There was a party running in the federal election that billed itself as the “Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada.” It ran candidates in 140 ridings and it put forward a programme called “make the rich pay.” Many workers are probably not aware that this is actually the so-called “Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist),” the well known counter revolutionary clique of Hardial Bains. Bains’ clique is forced to run as the “Marxist-Leninist party of Canada” because the revisionist “Communist Party of Canada” has the legal title to that name, awarded in a court judgement against Bains.
The only thing Marxist-Leninist about Bains’ Party is his fraudulent use of the name. There is nothing in his programme about Marxism-Leninism. The entire programme makes no mention whatsoever about socialism or revolution. It is a reformist programme that is designed for one purpose – to discredit Marxism-Leninism. Bains has long been exposed as a paid agent of imperialism and he is dragged out every election to parade around as the “Marxist-Leninist” alternative.
Bains begins his programme by stating:
Working people, small farmers and fishermen, youth and students, progressive intellectuals and cultural workers, all genuinely patriotic and progressive people: the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada is presenting this programme to you for implementation under the general slogan – The Only Solution to the Crisis – Make the Rich Pay!
Bains does not put forward a programme for the proletariat, the working class. Bains has nothing to say about the working class in his entire programme. He never mentions class struggle. Bains uses the bourgeois expression “working people,” an expression you can hear every day from all the bourgeois parties. The term “working people” is designed to cover up class contradictions and speak to all those who “work,” i.e. managers, capitalists, bureaucrats, etc. Along with “working people,” Bains programme is for “all genuinely patriotic and progressive people.” As we all know there is no one more “patriotic” than the bourgeoisie which has been promoting patriotism for over 100 years in Canada.
The purpose of Bains’ programme is to accomplish an alliance with the “middle bourgeoisie.” Bains put forward this call at his bogus “Revolutionary Rally” on March 31. Bains’ programme is designed to achieve that goal. Bains never attacks the bourgeoisie as a class in his programme. He never even mentions their existence. Instead he calls to “make the rich pay” and by the “rich” Bains does not mean the bourgeoisie as a class. He denounces the other parties as “representatives of the rich, of the tiny minority of some 45 families, the multinationals and the financial oligarchs.” For Bains the enemy is “45 families” and the US multinationals. Everyone else is “patriotic” and part of the “broad masses.” As Bains says: “The broad masses of the people must build a new Canada, which is genuinely independent and democratic and without crisis, on the basis of their own strength and through their own self-sacrificing activities.” Yes, any “middle bourgeois,” part of the “broad masses,” will tell you how he wants a “genuinely independent and democratic” Canada “without crisis” that is built with his “own strength” and his “own self-sacrificing activities”; and those that stand in the way of this are the “rich” monopolists and the US monopolies. The most openly right wing party in the election, Social Credit, runs precisely on the same program – make the rich pay – they denounce the tyranny of the financial oligarchs and the monopolies. Even the fascists do this! All for what purpose? To ally with the “middle bourgeoisie.” This is the line of the social-democrats, too. The NDP wants to bring in new welfare programs by increasing taxes on the big banks and monopolies, i.e. “make the rich pay.” This idea of an anti-rich, anti-monopoly coalition under the name of “Marxism-Leninism” is nothing new. The revisionist “Communist Party of Canada” has been promoting it for years. It is the line of all revisionists. The revisionist platform of anti-monopoly coalition is designed to deceive the proletariat into allying with the bourgeoisie.
Bains, like all revisionists, denies the necessity of proletarian revolution for socialism and, instead, he says “the real and only solution: Make the Rich Pay!” And how is he going to make the rich pay? By “expropriating” the property of the “45 families.” This is the first “economic” task of his programme. The other economic tasks include: “to declare all foreign debts” contracted by the state and monopolies as “null and void,” “to declare all stocks, bonds, debts, mortgages, etc, held by the Canadian financial oligarchy in foreign countries null and void, and declare all income from such sources illegal,” but not for the middle bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. He also calls “to declare all consumer debts incurred by the workers and broad masses of the people to financial institutions null and void,” i.e. to liberate the middle bourgeoisie from the tyranny of the big banks but to let the workers remain under the tyranny of the middle bourgeoisie. Bains tries to protect the property of the middle bourgeoisie by a call “to prohibit the importation of foreign capital.” Bains then calls for taking away control of natural resources from the multinationals and to transform them not to the property of the working class but to “common property of the nation inalienable and sovereign” i.e. to the common property of the middle bourgeoisie. For the kulaks Bains says “land for personal use shall remain in the family.”
And what does Bains offer to the working class – the continuation of wage slavery! The programme says: “To provide full employment and job security, forty-hour week and proper working conditions and a guaranteed income after retirement to ensure equal pay for equal work.” Even the trade union bureaucrats call for more. They at least call for a 32 hour week! Marx called for the abolition of the wages system; Bains calls for its continuation and strengthening. He tries to convince the middle bourgeoisie that some increases in wages would be good. “If wages of the workers increase and their purchasing power increases, this will merely increase the demand for those commodities which are necessary to satisfy the basic needs of the people and which will spur production and improve economic life.” And who does it “improve economic life” for? The bourgeoisie. This is Keynesian economics: it has nothing to do with Marxism.
Marxist-Leninists call for the expropriation of the entire bourgeoisie, the smashing of the state of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and its replacement by a dictatorship of the proletariat through armed revolution. Bains, of course, says nothing of this. He talks about“an arrogant dictatorship of the rich” but he has nothing to say about the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead of the “arrogant dictatorship of the rich,” he wants “real democracy.” Bains says:
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada stands for real democracy in which democracy is rooted first in the question of ownership of the means of production and fights for the expropriation of the handful of rich and to have their property turned into social property as the first step towards real democracy. ... The broad masses of the people... must fight for and establish their own political power which will not only guarantee genuine democracy on the political front, but will establish the economic foundation of this democracy – that is the expropriation of the rich, throwing the US imperialists out of Canada and the elimination of the anarchy of production.
Real Marxist-Leninists call for the proletariat to own the means of production through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Bains calls for the rule of the “broad masses” i.e. the middle bourgeoisie, who will continue to own the means of production and exploit the proletariat. This Bains calls the “economic foundation” of “real democracy” – real bourgeois democracy!
And what does Bains see as the political tasks of this “real democracy”? “To end the political and constitutional authority of the British North America Act. To eliminate all the vestiges of the British monarchy.” Revisionists in the “Communist Party of Canada” called for this in the 1920s. They were attacked by the Communist International for bourgeois nationalism. The Communist International said that Canada was an imperialist country and the task of the proletariat was socialist revolution, not allying with the nationalist bourgeoisie to get rid of “the vestiges of the British monarchy.”
Bains also calls “to institute a progressive independent and sovereign foreign policy.” This is calling for Canada to be a “non-aligned nation.” This is nothing but the Chinese revisionists theory of“three worlds” that Bains claims to oppose.
Bains is desperately trying to preserve the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by trying to deceive the proletariat into thinking that electing and supporting a government of the “broad masses” will be a “revolutionary change.” What Bains is preaching is Khrushchev’s “state of the whole people” and “peaceful transition to socialism.” Bains desperately tries to create illusions that the proletariat can change things through elections. “The propaganda of the rich is that to vote for our Party is a ’waste’ because we won’t win. This is not the case. We are fighting to win!” Of course Bains says “our Party creates no illusions”!
In reality Bains program presents no threat to capitalism in Canada or even monopoly capitalism. There are far more monopoly capitalists in Canada than “45 families” and expropriating only them will change nothing. Capitalism engenders monopoly capitalism, this is an economic law and nowhere in this programme does Bains call for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the abolition of capitalism. Instead, he calls for the formation of a “Workers’ and small Farmers’ government” to defend the interests of the “middle” monopoly bourgeoisie.
Bains’ programme, as well as his Party, is a fraud. They have nothing to do with the outcome of the election. His call to win the election to form a “workers’ and small peasants’ government” is a joke, but what Bains is doing in this election is not a joke. Bains and his clique are a very sophisticated attempt by the bourgeoisie to discredit Marxism-Leninism and to promote reformism in the working class under the banners of “Marxism-Leninism” and “revolutionary change.”
Bains’ party is a small clique of degenerate petty bourgeois, nearly all of whom are running in the election. On the basis of Bains’ declared expenses in the last election, this election will cost him over $70,000. Where does a small clique get that kind of money? We have to look no further than the content of the programme to find out. Indeed Bains has found a way to “make the rich pay.”