No one is born communist. And among those who do adhere to Marxism-Leninism there are a certain number who will not die communist, either. It is in the spirit of always making the concrete analysis prevail over all preconceived ideas or all handed-down ideas that we must envisage the struggle for the unity of communists, the unity of those who will create the party of revolution of those who will later be part of it.
For some, the label on a group at a given time is the most important thing in the world. They spend the vast majority of their time asserting that they are communist and that others are revisionist or counterrevolutionary. Being too occupied at looking for the smallest action, the least word which would back up their fixed and immutable ideas, they do not seem to have any concern for the analysis of reality. This is not a correct attitude. It is more important for communists to wage a constant war against opportunist errors, wherever they come from, than to plaster labels onto people or groups.
This is the point of view from which we must examine two particular groups, almost the only ones apart from IN STRUGGLE! to be considered Marxist-Leninist (with exception, of course, of the above mentioned groups which at least consider themselves to be Marxist-Leninist). In spite of definite differences of line between the RSC and the League, we will see how these two groups hold the same erroneous point of view on many questions. We will also see that their errors are not unrelated with those of the revisionists and of new-style social democrats. It is probably because opportunism, regardless of the carrier’s name, is always opportunism.
The Red Star Collective was created in Vancouver, barely two years ago, as a result of a split in the Vancouver Study Group which had in turn been set up as a result of the disintegration of the PWM at the beginning of the seventies. Before disappearing, the PWM passed on its nationalist line to the CPC(ML)[1], which has held essentially the same line since, and to the CLM which died a couple of years ago. In spite of its claim to the contrary, the RSC has never really broken with the nationalism of the PWM. It has, in practice, always had an ambiguous attitude on the question of the reconstruction of the party. While it states that the reconstruction of the party is the central task of Canadian communists, it has no qualms about allowing one of its most well-known members to go to Halifax to give a conference on unions and to declare, when confronted with the question of the party, that he is there to talk about trade unions and not about politics! However, the fact is that the comrades of RSC are talking politics even when they talk of trade unions. The question, though, is what are their politics?
Their politics are reformist, nationalist, and profoundly opportunist. Their politics do not really demarcate from revisionism, to the point that openly anti-Marxist-Leninist groups such as the Saskatchewan Waffle and the SOC toy with the idea of pulling the RSC along into their reformist adventure.
As the RSC forcefully states in its brochure, World United Front and Proletarian Revolution, which it published last August, it is a fervent partisan of the “three worlds theory” and of the world united front against the superpowers. Its defence of this theory leads it to consider that in the present conjuncture socialist revolution is not on the agenda of most imperialist countries, and that the task of the hour is to build greater unity against the superpowers and against the danger of a new world war. The eventuality of a world war preoccupies the RSC to such a point that, like the other supporters of the “three worlds theory”, they do not hesitate to subordinate the war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat – a war which is not only possible and inevitable, but which is also necessary in all capitalist countries.
However, the RSC has a wait-and-see attitude concerning the “world united front” which has become the task of the hour. Indeed, the RSC, as well as the League for that matter, has not taken any practical measures to apply its line on the “three worlds” and the danger of war. One would expect that a political line defended with such conviction would lead its supporters to do something to unite the forces within the country which are opposed to the superpowers. But no! The practical work of the RSC lies much more in the Canadianization of trade unions!
In short, almost 15 years after PWM’s formal break with modern revisionism, the members of the RSC have no more political perspective to offer to the Canadian proletariat than do the revisionist and Trotskyist groups of which we have spoken previously. And so, they fall back on work in the unions which have to be Canadianized or democratized. This is true of course, but what is principal, Canadian unions or a Marxist-Leninist party?
The RSC has two alternatives: either it abandons its economist practice in unions, eliminates the nationalism which contaminates its political line and truly engages in the struggle for the reconstruction of the party of proletarian revolution, or else it continues drifting onto the road of revisionism, getting forever closer to pseudo-Marxist groups which appear here and there, and sinking into utter reformism in contempt of the interests of the working class.
Unfortunately, everything leads us to believe that the RSC has chosen the second alternative. The recent declaration of one of its members in Halifax is a sign of this. The approaches which the Saskatchewan Waffle, and perhaps also the SOC, have made to it is another sign. Its persistence in separating the struggle for the party from its work in unions, which is the purest economism, also testifies to this. Finally, the growing reticence of the RSC to participate in the conferences of Marxist-Leninists is part of the same trend: that of the renunciation of the struggle within the Marxist-Leninist forces on the fallacious pretext that these conferences do not give it the possibility of expressing its positions. In fact, it is the conferences which have forced the RSC to come out of its previous isolation and to publish its positions. It is the conferences which have made the RSC known to thousands of Canadian communists and progressive people.
The reasons leading the RSC to turn in on itself are not those which the RSC invokes. The reasons are to be found in the fact that instead of seriously considering the criticism of its nationalist and economist positions and correcting its errors, the RSC persists in defending a line marked by revisionism in many ways, a line which, in the long term leads to the liquidation of the revolutionary struggle and which, more immediately, leads to the outright sabotage of the struggle for the reconstruction of the party on a genuinely Marxist-Leninist basis in favour of a gradual rapprochement with anti-communist elements who see the struggle for socialism in stages, the first being to radicalize or politicize unions, regardless of whether we call this democratic trade unionism, the Canadianization of unions, militant trade unionism or “class struggle” trade unionism.
Communists who intend to remain communist must learn from their mistakes and unreservedly and honestly correct them before the masses. To date the RSC has not given any indications of being able to learn from the revisionist errors of its predecessor, the PWM, which was also dominated by nationalism and economism. It is interesting to note that today we find the PWM’s slogan, “independence and socialism”, in the line of the Saskatchewan Waffle, as well as part of the line of the RMS and of the PTQ in Quebec; it was also part of the line of the CPC(ML) until recently, the CLM when it existed. We advise the RSC, which states that it is not necessary to criticize the errors of the PWM since the latter had not broken with revisionism, to do what it is constantly insisting others do, and concretely analyse the lines of all the above mentioned groups and its own line. And they will see, concretely, how past errors of the PWM are bearing very concrete offsprings!
You happen to glance up to the sky and there it is straight out of God knows where... somewhere out in space... The League wanted to begin its career in the manner of a shooting star, virginal and pure, without a past. Unfortunately, the League has aged very fast and today, in spite of its relative youth, it already bears the burden of an increasingly heavy past which makes the fame to which it apparently aspires more and more difficult to attain.
The founders of the League believed, and probably still believe, that being silent about their origins would whitewash all their past errors. However things are not so simple, especially since the League rallied a certain number of groups on the way, in particular the groups which it refers to as the “family of five” and which for our part we call the “Cinq-Famille”, after Marx and Engels’ work the “Sainte-Famille” (the Holy Family) in which they criticized the idealist philosophers. The groups of the “Cinq-Famille” had in common their direct descendence from the Work Sector of the Cap St. Jacques (Political Action Committee), which, created after the PWM, was also under the domination of the nationalist trend of the 1960’s.
Not only does he League have origins similar to the RSC’s, it also shares its most important deviations. Even though, contrary to the RSC, it does not pay much attention to the domination of US imperialism over Canada, its general line is deeply influenced by nationalism. The League holds that the two superpowers are the enemies of revolution everywhere in the world and, therefore, here in Canada as well. And if they had to say which of the two is the main enemy, they would tend towards Soviet social-imperialism because it is aggressive and on the rise while US imperialism is declining. In spite of these particularities, the League and the RSC agree that it is necessary to build the “world united front against the superpowers” because their rivalries are a threat to the independence of all other countries including Canada.
Since war is inevitable and the socialist revolution can always wait – after all, how can we simultaneously counter the external threats which endanger our bourgeoisie and wage the class war against this very bourgeoisie; and moreover, hasn’t revolution already waited this long? – the League avoids attacking the Canadian bourgeoisie head on as a class. It prefers to proceed factory by factory, monopoly by monopoly, attempting to co-ordinate various economic struggles. It would probably be awkward to weaken the Canadian bourgeoisie now, as it will be necessary to support this very bourgeoisie during the inevitable war since it is part of the “second world” and, as everyone knows, the third world war will pit the two superpowers against the united front of the “second” and “third world” countries. Now, have you ever seen a strategy, at all serious, which advocates attacking a future ally in the defence of national independence?
Would any Marxist-Leninist dare suggest that the Canadian proletariat can engage in the revolutionary struggle without being certain that the independence of the country will never again be threatened? The rest of their action remains on the strictly economic level of the struggles of the working class and people, factory by factory, community by community. One day it is daycare, the next, it is layoffs... there’s no shortage of things to struggle about! Little by little, the main task for the League is no longer party-building, but rather the setting up of “class struggle” unions. And so now, the League finds itself on the same terrain as the RMS, the Saskatchewan Waffle and the RSC: the struggle for the party takes the form of the transformation of reformist unions into “class struggle” unions.
In spite of important differences, it is increasingly evident that the League and the RSC have characteristics in common which point to the fact that these two groups have not broken once and for all with revisionism. On the contrary, recent developments tend to indicate, not only that they are not moving towards a victory over revisionism, but that they are regressing. Instead of demarcating from revisionism they are moving further away from Marxism-Leninism.
[1] For the reader who has some trouble following this list of more or less ephemeral groups, we recommend “A brief history of the struggle for the reconstruction of a proletarian party,” Proletarian Unity no.7.