This issue of PROLETARIAN UNITY is a special issue in many ways. It includes all the major documents of the Third Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada IN STRUGGLE! (MLOC IN STRUGGLE!): the Political Report presented by the Central Committee elected at the Second Congress; Programme and Constitution; and the Appeal issued by the Third Congress calling for the political and organizational unity of Marxist-Leninist forces around the world.
The adoption of the Programme for the proletarian revolution in Canada was without a doubt the highlight of the Congress. The Programme affirms clearly and unequivocally that the mission of the working class is to bring about communism, to free all of humanity from the chains of capitalist exploitation. To carry out this task, it is essential that imperialism be defeated on a world scale and the dictatorship of the proletariat established in all countries, including Canada.
The MLOC IN STRUGGLE! has devoted three years of work, study, debate, inquiry and struggle to writing its Programme. The result, a programme that is above all the programme of the proletariat in Canada in its struggle for socialism, is proof that these three years were very productive. The publication of the Draft Program gave rise to many debates that have considerably enriched the final version of the Programme. It reaffirms that communism is our final goal. It puts a great deal of emphasis on the resolution of the oppression that afflicts nations and national minorities in various parts of Canada. The unity of all working people in Canada must be founded on total equality, beginning with the equality of languages and nations. Equality in practice is the only way to unite Canadian workers, regardless of the nation or national minority to which they belong, in the struggle for socialist revolution in Canada.
IN STRUGGLE!’s Programme also takes account of the fact that Canada’s political sovereignty is threatened by more powerful countries, and notably by the U.S.A. In contrast, however, to all the revisionist programmes – from that of the CPC(M-L) to that of the CP, not to mention that of the CCL(M-L) – the struggle for the “repeal of all treaties, accords, or agreements between Canada and other countries that interfere with the country’s political sovereignty” is not seen as preliminary stage that will postpone the struggle for socialism. Instead, it is an issue around which working people can and should be mobilized today to struggle against capitalism and imperialism and for proletarian revolution.
The Third Congress also examined organizational questions and assessed the progress accomplished since the Second Congress. On the basis of more than two years of work, the Congress voted important changes in the Constitution. All the changes are designed to strengthen the understanding and application of democratic centralism, the sole organizational principle that can truly guarantee the application of the communist programme and ward off revisionism in organizational matters.
The struggle to equip the working class with its revolutionary programme led us to pursue and deepen our understanding and criticism of revisionism. We began to understand where it comes from and undertook to expose and discredit it on a principled basis. The principal results of this struggle are summed up and analysed in the Political Report presented to the Third Congress by the Central Committee, to which most of this issue of PROLETARIAN UNITY is devoted. The major conclusions of the Political Report, which analyses the forces at work in the world and in Canada as well as the work of our Organization over the past two years, were endorsed by Congress delegates, after a thorough study and expression of their criticisms, in the following resolution:
After broad and democratic discussions both before and during its proceedings of March 1979, the Third Congress of the MLOC IN STRUGGLE! affirms its full agreement with the fundamental conclusions of the Political Report of the Central Committee.
This holds true for both the internationalist tasks and the work of our Organization in the class struggle in Canada.
The very real development of our political line that is evident in the Report is greeted by the Congress with great enthusiasm.
The Congress considers that this development can be largely attributed to the reaffirmation of the principle that we live in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. In reaffirming this principle, our Organization also invites the international communist movement to defend it firmly against all the revisions to which it has been and is still subjected.
The Congress considers that the adoption of this position is especially important at a time when the struggle against revisionism is entering a new phase. It is to be hoped that the international communist movement will emerge from this struggle considerably strengthened both politically and organizationally.
Revisionism is still the enemy to be defeated in the working-class movement. Revolutionary storms are already raging in some countries, and the profound crisis now ravaging the imperialist world may well spark even greater revolutionary upsurges in the near future. In this situation, the duty of communists is clear: to provide revolutionary leadership for the proletariat and working people. To do this, they must expose the rotten revisionist leaders who have usurped the leadership of the working-class movement’s organizations. This is also why the Political Report emphasizes the need to work at intensifying the rallying of as many workers as possible around the communist programme so that the programme becomes a truly active force in the struggle of the working class in Canada.
On the basis of the orientations set out in the Political Report, we have also come to realize the full implications of what it means to say that the proletarian revolution has an international character. Today, we have a solid basis for renewing with the principles that lay behind the creation of the Communist International in 1919 and that guided its action through, until the Second World War.
This orientation in the struggle for the unity of the international communist movement was summed up and applied by the Third Congress in a call entitled: For the organizational and political unity of the international communist movement: Appeal from the Third Congress of IN STRUGGLE! to the communists (M-L) of the world.
The Third Congress of IN STRUGGLE! was a brilliant victory for Marxism-Leninism. The proletariat in Canada now has a programme to guide it along the path of the revolution. This is, without a doubt, the most important achievement of the Congress, for such a programme is the key to a victorious struggle against the revisionism that has dominated the working-class movement in Canada for more than thirty years now.
The Third Congress of IN STRUGGLE! is historic for another reason as well: on this occasion the communists in Canada committed themselves fully to the struggle against revisionism on the international level and for the principled unity of the international communist movement. Despite some very real and important difficulties, the conclusions reached by the Congress and our analysis of the international communist movement give us every reason to believe that the pseudo-communists of the CP, the CCL(M-L) and the CPC(M-L) will soon be thoroughly discredited and that their downright servile tailing after Moscow, Peking or Tirana will eventually be widely recognized for what it is: full-blown opportunism.
History has proven that parties that give genuine leadership to the working class and that lead it forward along the path of revolution have nothing in common with these counter-revolutionaries who cover up their opportunism and utter contempt for the revolutionary cause with servile attitudes and pompous words.
Communists around the world and workers in Canada will not be taken in for long by these mystifiers. Solidly united around the correct decisions of its Third Congress, the MLOC IN STRUGGLE! will strive all the more to have the Marxist-Leninist line triumph in Canada and throughout the world. Its confidence and determination to carry out this task are all the greater because it realizes that thousands of Marxist-Leninists in many countries are engaged in the same struggle.
The Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada IN STRUGGLE!
August 1979
Ed. note: The reader should take into account while reading the Political Report that it was written some time ago. In fact, the writing of this Report was begun several months before its presentation at the Third Congress in March 1979. It is therefore quite possible that certain recent events of the Canadian or international situation are not mentioned or taken into account.