At the present stage, the struggle for the party must be waged mainly on three fronts: the program, the unity of communists and the rallying of workers. Of the three, the program is the key link.
The proletarian party is the organization of the communist vanguard of the working class. It goes without saying that there cannot be two or three communist parties within one country though there may, at some periods, be several parties which call themselves communist. The struggle for the unity of communists is the struggle to unite all authentic communists in one party. Canadian communists have been struggling to reach unity for many months now, since the time that the movement recognized that party building had to be the focal point of its concerns. Indeed, the number of groups claiming to be Marxist-Leninist has considerably diminished in the past two years, as almost all of them have rallied to either IN STRUGGLE! or to the League.
In spite of the importance of this phenomenon, it is not the principal development which has taken place in the past two years on the question of unity. For if these groups have united organizationally, it is because they hold the same fundamental line. From this point of view, we can say that unity has made important steps forward among Canadian communists, this is positive.
However, at the same time, it is undeniable that differences which exist between groups that claim to be Marxist-Leninist and to be engaged in the struggle to build the party – like the League, RSC and ourselves – have deepened. Furthermore, the League, which has never considered RSC to be a Marxist-Leninist group in spite of the many similarities between their lines, has just up and decreed that IN STRUGGLE! is a revisionist group which must be destroyed at all costs!
To go straight to the point, the struggle for the unity of Canadian communists today, is no longer the same as it was two years ago or even one year ago. Today, it is not so much a question of establishing the political and ideological contours of the movement and naming those who belong to it. Communist forces have developed. The time has come to look at the question in terms of the program. Communists are those who adhere to the communist program and undertake to work at its practical application by joining the organization which puts this program forward.
The time has come to break once and for all with small-groupism which makes the interest of individual groups primary. The time has come to adopt a truly party spirit. From this point of view, our objective on the question of unity concretely becomes that of uniting all communists and of rallying advanced workers to the communist program, to the program which will guide the party to socialism.
As a matter of fact, this is why we maintain that the program is the focal point at the present stage of the struggle for the party, be it in relationship to the unity of communists or to the rallying of workers.
And what about those who do not recognize this point of view? Well, those who claim to struggle for the creation of the party of the proletariat and who do not recognize that the program is central to the struggle do not adopt a Marxist-Leninist point of view. They open the way for opportunism and all deviations, for in the international communist movement, the program is, and has always been, the basis on which communists have recognized one another and have demarcated from social-democracy, revisionism and Trotskyism.
That the League not recognize the importance of the program, that its agitation and propaganda be completely silent on the question, that on the other hand, it spend more than a year producing reformist platforms and getting them adopted left and right, that today it claim to be in a rush to create the party, these are only additional signs of the opportunist deviations which permeate it.
This is, furthermore, the extension of the total indifference which it has had for political and theoretical questions since its very foundation. This indifference became evident when the League decided to boycott the conferences organized by IN STRUGGLE!, although its duty would have been to come and back up the criticisms and accusations which they had so off-handedly thrown out regarding the positions and actions of IN STRUGGLE!
As the leadership of IN STRUGGLE! stated in its communiqué of April 3, 1977, henceforth to struggle for unity we must struggle against opportunism.[1] And the essential criterion to demarcate Marxism-Leninism from opportunism is the communist program. It is clear that those who will unite to create the party will agree on the program even if, in other respects, they have differences of opinion on many particular questions concerning political or organizational tactics.
[1] See The Unity of the Marxist-Leninist movement passes by the intensification of the struggle against opportunism, Communiqué from IN STRUGGLE!’s Central Committee, April 3, 1977.