwards a consumer majority will ’buy into’ its favorite and the minority will submit. Hence the “emergence” of the “leading centre”, i.e. the majority line. This ’dialectical’ link that En Lutte! makes between ’democratic centralism’ and ’ideological struggle’ permeates its entire “fundamental line”. It must at all costs attempt to reserve ’ideological struggle’ as a function within its “M-L organization of struggle for the Party”, since it is only within the ’basic framework’ of such an organization that En Lutte! can attempt to override matters of principle through the use of ’democratic centralism’. As long as it can, through its Centrist maneuvers, maintain a ’majority’, then all is well.
That En Lutte! maintains such a narrow view of “open struggle and large-scale polemic” is further verified by its unwillingness to engage in open struggle and polemic prior to the formation of the “M-L organization of struggle”. In answer to its own question: “Do the conditions exist in the Marxist-Leninist movement in order to advance to this qualitatively higher state of organization?” (CR #3 p.18), En Lutte! states incisively that
It is not up to us, in En Lutte!, nor to any particular group, to make a definitive value judgement on the quality of transformation in each of the Marxist-Leninist groups. No group can take upon itself the right to make such a general evaluation. Certain pretentious elements have in the past tried...CR #3 p.18
It is not up to us, states En Lutte!, to determine who is Marxist-Leninist and who is not. No. We will not shoulder such a responsibility. In fact, we will not only uphold irresponsibility for ourselves, but we will condemn as “pretentious” anyone who attempts to draw firm and definite lines, anyone who attempts to make “such a general evaluation”. We will simply tail after the movement, attempt to prevent anyone from declaring ’prematurely’, and when the time is ’right’ urge everyone to join in our quite generous “M-L organization of struggle”. But this is in fact only a cover for En Lutte!’s own “value judgements” of the movement. For fear that it might alienate future ’allies’, En Lutte! withholds ’polemic’ and ’evaluation’ of possible friends. But, on the other hand, should anyone expose En Lutte! non-committal opportunism, En Lutte! retains a quite definite “evaluation”, towhit: “certain pretentious elements”. It is, in short, quite willing to “take upon itself the right” to offend its opposition, while it attempts to deny its opposition that same right. This is every bit as sectarian as the CCL(ML), only it is presented in a more subtle and more hypocritical form.
En Lutte! further elaborates its soft-core sectarianism in its view of the formation of its organization in Quebec prior to Canada. It is common in our movement to consider the movement in Quebec as “more advanced” than the rest of Canada. The Quebec groups generally make no effort to dispel this myth, but instead foster it, while most of the more influential groups in Canada have, for reasons of their own, consistently grovelled before this conception. As should be clear from the examination of the CCL and En Lutte!, none of the Quebec groups are in any way ’advanced’. The only outstanding characteristic is their relatively larger organizational size, but then this has absolutely nothing to do with political line. In fact, the consolidation of opportunism into large-scale organizations is one of the gravest threats to the development of principle in our movement. En Lutte! however, in its articles in CR #3, “takes upon itself the right” to expose the actual conditions in Quebec, describing the entire Quebec movement as “...floundering in infantile forms of propaganda, of agitation and of organization...”. The movement there, according to En Lutte!, is “...incapable of offering to the advanced workers conditions of communist formation and organization...”, is not leading a “...consistent struggle against opportunist deviations which are obvious in its ranks...”, and suffers from “...considerable backwardness on the theoretical level, and consequently on that of political line (strategy and tactics)...”. This is a remarkably ’honest’ admission on En Lutte!’s part, and one would expect that since En Lutte! admits that conditions in Quebec are as bad as in the rest of Canada, it would make an even greater effort to insure that the entire movement, in both Quebec and Canada, be raised to a higher level. As it turns out, this is not the case at all. Despite En Lutte!’s confessional, it still persists in a sectarian scheme which will place its own organization in the lead. And since its own organization is based in Quebec, it must somehow justify its consolidation there:
...from a historical point of view and not abstract principle, taking account of the development of the marxist-leninist movement in Quebec, and the evolution of internal conditions, we think that the situation is ripe for the union of Quebec marxist-leninists in a centralized organization. We are convinced that such an organization would have positive and encouraging effects on the rest of Canada. CR #3 p.24
Given En Lutte!’s earlier comments on “floundering in infantile forms”, “obvious” opportunist deviations, “considerable backwardness” and so on, it is truly a mystery how En Lutte! could still come up with a “historical point of view” that would justify the union of Marxist-Leninists in Quebec prior to such a union throughout Canada. The situation was indeed “ripe”, but for what? Apparently it was “ripe” only for En Lutte!’s opportunist efforts to jump the gun on the MREQ and ’unionize’ the ML’s before its opposition could.
Previously we had thought that when the movement has not yet forged unity on the fundamental questions of principle, when it is still “floundering in infantile forms”, and suffers from “considerable backwardness” on questions of strategy and tactics, then our main task is to resolve those questions so as to make organizational consolidation possible. Previously we had thought that the dissolution of the separate circles into a single organization would be the result, the end product, of the resolution of questions of political line, and would represent a higher level throughout the movement. Previously we had thought that any attempt to advance organizational solutions when matters of principle were still unresolved only amounted to a crass attempt to consolidate the movement on an opportunist basis. But En Lutte! does not hold to such “abstract principle”. Not at all. From En Lutte! we learn that such characteristics as “floundering in infantile forms”, “considerable backwardness”, prevalent “opportunist deviations” and so on, are the ideal, the “ripe” conditions for the ’union of Marxist-Leninists’. That is, the worst of all possible worlds is, for En Lutte!, the best; the greatest disunity and confusion presents, from En Lutte!’s “historical point of view”, the most “ripe” conditions for ’unity’. But all that is ’ripening’ in fact is En Lutte!’s opportunism. What it hopes to “centralize” is simply the status quo, the dominance of opportunism over Marxism-Leninism. It can then, once it has drawn all and sundry into its ’union’, formalize the leading role of opportunism through a democratic majority vote. And once this pattern has been established in Quebec, it naturally follows that it will have “positive and encouraging effects” on hard-core opportunists throughout “the rest of Canada”.
This “general evaluation” En Lutte! made in CR #3, however much En Lutte! may chastize itself for being “without rigor”, is certainly not at all lacking in crude opportunist intentions. But it was the declaration of the CCL(ML) that fully roused En Lutte! to even greater dedication to ’unity’ and enabled En Lutte! to supply sufficient ’rigor’ to raise its ’two-line struggle’ as a final showdown between itself and the League. Unbeknownst to En Lutte!, the situation had become so “ripe” for an opportunist ’union’, that the League sprang up entirely on its own.