First Published: Canadian Revolution No. 4, December 1975/January 1976
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
This is the second installment of a three-part article translated from MOBILISATION. The first installment, dealing with the history of the Communist Party from 1921 until the formation of the anti-fascist United Front, was printed in CANADIAN REVOLUTION no. 3 and is available for $1.50 from CR. The final installment will be printed in the February-March (No. 5) issue of the journal.
MOBILISATION has pointed out that our titling of the first installment A History of the Communist Party of Canada was incorrect and misleading and CR regrets any confusion or false expectations produced by this error.
In July 1935 Georgi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian communist and Secretary-General of the Comintern, delivered his famous speech:
“The first thing that must be done, the thing with which to begin, is to form a united front, to establish unity of action of the workers in every factory, in every district, in every region, in every country all over the world. Unity of action of the proletariat on a national and international scale is the mighty weapon which renders the working class capable not only of successful defence but also of successful counter-attack against fascism, against the class enemy.” FOR UNITY OF THE WORKING CLASS AGAINST FASCISM, Sofia Press 1969, p. 27.
The international communist movement decided to change its tactics. Seeing the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, Japan and central and eastern Europe, and faced with increased activity by the fascist factions of the bourgeoisie in America and the rest of Europe, the world communist movement decided to mobilize and block this process. In practise, this meant uniting in action with the socialists and reformist factions of the bourgeoisie of all stripes, in order to isolate the ultra-reactionary forces as much as possible, by the formation of the largest possible united front. This basically correct tactic[23] was to result in the defeat of fascism and the expansion of popular and proletarian forces after the war in Europe and in the rest of the world (the liberation of China, Vietnam, and Korea. . .)
Following the instructions of the Comintern, the Communist Party in Canada decided to give priority in its work to this international directive. The CP estimated that the danger of fascism in Canada was real, and that it revealed itself in two ways: 1) the development of ultra-fascist movements instigated by Germany and Italy (especially in Quebec in the form of the Union Nationale and Adrien Arcand’s party; and 2) the Canadian bourgeoisie’s attempt to ally itself with the reactionary British bourgeoisie in an international offensive against the Soviet Union.
According to this analysis, the struggle against fascism had become combined with the struggle against the imperialist war. Accordingly, the principal contradiction in Canada was the contradiction that opposed the working class and the people as a whole, to the reactionary pro-imperialist forces of the Canadian bourgeoisie, which wanted to drag Canada into an alliance against the Soviet Union with Great Britain and the fascist countries. The nationalist forces in Quebec, who were attempting to profit from the contradictions with the Anglo-Canadian bourgeoisie in favour of an eventual alliance with France and Italy, were analyzed in this context as objectively pro-fascist by the CP.[24] The CP considered all attempts to weaken Canada to be pro-fascist.
In reality this analysis was mechanical and did not take into account the specificity of class contradictions in Canada and Quebec. It amounted to nothing more than an unelaborated reproduction of general directives relating to the international situation. The thing that the CP was incapable of understanding was that from this period of time onwards, the Canadian bourgeoisie was completely aligned with American imperialism. For Canada this situation had two major consequences:
1. The development of a Great Britain-Canada alliance against the USSR as formulated by the CP was unthinkable.
2. The anti-fascist character of the American bourgeoisie did not prevent it from continuing to be a capitalist and imperialist bourgeoisie whose oppression of various peoples (in Quebec, Latin America, and the Philippines) was only very slightly different from the domination of the fascists elsewhere.
In other words, the international front against fascism did not cause the class struggle in Canada to disappear. In this context, it would have been correct to support the right of national liberation for Quebec and other oppressed peoples while, of course, avoiding that these struggles against Canadian and American imperialism play into the hands of other imperialisms.[25] In developing their analysis, both the CP of Canada and the American CP liquidated the question of class struggle in their own countries and, still worse, formed themselves into the objective allies of their own imperialist bourgeoisies.
It is essential to understand that this incorrect analysis of the situation manifested itself in varying degrees throughout the period from 1935 to 1945. On the other hand, it is important to appreciate the struggle against world fascism, which the communists led with perseverance and extraordinary courage. Nevertheless, the mechanical and one-sided form of their analysis (which did not take into account the ”other” aspect, i.e. the class struggle against their own bourgeoisies) was such that the CP drifted into revisionist and reformist positions.
The communists dissolved the WUL and encouraged their unions to join the ranks of the international unions. The disbanding of the league conformed to Comintern directives to dissolve “red” unions and re-enter the ranks of the larger labour movement. Mechanically, the Canadian communists arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary to rejoin the ranks of the AFL. Besides this, several errors were made in the process of disbanding the League. For example, in many cases directives were issued from above without explanation and discussion at the rank-and-file level. This caused many militants of longstanding to quit the party because they did not understand the decision to dissolve a fighting organization that they had helped to build with the blood and sweat.
At the same time, in the United States, an important faction of the AFL was fighting for the formation of mass industrial unions in the primary industries. The super-reactionary leaders of the AFL would not budge, forcing the advocates of industrial unionism (led by John L. Lewis of the miners’ union) to separate organizationally and found the CIO (Committee for Industrial Organizations) in 1936.[26] Immediately millions of workers began to organize and, with strikes and occupations in the automobile, rubber and textile industries, it became the largest movement of workers’ struggles ever seen in the United States. In many cases, CIO industrial unions were formed in Canada on the foundation of the former unions of the Workers Unity League. This situation was encouraged by the leadership of the CIO, which had decided on a policy of taking maximum advantage of the organizational opportunities and agitation of the communists who, too satisfied with finally being part of the official union movement, threw themselves into the campaign with all their energies.
The first inroads made by the industrial unions were in Ontario; both in the North in the nickel and gold mines, and in the south where the first steelworker locals were set up. But these first steps were difficult. The Canadian bourgeoisie used every possible argument including anti-Americanism to counter their organization drive.
An important step in the growth of industrial unionism was the strike at General Motors in Oshawa in 1936.[27] For several years previous, a rank-and-file group initiated by communist militants, in collaboration with CCF militants and militant GM workers, had existed in the factory. Against the background of the struggles in the United States, the GM workers decided once and for all to unionize as a part of the United Automobile Workers (CIO).[28] They presented their demands, which, needless to say, included the recognition of their union. But General Motors refused to negotiate with representatives of the CIO. This attitude was strongly encouraged by the Ontario government, whose leader felt that his shares in the mines of Northern Ontario were threatened. After two months of total strike – involving more than 5,000 workers – they gained a partial victory. For all practical purposes, General Motors had recognized the union even though they refused to allow a clause recognizing the local’s affiliation to the UAW to be included in the contract. This first important breakthrough in large-scale industry soon prompted tens of thousands of workers to unionize. Seamen, steelworkers, electrical products workers, and rubber workers were organized in the large unions that, to this day, form the main force of the union movement. The communist militants were in the forefront of these struggles. Thus, by 1937, they found themselves in practical control of close to a third of the Canadian unions affiliated with the CIO.[29] From workers in the automobile and electrical products unions in Ontario to the seamen of the Great Lakes, from the forestry and shipyard workers of British Columbia to the miners of the west, the communists dominated the unions. But, as we shall see further on, this leadership did not rest on political work, on work as communists. The communists were recognized, in effect, for what they were: militant workers who knew how to organize.
In 1937, in Quebec, a strike movement developed in the textile industry. The workers of Dominion Textile affiliated with the CCL went out on strike in Montreal, Valleyfield, Drummondville, Magog, Sherbrooke, St-Gregoire and Montmorency. Their victory gave birth to industrial unionism in the textile industry in Quebec. Once again the communists were untiring in their efforts to organize rank-and-file workers, launch support campaigns, and mobilize the masses of the cities against the giant monopoly. Even within the Catholic unions, which were tightly controlled by the reactionary clergy, it was rank-and-file communist militants who took the initiative and joined the great organizing movement of the late thirties.
The fascist offensive continued throughout the world. In 1936, the fascist generals of Spain, in close collaboration with Germany and Italy, rebelled against the democratic government of the Republic. The tragic struggle of the Spanish people against the combined fascist forces of Europe roused the international labour and communist movements. At that point they launched a mobilization and support campaign that will go down in history as one of the finest examples of international fraternity amongst workers and between peoples. Marx’s slogan, “Workers of the world, unite!” lived with an intensity unique in history.
In Canada, the communists organized a campaign of support for Spain which became one of their finest contributions to this country’s working-class history. More than 1,200 Canadians and Quebecois went to Spain – more than half to fall in the front combat lines held by the “Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade”, their battalion in the famous International Brigades. Doctor Norman Bethune,[30] a communist from Montreal, became a living example of proletarian internationalism during this period. In Spain, Bethune organized a blood transfusion service which saved lives of the wounded directly on the battlefield. This revolutionary method allowed the lives of hundreds of anti-fascist fighters to be saved. In 1937, before leaving for China where he died heroically, Bethune returned home to strengthen the campaign in support of Spain. In Montreal, more than 15,000 people came to hear him at a rally held in his honour, and to show their support for the Republic. At the same time, the Catholic Church, in collaboration with the Duplessis government, launched a support campaign for the fascist butchers of the Spanish people.
But the anti-fascist conviction of the peoples of the world was strong. The 1938 Mayday demonstrations in Canada were alive with the reality of it. In Toronto, for example, more than 25,000 people marched behind the banners of the Communist Party and other progressive and anti-fascist organizations.
While the peoples of the world were organizing against fascism, the bourgeoisie was trying to compromise with them. In 1938, after the infamous Munich Pact was signed by Great Britain and France,[31] the fascists were given a free hand and quickly invaded other countries of Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia and Austria, and were preparing an offensive against the Soviet Union. An international capitalist front was also preparing itself for an assault on the USSR, but this tactic was thwarted by the leaders of the first socialist country. Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with the Germans, thus allowing himself three years in which to prepare for the inevitable war against fascism. For many of the peoples of the world who were fighting the fascists or oppressed by them, this turn of events was difficult to understand. However, history proved that Stalin and the leaders of the USSR had correctly understood the situation.
On the third of September, 1939, Great Britain – followed quickly by France and other European countries – declared war on Nazi Germany. The declaration of was still showed signs of attempts at compromise with the fascists. For many months, the troops were not mobilized and the war was in a state of suspension. No offensive was launched while the Nazi troops were still concentrated in the east against Poland and the countries of central Europe. This was called the “phoney war”, a period of almost two years during which the two great forces of the capitalist world stood face-to-face, trying to start behind-the-scenes negotiations and searching for some way out of the deadlock.
What was happening in Canada? The Canadian bourgeoisie served as a meeting point between Great Britain and the United States. The latter wanted to remain detached but nevertheless supported the countries who were against Germany. So Canada officially entered the war. In reaction to this maneouver of the international bourgeoisie, the Communist Party put forward the slogan “Keep Canada out of the imperialist war”. The CP analyzed this part of the war as a confrontation between imperialist powers (Germany against Great Britain) and as a result of this analysis advocated neutrality.
Inside of Canada, the infamous War Measures Act was brought into force again. Under the pretext of protecting the country against its enemies, the bourgeoisie used the law to settle its accounts with workers’ organizations and progressive organizations. They gave priority, of course, to the Communist Party. The Party was outlawed and its publications, archives and offices were seized. Some hundreds of militants including Jackson, the head of the United Electrical Workers, were interned in concentration camps. However, the leadership of the party managed to go underground.
The Party continued to organize, in spite of the repression it suffered, until the entry of the USSR into the war and the change in communist tactics. It was during this period, the early forties, that it reached its high point. It had about 20,000 members and was the predominant influence in many unions (e.g. in the automobile and electrical workers’ unions, etc. . .). However, this heavy implantation in mass organizations – both union and other – concealed a profound weakness in the political content of the Party’s work.
Consequently, even in this period, questions of political education and training had not been resolved. Overall, the Communist Party was a party of communist “fellow travelers”, progressive and militant people whose political development was nonetheless extremely low. Not only did this situation not improve during these years, but it deteriorated. The Party decided, for example, to dissolve the communist groups in the unions, thus abolishing the framework within which the communist militants’ operation, leadership, and education took place. At the time, this decision was explained in terms of the need to build the largest possible unions and to avoid “alienating people” – i.e. to avoid emphasizing the revolutionary character of the Party and its strategy. The Party was seen more and more as an organization paralleling the unions, whose members were the best, most resolute and dedicated trade union militants. William Foster[32] the leader of the American CP, explained the communist position (a position largely followed by Canadian communists) in 1939:
“The organizational forms of communist work in the unions have changed radically in the present period. Certain traditionally correct methods no longer apply to the present situation in the labour movement. Thus, Party members no longer participate in groups or independent organized activities within the unions. The Party no longer encourages the formation of progressive groups, blocs, or caucuses in the unions; we have liquidated our own communist factions, stopped the publication of workplace newspapers, and are presently changing our system of industrial branches. Communists now work in the labour movement only through regular union committees and the formal institutions of the labour movement. Communists are the best fighters for democracy and discipline in the labour movement and resolutely oppose all forms of control by groups or cliques. . . .”
These political positions, which formed the basis of all Party work among the masses, contained two serious errors. The first was the confusion of the economic struggle with the political struggle. If the communists did not understand why it was necessary to function autonomously within the mass organizations, it was because they did not discern the difference between the economic and union (i.e. defense) struggles undertaken by the masses with a direct trade-union consciousness (to use Lenin’s expression) on the one hand, and the political struggle against the bourgeois state for the establishment of workers’ power, on the other. The CP militants had the impression that the massive economic struggles of this period would almost spontaneously merge into a struggle for socialism. In this way, they did not appreciate their autonomous role. This constituted their second error. Communists, like all vanguard movements, are essentially different from the mass movement in that they have a scientific overall awareness of the whole social process and its transformations. Thus the communists were forgetting the essential lesson of Lenin’s which stated that the task of communists is to inculcate socialist consciousness in a conscious and organized fashion into the mass movement which, by itself, because of its spontaneous character, can only lead to reform, not to revolution and socialism. The explanation of the subsequent degeneration of the Party can be found in these two errors. In practice, these errors led to the isolation of the Party from the masses, the same error that the communists were trying to avoid by putting aside their revolutionary character.
It was during this period that the anti-communist attacks began within the unions of the CIO.
In January 1940, the unions affiliated with the CIO in Canada merged with the other labour federation.[33] This latter federation was controlled by reactionary elements close to the leadership of the CCF. Its organizing was limited to the railway workers, but the merger with the two factions of the CIO gave it new strength. Within the Canadian CIO, two factions had existed for a long period of time. The right, counseled by notorious anti-communists like David Lewis (future leader of the NDP), struggled from the beginning to limit communist influence. They started by eliminating the CP from the Steelworkers Union. Although the first steelworker locals had been organized by communists in Hamilton during the thirties, the leaders of the Canadian CIO instigated a great purge with the aid of the American leadership of the CIO. This had the effect of considerably limiting the work of organizing and unionizing thousands of steelworkers in this country. Furthermore, dating from the merger with the All-Canadian Congress of Labour, the leadership of the federation became super-centralized in the hands of an executive which was hierarchical to the highest degree. Of the seven members of the executive, five were fervent anti-communists. The communists struggled without success for the democratization of the new union. As we shall see further on, the vast majority of the communist-dominated unions were, slice by slice and little by little, purged, isolated or placed under the control of the right.
June 1941. Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of the end for German Fascism. Internationally, this event profoundly changed the character of the war. The significance of the war was no longer only the division of the world between the capitalists. It now meant the defence of the first workers’ state in the world. The forces of the workers and progressive people throughout the world united in the effort to destroy the fascists.
At the beginning of 1942, the Communist Party launched a campaign of support for the war and for conscription. In spite of the fact that the Party was still officially illegal, it was able to resume its activities openly, following unofficial negotiations with the government. The communists threw themselves into this campaign ardently, organizing committees to encourage the masses to vote positively in the plebiscite on conscription which was organized by the federal government in May 1942. Although the Canadian population voted by a majority in favour of military conscription, more than 80% of Quebec voters answered NO. In spite of the fact that the campaign against conscription was organized by right-wing forces suspected (with good reason) of having ties with Mussolini’s Italy, the vote reflected the profound resentment shown by the Quebec people against the national oppression inflicted upon them by the Canadian bourgeoisie. Once again, incapable of grasping the fundamental essence of the national question in Quebec, Canadian communists saw only a fascist maneouver in this situation. This fact led them to isolate themselves even more from the people of Quebec.
During this period, the Liberal government of Mackenzie King, in collaboration with all the labour and union organizations, put all the energies of the nation at the service of the war. In a few months, production doubled and hundreds of thousands of men and women workers were hired. The bosses made immense profits on the backs of the workers, thanks to the national war effort. The companies fixed exorbitant prices for their products in some industries, and conspired with the government to keep down the working and living conditions of the masses. But it was the masses who were winning the war: it was the workers who went to fight the Nazis, and it was the women who produced the ammunition at home. Meanwhile, the big bourgeoisie was building up the American empire, which was to become the dominant force throughout the world after the war.
The Communist Party fought for the unions to ratify anti-strike agreements with the bosses. In exchange for a few compensations along the lines of job security and other peccadilloes, these clauses took away the workers’ right to strike. In the eyes of the communist militants, this policy promoted the national war effort. However, despite this, the class struggle in this country was not abolished. This incorrect and mechanical tactic contributed even more to the isolation of the Party from the masses. The masses correctly perceived that while they were working themselves to death for the war effort, the wealthy were enriching themselves like never before and were being accorded unheard-of privileges by the government. Even the most reactionary and collaborationist sectors of the union movement did not oppose strikes with as much force as did the communists. Once again, it is necessary to note the lack of concrete analysis and lack of dialectics among Canadian communists. They never sufficiently took into account the national reality of Canada and the North American context.
The Party rigorously defended its position on unity. It became an apologist for Mackenzie King and the Liberal government. In order to officially regain its legality, the Party changed its name in December 1943 and adopted the name the Labour Progressive Party (LPP). In the federal elections, Fred Rose, the LPP candidate, was elected in Montreal-Cartier, a district of Jewish and Greek workers. Rose’s victory, as well as the relatively high number[34] of communist votes in the rest of the country, indicated the popularity of the Party in the sectors of the working class particularly affected by the question of fascism. Communists were also elected in some working-class ridings in the Ontario provincial elections. The LPP’s programme differed very little at this time from the programme of the CCF. The communists even accused the CCF of being too ̶-;socialist”(!) and of not supporting the national front enough. “Everything for Victory” – such was the slogan of the Party.
At the same time, “Browderism”, named after the Secretary-General of the American Communist Party, Earl Browder, made its appearance. He had developed (once again) the theory of a new type of North American capitalism able to reconcile the interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In TEHERAN, his famous book, Browder explained that the new international conjuncture (the united front between the United States, Great Britain and the USSR) would force American capitalism to peacefully transform itself progressively into socialism. The logic of Browder’s position led him, in practice, to advocate dissolving of the Communist Party. And, in fact, in 1944, the Party dissolved itself since the revolution was no longer necessary (!). It was transformed into an educational association (the Communist Political Association). One year later, the party was re-established under the leadership of William Foster. But Browder’s revisionist ideas – which dominated the communist movement not only in the United States but here too, and in certain Latin American countries, gives a good idea to what degree militants had been led into blind alleys be a mechanical analysis of the international front against fascism. Even if there was never officially any question of dissolving the Party in Canada, Browder’s line had a great deal of influence, and, because of the tight relations between the two parties, it can be said that this revisionist political line established its domination here too, in a different form.
Within the union movement, the positions of the communists were being increasingly threatened. First of all, the rank-and-file workers did not understand what was at stake in the debate. The communists were identified as union militants. Furthermore, their tactics during the war had dissatisfied a good number of militant workers who saw only that the bosses were in the process of pocketing immense profits. This combination of factors was such that the leadership of the unions, like the American leadership of the international unions, were in a position to launch their offensive.
Thus, in British Columbia, a communist stronghold, there was an all-out attack. Three unions constituted the largest contingent of unionized workers in the province: the International Woodworkers of America (IWA), the unions of the shipyard workers, and the miners (Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers). Maneouvers took place on two fronts. At the international level, unions like the IWA prohibited union officers from belonging to the Communist Party. At the local level, the federation made unwarranted demands for supplementary funds from the union locals. In point of fact, the communist militants in the leadership of local unions were “outlawed” by their own union. Soon this unofficial expulsion became official. Once the control of the IWA was in the hands of the right, they hurried to take control of the British Columbia Federation of Labour which, in its turn, expelled the shipyard workers and Mine Mill. All these maneouvers were tightly co-ordinated with the bosses (who laid off the most active militants at the right moment), with the bourgeois press (which accused the communists of being against “democracy” in the unions), and the state (which discredited progressive unions through its Ministry of Labour). As a final result, the communists, like all progressive militants, lost the leadership of the unions. Often the militants remained there for some time after, but without being able to exercise a real leadership role in struggles and among the masses.
So ended this period, which also saw the beginning of the end of the existence of the Communist Party as an important force on the labour political scene in Canada. The combination of spontaneist and economist kinds of errors (products of previous periods) with a mechanical and vulgar application of the tactic of the common front against fascism led to its disappearance. The end of the hot war was also the beginning of the cold war, of repression, and the anti-communist witch-hunt. But as we were told by an ex-militant of the Communist Party, “Repression will never succeed in eliminating a true communist party. It is internal factors that are principal, that are the motor. Thus, if the Party has disappeared, it is not principally because of repression, but because of its serious political mistakes; because it was never able to develop an analysis, a political strategy consistent with the national reality. . .” But the Communist Party did not disappear immediately after the war. It continued to participate for many years in the organization of struggles which were among the richest and most glorious of labour history in this country.
The end of the war was the beginning of a new era in world capitalism, the era of the Yankees. American imperialism became completely dominant. Although blocked by the struggles of the peoples of central Europe, Asia and Africa, American imperialism nevertheless spread out without serious opposition from other capitalist powers, who were starting anew from ruins. Aware of the danger of the destruction of capitalism in several countries, American imperialism hurried to entrench itself in order to establish its supremacy (the Marshall Plan in Europe, development plans in Latin America, the setting up of NATO and military alliances in Asia, and massive support for Japan and Chiang Kai-shek in Formosa, etc. . . .). In North America, American imperialism did not want to take any chances. They wanted a solid consolidation of their rear flanks, eliminating all danger of internal competition. The means was the communist witch-hunt.
Aware of its powerful position in the economy and after five years of passivity, the North American working class launched a large-scale strike movement and campaign for economic demands after the war. These struggles had a strictly economic nature and ended mostly with gains centred around wages and working conditions.
In Canada, in September, 1945, 11,000 Ford workers in Windsor launched a strike. The local executive was run by communist militants who gave the strike a mass character: mobilization of all strikers on huge picket lines, support campaigns in the rest of the country and organization of solidarity committees in the area of the strike, etc. . . . The strike soon became a national cause. The chief demand was union security.[35]
The UAW-affiliated union was really asking for a closed shop: all workers in the factory had to be unionized.[36]
Ford finally gave in, after being threatened with a general strike in the auto industry in Canada and the United States. But they escaped easily. Acting as a conciliator, the federal government sent in a Judge Rand, who gave his name to a now-standardized formula.
The Rand Formula, which originated during this strike at Ford, has two aspects: one positive, guaranteeing basic security to the union and another, very negative, aspect. This had to do with the institutionalization of the union caused by the terms and conditions of this formula, and the consequent loss of direct and daily contacts with the rank-and-file. The Rand Formula thus had the effect of accentuating the bureaucratization of the large business unions which today constitutes one of the main obstacles to workers’ organization and struggle.
In 1946, more than 150,000 workers were involved in strikes. In August 1946, the United Textile Workers Union (TLC)[37] launched their famous strike against Dominion Textile in Valleyfield and Montreal. The communist militants, Madeleine Parent and Kent Rowley, led the strike to victory, even though they were not able to escape Duplessis’ prison and a slander campaign which forced them to leave Quebec. Strikes multiplied among the seamen of the Great Lakes, workers in the electrical goods industry, and railway employees, etc. The union movement was now comprised of close to a million members.
In 1947 and 1948 the communists lost control of the UAW, the IWA (the woodworkers) in British Columbia, and several Steelworkers’ locals where they were still active. The large Seamen’s union (Canadian Seamen’s Union)[38] was destroyed when the bosses decided to recognize the union of the notorious Hal Banks (the Seafarers International Union), who gained control of the docks and ships by blackmail, extortion and violence. In the food, garment and shoe industries, many small unions – which had been built through glorious and epic struggle by communist militants – were destroyed or taken over by bureaucrats sent from Washington, or from the upper echelons of the union federations.
Communists remained entrenched in two powerful unions: Mine-Mill, located in the mines of the west and in northern Ontario, and the UE, the union of the large electrical goods industries. Unable to overthrow the communist leadership in these unions, the reactionary bureaucrats simply expelled them from the federations. The UE and Mine-Mill were expelled from the union movement in 1949. In collaboration with the CIO in the United States, the CCL immediately set up the fake “International United Electrical Workers” (IUE). At that point, some strange intrigues were seen in General Electric and Westinghouse plants. Representatives of the IUE accompanied by the bosses came to get union cards signed, calling for the withdrawal of the UE locals’ certification. In Quebec, Duplessis decertified most of the UE unions (GE, Westinghouse, Marconi, RCA) in order to replace them with the IUE or with company unions. Despite this enormous campaign, the UE survived and continues today to be the strongest union in the electrical industry,[39] the only remaining stronghold of the Canadian Communist Party within the union movement.
The union bureaucrats launched the Steelworkers union against the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, one of the most democratic and militant unions in Canadian union history. The Steelworkers – still well known for their good relations with the bosses and their repression of progressive militants and militant workers – embarked on raiding campaigns in the gold and nickel mines of northern Ontario. Although unable to destroy the Mine-Mill union, the Steelworkers succeeded in containing the union within narrow limits. (In 1966 Mine-Mill merged with the Steelworkers.)
Repression did not remain restricted to the union movement. In 1948, a Soviet citizen working in the USSR’s embassy in Ottawa crossed over and revealed information to the RCMP about Soviet espionage in Canada. The revelations of this official led the Canadian government to organize an intense campaign of repression. Federal MP Fred Rose was arrested, convicted of espionage, and deported. Several dozen militants were arrested, and several hundred were interrogated and intimidated. In Quebec, Duplessis brought his famous “padlock law” into force, permitting the police to padlock all premises suspected of being used to spread communist propaganda. This infamous law allowed the cops to terrorize the offices of the Party, other progressive organizations and the unions, without leaving them any legal recourse.
But this repression was above all a matter of moral and psychological pressure. Without denying the importance of arrests and beatings, the repression was especially evident in the intense ideological campaign which was launched across the continent to eradicate all progressive ideas among the masses. The Catholic Church, the educational system, sports and recreational organizations, films, radio and publications of all sorts contributed to the concerted effort to provoke collective anti-communist hysteria. Stereotypes of Bolsheviks with knives in their teeth, and martyr-priests in communist countries were capitalized on, in conjunction with pseudo-scientific analyses supplied by bought-off sociologists and political pundits.
Because of the relative prosperity towards the end of the forties, and in the fifties, these ideas flourished – successfully destroying among the masses of the workers the first signs of class consciousness which they had acquired during the period of the great organizing struggles before the war. In Quebec, the Catholic Church, with its thousands of priests and nuns, was responsible for organizing this huge lie, this enormous slander against everything progressive in the world from socialism to the French Revolution to the works of Picasso . . .
American imperialism appointed itself the policeman of the whole world. In western Europe, they brought about the fall of coalition governments such as those of Italy and France. In West Germany they embarked on campaigns of provocation against the masses and against the eastern part of the country, which was occupied by Soviet troops. In Greece, they financed and armed reactionaries who started the civil war in 1948, to crush insurrections led by the communists.[40] As for the socialist countries, against these they constantly organized sabotage and espionage operations. In Asia and Africa, the Americans took the place of the French and British colonialists. From the beginning of the fifties, they heavily supported the French in Indochina and the British in their war against the partisans in Malaysia. The Americans themselves directly crushed the insurrection of the peoples’ liberation army in the Philippines. Early in 1950, they invaded people’s Korea and occupied the south of the country. The pillage and oppression of nations and countries took place throughout the world. But ”where there is oppression, so is there resistance”. The peoples of the world organized themselves and took up arms against imperialism. Korea and Vietnam, strengthened by the final liberation of China in 1949 and of many African countries, gained their liberty and joined the camp of countries struggling for socialist construction.
But American imperialism remained strong. On “its” continent, it installed puppet regimes in Latin America. In the United States itself, repression caused the decline of membership in the Communist Party from 80,000 to 6,000 in a few years. Union militants were persecuted. In the arts, literature and the cinema, there was a massive witch-hunt. McCarthy and his army of attorneys and cops pursued ”reds” the way an exorcist pursues the devil. Hoover and the fascists of the FBI became national heroes. A scientist and his wife were arrested and sent to the electric chair (the Rosenberg trial).[41] The big bourgeoisie and its press gloated over their triumph. Their victory will not last long.
Faced with these difficult conditions, the Communist Party was unable to rebuild. Isolated from the trade union movement, isolated from the masses, and re-grouped around a leadership that had never demonstrated any foresight or talent for strategy, the party fell apart.
At the time of the 5th congress of the Labour-Progressive Party in 1949, the contradictions all came out. A large part of the Quebec delegation, led by Henri Gagnon, criticized the party on two fronts. In regard to the national question, Gagnon and his supporters explained the absence of a communist force in Quebec – the Party had never had more than 500 members, the majority of whom were immigrants or English-speaking – by the presence of an incorrect line on the national question. Avoiding nationalist positions, the Quebec militants wanted to radically change the position of the Party. They did this by clearly putting forward the right to self-determination, by analysing the struggle as a national liberation struggle, and by making an effort to link the Party with Quebec nationalist forces. More importantly, in the second aspect of their criticism, they made the link between the absence of a correct position on the national question in Quebec and what they termed “economism” within the Party. The Party, they said, had concentrated solely on work within the union movement, on economic struggles. It never took up the political struggle, per se, leaving it to the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. This essentially correct criticism by the Quebec militants had major weaknesses: the lack of a plan for re-organization and a lack of concrete proposals. Much later, the majority of Quebecois militants left the Party or were expelled. A group formed around Henri Gagnon and constituted itself as the “Communist Party of French Canada”,[42] which only lasted for two years (1949-1951) and did nothing to build a revolutionary organization in Quebec. Gagnon and his supporters were eventually reinstated in the Party, only to immediately leave again. In the late fifties, they ended up taking the social democratic positions, which they still hold.
At the level of the party leadership, there was no new discussion on these positions. In refusing to see the problem[43] they were even less able to see new alternatives. The few militants who remained within the union movement dug in, and attempted to make those around them forget that they ever had revolutionary perspectives.
At the beginning of the fifties and afterwards, the activity of the Party was reduced to a strict minimum. Little by little, the Communist Party transformed itself into a sort of para-political organization, whose principal preoccupation was the defense of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. Working within the framework of the international campaign of the World Peace Council, the Party started petitions for the unconditional prohibition of nuclear arms. In 1951, this took the form of a campaign for a peace pact among the five great powers. In 1959, it was a campaign against the re-armament plans of Germany. Each year brought a new campaign which corresponded to the tactical needs of Soviet foreign policy. This defence of Soviet interests was not incorrect in itself, especially since the foreign policy developed by Stalin and Molotov was part of a revolutionary strategy aimed at isolating imperialism. However, it was a mistake to reduce the activity of an organization which was supposed to be the revolutionary party of the proletariat to the role of a friendship association with the USSR.
In 1956, two years after the death of Stalin, Khrushchev took over the CPSU and established a revisionist and counterrevolutionary leadership. The revisionist analysis is based on the following premises: socialism has definitely triumphed in the USSR; the class struggle is over; and the Soviet state has become the state of the whole people. On the international level, socialism has entered into a period of peaceful competition with capitalism, which primarily takes the form of competition between the two super-powers, the USA and the USSR. This struggle is now the principal struggle, the driving force of history, the concretization of a higher stage of class struggle in the world. Consequently, it is possible to avoid war with the capitalists, internationally as well as locally. Communist Parties must therefore attempt to take power by legal and peaceful means.
An analysis of revisionism in the world communist movement is not possible here.[44] However, it is possible to sketch an outline and to see the consequences of revisionism in regard to the Communist Party of Canada. As the result of the domination of revisionist ideas in the CPSU, the communist and progressive forces of the world were expected to engage in legal electoral work as the means to take power. Revolution was a thing of the past, and the character of class antagonism had taken on a new turn. As well as the class struggle in the capitalist countries, the national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America had to be subordinated to the great peaceful competition between the USSR and the USA. Communists who went against the reactionary line were labeled “war-mongers” and “ultra-leftists”.
At its 6th congress (1957), the LPP hastened to confirm these positions:
“. . . Modifying Lenin’s premise that war is inevitable as long as imperialism exists, our congress affirms that, in the present context of the balance of political forties, war is not inevitable.”
This basic analysis led the Party to outline its strategy thus:
“The changes which mean that it is possible to avoid an atomic war, also create the possibility for the working class in the capitalist countries to unite the great majority of people under its leadership. At the present time, a stable parliamentary majority elected by a revolutionary mass movement of working people can prepare the conditions for the transformation of parliament into a true instrument of popular will, and undertake fundamental political and economic changes . . .”[45]
Thus, in this analysis, the objective becomes a “stable parliamentary majority”, with the revolutionary movement as the “pressure group” behind the “people’s parliament”. The principal struggle becomes the ”struggle for peace in the world”, which is to say the defence of the USSR against American attack. Thus, bourgeois politicians who claim to struggle for peace are politicians of the people, who must be defended. For this reason, the American communists supported – as the roles changed over the years – first Kennedy and then Johnson (against Goldwater) – these butchers of the Indochinese and Cuban people – because they were “more in favour of peace”. In 1963, Canadian Communists congratulated themselves for having worked to keep the Liberal government from obtaining an absolute majority, allowing the Conservatives (a great progressive force for peace in the world) to win more seats. Ridiculous and tragic at the same time, the consequences of this counter-revolutionary political line was a situation where the Party was defending positions that were more and more scorned by revolutionaries in the world.
At the beginning of the sixties, Albania and China openly responded to the attacks of the Soviet Union, which was quickly heading towards the total restoration of capitalism. The Chinese and Albanian comrades completely demolished the theses of the revisionists. The development of the world revolution gave them the concrete basis to affirm that “the principal trend in the world is revolution”, and not the peaceful competition between the superpowers. At the beginning of the sixties, national liberation movements leaped into action once again with the formation of the NLF in South Vietnam, the launching of the guerilla movements in Laos, Burma, Thailand, and the victories of the Cuban and Algerian people. Revolutionary movements were organized in Latin America outside of and against the revisionist parties, who were faithful to the “peaceful road” of the counter-revolutionaries of the CPSU. The flames of revolution soon flickered in the citadels of capitalism: in France, Italy and among American blacks. . . . ’Defending peace’, the Soviet revisionists invaded Czechoslovakia, and amassed over a million soldiers on the borders of China.
[23] The tactic of a united front against fascism and imperialism was the model for the united anti-Japanese front in China and later, for the anti-imperialist struggles of the Korean and Indochinese peoples.
[24] It is true that, at this moment, certain nationalist forces in Quebec were leaning strongly towards fascism, particularly the movements around Canon, Groulx, and Henri Bourassa. However, a faction of these nationalist tendencies also expressed themselves in anti-fascist and anti-imperialist terms. These formally organized tendencies collaborated with the Communist Party from 1939 to 1941.
[25] For example, the struggles against British and American imperialism in Argentina led by Juan Peron, in order to aid Hitler.
[26] See Le mouvement ouvrier americain, MOBILIZATION 1974, Vol. 3 no.’s 4 and 5.
[27] See ON STRIKE, op cit.
[28] The building of the UAW s the subject of an incredible story by W. Mortimer, a communist militant and founder of the union in ORGANIZE!, available from Librairie Progressiste, 1867 Amherst, Montreal.
[29] A matter of 150,000 workers.
[30] Refer to a brochure of the Comite d’amitie Hispano-Quebecois. CP. 1491, Station “A”, Montreal. According to the article by Mao, Comrade Bethune’s spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his boundless sense of responsibility in his work and his boundless warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people. Every communist must learn from him. In Memory of Norman Bethune, 1939.
[31] This pact – hatched by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Great Britain, Chamberlain – left Hitler a free hand in the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Austria. The possibility of an agreement to invade the USSR was hidden behind the pact as well.
[32] It is an irony of history that it was Foster who delivered these words, since he would be the one to lead the struggle against Browder’s revisionism in the American CP during the fifties.
[33] To found the Canadian Congress of Labour. The CCL merged in turn with the Trades and Labour Council of Canada to found the present federation. At the time of this merger, the CCL had 330,000 members and the TLC had 14,000.
[34] The LPP even helped in some places to elect Liberal and NDP MPs.
[35] See the series of articles that appeared during the summer of 1974 in REVOLUTION, jounrnal of the American Marxist-Leninist organization, the REVOLUTIONARY UNION.
[36] It should be remarked that this demand was at the core of the long strike at United Aircraft led by the UAW.
[37] See Charles Lipton, THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN CANADA, 1967.
[38] Ibid.
[39] In Quebec, the UE recently led the Westinghouse strike at St-Jean. The UE is also heavily involved in an inter-union common front in the St-Jean region.
[40] See THE KAPETANIOS on the civil war in Greece.
[41] This employee of the American Atomic Energy Research Commission was the victim of a frame-up instigated by the FBI to discredit the Communist Party, of which he was a member. Despite a world-wide campaign against his conviction, he was executed, along with his wife, in 1951.
[42] We will present a study of this experience in following issues.
[43] In an official publication in 1954, the LPP defined its position on Quebec in the following way. “We do not advocate seccession. In our eyes, it is against the interests of the people. But we do offer the French-Canadian people a constitution which would assure them the right to decide their own destiny without conditions...The LPP believes that it is necessary to draw up a new Canadian constitution, which would recognize the bi-national character of the Canadian state, and sanctify the principle of equality between the two nations that make up Canada.”
[44] We refer the reader to the Chinese articles in THE ORIGINS OF THE SPLIT AND CONCERNING THE OPEN LETTER OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU.
[45] In KEYNOTE SPEECH TO THE 6TH CONVENTION OF THE LABOUR PROGRESSIVE PARTY 1957.