The question of the program is even more central as the creation of the party approaches, because there are still a number of groups and parties within the workers’ movement who falsely present themselves under the banner of Marxism-Leninism – but who are phonies, hypocrites who try to hide their revisionist or Trotskyist lines behind the flag of revolution.
Actually, opportunism has many masks. Today, apart from the social-democratic, Trotskyist and revisionist masks which we have already mentioned, opportunism is also hidden behind a screen of Marxism-Leninism!
Since about 1970 there have been groups and parties which have borrowed Marxist-Leninist language, denounced the CPSU’s modern revisionism, and referred to Engels, Lenin and sometimes even Stalin, Mao and Hoxha, but which were and continue to be nothing but revisionist cliques with differing amounts of Trotskyism thrown in.
What characterizes this neo-revisionist tendency is that although it was born at the same time as the modern revisionist betrayal, and claims to demarcate from modern-day revisionism, it in fact has not demarcated. Furthermore, it is an international tendency which Marxist-Leninists around the world must face.
The most authentic and well-known group of this kind in Canada is the CPC(M-L). In addition to its utterly opportunist and sectarian work methods, this party is characterized by constant and unexpected changes in its positions and calls to action. Thus, recently the CPC(M-L), which not long ago had only admiration for President Mao and the Communist Party of China, launched a campaign denouncing Teng Hsiao Ping, Hua Kuo-feng and the CPC for having suddenly become revisionist. Ah yes, for the CPC(M-L) things change with amazing speed! In fact they change according to the mood of the careerists who lead this organization of professional saboteurs, with Hardial Bains at the top. Bains, apart from being president of the CPC(M-L) also leads his own “little international” made up of Canadian, English, Irish and Indian parties – and he almost got away with setting up a party in the USA.
The CPC(M-L) has always defended a nationalist line, putting Canadian independence in the forefront, (this line was originally borrowed from the PWM). Until very recently the CPC(M-L) had been a fervent defender of the “three worlds theory”, a theory which serves to cover up the nationalism of the majority of its supporters of which the Red Star Collective and the League here in Canada. It was only out of resentment for not having been appreciated by the CP of China and for not having been invited to China that Bains and his “international” turned to the Party of Labour of Albania. History would have it that the turnabout came when the PLA criticized the “three worlds theory”. Always ready for a little travelling and a few more photographs in the CPC(M-L)’s newspaper, the People’s Canada Daily News, Bains renounced the “three worlds theory”. And to top it all off, he then dumped the CPC into the revisionist camp. An organization like the CPC(M-L) deserves nothing but contempt: it is a clique of authentic counter-revolutionaries.
But the CPC(M-L) was not the first party to number the Communist Party of China amongst the revisionists: the Canadian Party of Labour was ahead of them! The CPL was born at the same time as the CPC(M-L), in the footsteps of the American Progressive Labor Party. Somewhat Trotskyist, the CPL developed in reaction to the nationalism of the PWM, CLM (Canadian Liberation Movement) and CPC(M-L). They claim to be Canada’s party for socialist revolution and, like all Trotskyists, present themselves as just about the only communist organization in the world. They are amongst those organizations which wave the flag of Marxism-Leninism in order to better fool the workers.
The CPC(M-L) and the CPL are no longer alone in the camp of the supposedly communist fringe groups. Recently the Bolshevik Union (BU) was formed – a group which is a lot more Menshevik and Trotskyist than Bolshevik and Marxist-Leninist. This group’s self-important talk, its scorn for the masses and their struggles, its obscene display of quotations and misunderstanding of the classics, and its thorough sectarianism – all this should not lead us to forget the scandalously primitive nature of its political line, which, like that of the CPC(M-L) is constantly changing.
This group was established in Toronto within the larger group which published the journal Canadian Revolution. When the Toronto Communist Group (TCG), which also belonged to this larger group, began the process of rallying to IN STRUGGLE!, the founders of the Bolshevik Union, then called the Bolshevik Tendency (BT), wanted to compete with the TCG and began a campaign of denunciation: they claimed that it was the BT and not the TCG which shared IN STRUGGLE!’s line! Rejected by IN STRUGGLE!, they became the Bolshevik Union and moved to Montreal to... recruit other unstable petty-bourgeois elements who had also begun to rally to IN STRUGGLE! This is why for several months now the basic line of BU has been to fight IN STRUGGLE! in every imaginable way, including some of the very lowest.
We shouldn’t give groups such as the CPC(M-L), the CPL and BU more importance than they deserve. However, if we realize that their actions spark those of other revisionists and Trotskyists who are attracted like bloodsuckers to the most combative sectors of the workers’ movement, than it is necessary to be aware of their existence. However, there will always be groups like these to take on the despicable task of turning advanced workers away from communism. Therefore, it is all the more important that we understand the nature of the Marxist-Leninist program for socialist revolution, because in the near and distant future it is the program which will be the principal instrument in distinguishing true communists from all the hypocrites.