First Published: People’s Canada Daily News, Vol 2, No. 8, November 2, 1972
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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A new storm against the Canadian monopoly capitalist class is now developing across Canada and Quebec. The masses of the working people are seeing through the treacheries of the monopoly capitalist class. History is moving with big strides.
An event of great historic significance took place this October. For the first time the working people presented fifty-two candidates to oppose the 1065 candidates a the monopoly capitalist class. Class struggle has emerged out of the politics of class collaboration pursued by the revisionists of the new type (The Revisionist Party of Canada treacherously calling itself “Communist”) and of the old type (The New Democratic Party treacherously calling itself “Socialist”). There is class struggle raging in Canada and Quebec today. It is an objective fact and no opportunist intellectual, revisionist dog or imperialist lackey is able to hide it that Canada and Quebec have reached the stage of history where objective and conscious class struggle is the order of the day.
In this class struggle we have the tired old parties of the capitalist class: the traditional Liberals and Conservatives, both loyal servants of the English colonial empire and obedient lackies of the U.S. Imperialists; the traditional alternatives to communism: the Social Credit and the NDP – two parties which came out of the material conditions of the 1930s when revisionism betrayed the working people and refused to lead them to victory over capitalism. Then there is the Revisionist Party, the so-called “Communist” Party of Canada, a party of the most shameless renegades to Marxism-Leninism. Together they are all scrambling for 264 seats in Parliament.
Leading the glorious class struggle against the capitalist parties are the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and its sister Party, the Communist Party of Quebec (Marxist-Leninist). Close supporters and comrades in arms are the comrades of the Partisan Organisation (Vancouver). There are also groups and individuals who provide CPC(ML) with their support. VIGOROUS CLASS STRUGGLE IS ON! IT IS AN EXCELLENT BEGINNING FOR REVOLUTION!
The Communist Party of Canada(Marxist-Leninist) nominated thirty-five candidates to represent its political line in the federal elections. The Communist Party of Quebec (Marxist-Leninist) nominated sixteen candidates to represent its political line and the Partisan Organisation (Vancouver) nominated one candidate to represent their political line. Altogether, fifty-two candidates went to the working people under the slogan: ORGANISE THE WORKING CLASS AS THE RULING CLASS OF CANADA AND QUEBEC! OVERTHROW THE MONOPOLY CAPITALIST CLASS AS THE RULING CLASS!
This has created an entirely new situation in Canada and Quebec. For the first time there have emerged political organisations of the proletariat whose main aim is to overthrow the capitalist system.
As usual, the capitalists fielded many candidates. These candidates are fighting the election under various labels to fool the people. In essence they are all the same. They are defenders of the capitalist system and will attempt to keep it by the force of arms. There is the Liberal Party of Pierre Elliot Trudeau which is running under the slogan, “THE LAND IS STRONG”. There is the Progressive Conservative Party of Robert Stanfield which is running under the slogan “A CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT CAN DO BETTER”. There is the New Democratic Party of David Lewis which is running under the slogan “ELECT MORE NEW DEMOCRATS”. There is the Social Credit Party running under the slogan “SOCIAL CREDIT IS THE ONLY ANSWER”. There is the Revisionist Party of Canada of William Kashtan, running under the slogan of “ELECT A PROGRESSIVE BLOCK OF COMMUNISTS AND NDP’ERS”. There are also smaller parties like the Western Party and some chance individuals who are running on other inane issues. All these hordes of 1065 candidates stand for the preservation of the capitalist system.
The political platform of the proletariat has been presented to the working people by our Party in as clear a form as possible. Masses of working people have been aroused to discuss it. The fifty-two candidates, fighting under most difficult conditions, have persisted in going to the masses and presenting their programme.
The political platform of the capitalists has been presented by their parties in as confused and treacherous a manner as possible so the people won’t grasp what they stand for. All the ’ capitalist parties have been pledging that they will do something about inflation, unemployment, the rising cost of living and dwindling wages. They have also pledged action on foreign domination of Canada. All these pledges are deceptions – instead of providing solutions the capitalist parties will further aggravate these problems. The capitalist parties are the cause of the problems and the masses are becoming conscious that they cannot expect any CURE FROM THE GODS OF PLAGUE.
The 1972 federal election brought the class struggle in Canada and Quebec to the objective and scientific level among the masses. This has never happened before. No political party ever spoke before in the name of the working class and called for the overthrow of the monopoly capitalist class as the ruling class. No political party ever questioned the very existence of the British North America Act and all the legislation stemming there from. No political party ever before presented the people of Canada and Quebec with a genuine solution to the domination of the country by the foreign imperialists. Only the political parties of the proletariat have brought about this new situation, and this new situation is bound to advance in the months and the years to come.
The capitalist press and news media showed their utter contempt for our parties and our Party programme, They hated us. They tried their best to conceal our political programme and to confuse our Party with the revisionist party, treacherously calling itself “Communist”. They had great difficulty in determining our political programme, the names of our candidates and our Party and they did everything to hide the fact that we were fighting in the elections. In the Toronto area, the mouth pieces of the capitalist ruling class, the TORONTO STAR and the GLOBE AND MAIL did not even mention the names of the candidates most of the time their Party affiliations. Television stations singularly avoided our candidates. CTV Channel 9 ran a programme on October 25, on women candidates and our candidate was excluded from the programme.
While the news media had one attitude towards us, they had entirely the opposite attitude towards their own parties. Trudeau, Stanfield, Lewis, Caouette and Kashtan were followed all across Canada and Quebec and extensive news reporting was given to them in order to mystify the issues and popularise these so-called personalities. The main aim of this propaganda is to say that there is NO WAY OUT of the capitalist system and that the masses should TAKE IT OR LEAVE THE COUNTRY and that the OVERTHROW OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS NOT THE REAL ALTERNATIVE. Those news media people have become so reactionary, backward and committed to the capitalist class that they take pride in concocting lies about the capitalist system and attempting to prettify it as the “best in the world”, etc. At the same time they malign our Party and the communist system and deliberately compare it with the social imperialist system of the Soviet Union.
When the news media and the propaganda organs do not have the desired effect, the capitalist class brings their armed forces into the struggle and uses it against the people. Since the elections were declared there have been over forty arrests of our comrades in various cities in Canada and Quebec. Three of our candidates have been locked behind bars.
The RCMP joined the elections on October 19, 1972, and deliberately tried to suggest that we were running in the elections incognito and that an “RCMP informant” had some secret information which he was divulging to the masses.
The behaviour of the news media and the RCMP during the elections is a despicable self-exposure of the monopoly capitalist class and shows how much they conspire against the people. It also exposes the fraud of “bourgeois democracy” that people have a real “choice” and that everyone has the right to participate in the elections and present his views. The federal elections have clearly shown that the monopoly capitalist class holds elections purely to ask the people which set of oppressors they want to rule next. All the capitalist candidates prepare public opinion against the working class and immigrants and their fighting with one another is merely to sort out contradictions in their own camp. They use money and guns to achieve their aims.
The number of candidates which the proletarian parties nominated in the elections shows the growing unity of the proletarian forces. As well as CPC(ML)-CPQ(ML) and the Partisan Organisation (Vancouver) closely uniting and assisting each other In the elections, other individuals and groups also decided to put their differences in a secondary position and assist the proletarian candidates. The New Morning Collective (Halifax) is one example of groups and individuals assisting in the-elections and interested in forging unity. Apart from the real criminal and hardened agents of the capitalists, the revisionists and the trotskyites, everyone else has taken up the road of opposing capitalism and its parties. There are organisations of “super-revolutionaries” which are bending backwards to assist the capitalist parties and their system but unity and solidarity is the developing trend in the proletarian camp.
The elections have further clarified who is on the side of the capitalists. The revisionist “Communist” Party of Canada has given an open call to vote for the New Democratic Party, a capitalist party, the Trotskyite League for Socialist Action has also given a call to vote for the New Democratic Party, The Canadian Liberation Movement has issued its diversionary 85% quota campaign for Canadian professors, a capitalist issue. The “Canadian” Party of Labour, an imperialist agency, has also called upon the workers to take the side of the capitalists by telling them not to participate in the political affairs of the country by opposing the monopoly capitalist system. Instead they shouted that JOBS IS THE ISSUE, a rotting plank from the platforms of the Conservative and Revisionist parties. The Left-sloganeering from of Khruschevite revisionism, a hodge-podge collection of various communalist and bourgeois intellectualist elements, has dished out their counter-revolutionary propaganda that TO FIGHT ELECTIONS IS TO BECOME REVISIONIST in order to divert the people from fighting the monopoly capitalist class.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), the Communist Party of Quebec (Marxist-Leninist) and the Partisan Organisation (Vancouver), have gained rich experience in fighting elections. They have addressed thousands of people across Canada. Candidates were running in Vancouver (B.C.), Edmonton (Alberta), Regina and Saskatoon (Saskatchewan), Winnipeg (Manitoba) Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa (Ontario), Halifax (Nova Scotia); in Montreal, Ste-Hyacinthe, Quebec City and St-Jean (Quebec). To our estimation we have distributed over one million pieces of revolutionary propaganda across Canada and Quebec. We have attended over two hundred all-candidates meetings. Comrade Bains addressed over 1000 people in Vancouver on his election visit there (over 350 in one rally alone) and there have been innumerable mass democracy meetings. It is because of this vigorous activity that the holy alliance of the “left” opposes us and the capitalist parties were reduced to talking gibberish with their candidates showing signs of extreme nervousness and fatigue.
We say: IT WAS CORRECT FOR OUR PARTY TO WAGE CLASS STRUGGLE AND WE SHOULD DEEPEN AND BROADEN THIS STRUGGLE IN THE COMING MONTHS AND YEARS.
There are certain capitalist rogues who are already chiding us: WHERE ARE YOUR WORKING MASSES? WHERE IS THEIR SUPPORT? These charlatans will increase their feeble tune after the election. What should we tell them? Should we be embarrassed by these reactionaries and submit to their abuse and decide that the working class is not revolutionary at all and that the capitalist class has a monopoly on everything? We will do no such thing. We will let these backward elements suffer from their own delusion. As far as we are concerned, we have already won a great victory. We have nominated 52 candidates as representatives of the working class. The capitalists thought, in their ill-conceived arrogance, that this could not be accomplished. Our victory is that we have shown the working class that we are capable of representing their basic interests. The monopoly of the capitalists over politics in Canada and Quebec is broken. The monopoly of the revisionists and the reformists is also broken. Our party has advanced to the scale of vigorously opposing the capitalist political line on many fronts. As far as the support of the working people is concerned, we already have tremendous support. Look at the facts: We raised over $20.000 from our own comrades and close supporters to run in the elections. The majority of our candidates are actual workers. Capitalists, in order to keep their facade of democracy will have to call elections within the next four years. By that time we will nominate candidates in all ridings in big, medium-sized and small cities and we will certainly fight to win. We will use this period to give the capitalists tit-for-tat struggle on several fronts.
Up until now, the capitalists have had a fine time concocting lies against the working class and deceiving the people. There was no revolutionary newspaper to oppose their reactionary propaganda. Starting from November 2, 1972, the Norman Bethune Institute has announced that it will produce a daily newspaper across Canada and Quebec. Alongside the struggle on the journalistic front, our Party has established close ties With the working people in several areas, especially in areas where U.S. Imperialist subsidiaries exist in large numbers. Our comrades and friends will be engaged in most of these places serving the working people there. Our communist women workers are also planning to smash the monopoly of the capitalist women over the women’s liberation movement. The work of the Provisional Committee of the Canadian People’s United Front Against U.S. Imperialism will also deepen and broaden. With all these developments we will show these capitalist rogues (some of whom even put on progressive airs) which side the working class will take. Capitalist propagandists are always eager to assess the revolutionary force at its beginning and at times of low ebb; They do so for the purpose of deceiving themselves about the developments taking place in society. They really do not want to leave the scene of history without a fierce struggle for they have tasted political power for a long time and their appetite for autocratic rule and dictatorship has increased beyond their control. They have begun to believe in the DIVINE RIGHT OF THE CAPITALISTS TO RULE.
During this election campaign we have learned many lessons, some of them are enumerated below:
1) All the capitalist parties are advocating further dependence on foreign investments. They oppose revolutionary self-reliance. With the developing economic crisis the working people of this country will be saddled with the increasing economic burden which U.S. Imperialism is turning over to other countries, Just examine the solutions: The Liberal Party will maintain the status quo in relation to the U.S. imperialists. They will import more U. S. monopoly capital and will continue selling out resources. The Progressive Conservatives will increase U.S. imperialist investment by their emphasis on building secondary industries in Canada and Quebec and tying these to U.S. imperialist manufacturers. They are against curbs on any U.S. imperialist enterprises. They are advocating developing so-called Canadian enterprises and fattening them up for takeover. This is the some policy which the Liberals advocated – the Conservatives pledge that they will do better. They will establish wage and price controls for the purposes of eliminating small enterprises and further exploiting labour and helping big monopoly enterprises. The New Democratic Party’s economic policy is no different from the Liberals and Conservatives and the same is true of the Social Credit Party and the Revisionist Party. Nationalization slogans given by the Revisionists and the NDP and the clap-trap about “corporate welfare bums” are merely a: smokescreen to make working class pay for those enterprises which are no longer profitable to private capital but which must continue to provide services to the monopoly capitalists at a cheaper rate (e.g. the proposed nationalization of BC Telephone of the NDP and all the nationalizations of the British Labour Party which were to consolidate the hold of the monopoly capitalists over the working people and to streamline the capitalist system). All of these parties, apart from basing themselves on foreign monopoly capital, are totally committed to finance capital. They gave no programme of basing the economy on the real value of labour, land and the growth of the national productive forces and on the basis of generating an internal market plus international trade based on mutual benefit. They have pledged themselves to be anti-labour, anti-Canada and against the development of Canadian technique and know-how. Because they are building their economy on foreign monopoly capital and foreign dependency, they are presenting their programmes in terms of which international economic grouping they can ally with. From this we draw our first lesson: Only our Party is genuinely nationalist, genuinely pro-labour and genuinely internationalist.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls upon all our members and supporters to deepen and broaden the above general analysis and popularize it widely. It is extremely important that we prepare public opinion against, comprador economic theories.
2) The capitalist parties are the exploiters and oppressors of the Quebec people and the Native Indian people. None of the capitalist parties disagree on their general policy towards the British North America Act. The so-called “socialist” NDP and the revisionist party are more eager to defend this colonial Act than the traditional colonial parties themselves.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls upon all our members and supporters to deepen and broaden this general line against the BNA act and expose the nature of all the capitalist parties as being anti-Quebec and anti-Native people.
3) The capitalist parties are the strongest defenders of the U.S.imperialist policies of war and aggression. None of these parties, including the Revisionist Party has come forward consistently to oppose wars of aggression by imperialism and social-imperialism. Liberals and Conservatives, NDP and Socreds, they all sympathize, support, finance and provide manpower to prop up the U.S imperialist puppet state of Israel which is based on racism and whose leaders are stubborn anti-semites (all Arab people are semitic people). These parties have not yet denounced the U.S. imperialists for their crimes against humanity. The Revisionist Party, although they oppose U,S imperialism in words and even call for, from time to time, PEACE ON EARTH, supported the Soviet social-imperialist invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Indian reactionary invasion of Pakistan. Their anti-imperialist facade is daily being exposed. The capitalist parties, including the revisionists, fully support the superpower politics of the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists and their world-wide contention and collusion. Each of these parties supports one superpower or the other.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls upon all its members and supporters to popularise this basic analysis and mobilise the masses against the superpowers and their politics.
4) Throughout the elections we found that the masses of working people are extremely interested in engaging in discussions and are keen on clarifying ideas. They are becoming increasingly clear that the capitalist parties appear only during the elections and then disappear.
The Communist Party of Canada(Marxist-Leninist) calls upon all candidates who fought the elections to establish permanent committees in their areas and publish newsletters from time to time to clarify views, develop discussion groups and support the struggles of the working people on a day-to-day basis there.
5) The working people want to oppose the judiciary system. They are becoming conscious of the class nature of the state and they are asking for assistance in carrying out day-to-day struggles against the judiciary system. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)calls upon all its members and supporters to pay close attention to this problem and strive to integrate with the working people, especially in their struggles at the place of work, and to show how the judiciary system is used-to suppress them and increase their exploitation and how to develop the fight against it.
6) Immigrant workers, brought to Canada to be exploited for increased profits of the monopoly capitalists are increasingly hostile to the policies of racial discrimination and political repression of the Immigration Department. The Department disenfranchises progressive immigrants and prevents their full participation in the political affairs of the country, while at the same time denials of citizenship to immigrants who support CPC(ML) are increasingly frequent. Lucio Appolloni, the Liberal candidate in York South riding in Toronto came to Canada in 1965 and was awarded his citizenship, while Comrade Hardial Bains, the leader of our Party, came to Canada as a landed immigrant on November 30, 1959, and has been officially denied citizenship because of his political beliefs.
These policies are aimed especially against immigrant workers from Asia, Africa and Latin America and against unskilled working people from certain areas of Western Europe such as Italy, Portugal and Greece.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist} calls upon all of its members and supporters to pay special attention to the problems of the immigrant workers and provide them with every assistance possible. The Party calls upon all to engage in vigorous struggle against the racist and anti-communist policies of the Immigration Department, and engage in preparing large scale public opinion in support of the just struggles of the immigrant workers and national minority people.
7) The working people are extremely interested in learning about and opposing land speculation, especially in the big cities. Working people live in bad housing quarters and are the worst affected by pollution. They are also the victims of slum landlords and loan sharks. On this front also, the Communist Party of Canada(Marxist-Leninist) calls upon all of its members and supporters to pay close attention and develop the work on a long range basis.
8) The working people are extremely hostile to the slanders of the monopoly capitalists, especially on the front of “welfare”. While they are angry and will oppose the capitalists, they are confused about the “welfare” system and, in a way, consider it a “humanitarian” act on the part of the capitalists. Our members and supporters should pay immediate attention to clarifying the “welfare” system and increasing the level of understanding of the working people. There arc several other economic questions working people want to know about – the origin of and the solution for inflation, unemployment and the rising cost of living. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls upon all of its members and supporters to pay special attention to clarifying these basic questions among the working people.
9) The working people do not yet see that in order to have economic power and a society based on the liberation of labour and its dictatorship over capital, it is necessary to seize political power. In the seizure of political power they are also confused about the question of “violence”. The establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the opposition to the violence of the bourgeois dictatorship must be explained and discussed in great detail all the time.
In Canada, the bourgeoisie is attempting to equate the just resistance of the people with individual terrorism and then is trying to promote itself as an international champion of the “fight against terrorism”.
In this way, knowing full well that the people do not like terrorism, they are attempting to hide the fact that the capitalist system is the most violent system and the capitalist class the most violent class.
In Canada and Quebec the bourgeoisie established itself through violence and since that time has never ceased using violence against the Quebec people, the Native Indian people and the working people.
During the election, when confronted with the facts on political deportations and the violence of the capitalist class, the capitalist politicians first tried to suppress the issue with bourgeois legality, (Sharp held that Indian immigrants were being deported because they “entered the country illegally”) and then, when further confronted, they protected this legality by openly advocating force (Liberal Charles Caccia, Davenport, stated that CPC(ML) supporters were justly deported because they “violated the Immigration Act” and were a “threat to Canada’s security”.)
While CPC(ML) has never supported terrorism it will definitely retaliate against any attack made against the Party’s members and supporters. This is not terrorism. We will never be cowed down by the violent attacks and slanders of the police. The monopoly capitalist class, not the oppressed people, decides whether we will have a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism or a violent one.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on all of its members and supporters to clarify these issues among the masses and to continue the work against the RCMP and all the other violent institutions of the bourgeois state machine.
10) The capitalist parties, especially the revisionists, have created confusion about the Party’s policies towards the American people and the US imperialists. They have been doing counter-revolutionary propaganda that CPC(ML) is “preparing for an invasion of the U.S.”. This is the lowest level to which these boot-lickers of imperialism and social-imperialism can go” We must explain to the people that asking a thief to leave the house is not a declaration of war on the house of the thief but a declaration of war against thievery. It is just to oppose the thievery of the imperialists and social-imperialists. It is also just to oppose the thievery of the enemy if he invades by force of arms, just like it is just for the Vietnamese people to end armed aggression by the U.S. with the force of their own arms.
Lastly, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls upon all our members and supporters to NEVER FORGET CLASS STRUGGLE INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE PARTY. OPPOSE CLASS COLLABORATION OUTSIDE AS WELL AS INSIDE.
To win victory over the monopoly capitalist class and the foreign imperialists, it is most urgent to: 1. Strengthen Party leadership on all levels of work, 2. Arouse the masses in support of the Party’s programme. 3. Sympathise with and support the thirteen revolutionary movements. 4. Build unity among all Marxist-Leninist groups and individuals. 5. Oppose both reformism and terrorism, and 6: Oppose capitualation to the state machine and march gloriously along the path to victory!