First Published: In Struggle! No. 287, May 18, 1982
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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The resolutions which follow are the product of many meetings and discussions with comrades in all regions and subregions including both those who agreed with our basic orientation and those who did not. Our understandings were transformed by the many criticisms and suggestions made and we hope this is reflected in the final version below.
You will note that we have subdivided the two original resolutions into six separate resolutions. The first four relate to the criticism of the programme and the last two deal with future perspectives. Our objective was to break things down into manageable bits so that each resolution was readily debatable and amendable.
If you have suggestions for “friendly amendments” that could improve the wording of the resolutions please contact Nina Kingsley at 288-2071 in Montreal or speak to any of us at or before the congress. It would save everyone time and energy if such amendments were made by the mover of the motion before debate started.
As we prepare for this Congress, it is clear that our Organization is in the midst of a deep crisis. The things that united us in the past in relation to our ideology, our political line, and our organizational methods and structures have been debated and challenged intensely since our 3rd Congress three years ago. Along with this process, our capacity for united action in the class struggle has diminished constantly. Many of our members and supporters have stopped working with IN STRUGGLE!, and many others who remain are unsure about their political future with the Organization.
How has this come about?
Some comrades think that the main problem is the sectarian fights in the leadership. Others think that it is the reformism of the majority of the leading cadre, or even the liberalism and lack of revolutionary commitment of the majority of our members and supporters.
We don’t agree with these kinds of explanations. We don’t think they will help us solve our real problems, which is how to continue in an organized way to contribute to fight to defeat imperialism and build socialism and communism, in Canada, and around the world. These explanations don’t really help solve this problem, because they don’t deal with the basic reasons for our crisis.
The forces fighting for socialism and communism have been in a serious crisis for many years now. In the twenties, thirties and forties, the rise of fascism in Europe posed the question of what alliances to make to win immediate political objectives very sharply. The way in which power was exercized in the Soviet Union raised a whole series of major questions very early on. What should the party’s role be in exercizing State power? What sort of internal democracy should the party allow? Was it possible to build socialism in an economically under-developed country? What kind of society was the U.S.S.R. in fact? These questions were debated side by side with a series of events: the forced collectivization of agriculture; the purges within the party; the development of private markets within the U.S.S.R.; the invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
The questioning among IN STRUGGLE! members and supporters originated in various different ways. We became aware of the problems bit by bit as political events of recent years unfolded and we learned lessons from our practice.
1. Internationally, there were events such as the degeneration of China, the worker uprisings in Poland, and the war between China, Vietnam and Cambodia. These developments raised anew in a very concrete way the question of working class power and the possibility of having socialism in economically underdeveloped country.
The coming to power of the socialists in France and Greece and of Reagan in the United States raised the whole issue of what alliances to make to win immediate political objectives, the same issue that faced communists in the twenties and thirties.
Faced with these fundamental problems, the Marxist-Leninist movement, which we have seen ourselves as part of, has remained politically impotent. It has taken refuge in dogmatism and has fallen into sectarian squabbles with Albania leading the way. Little by little, it has been disappearing in front of our eyes. This is especially true for the industrialized countries, whether imperialist or “revisionist”.
2. Our practice in Canada has also helped us become aware of the problems which confront the international socialist movement. In Toronto, we debated whether we shouldn’t support Sewell for mayor if only to help preserve what few rights had been won for gays and lesbians and national minorities. The work we did to support El Salvador stimulated further debates: while some comrades felt that it was a good thing that the NDP and PQ got involved in support work, others saw it as simply a manoeuvre by the social democrats to make political hay. During the last Quebec provincial election, many comrades talked about the idea of endorsing progressive candidates. Here again the whole issue of making alliances with social democrats to win immediate political objectives came to the fore.
A significant part of the working class has supported the bourgeoisie in its calls to take away the right to strike in the public sector. Some workers are accepting wage cuts and fewer days of work in order to keep their jobs. We began to wonder whether our analysis of the working class was sufficiently developed to really take account of the complexity of the situation.
Our work with other leftists in immediate struggles made us realize that there were other people who were for socialism and even revolution. We questioned whether a single party was desirable or possible. We started to challenge the idea we had had of ourselves as being the vanguard for everyone on all fronts.
3. The internal life within our Organization was also a stimulus to raising many of the basic questions we have before us.
There were many years of real effort to change things and many debates and changes in the way we were organized. But at the end of all this we saw that the sexual division of labour, the lack of real power for workers and the gap between the leadership and the rank and file was just as much of a problem as it had been before, if not more. We began to wonder whether we were perhaps trying to resolve problems which were unresolvable as long as we stuck to the same approach to leadership and democracy that is in our constitution.
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT:
To come to terms with the crisis within IN STRUGGLE! it is not enough to look for errors committed by one or another level of leadership. It is not enough to try to identify errors in the ways our programme and constitution were applied. We have to face up to facts. The state of the struggle for socialism on a world scale, our own experience in the political struggle in Canada, and what we know about the internal life of many organizations shows quite clearly: there are a lot of theoretical, political and organizational questions to be answered which the whole of the revolutionary left quite simply doesn’t have answers to.
Recognizing the depth of the crisis we are in does not require us to dismiss all the positive sides to our past work. It is not a coincidence that IN STRUGGLE! comrades have been capable of debating all these questions openly, frankly and publicly. For we have begun to break with our sectarianism in the past few years in practice. We have started to concern ourselves with the immediate struggles if the working class, women and oppressed groups. We have started to develop a concrete analysis of our society and the world. We have made strides forward in developing genuine internal democracy. In order to continue on with what we have begun, we must now undertake to criticize the political assumptions which underlay the errors we are now trying to correct.
1. The programme is wrong on women’s oppression. It fails to recognize that there is any material basis for women’s specific oppression and the sexual division of labour other than the super-exploitation of women’s wage labour at the place of work. (See Article by Jean Tepperman in P.U. # 26). This is the basis for seeing feminism as “divisive”, for saying the women’s struggle is subordinate to the “class struggle”, and for opposing an autonomous movement outside our ranks and feminist structures within it. In short, our programme does not recognize the existence of a system of patriarchy.
In particular, the programme ignores the family and the role women play in the reproduction of human beings, of social relations (education of children, etc.) and of workers’ labour power (housework, feeding and caring for husband, etc. so he is “ready to work” another day for Capital). Hence there is no mention of women’s right to control their own sexuality and reproduction functions. No mention of oppression in “private life” (rape, sexual roles, etc.). No mention that men have privileges and that the ideology of male chauvinism which defends those privileges is the main barrier to the unity of working-class men and women.
2. Many women have pointed out the programme’s narrowly “economic” way of looking at women’s oppression is repeated in terms of other forms of oppression too. Thus there is no mention of the social structures (beyond the private ownership of the means of production) which must be transformed or overthrown to eliminate the material basis of:
– the racial and international division of labour;
– the oppression of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals;
– the inequalities in power and privileges enjoyed by mental and manual workers;
– the various forms of repression and oppression faced by young people.
If we compare our programme’s analysis of the world situation with what is really going on internationally, we can see that there are some real problems in the programme:
1. The programme says that one of the main contradictions in the world today is between capitalist and socialist countries (article 2, p. 19) but who can say where the socialist countries are?
2. The programme explains the setbacks in efforts to build socialism as being due to the failure on the part of the ruling communist parties to maintain a sufficiently “firm application of Marxism-Leninism” (Article 2, p. 19). This is an idealist explanation. There is no mention of the problems due to economic backwardness, nor reference to the fact that the working class was in most cases a minority class. There is no analysis of the various social contradictions characterising “socialist” countries, even before the “revisionists” took over. There is an especially notable silence on the lack of democracy exercised by the working people themselves in those societies.
3. In listing the “four main contradictions (which) govern the contemporary world”, the programme simply ignores some of the most important contradictions which are giving rise to major political battles (Article 2, p. 19). One example is the struggle of women. Another is the national struggles within the imperialist and revisionist countries. Another is issues related to the survival of humanity itself: ecological questions, the threat of nuclear destruction.
4. The programme states that imperialism has been in “general crisis” and on the verge of final collapse since the Russian revolution (Article 1, p. 16). It claims that the victory of the different proletarian revolutions is an immediate possibility in all different kinds of countries everywhere (Article 2, p. I8). Such idealism is a block to a serious analysis of the real stakes of the struggle in different countries with different social systems and concrete conditions.
1. The programme describes Canada as being basically indistinguishable from any other capitalist country, even much poorer countries and those run by military dictatorships. It is wrongly claimed that the “majority” of Canadian workers “face poverty... and starvation wages”, meaning below the level of subsistence (Article 3, p. 21). There is economic deprivation in Canada and it is getting worse for many in the economic crisis. But Canada is not Honduras or even Mexico.
2. The programme talks about “the growth of the size, cohesion and revolt of the proletariat” in Canada and the world (Article 2, p. 17). But in fact the Canadian working class is not monolithic. It is composed of strata with widely varying material and social situations (men vs. women, unionized vs. non-unionized, mental vs. manual workers, etc.)
3. Instead of an accurate history of the Canadian working class, the programme presents us with a thoroughly idealist one (mostly by talking exclusively about the history of the Communist Party) – all to justify the assertion that the monolithic proletariat (read the party) has “led” all important struggles, including supposedly those for women’s rights, etc. (Article 4, p. 22). This way of looking at things led us to downplay the importance of struggles waged by people outside the workplace (women, youth, handicapped, aged, welfare recipients etc), non-unionized workers, women and some sections of the petty bourgeoisie.
4. The programme correctly sees that the State is, in the final analysis, an instrument for exercizing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It is an instrument of repression employed to maintain the power of the bourgeoisie over other classes. However, the programme errs in speaking only about this aspect of the State and thereby distorts things.
There is no mention in the programme of the fact that in this century the State has increased the scope and extent of its activities considerably. Some parts of the State apparatus deal with ideology, others with the economy, still others with social services. The number of centres of decision-making has increased: federal, provincial, municipal, school board. Given these developments, shouldn’t we communists think seriously about gaining leverage in these centres of decision-making power? Wouldn’t our participation in these bodies improve our ability to defend some of the acquired rights of working people that are under the gun? Wouldn’t it improve our chances of winning reforms that could create better conditions for waging extra-parliamentary struggles? And, within certain limits, would this not enable us to experiment with forms of supervision where there is a greater degree of worker and popular control (eg. user control of public daycare school boards, abortion committees in hospitals etc.)?
It is not possible to build socialism city by city or government department by government department. Any radical change of the system will necessarily involve confrontations with the State. Nor should electoral activity be viewed as the main form of communist work. However, the fact that there will be more important battles to fight in the future must not be used to block our using whatever avenues are presently open to us to strengthen our power and influence.
1. Our programme presents a view of socialism based on the model developed in isolated, economically backward countries, where economic tasks (rapid industrialization) were the main tasks. The only social relation the programme specifically mentions changing under socialism is private ownership of the means of production (replacing it with state ownership). The programme in fact claims that this single act abolishes antagonistic classes (Article 5, p. 25).
The changing of all other social relations (men-women, mental-manual, etc., let alone party-class) is left to later, to the advent of communism (Article 5, p. 25).
Canada is already industrialized. What oppressive social relations will the socialism we talk about in our programme abolish?
2. The programme talks about workers’ control except that a sink party will be supreme in controlling everything, Including the process of workers’ control. Strengthening the hegemony of the party is seen as the way to strengthen workers’ democracy.Poland highlighted the contradiction in our programme: it supports the autonomy of mass organizations from the capitalist State; it says proletarian democracy is better than bourgeois democracy because a single party will control Parliament, the courts, the media, the schools etc.
We will never rally workers to a programme that promises less political democracy and less autonomy than exists under capitalism.
There is no socialism but democratic socialism.
The strategy for socialism in our programme is: first, to build the single vanguard party; in stage two, the party takes over all the mass struggles and organizations (particularly the working class ones) under its leadership; in stage three, the party leads the armed seizure of power and controls the new socialist state alone (Article 7, p. 30). Does this strategy work to help move us closer to revolution?
1 . In practice there are major problems with this strategy: it describes what has to be done for the party to take power but not what the working people have to do to take power.
If we are serious about working class and people’s power then we have to start treating the struggles the masses wage day to day as an integral part of the revolutionary process. We can accumulate forces and push the bourgeoisie increasingly into a corner through immediate struggles on all fronts. We can also build up organizations and give people political experience. That experience will be very important when the bourgeoisie tries by all means available, including the use of violence, to hold on to power.
Our programme has nothing to say here – only to support spontaneous struggles and to “demonstrate the need for revolution through them” (Article 8, p. 31). Our solution to all problems – demand absolute equality in all things, and if the bourgeoisie doesn’t grant it, wait for revolution.
2. The strategy in the programme has also proven problematic in practice because it is presumed that we are in a revolutionary period which is not the case. Indeed, the worsening economic crisis is creating political problems which are very different from the ones we expected to be confronting: the rise of the Right, a downturn in workers struggles etc.
WE THEREFORE RESOLVE TO REJECT THE PROGRAMME BECAUSE:
The programme should be more than just a list of principles which members have in common. First and foremost the programme should be a guide to making revolution in our own country. It should be grounded in a concrete analysis of the situation in the world and in Canada. It should reflect a genuine comprehension of the struggles waged by the masses and of the forces which support those struggles. It should describe what kind of socialism we want and what the strategy is for getting there. We believe that the positions on these matters contained in the programme are erroneous.
1. The programme does not contain a correct analysis of the objective and subjective conditions which exist in the struggle for socialism in Canada and around the world. For example: the programme does not distinguish between the situation in the advanced capitalist countries and the underdeveloped countries; it describes the present world situation as if imperialism were on the verge of being overthrown on a world scale; it puts forward a completely idealist vision of the working class in Canada; it makes an idealist analysis of the setbacks in the struggle for socialism etc.
2. The programme puts forward a mistaken view of the strategy for taking power. It is a strategy which fails to see the immediate struggles of the masses as an integral part of the revolutionary process. It is a strategy which focuses everything on the building of a vanguard party rather than on the consolidation of the organizations of working people and the conscious participation of working people in taking power.
3. The programme has an essentially “economist” approach to the women’s struggle. That approach subordinates women’s struggles to the economic struggles of the proletariat.
Some people are afraid that if we reject the programme we will be abandoning our revolutionary objectives. Just the opposite is true. We want to move ahead to seriously tackle the problem of defining the best means to attain those ends.
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT:
We continue to believe that the imperialist system is profoundly reactionary. It is based on the exploitation and oppression of the overwhelming majority of humanity. Imperialism has created unbelievable inequalities between rich and poor countries. It has resulted in military dictatorships being put into power to protect the privileges of the bourgeoisie in many countries. There is a constant danger of another world war due to the contradictions of this accursed system. The only real way to radically change this situation is to completely overthrow capitalism. History has shown that this will be no easy task. The bourgeoisie is ready to go to any limits to keep itself in power.
Socialism – a transitional step towards a classless society is just as necessary as ever and just as vital an idea as ever. And it is still necessary to organize into political parties to wage the struggle for socialism.
The problem which remains unresolved is: how are we going to achieve socialist in an imperialist country like Canada? How can we ensure that a socialist Canada would be run democratically by and for the working people and would suppress the privileges of the exploiters?
How an we achieve all this in the present context where socialism has experienced setbacks in China and the USSR? How will we get to socialism in a period who the struggles being waged in the economically underdeveloped countries are not directed in the short-term at achieving socialism? How can we make revolution in a period when the revolutionary left in the advanced capitalist countries has encountered serious setbacks?
It is not enough to repeat a list of fundamental principles, even a shorter list than before, if we are serious about dealing with these very basic questions which confront all revolutionary socialists.
The programme says that “the party is at all times and in all respects the headquarters of the revolution, its supreme and sole leadership” (Article 7, p. 30) If you want to have a vanguard minority exercise leadership in all mass organizations you have to have monolithic unity and top-down decision-making to be effective.
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT:
We hereby set aside the kinds of structures and methods of operation that IN STRUGGLE! had:
– because the way we were organized made only a limited amount of democracy possible;
– because it restricted the degree and quality of the participation of women, workers and gays and lesbians in making political decisions and in carrying out leadership functions;
– because the structures and methods of functioning we had were bureaucratic;
– because it restricted and stifled political initiative on the part of the base units and individuals;
– because they forced everyone to have a uniform practice and to maintain the same level of involvement as everyone else; this excluded a lot of people from active political life;
– because the rules of secrecy and clandestine methods isolated the organization from the masses.
In fact, all of the criticisms listed above flow from the way we defined the role of the party and analyzed the concrete conditions in the programme.
(The goal of this introduction is to briefly explain the reasoning which led us to rework the original draft of the resolutions on future perspectives. It is not part of the text which the congress will be asked to vote on).
It became evident during all the different meetings and discussions we had with people around the draft resolutions that our approach to future perspectives was not clear. Some people observed that they read more like a prescription for some sort of operation to save IN STRUGGLE! at all costs rather than as a proposal for how to proceed in an organized way given the current state of the debate and condition of the membership. Others noted that the resolution on organization came across like a revised version of the old constitution. People pointed out that we had not listed all the groups who should have the right to their own caucus (e.g. the gays and lesbians). And finally, some comrades interpreted the proposal as an attempt at a new programme and plan of action as if the fundamental problems in debate had been overcome and we were ready to “take up where we left off’ which is certainly not what we meant at all.
We acknowledge the validity of these criticisms and have therefore reformulated the resolutions accordingly. It is clear that we are not yet ready to get involved in a totally different and worked-out new political project. We must take the time to evaluate what we have been and done in the past, take a closer look at what actual conditions are in Canada today and at what the state of the socialist movement is and what kind of role we might play within it. For all these reasons, the perspectives we are proposing are provisional in nature. They might be viewed as a short-term solution that enables us to maintain links between the different component parts of the organization, the different regions and nations etc. This will give us the time we need to reach a more balanced judgment on our past and decide where we will go in the future.
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT:
IN STRUGGLE! as it has existed up until very recently should cease to exist. In practice that has already happened. The organization we came out of the 3rd Congress with is no more. And that is not a bad thing after all. It would be a mistake to try to revive it from the ashes and even the best-intentioned efforts would likely fail. The task before us is not to reconstitute IN STRUGGLE! around a “minimal” platform or in any other way. It is to try to work collectively to determine what the best way is to continue our involvement in the struggle for socialism in Quebec, Canada and the world.
At the moment we cannot maintain that collective commitment as socialists by taking up some all-encompassing solution which is viewed by everyone as clear and satisfactory, because such a solution does not exist. We must learn to live for a while with provisional solutions, with things being uncertain and with many questions unanswered.
We have the collective responsibility to ensure that our experience, the lessons we have learned our human and material resources, and our political convictions continue to serve the cause of socialism and the fight against all forms of exploitation and oppression. The best way to do that at present is to maintain the links between the different component parts of the organization (groupings, caucuses, tendencies, regions, sexes, nationalities, classes and social strata etc.) while taking the time it takes to find a more definitive solution to the problems we have come up against. If at the end of this process we come collectively to the conclusion that the best solution is to simply disband IN STRUGGLE! we will cross that bridge when we come to it. That is not what the situation requires right now.
There are many diverse anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, progressive and socialist forces in Canada and Quebec. We must admit that the extent of our knowledge of these forces is quite limited. It is thus difficult at this stage to talk in precise terms about the Canadian socialist movement and to define what our tasks are in terms of that movement. However, those forces do exist and we should try to do what we can to contribute to the building of a revolutionary democratic socialist movement in Canada and Quebec.
Would we be an organized tendency within such a movement? Will we maintain our organizational identity for a long time to come? Those are questions we cannot answer right now.
What we are seeking is to bring about the greatest possible unity among those forces both with respect to goals and means (including organizational means). The task before us is to make contact with these forces, debate with them about the political perspectives for the struggle for socialism and cooperate with them in immediate struggles on the different fronts (anti-war, women’s, anti-cutback, anti-Right struggles etc.).
It is evident that there is no prospect of socialist revolution in the immediate future in Canada. Even though the economic crisis of imperialism may be very profound and the byproducts of that system may be quite barbarous (war, fascism) in the next period, imperialism will not be.destroyed and replaced until and unless a conscious majority of working people does so. Our principal concern in waging struggles is not to build up the power and influence of a vanguard minority but to weaken the power of the bourgeoisie and develop the unity, self-organization and consciousness of the majority.
As a result, we will have to develop a different approach to politics. We should be collectively and individually involved as an integral part of the different reform struggles, movements and campaigns around issues like stopping nuclear war. We should get involved in struggles in order to build them and to win real victories that result in better living conditions and change the relationship of forces so that the working class and its allies are stronger.
The organization (or movement) we are talking about will be feminist as well as socialist. The women’s struggle is not subordinate to the fight for socialism. We commit ourselves to wage a constant struggle both within our own ranks and in all struggles to feminize the politics and our own attitudes in doing political work.
We are not in a position at this juncture to predict what forms of organization would be most appropriate to the concrete conditions which exist for the fight for socialism in Canada. Those forms remain to be determined and we are not the only ones who will be working on determining them. We do however recognize the practical and theoretical sterility of the Marxist-Leninist movement that we have been part of up to now.
What follows is therefore not an organizational recipe for a new organization which is seen as the embryo of a future party. More modestly, it is a short-term solution which tries to maintain a certain cohesion among the forces which made up IN STRUGGLE! in the past and to give those forces time to carry the tasks described in the “Perspectives for the future” resolution.
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT:
The IN STRUGGLE! constitution is suspended and replaced by the following general rules.
A) General organizational form
Instead of the ultra-centralized organization that IN STRUGGLE! was, we will operate with a flexible and decentralized one where initiative and autonomy at the rank and file level will be strongly encouraged and buttressed.
A person may become a member of the organization (or movement) in various ways: by joining a collective of members in a given area which intervenes in a specific social strata (eg. among youth, women, etc.); by getting involved in a research collective (e.g. the science and technology collective, an ecology collective); by working in a unit operating in a defined geographic area (a neighbourhood, region, city) etc. In short it is the various collectives, committees and caucuses which take in members and provide an organized framework for their political work.
Members in each neighbourhood unit, place of work, city and region are the ones who decide on what organizational structures to establish locally.
Isolated individuals may also be members.
The organization (or movement) should be controlled by militants with a real involvement in mass organizations and struggles. It is within this framework that we will be able to start linking theory to practice instead of viewing it as inevitably an activity where the intellectuals dominate. In saying this we do not mean to imply that there should be any censuring of the criticisms and views advanced by any member whether they are intellectuals or activists in mass struggles.
The dues policy will be set by the base units although there will be a general minimum (for example 2 or 3% of the net salary of an individual – the specifics should be voted upon by the congress).
The guiding line for such an organization is the objective of maintaining links between the different forces that make up the organization and the ensuring of horizontal circulation of information and all sum-ups of practical work, research etc. which is done.
B) Types of leadership and coordination
It is useless to pretend that we would be able to maintain links between the different parts of the organization unless we agree to establish some form of leadership or coordinating bodies.
For the next period this leadership will mainly consist of coordinating things countrywide. Its mandate would be to aid in the organizing of various groupings of militants, to facilitate the circulation of the lessons drawn (sum-ups, theoretical research papers etc.), and to establish ties with socialist forces in Canada when that needs to be done on a countrywide level.
Structures in the regions will vary according to what is most appropriate given the number of members etc. The national leadership or coordinating committee will be elected as follows: 50% by the congress and 50% by the regions (again the congress will decide the specifics; one possibility is to have 15 from the congress and 15 from the regions).
C) Particular structures for leadership and coordination and their degree of autonomy
Various structures may be set up by different groupings of militants such as:
– women
– gays and lesbians
– workers
And so on.
These caucuses will have the autonomy which they require to control their own research work and the way in which they intervene in their specific sector (in terms of publications, public meetings etc.)
Each region, depending on its specific characteristics, will have the amount of autonomy required to take stands which correspond to the concrete conditions within with they are working. For example, the comrades in Quebec will be empowered to take stands on the Quebec national question without necessarily having obtained the prior okay from the national leadership. They may decide to admit socialist nationalists as members. The same rule applies to the Maritimes and to other regions. The right exists to form tendencies in the next period up to and including the right to form factions (with a separate press etc.).
D) Membership
After the 4th Congress, there no longer is any distinction between members, probationers and sympathizers. All those who contribute in one way or another to the overall work are eligible to become full-fledged members of the organization (or movement). To get onto the membership roles one must be connected in one way or another with a recognized grouping of the organization.
E) Publications
The congress will elect a publications committee whose main task will be to ensure the publishing and distribution of a bi-monthly publication. This publication will print the analyses, reports on practical work etc. written by the individuals and groupings in the organization. The congress will decide what form this publication should take: a newspaper? a journal? a magazine? a newsletter? All articles will be signed. People who wish to hide their identity can use pseudonyms.
F) Central organs
All the central organs which presently exist are hereby abolished. It is up to the coordinating committee to establish whatever minimal mechanisms are necessary to ensure that communications and some degree of coherence are maintained among the different parts of the organization. Research work should not be assigned to the organization’s full-time staff. It should be carried out in connection with the interventions of the different groupings and individuals. The coordinating committee members will look after the administering of the organization’s assets.
The following people were involved in discussions leading to the writing of the final draft: Gilles Beauchamps, Michele Beaudin, Normand Bissonnette, Ian Boyd, John Cleveland, Yves Desroches, Luc Madore, Melody Mayson, Ted Richmond, and Jacques St. Onge.