It is nearly a year since Marxism-Leninism was introduced as one pole in the two-line struggle on the WESTERN VOICE. At that time, someone suggested that those of us who were putting forward as a basis for the work of the collective the historically accumulated lessons of the struggles of the international proletariat were trying to sell a “pig in the poke”. Since then, of course, the “poke” has become rather crowded. Members of the WESTERN VOICE collective, and many close friends, have begun to study the scientific writings of Marxism-Leninism. The emergence of CANADIAN REVOLUTION[1], and Dave Paterson’s critique of right opportunism[2] have shaken the complacency of many so-called “self-defined” revolutionaries in the Vancouver area. The palpable advances of the Marxist-Leninist movement in Quebec[3] have further strengthened the influence of revolutionary theory in English Canada.
At the same time, the bankruptcy of tailism has been exposed in the total lack of preparation for the militant wave of spontaneous struggle of the past summer – led in BC by workers in pulp, paper and lumber, and the subsequent attacks of the bourgeoisie on the working class movement – the NDP’s back-to-work laws and Trudeau’s wage controls. Both of these events were entirely predictable, yet the revolutionary movement found itself utterly incapable of exercising leadership – or even of exposing clearly what was at stake and the real lessons of the struggles.
On the international scene, Marxism-Leninism has won great victories in the past year. The total liberation of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Mozambique proved once again that it is only under the leadership of a proletarian party armed with Marxist-Leninist theory, closely linked to the masses, that the people of oppressed countries can win their freedom.
Nevertheless, right opportunism and economism continue to hold sway in the WESTERN VOICE. While certain individuals may have begun to be won over to Marxism-Leninism, the practice of the collective has not changed.
A repudiation of our previous lines and practice is of fundamental importance if the newspaper is to move forward. It must be public. It must address itself both to our readers and to the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement as a whole. It must include a thorough criticism of our past errors so that others may learn from our mistakes to avoid making them themselves. We must seek consciously to become active participants in the Marxist-Leninist movement, whose principal task at this time is the building of a Canadian proletarian party. The content of the WESTERN VOICE must reflect this practice.
Where there is no party, the first task of Marxist-Leninists is to engage themselves in the process of building one. The entire history and theoretical works of the international communist movement attest to this basic fact. The party is the leader of the working class and its allies in the struggle for state power. It unites the most active, conscious and dedicated leaders of the proletariat around this objective. It is bound by the discipline of democratic centralism, guided by a program and political line which unites the specific elements of objective conditions with Marxist-Leninist theory and ensures the strategy and tactics are employed with a view to striking the main blow at the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The Communist Party of China, in the polemic on the general line of the international communist movement in 1963 stated:
A most important lesson from the experience of the international communist movement is that the development and victory of a revolution depend on the existence of a revolutionary proletarian party.
There must be a revolutionary party.
There must be a revolutionary party built according to the revolutionary theory and revolutionary style of Marxism-Leninism.
There must be a revolutionary party able to integrate the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the revolution in its own country.
There must be a revolutionary party able to link the leadership closely with the broad masses of the people.
There must be a revolutionary party that perseveres in the truth, corrects its errors and knows how to conduct criticism and self-criticism.
Only such a revolutionary party can lead the proletariat and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its lackeys, winning a thorough victory in the national democratic revolution and winning the socialist revolution.
(“A proposal concerning the general line of the international communist movement”, in The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, Peking: 1965, pp. 48-49)
Given the general lack of clarity on political line and program, given the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie and its agents in the proletarian movement (social democracy and modern revisionism), the immediate task of the Marxist-Leninist movement, nationally and internationally, is theoretical struggle to demarcate the movement from revisionist and opportunist trends, break the hold of bourgeois ideology on the proletariat and its allies and develop the political line, strategy, tactics, methods of work and program necessary to the formation of the proletarian party.
This paper does not aim to be a complete exposition of the theories of Marxism-Leninism. Nor is it either an analysis of the Canadian situation or a detailed exposition of the tasks of the Marxist-Leninist movement in the process of party-building. It is a criticism of the incorrect Economist lines put forward by the leading tendency of the WESTERN VOICE collective, with some proposals on how the collective can begin to rectify these errors. The Economist political line of the WESTERN VOICE is most eloquently expressed in texts put out by two individuals, “X” and “Y”, in the summer of 1974[4], titled “Some brief, provocative notes” and “Some responses”. Our main theoretical criticism is to these two texts. We recognize that the errors of the VOICE existed before the publication of these texts, and that other individuals, including some of the authors of this paper, played their part in the propagation of these errors. Nevertheless, these two texts, and the political reasoning which lies behind them, must be specifically attacked and repudiated if the collective is to move forward.
At the same time we must not lose sight of the real advances made in the “first period” of the WESTERN VOICE. We have taken the class viewpoint of the proletariat to struggles against capitalist exploitation, imperialist domination and all forms of oppression, attempting (albeit incorrectly) to practice “from the masses, to the masses”. We have promoted unity through struggle and attempted energetically to be an active instrument of popular struggle. We have promoted the anti-imperialist united front on a world scale, summed up by the slogan “Countries want independence, nations want liberation, people want revolution”.
We have promoted the practical economic and political struggle of the proletariat, the working class as a whole and their allies as aspects of a single class struggle. We support rank-and-file workers who seek to unite the mass of workers for class struggle and against individual employers, the state, the ruling class, the labour aristocracy and business unionism. Unions which struggle against these enemies have our support, as does the independent Canadian trade union movement. Women and national minorities are supported as part of the class struggle. We have aimed to “proletarianize” the newspaper by recruiting from the working class and encouraging collective members to integrate in theory and practice in the working class struggle.
We have attempted to struggle for a basis of unity that to a certain extent demarcates us from reactionary forces and unites all those who can be united to fight against a common enemy for a common goal.
To put this unity into practice and to develop it, we must agree on the two main proposals that this paper puts forward for immediate adoption:
a) that the basis of unity of the collective be anti-revisionist as well as anti-imperialist;
b) that we agree that Marxism-Leninism is the scientific theory of the proletariat and that we will use it as the basis and guide in our study which is a struggle to develop a political line and to define the central tasks of the newspaper.
In that struggle we will argue that party-building is the central task, that it is directly connected to the struggle against revisionism and for proletarian leadership of the united front, and that both and-imperialist struggle and the fight for socialism are on the agenda in Canada today.
Our apologies, first of all, for the lateness of the document. We make no excuses – collective members know them all. A positive result of this late publication is that many more collective members have had an opportunity to consider and study the issues that were raised last January.
We must apologise for any inconsistencies, weak points, poor explanations, repetitions and gaps. Unfortunately, we have not been able to account for all aspects of the problem.
We point out that there are a large number of lengthy quotes from Marxist-Leninist classics. These are provided, not simply to back up our arguments, but to illustrate concretely what we mean when we talk about using Marxism-Leninism as a guide for our work.
Vancouver, October 1975
[1] Canadian Revolution (CR) is a theoretical magazine published in Toronto. According to its policy statement, CR aims to facilitate ideological and political discussion in order to lay the basis for Marxist-Leninists to achieve the goals of a socialist revolution in Canada.” It is available for $1.50 a copy, or $6.00 a year, from Canadian Workers Press, P.O. Box 164, Station G, Toronto, Ontario.
[2] An article in Vol. 1, No. 2 of CR which exposes the so-called Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) as “thoroughly opportunist, incapable of leading the working class and progressive people forward to socialism.” Paterson points out that the “CPC(ML)” ’s successes result from the fact that would-be Marxist-Leninists in English Canada have supported bourgeois nationalism while tailing after workers’ economic struggles. He calls on Canadian Marxist-Leninists to “fight opportunism in our own ranks and initiate the struggle to build the genuine party of the proletariat.”
[3] There are several groups in Quebec which openly base themselves on Marxism-Leninism. One group, En Lutte!, has been distributing its newspaper among workers for 3 years. En Lutte’s main objective is to build a revolutionary proletarian party by fusing Marxism-Leninism with the workers’ movement. Among other groups with similar objectives is the recently formed Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist), a product of the unification of three groups which have existed for several years.
[4] These two texts were internal documents written by two members of the collected (called here X and Y) as part of the ongoing debate about the basis of unity and objectives of the newspaper. “Some Brief, Provocative Notes” was formally adopted as our basis of unity at the time.