First Published: Canadian Revolution, No. 1, May 1975
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Comrades:
The Mouvement Revolutionnaire des Etudiants du Quebec (MREQ) wishes to offer its support and solidarity to the new journal, Canadian Revolution. It is our belief that this journal represents a positive step forward in the struggle to unite Marxist-Leninist forces across Canada, by bringing forward for national debate, important questions of the Canadian revolution.
As is pointed out in the article submitted by MREQ to this issue of the journal, the struggle to build a Marxist-Leninist organization that would undertake the task of building a true Marxist-Leninist Party, is rapidly developing in Quebec. Many groups of Marxist-Leninists have issued political statements where they clearly put forward their political line, dealing with analysis of the international situation, of the principal contradiction in Canada, Party building, work in trade unions, etc. Debate and struggle around political line has gone on for the past few months between the different groups, and the prospects for building unity on a clear political basis are quite encouraging.
Many of the questions being debated in Quebec are the same as those being debated by communists in the rest of Canada, and the answers to these questions are crucial for the development of the entire Canadian revolutionary movement. In the past there has been little contact, exchange or debate among communists in different parts of Canada in general, and a particular isolation of communists in Quebec. The question of struggling to build a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party in Canada is on the agenda. It thus becomes increasingly important to break down regional and national barriers and address ourselves, in the spirit of unity-struggle-unity, to the questions that confront all Canadian revolutionaries.
It is our hope that Canadian Revolution will act as a forum for national debate, will help to systematize relations between communists across Canada, and through struggle on the questions of political line, begin to lay the foundations for the building of unity between genuine Marxist-Leninist forces.
Mouvement Revolutionaire des Etudiants du Quebec
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I am delighted to receive the announcement proclaiming the early appearance of a Canadian Marxist-Leninist journal, to be edited and published in Toronto. Judging by your statement of principles, your magazine will fill a journalistic gap too long neglected in Canada, and should meet with an enthusiastic response from left-wing circles across the country.
Having filled the post of editor for some six years of the now extinct Progressive Worker, I am deeply appreciative of the many difficulties that lie ahead of you. So far as financial problems are concerned, I would not anticipate any enormous difficulty in winning the support of readers, who will readily recognize the importance of such a journal to Canadian political development and debate. There should be, however, emphasis laid on the vital need for literary contributions that will truly reflect the state of radical political development in all areas of Canada, from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, and including even the most remote settlements in between.
I offer my sincere congratulations to the editorial board for the initiative they have shown in taking up this project, and I offer and pledge my personal cooperation, financial and literary, to the full extent of my limited capacity in both areas.
Jack Scott Vancouver, B.C.
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Comrades:
In the past there has always been talk of promoting discussion and analysis of concrete conditions in Canada amongst Marxist-Leninists in a national journal but no journal materialized that could act as a vehicle for this process. Now, with the birth of Canadian Revolution, this has become a reality.
Canadian Revolution has the important role of becoming a national forum for developing serious Marxist-Leninist analysis of Canadian issues based on careful analysis of concrete conditions – instead of opportunistic speculations based on idealism. Theoretical questions can only be developed correctly through study and struggle. Information needs to be gathered, circulated, and debated. It is time to dispel idealistic speculation masking as scientific analysis – for example, the national and class question are often discussed in total ignorance to any concrete evidence of class relations and class structure in Canada. Careful research has been ignored in favour of convenient assumptions that fit preconceived notions rather than a scientific analysis of concrete conditions.
This journal must overcome this political idealism and aim towards building a forum to develop scientific socialism in Canada. With the introduction of this journal, a big step forward has been taken. Marxist-Leninists throughout Canada must contribute to this effort to develop the study and debate of all issues which will affect the vital importance of building a scientific analysis of concrete conditions in Canada. Only thorough investigation can weed out these errors!
Yours in the struggle for scientific socialism, W. C. Winnipeg, Manitoba
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Comrades:
We here in Halifax who have read your statement of policy welcome the establishment of a Marxist-Leninist journal in Canada. We are in fundamental agreement with the stated principles set forth as a foundation for the new journal. We also realize that agreement on general principles is relatively easy, while unity of purpose and direction in the fullest sense over the substance of Marxist-Leninist theory and its specific application to Canadian circumstances will be a more difficult task. Certainly a major reason justifying such a journal is to engage in the principled struggle necessary to begin to construct this unity and to deepen it in theory and practice.
There are other reasons why we think that a Marxist-Leninist journal is so important at the present time. It is a tribute to the theoretical and practical power of Marxism and to its living embodiments in existing socialist states (here, of course, we exclude the now bourgeoisified Soviet state and all its satellites) that bourgeois thought forms are in constant retreat if not actual disintegration. We do indeed live in the epoch of moribund capitalism and proletarian revolution, and bourgeois ideas are in such decay that, when baldly stated, they have little of the appeal they had during the heyday of bourgeois revolution. Yet bourgeois society with all its industrial, military and ideological armory remains powerfully intact. In this context, the greatest danger for a potential socialist movement, especially in the wealthier capitalist societies, stems less from the effects of explicitly bourgeois theories, and more from the infiltration of bourgeois attitudes and concealed values into Marxist theory itself. This revision or distortion of Marxism is equal in its menacing proportions to the overwhelming obstacles fought so successfully by Lenin in his struggle against revisionism in the Second International. Today, the battle against revisionism is being continued by Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party and their revolutionary allies around the world, but the dangers are even greater now when revisionism is being disseminated as the official policy of the world’s second superpower.
Even here in Canada, which until recently has suffered from the North American notion that Marxism was a disease, we now find a variety of pseudo-leftists calling themselves Marxists, including some, habituated to “left” icon-swinging in isolation from real workers and real working conditions, who even call themselves Marxist-Leninists. Only in clearcut and explicit criticism of such would-be Marxism can the heavy legacy of bourgeois ideas be expunged and vital Marxism-Leninism presented to Canadians for perhaps the first time. We would hope that this is one of the objectives of your journal, and we would also hope that we may contribute what little bit we have learned here to help fulfill it. Yet we must realize that socialist revolution in Canada is still a long way off. The setting down of first principles of agreement and the rejection of false theories are necessary and will continue to be necessary, but they are no substitute for immediate and long-range strategy and programme. Such strategy and programme will require a systematic analysis of the Canadian political economy, its class structure and its status and place within the American empire. Unity on general principles is only a first step toward unity in practice, and practice is the ultimate validation of Marxist science.
We are also in full agreement with your position that, despite proclamations to the contrary, no real organized leadership yet exists to give focus and direction to the increasing militancy of the working class. A theoretical journal of Marxism-Leninism must be particularly engaged in dealing with this problem, in exposing misleadership and in forging the unity that will make effective leadership possible. On this score, we consider that the most persistent falsifications committed by those who call themselves Marxists in Canada (and in the West in general) devolve from ultraleft proclivities. In saying this, we do not wish to downplay the very real fact that problems of right opportunism and economism are formidable obstacles to be fought and overcome by any revolutionary movement. The entrenchment of right-wing trade unionism and the relatively successful alliance of Canada’s “labour party” with a reactionary labour aristocracy remains a redoubtable barrier to the advancement of working class political consciousness. In our view, this latter constellation of forces has long lost any claim to progressive change and has become part and parcel of the bourgeois scheme of things. Therefore, if problems of party formation are given priority, as we think they should, then the most pressing difficulties will be those common to potential revolutionary leadership. Here the hindrances to revolutionary development do not stem so much from reformism as from dogmatic “leftism” and sectarianism.
Of course, it is not valid to mechanically separate problems of reformism and corruption of trade union leadership from problems of sectarianism and adventurism since their existence, viewed in class terms, is inter-connected; the solution to one will help to create the solution to the other. In the long run, however, only by the uprooting, in practice, of the deep-seated economism now dominating the working class can the cultism bred of petty-bourgeois intellectualism be effectively counteracted.
It is our position that a theoretical journal should, at first, place most emphasis on subjective issues among revolutionary intellectuals, and as such, it must be especially sensitive to ultra-leftism. We think that the reactionary sediments of the new left of the sixties have for the most part gone unanalyzed and have not yet been truly repudiated; still festering, these sediments join with the “natural” predisposition of left-wing intellectual life to so often form a cesspool of sectarian stagnation. Although we can, with some discipline and political experience, recognize these problems when they arise in their most blatant forms, as for example in Trotskyism or anarchism, they are still too dangerous to be treated as an afterthought since they turn up again and again even in the ranks of Marxist-Leninists. This becomes particularly significant in a capitalist environment where there is still much reform leeway in the system, and where revolutionaries must be engaged in years of patient reformist activities even to put the idea of revolutionary transformation on the historical agenda.
We look forward to elaboration of these and other significant issues in the pages of the journal. Good luck; we commend your resolve to pursue the grinding task of putting out six issues a year.
K.C., H.G., R.G., H.Y.,
on behalf of comrades in Halifax.
* * *
Comrades:
Having read your statement of policy for the journal and having heard reports on your progress from members of our study group who were recently in the east, we can say that we expect this journal to play a major role in the ongoing debate among Canadian Marxist-Leninists. Many positive things are happening around the country, and it is time that we began sharing our experiences and analyses so that the level of theoretical understanding will keep up with the developing practical situation.
We are an independent Marxist-Leninist Study Group. Our purpose over the 2 1/2 years of our existence has been to develop an understanding of the situation and tasks in Canada through combining the study of Marxism-Leninism with historical and contemporary Canadian sources. The study group is looked upon as only one priority, with the majority of members being involved in various types of practical work. Our group is composed of both industrial and non-industrial workers, active in their unions and workplace struggle. A number of our members are playing active roles in the building of a Canadian union movement, in producing the Western Voice, and with the Canada-China Friendship Association in Vancouver.
Ideological struggle among groups of Marxist-Leninists throughout the country has up to now been carried on in a very haphazard manner, through personal contact and limited circulation of documents. Many important political lessons gained through struggle by comrades in other parts of the country, in political situations somewhat different from our own, are lost or never fully understood by us in B.C.; for example, the role of Marxist-Leninists in the highly-nationalistic atmosphere of Quebec, or the demise of the Ontario-based Waffle movement.
There is a long history of anti-revisionist activities in our area, one focus being the existence of the Progressive Workers Movement. A valuable lesson learned from this experience is the inability of such a movement to succeed without a national organization of Marxist-Leninists. Conditions at present in B.C. give us confidence for the future – the successful struggles of workers here to free themselves from the bonds of U.S. imperialists unions, and the assuming of power of a social-democratic government, thereby exposing itself in practice as no alternative to capitalism. We must put forward analysis of these events as our contribution to the development of a Marxist-Leninist movement in Canada.
Many theoretical questions confront us every day, discussion of which we anticipate in the pages of Canadian Revolution.
Our group has always held that the principal contradiction in Canadian society is between the Canadian people and U.S. imperialism. The journal should place primary emphasis on this question, and also develop an analysis of classes in Canadian society. Our strategy will derive mainly from our answers to these fundamental questions.
– Our movement has to understand its background in Canadian history–the political history of the working class and its vanguard.
– When an important strike or other struggle takes place, the journal should analyze its importance and criticize the practice of Marxist-Leninists within it.
– If we are to build a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, we must have a firm grasp of the content and sources of opportunism. All anti-Marxist opportunist trends which have arisen within the working class movement should be dealt with so as to help us avoid these errors in our practice. This will be very important, especially in the early stages of party-building.
– The journal should give a secondary, but still necessary, place to the Marxist-Leninist movements in other countries, and to an examination of the history of various Marxist-Leninist parties around the world.
We support your policy statement, which puts forward a clear Marxist-Leninist framework, establishing the unity we must start from in our discussions. The tasks of communists always revolve upon linking the mass movement with socialism. In our work to develop Canadian Revolution as a discussion journal, and in party-building in general, we must always guard against the danger of sectarianism, of isolating the Marxist-Leninist movement from the people. The masses of Canadian workers alone are the judges of the correctness of any line we put forward.
There are great distances and varying political and social climates in parts of Canada, giving rise to different forms of struggle and experience. Required at this time, preliminary to the formation of a national Marxist-Leninist party, is a central focus through which political debate can take place. The national scope of our struggle requires the development of unified national policies by Marxist-Leninists throughout Canada and we expect the journal will greatly assist this development.
We are very much encouraged by the creation of Canadian Revolution . You can count on us for solid support – articles, criticisms, financial contributions and distribution in our area.
Best wishes in this important work!
The Vancouver Study Group