What is clearly lacking in the X/Y papers is a sense of strategy for socialist revolution in Canada. As the collective stated in its letter to the liberation forces of Indochina, where there is oppression there is resistance, and where there is resistance there is leadership.[1] The question is, where is the leadership to come from, what are its methods and principles of work, and what are the steps it must follow to create the conditions for socialism in Canada?
The X/Y paper argues for building unity through mass struggle, “learning from the working class”, “developing working relations with militant and politically advanced workers (agitators)”, so that we may draw “political lessons which are recognizable to the people involved in these actions”. It therefore follows (according to X/Y) that “our main current political task is to convince agitators of the need of the WESTERN VOICE to advance their own specific struggles”.
X/Y oppose the idea that the primary political task is “to consolidate the left around a systematic political program as a precondition for leadership of mass movements”. Such a plan is characterised by implication as “self-cultivation of the petit-bourgeoisie”, “leadership imposed from the outside according to a pre-determined program”, and “a paper which uses people’s struggle to ’prove’ that revolution is the only answer”.
This latter series of arguments is a complete misrepresentation of the Marxist-Leninist position. Marxism-Leninism is a science which, if applied correctly, guides the proletariat and its allies to socialism (the dictatorship of the proletariat and ultimately to communism (abolition of class rule). The political leader of this process is the revolutionary party. The party plays a central role in the revolutionary process. It unites the vanguard of the working class around Marxism-Leninism and a revolutionary line. It takes the Marxist-Leninist line to the working class and its allies, in a struggle against the hegemony of bourgeois ideology among the masses of the people. The party seeks to lead the day-to-day struggles, as well as the long-term struggles, with the object of instilling these struggles with a revolutionary content. The aim is the seizure of state power by the proletariat.
A revolutionary party is not created out of thin air, or by a group of people getting together one day and declaring themselves to be “the Party”. These are the methods bf CPC(ML) – methods which are thoroughly counterrevolutionary.
The party will emerge out of a lengthy, conscious process of theoretical and political struggle. Basic questions concerning the nature of the Canadian revolution must be thoroughly analyzed and debated. These questions include the principal contradiction (often called the national question), class analysis, the Quebec question, the native question, etc. At the same time, the most active, militant elements of the working class must be rallied to Marxism-Leninism and join the theoretical struggle. Marxist-Leninists must take theory to the masses of workers in order to show that it is only the ideology and organisation of the proletariat which can solve their problems in the long and short run. These are some of the preliminary stages in the process of building a party.
To argue that the function of a political program is “to consolidate the left as a precondition for leadership of mass movements” is to suggest that “the left” opportunistically seeks to lead mass movements in order to gain power for itself under capitalism. The “political program” as suggested by X/Y would be nothing more than a political ploy, a sham set of words aimed at deceiving workers into giving up one set of leaders for another. Groups calling themselves “left” have, it is true, gone down this path more than once. But it is precisely because they failed to seek real understanding of Marxism-Leninism and its application to Canada that they followed the line of opportunism.
In any case, it is impossible to be effective in the real world without some sort of plan or program. If the method of the WESTERN VOICE is not to be Marxism-Leninism, what method remains?
In the following sections we will deal with various aspects and implications of the X/Y line.
[1] Last spring the WESTERN VOICE organized a celebration to support the revolutionary victories in Cambodia and Vietnam. The statement quoted here comes originally from the Vietnamese.