Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

The truth about the relations between the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA and the Communist Party of Canada (M-L)


SECTION III: The leadership of CPC (M-L) has started down the road of public attacks against our Party

You have gone to the extent of withdrawing any public support from us and have started down the road of public attacks against our Party. Indeed you have carried your unprincipled splitting activity to the point of a public split. You are now seeking to organize your own anti-party network in the U.S. And you are placing great pressure on the parties that you regard as part of your “trend” to take part in your boycott and hostile work against our Party. For some time you have been cutting down on and eliminating public support for our Party from your press. This is not because People’s Canada Daily News (PCDN) has not written about the U.S. or about the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement. It is precisely support for the Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the U.S. that has been withdrawn. This is quite apparent with regard to the campaign to found the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA.

During the entire campaign to found the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA, you expressed “support” publicly exactly twice.

The first time was when your representative attended our May Day meeting in Chicago at our invitation. This meeting was the opening of the public campaign to “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists.” Your representative delivered an enthusiastic message and hailed the coming founding of the Party. We requested if we could publish this message. Your representative agreed but then decided to bring the message back to Canada for some further editing prior to publication. That is, of course, quite acceptable and within the norms. But despite repeated promises, you then never sent us this message. You professed to have misplaced it. Instead of telling us why you didn’t want to support our Party, instead you pretended that you would send the message to us in a few days. Despite repeated promises on your part, to this day we have never again seen that message.

Meanwhile, PCDN printed nothing about our campaign. Quite clearly, this message didn’t get “lost” by accident. It was part of the pressure leading up to and preparing conditions for your letters of December 5 and early February (January 19).

Our two fraternal Parties have a long history together, a history of close relations and common struggle. It was the established and correct practice for our two Parties to give political support to each other. Our Party has always enthusiastically supported the CPC (M-L) in the most vigorous and open-hearted manner. We have every right to expect political support from the CPC (M-L) for the founding of the MLP, USA. The CPC (M-L) is a “recognized” party, compared to us. That is to say, the CPC (M-L) has received direct political support from other parties, and it was the duty of CPC (M-L) to in its turn extend political support to its close fraternal comrades in the U.S. But this support was withdrawn. And it was withdrawn because you, the leadership, were using the questions of practical relations and of public support as pressure upon us.

Thus things reached the point where we had to write to you to ask for public support. According to the decision of the NC of the COUSML, the NEC wrote a letter to the NEC of the CPC (M-L). This letter stated:

Through the many years of existence of our two Marxist-Leninist Parties, we have steadfastly fought together against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction, and against revisionism and opportunism of all types. We have fought together for the purity of Marxism-Leninism and to defend proletarian internationalism. And we have always supported each other in our common struggle. The common front of our two Marxist-Leninist Parties has always been a major victory for Marxism-Leninism in North America.

We request that CPC (M-L) express support in People’s Canada Daily News for the campaign of COUSML to found the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA. We would warmly welcome this proletarian internationalist assistance. (Letter of July 17, 1979 of the NEC of COUSML to the NEC of CPC (M-L))

You replied to us not by giving us support, but by urgently insisting that we drop everything and travel for discussion. At this discussion, in early August, you defended your previous lack of support on the grounds that you disagreed with the “Call of the NC of the COUSML” and with the slogan “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists.” Our representatives defended our positions. It should be stressed that you never wrote down and systematized your objections to the “Call of the NC of the COUSML” nor did you even indicate that you had objections during the period we set aside for discussion with fraternal comrades prior to going public with the campaign. And this was not for lack of knowledge of our plans. You were invited to and attended our conference “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists” of early March 1979. You were also given the internal bulletin on the proceedings of this conference. As well, there have been innumerable other discussions with you on the questions of when and how to found the Party, right from the formation of the nucleus of the Party, the ACWM (M-L), in May 1969, and on up to the present. But you not only have withdrawn public support to put pressure on our Party. You have also defended your practice of acting in the most offhand way, of not working out your ideas, and of refusing any responsibility for your ideas and actions at the same time as you put tremendous pressure on us to follow these ideas. A typical example of this is that while in early August 1979 you justified your lack of public support for us by your opposition to our slogan “Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists,” in your letters of December 5 you call us a “shameless liar” for saying that you opposed this slogan, (pp. 1 and 16)

In the discussions of early August 1979, after seeing that our representatives defended the Marxist-Leninist line of our Party, you stopped the discussion and agreed to publicly support the campaign to found the MLP, USA. But you never carried through on this agreement. Instead, you published but one article in PCDN. This was the article “Brother Marxist-Leninist Party to be Founded in the U.S. in the Near Future” in the August 1, 1979 issue of PCDN (Despite the official August 1 date of this PCDN, it appeared after the discussions of early August. It is possible and indeed probable however that the article was written prior to the discussions.)

With this article, you in fact took a big step on the road to public polemics against our Party. In this article, you put forward your objections to our campaign while allegedly praising the MLP, USA. With this article you tried to probe our organization and see if you could incite a split in it. By first not publishing for months anything on the MLP, USA, then publishing an article giving opposing views on how to found it, you clearly were hoping to incite part of the organization against the line of the Party and to promise it support. However, you failed, due to the iron unity of our Party, the unanimous enthusiasm of our Party for the campaign to found the MLP, USA, and the fact that our positions were well-founded on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and in accordance with the concrete conditions.

We were indignant at your article and told you so in later discussions. At the same time we took care to maintain public solidarity. We reprinted excerpts from your article of August 1 in the August 15, 1979 issue of The Workers’ Advocate under the title “Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) Declares Support for the Founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA.” We did not claim that you supported the “Call of the NC” or the campaign itself, because the article did not. We simply stated that “This article gives the views and position of the CPC (M-L) on the Marxist-Leninist movement in the U.S.,” tried to find anything positive in the article and promote it, and expressed our support for the CPC (M-L).

However, time has proved that the article was completely hypocritical. In the article you said that the founding of the MLP, USA would be “a great step forward for the proletarian movement for emancipation in the U.S.” and called it a “brother” party, while the letter of the NEC of the CPC (M-L) of early February (“January 19”) states that you won’t “have anything whatsoever to do with a ’Marxist-Leninist Party, USA’ until such time as it is clarified what this organization is, what are its relations to COUSML and whether this ’Marxist-Leninist Party, USA’ is interested in establishing relations with us, or merely in receiving literature.” This proves that your article of August 1, 1979 was completely hypocritical in its alleged “support” for the MLP, USA and was only being honest in its attacks on the Party.

After your article in the August 1, 1979 PCDN, to date nothing else appeared in PCDN concerning the founding of the MLP, USA.

However, you continued to take further steps down the road of public polemics. The January 3, 1980 issue of PCDN carried a speech of major importance delivered on December 30, 1979. This speech gave CPC (M-L)’s assessment of the decade of the 1970’s. In this speech you accused both our Party and the glorious Party of Labor of Albania of putting pressure on your Party, pressure that you compare to the pressure put on your Party earlier by the Chinese revisionists. You wrote:

...because during the 1974-77 period, big pressure was exerted from within the Party as well as from outside, that whatever CPC (M-L) says should be consistent with what the Chinese say.

Since the Seventh Congress of the PLA, another trend is developing: Is our line consistent with the line of the PLA? ...

It is very important that our Party – our Canadian Party, not American Party or Albanian Party or anyone else’s Party – must stand on its own two feet and that it have its own organs and its own leadership, in the sense that any Marxist-Leninist Party has its own central committee as the supreme organ when the Congress is not in session. Any Marxist-Leninist Party has its leaders and they should naturally come from its ranks. (PCDN, January 3, 1980, p. 2, col. 4)

In this passage, the reference to the “American Party” is clearly to the genuine Marxist-Leninists in the U.S., i.e. to us, in the same way as the “Albanian Party” is a reference to the PLA. We are astonished to see you attack the PLA, which has given you such firm political support. The PLA has always rigorously adhered to the norms set by Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism in its relations with other Marxist-Leninist parties. It has given direct, open and vigorous fraternal support to the CPC (M-L). Yet here you equate the vigorous ideological work of the PLA, done in the open and without putting pressure upon anyone, with the treacherous, double-dealing and big power chauvinist methods of the Chinese revisionists. For shame! We also protest against your slanderous attack against us. Since you have raised this accusation, we also demand that you tell us the following: where, when and how have we ever put pressure on and interfered with the integrity of the CPC (M-L)? Where, when and how have we interfered with your central committee or your leadership? No, comrades, it is you who have put tremendous pressure on us and have also tried to dictate who could or could not be in our leading bodies, as with your vicious attack on Comrade Joseph Green and other comrades.

Furthermore, you also take certain steps in that article to begin a public polemic on the question of the “enigma of China.” You write:

When we say it was a mistake, it is not for the reason that some people are now suggesting, that Mao Zedong and China were an enigma, that Mao Zedong and China were not very well known to us. When Comrade Enver Hoxha talks about this he is saying something entirely different to what these people are suggesting. (PCDN, January 3, 1980, p. 2, col. 3-4)

Instead of giving your views on the question of enigma, you begin a polemic against “some people.” That is, you are taking steps to start a polemic against us on this issue. It is notable that you do not develop your views on this question of enigma at all. To give your views would be within the norms, but you refrain from that. Instead, you are taking steps to launch an attack on us. In actual fact, you are also against the analysis of Comrade Enver Hoxha and the PLA on the question of the enigma of China. You are also polemicizing against the PLA, as well as against us.

You stepped up your attacks on our Party at the Internationalist Rally in Montreal on March 30, 1980 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the CPC (M-L). We sent a delegation from our Central Committee to this rally bearing our greetings to the CPC (M-L) on its 10th anniversary. You boycotted this delegation and did not let our delegation speak. This was a great provocation against our Party, a vile act of treachery against the fraternal relations between our two Parties and a mean, contemptible deed. But as well it was a public announcement of a split. With this act you brought the fact that differences exist completely into the open, publicly announced your boycott of the MLP, USA and attacked our Party. With this act you also hoped to incite discontent inside our Party. In this direction, your intentions have been frustrated by the iron unity in our Party, a principled unity based on Marxism-Leninism. Indeed, in our Party there is not just unity but enthusiastic zeal to carry forward our sound positions which have been proven to be solidly based on Marxism-Leninism and on a correct analysis of the concrete conditions.

As well, at this rally you sought to make things difficult for our delegation to talk to the other delegations of Marxist-Leninist parties, including both those parties with whom we have long-standing fraternal relations and who have hailed the founding of the MLP, USA, and those with whom we do not yet have such relations and also including the Party of Labor of Albania. Indeed you used the occasion to step up your activities to make your boycott of our Party an international boycott and to spread evil sayings against our Party in the darkness of secrecy. You applied great pressure to those parties that you consider to be part of your “trend” to withdraw their support of our Party without even having discussions with us. And you have sought to have these parties or their representatives compromised by having them take part in or acquiesce in hostile work against our Party. This is a towering crime not just against our Party, but against these other Parties as well.

Furthermore you have gone to the extent of seeking to organize an anti-Party network in the U.S. as the rudiments of a second or parallel party. This shows to what depths of vile treachery you have sunk. But you have been unable to find even a single crack in our ranks, so you have resorted to slinking around the edges. You have frantically called this or that element up to Canada for protracted discussions in which you attack our Party. You have especially concentrated on wrecking and disrupting the work among the East Indian nationality in the U.S. For years, starting at least as early as 1976, you have been spreading poison against our Party in these circles. You had sought to enforce anti-Marxist-Leninist theories on these circles to weaken the connection between the work in the East Indian nationality and our Party and to deny the party principle in the U.S. Thus you have advocated the anti-communist theory that it is impossible to work both in the East Indian circles and be an active supporter of our Party, a theory taken from the arsenal of the anti-communist redbaiting trade union bureaucrats. Nevertheless the vast majority of members of the East Indian circles have been friendly to our Party. This year, as part of your hostile work against our Party, you stepped up your wrecking activities and ordered these circles to have nothing to do with our Party and to serve as anti-Party groupings.

We are opposed to the path of public split, public polemic and the organization of anti-Party networks that you have embarked upon. These stands severely damage the fraternal relations between our two Parties. You should be directing your fire at the enemy, not at us.