Essentially, communist tactics deal with all of the means which must be employed to arrive at the conquest of the workers’ movement by the communist point of view, and by this very fact, to the weakening of bourgeois power. Throughout the period which preceeds the collapse of bourgeois power, that is, its incapacity to firmly maintain itself in power because of the sharpening of the contradictions which are the result of the rise of popular struggles, and sometimes of the contradictions with other countries and the war which follows, the communist tactic aims at constantly weakening the power of the bourgeois class and preparing the situation where its overthrow will be possible. This period can go on for many years, but a situation of sharp political crisis within the bourgeoisie or an inter-imperialist war, can, however, make things go much faster.
Moreover, communists don’t have to speculate on the future as some are doing at the present time on the question of a third world war. The duty of communists is first of all to put themselves in a position where they can pass on to the assault on power as soon as conditions permit it, whether that happen in 5 years or only in 25. The duty of revolutionaries is to work for the revolution.
Thus in each specific conjuncture, in each new political situation, communists, if they want to be up to their role as the vanguard of the workers’ movement, must determine on what grounds, around which demands, they will call on the proletariat and the masses to strike their blows. They will have in mind the central preoccupation of weakening the bourgeoisie and of reinforcing the camp of the revolution, of consolidating the fighting unity of the proletariat and the masses.
Take the current situation. Certain comrades who claim to defend a Marxist-Leninist line which is articulated around the position that the principal enemy of the revolution in Canada is the Canadian bourgeoisie, carry on a practice of agitation-propaganda which deals mainly with the specific economic demands of certain groups of workers, on one hand, and on the denunciation of the superpowers and the support for struggles of national liberation on the other. In passing, that’s quite consistent with the “three worlds theory” which advocates a world united front against the superpowers, a united front which can include the Canadian bourgeoisie as the leading class of a country of the “second world”. But it is not consistent with a line which says that to make the revolution in Canada, the main thing to do is to defeat the Canadian bourgeoisie. Further on we will see that these same comrades are greatly concerned with the question of unions – in fact, more so than with the question of the party – and that’s no accident.
These comrades fall into opportunism because they abandon the class point of view and adopt a reformist point of view with regard to Canadian affairs, thus putting off political considerations in favour of international questions alone. In practice that leads to the following: the struggle for socialism consists of struggling militantly in Canada, against different bosses and different businesses, and co-ordinating, as much as possible, these different struggles which are essentially economic, despite the claim of “politicizing” them, and even if they were to be led by what are called “class struggle unions”. It also consists of supporting struggles – political ones this time – of the peoples oppressed by imperialism elsewhere in the world, and promoting the world united front against the superpowers.
The question is not one of knowing if it’s correct or not for communists to support workers’ struggles, to support national liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples or to denounce the war preparations of the imperialists and particularly the superpowers. All that we must unhesitatingly affirm is absolutely correct and part of the Marxist-Leninist line. But that in no way constitutes a tactic in the struggle for socialism in Canada, because that puts aside the struggle against the Canadian bourgeoisie, against its State power. That does not constitute the essential characteristic of a Marxist-Leninist line. In fact, the reformists and social democrats agree with militant workers struggles, they’re anti-imperialist and they’re for the liberation of the oppressed peoples, except that the revisionists don’t recognize the USSR as an imperialist power.
If the tactic of communists consists of weakening the bourgeois class by attacking its political power, if at the same time it consists of consolidating and unifying the camp of the revolution, the main ground for communist action in the present conjuncture can more easily be identified. This is especially true at a time when the factors of division in the proletariat are developing, particularly Quebec nationalism and English-Canadian chauvinism, and at a time when the bourgeoisie profits from this to consolidate its dictatorship by attacking directly democratic rights, in particular, by institutionalizing State interference in unions. The tactic of communists must be to unite all of the proletariat in order to give a greater resistance to the attacks of the bourgeoisie.
The first duty of communists today is not to drag themselves behind the workers from one strike to another, crying out ”solidarity, be combative, we’re going to co-ordinate your economic struggles”. The first duty of communists at this time isn’t to develop a sort of fantasy about an inevitable and imminent third world war which will leave the proletariat no choice but to put everything into “the defence of the homeland” with a better equipped army of the bourgeoisie.
No, the first duty of communists is to unite and to mobilize the Canadian proletariat and masses against the principal enemy of socialism in Canada, the Canadian bourgeoisie by remembering the following: the working class is not the sum total of workers on strike in the country at a given moment and the bourgeoisie is not the sum total of the owners of businesses where there are strikes even if they are monopolies. The political struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie will not result from the co-ordination of strikes and other economic struggles, even if they are “politicized”.
Economism has deep roots and it’s not just by talking about the party and the dictatorship of the proletariat from time to time that we’re going to eliminate this deviation from communist action. The victory over economism demands that the tactic of communists be developed on the main terrain, the political terrain. It demands that the tactic of communists be oriented towards the development of the proletariat’s attack against the State power of the bourgeoisie. Otherwise we are paving the road to economism, opportunism and revisionism.
The insistence which is presently being placed on the radicalization of unions in some circles is worth examining. If it should develop – and it is developing, at least in the League, in the RSC, and in the Saskatchewan Waffle – it could lead to abandoning the struggle for the party. There is an obvious correlation between economism and the struggle for “class struggle” unions and popular organizations. If the workers’ struggle is primarily the economic struggle, it’s quite clear that better and more radical unions are the first thing to be achieved... as for the party, well, it can always busy itself assuring better co-ordination of the economic struggles.
Does that mean that communists are not interested in these organizations and that they are indifferent to the economic struggles unceasingly waged by the workers in all corners of the country? In no way. Every victory of any group of workers on the economic level causes communists to rejoice, because such victories temporarily lighten the burden of exploitation. Thus every particular workers’ struggle should obtain the support of communists. But this shouldn’t make us forget the central fact that communist intervention in economic struggles consists first of all in working to develop the class consciousness of the workers involved, that is, to bring the workers to understand the necessity of the political struggle, and, in the present situation, the necessity of becoming involved in the struggle for the construction of the Marxist-Leninist party. In other words, communists do not intervene in economic struggles with the goal of “politicizing” them and “co-ordinating” them. They intervene with the goal of raising the workers’ level of consciousness.
Thus, the question of the intervention of communists in economic struggles, and the question of work in unions, certainly become less mysterious. The objective of communists in unions, at the present stage, are essentially the same: rally the workers to communism, and encourage them to become involved in the struggle for the party, the essential condition for the victory of socialism. This said, each particular situation can call for different intervention tactics. But at all times, it still remains that these tactics will not be correct unless they work together to raise the workers’ level of consciousness about the necessity of socialism, about the necessity of adopting Marxism-Leninism to get there, about the immediate character of the struggle for the party and about the obligation of each conscious worker to take part in this struggle.
Must we get ourselves elected to union leadership? Must we form nuclei of communist workers within the unions and on union question? Must we participate in union newspapers? There are no ready-made answers to these questions, there is the general principle that the tactic must serve the strategy, that the means must serve the goal which is being pursued. It’s not certain that it’s always a good thing to place communists in union leaderships at the present stage. It’s not sure that today we must invest a lot of energy in a union newspaper, especially if that means reducing the energy available for distributing the communist newspaper.
Sometimes comrades ask the question: why don’t communists have a union program? There can be no question of this at the present stage. As long as the proletariat has not taken up the program for socialist revolution, to set about the task of distributing a “union program”, whose contents are still to be specified by the way, would only serve to turn the attention of the workers away from the central and immediate character of the struggle for the party, to the profit of the struggle for reformed “class struggle” unions which would apply this program. We have only to look at what happened with the League’s platforms to see where such adventures lead.