First Published: Canadian Revolution No. 5, April/May 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.
Dear Comrades:
In the Letters section of the last issue we suggested that the CR should change its basis of unity and we promised to respond to some criticisms made of us in the article Why Party Building is the Principal Task (CR Vol. I, No. I, p. 46-49).
Regarding the change in the basis of unity of CR, we said that the basis of CR should include a plan which would “outline the basis of the Marxist-Leninist movement, the issues of the two-line struggle, and the steps to resolve it”. We have since defined the two-line struggle more specifically; i.e. the struggle over the ideological, political, and organizational line of the Marxist-Leninist organization that must be founded to lead the struggle for the Party. This is the principal contradiction in the Marxist-Leninist movement. (In our previous letter we spoke vaguely of the principal contradiction as if it involved all the issues of the present debate.) So we can now say that the CR should have in its basis of unity a plan which would outline the basis of the Marxist-Leninist movement, the basis required to found the Marxist-Leninist organization, and the method to resolve the principal contradiction with the founding of the Marxist-Leninist organization.
The method to resolve the principal contradiction is first of all to exclude from the struggle those positions which objectively are not Marxist-Leninist. Secondly, start from the agreement on the Marxist-Leninist basis and proceed to focus the struggle on the most important issues on which the Marxist-Leninist organization must agree (the method of unity, criticism and self-criticism, unity). The two most important issues are the line of the organization on party-building and its political line on the world and on Canada.
We believe that, if the Marxist-Leninist movement and the CR in particular adopts this plan and method, it will clarify and sharpen the struggle – moving us a step closer to the founding of the Marxist-Leninist organization of struggle for the party.
The CR has called, in its fourth issue, for a debate on its basis and direction. We think this debate should be developed. We have a position on the Marxist-Leninist line which defines the basis of the Marxist-Leninist movement and on the issues which must be solved to have the necessary basis to found the organization; however we did not submit it to this issue because we think the first point to resolve is whether the CR should change its basis. We do not believe that the position is essential, at this time, to promote that struggle. (It is available, from us, either in our Response to CCL (ML) or on its own.)
Regarding our response to the article Why Party Building is the Principal Task – we think that it distorted the position we carried in late ’74 and early ’75. However, we have decided that the clarification of these points is not relevant to the debate since we do not hold the same position now. Trying to criticize some points of that article without criticizing the general line would not advance the struggle and would probably be confusing.
Yours in struggle,
Toronto Marxist-Leninist Collective (TMLC)
P.O. Box 502, Station C, Toronto
* * *
Comrades:
Along with other Quebec Marxist-Leninist groups, the Groupe pour la Revolution Proletarienne (G.R.P.: Group for the Proletarian Revolution) is happy to salute the publication of Canadian Revolution. Your journal represents a step forward toward the creation of a genuine Canadian revolutionary workers’ party. In effect, it allows Marxist-Leninists to come to understand each other and provides them with an important forum for debate on all questions which must be clarified so that the revolution can seize victory.
As you requested in issue no. 1, we are putting forward Contribution a la creation du parti ouvrier revolutionnaire (Contribution to the creation of a revolutionary workers’ party). This document published at the beginning of January, 1976 is the expression of our political line. In the view of G.R.P. Canada is presently at the stage of socialist revolution. Within this, the Canadian proletariat must have as its strategic objective the overthrow of the Canadian bourgeois state, a state dominated by the Canadian imperialist bourgeoisie, and the institution of the dictatorship of the proletariat. For Canadian Marxist-Leninists, they must have as their tactical objective the creation of a revolutionary workers’ party and take up the central task at the present time of the fusion of Marxism-Leninism with the workers’ movement.
We have published Contribution a la creation du parti ouvrier revolutionnaire with the aim of advancing the debate on the strategic and tactical orientation of the proletarian revolution in Canada, and thus contributing to the political and then organizational unification of Canadian Marxist-Leninists. For the G.R.P., the development of political line and the unity of Marxist-Leninists are in fact the two conditions whose realization are necessary in order to advance to the creation of a party.
Armed with a clear expression of its political line, the G.R.P. intends, in the coming weeks and months ahead, to engage in the struggle for unity with other Marxist-Leninist groups in Quebec and Canada. Being itself the product of the fusion, a year and a half ago, of two political groups, Strappe and Virage, the G.R.P. is confident of results from this struggle for unity.
Lacking the means and intervening only in the francophone milieu for the moment, we cannot unfortunately put forward an English edition of this text. In spite of that we hope that this first effort will be the point of departure for a fruitful collaboration between us.
Long live the proletarian revolution! Build the unification of communists!
Groupe pour la Revolution Proletarienne
P.S. All groups or individuals wishing to obtain Contribution a la creation du parti ouvrier revolutionnaire or to correspond with the G.R.P. can do so by writing the following address:
G.R.P.
CP. 427
Station Beaubien
Montreal, Quebec