First Published: Canadian Tribune, [newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada] March 7, 1973. Reprinted in Mass Line, Vol. 4, no 54, May 6, 1973.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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MIA Introduction: The CPC (M-L) responded to this article with Canadian Revisionists’ Shameless Self-Exposure.
Under the heading, “Mr. Kashtan Visits Moscow” the ’People’s Canada Daily News’ which is neither daily nor newsworthy, devotes five articles to an ’analysis’ of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Soviet Union, and the statement issued by William Kashtan, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Canada to the historic gathering in Moscow honoring the occasion.
The articles appear under the name of “Comrade” Joseph Redpath and if the name doesn’t strike you as a put-on, it remains for you to digest the text.
The People’s Canada Daily News, for those of you who are not versed in such matters, is the off-again, on-again, organ of the Canadian Maoists masquerading under the name “Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)”. The edition carrying the first of the five articles ’exposing’ Mr. Kashtan, appeared under the main headline “Communist revolutionary prisoners in Guelph continue education in political line.” Its editor is “Comrade” Hardial Bains, we are told.
Mr. Redpath (he’s got to be kidding) establishes his revolutionary credentials immediately in the first paragraph by adding a capitalized Great in front of the names of Lenin and Stalin whose contributions, he asserts, were equal and on a par with that of the Great Mao Tsetung in the world revolutionary order of things.
Having established this unassailable connection between himself and the “Great revolutionaries”, Mr. Redpath jumps onto his jargon horse and in one bold stroke demolishes the world socialist system – with the honorable exceptions of China and Albania, of course.
Mr. Kashtan, we are told, is merely a “public relations flunkey of Soviet social imperialism.” The Soviet Union is not a Union of Socialist Republic at all, it seems, but a reintroduction of “New Czarism and big Russian Chauvinism.” The dictatorship of the proletariat has been replaced by the dictatorship of the “New Czars!” Internationally the Soviet Union is cutting a deal with U.S. imperialism to divide the world between these two super powers.,/P>
The Soviet Union, says he “are war-mongers and disturbing the peace of the world...” “the Soviet Union trampled underfoot the independence, sovereignty and tranquility of Czechoslovakia.” It “groomed India to invade Pakistan and dismember it in 1971”; “it guarantees the continued occupation of Arab lands by Israel by calling for a political settlement of the Mid-East crisis based on the United Nations Resolution of 1967,” he says.
What is required, according to this wordy jargonist, is for the people of the “social imperialist countries” (the Socialist countries) to carry through a revolution against the new Czars, and we are told if Great Lenin were alive today he would sympathize with and encourage such actions.
This series of articles in the Maoist Canadian newspaper, which is reflective of the consistent tone of the paper, shows a coming together of the Anti-Soviet line of the Communist Party of China and the line and interests of U.S. and world imperialism expressed through a Canadian front organization.
What is the difference between the line put forward by Mr. Redpath on the question of Great Russian Chauvinism and the character of the Soviet state, and that of Lubor Zink? There is no difference! What is the difference between the position of Mr. Redpath on the question of Czechoslovakia and that of the most right-wing opponents of Communism? None whatsoever! Who was allied with U.S. imperialism in the Pakistan war – in support of the fascist Yahya Khan? China of course, not the Soviet Union.
What these articles make quite clear, for anyone who had any previous doubts, is that Maoism has gone over completely from a position in which it may have “appeared” to express differences in Marxist analysis, to open collaboration with imperialism to attempt to isolate and weaken the Soviet Union, the cornerstone of the world socialist system.
From that point of view the series of five articles may prove to be of some value to the real Canadian left. Those who have not read or studied the foreign policy doctrine of the Communist Party of China now see it translated into Canadian terms by Mao’s disciples in Canada. For anyone with a shred of concern for reality and history, this so-called analysis can only serve to strip bare the feeble pretense of the Maoists to the proud title of Communists. It exposes them as “left” agents of imperialism seeking to split the unity of the world revolutionary forces and the unity of the world anti-imperialist forces at a time when such unity is gaining, ground and is vital to the struggle against imperialism and for socialism.
As you read their propaganda, with all its rhetoric about the working class, it becomes more and more evident that they do not come from the working class, they do not understand the working class, they do not speak for the working class, they have utter contempt for the working class and they do not bring to bear a working-class attitude to a single thing they discuss. Rather they are trying to steal working-class ideology and distort it to serve imperialism and monopoly – to serve the hegemonist, anti-Soviet ends of Maoism.
In this they will not succeed. The question really is, how much damage will they do in the course of their shameful splitting anti-working class activities?
To assure this damage is minimized requires a stepped-up exposure in the working-class and democratic movements of the anti-Soviet, anti-unity, anti-Marxist, divisive line and tactics of the Canadian Maoists, to isolate them from these bodies.