Up to recently, the group Mobilisation/Librairie Progressiste had been the main upholder of the “theory” of “mass political organizations”, inspired by Lotta Continua a neo-trotskyst organization, a theory that this group has begun applying by “implanting” itself in many mass organizations involved in the defense of the democratic rights of certain unfavoured strata. Moreover, at the time of the struggle of the M.R.E.Q. against the creation of the A.N.E.Q., it appeared to anyone that this same group was supporting instead of the so-called corporatist A.N.E.Q., the creation of students’ “mass political organizations” of which the program would precisely have been that of the M.R.E.Q.’s, that is the support of workers’ struggles, the support of anti-imperialist struggles and the struggle against the capitalist school. Finally, in its most recent stands on the C.S.L.O., the C.O.R., puts forward the transformation of the local students’ Support Committees into such “mass political organizations” with the M.R.E.Q.’s platform.
These are sufficient facts to conclude that the theory of “intermediate organizations” is well on the way to finding many supporters within the Marxist-Leninist movement. And we can say that it has just received a kind of blessing with the publishing, last June, of the C.M.O.’s pamphlet De Quelques Questions Brulantes... We can speak indeed of a blessing of the “theory” of the “intermediate organizations” since the C.M.O. presents this “organizational principle” as being applicable everywhere, among the workers strata, (e.g. the students).
With the numerous proposals all aiming at the creation of “intermediate organizations” or “mass political organizations” of which the C.S.L.O. constitutes one form, the others being factory committees, women’s mass organizations, students’ organizations for support of the struggles of the proletariat, etc,, we find ourselves facing today the same contradiction in the Marxist-Leninist movement as three years ago, in face of EN LUTTE!’s proposals to have agitation and propaganda as the principal preoccupations of communists, the “Secteur Travail” (Labour Section) of the Comite d’Action Politique St-Jacques (C.A.P.)(Political Action Committee) opposed the necessity of organization. To which EN LUTTE!, which called itself Equipe du Journal at the time, replied in the Document de Presentation du “Projet Journal” (Presentation document of a proposal for a journal) in February 1973; as follows:
Some militants have considered, in the course of the present debate, the question of ideological struggle and of the development of the organizational bases (implantation and consolidation) as two trends if not antagonist at least opposed and divergent. Others (and/or the same) considered it as successive stages, claiming that we were either at the “stage” of ideological struggle, or at the stage of implantation.
This is without recognizing the dialectic unity of these two aspects and the necessity of their simultaneous and reciprocal development.
At each historical stage of the process of formation of a revolutionary party, the struggles which are carried out must allow the development of the movement on all fronts.
In the same manner, at each historical stage of the process there is one principal aspect and one secondary aspect.
In the present situation, ideological struggle is, in many ways, a priority. For example, to participate in a union struggle in such a way as to clarify the class interests that are at stake is a way to wage the ideological struggle; a factory or local newspaper is another; research on social classes, on imperialism, on regional economy, etc., and the diffusion of the findings is also part of ideological struggle; political education in workers’ groups is again one form of ideological struggle. (See Document... pp.4-5)
In large measure, the present debate between the supporters of “intermediate organizations” and those of the Marxist-Leninist organization and open communist work among the workers is the repetition or the pursuit under a new form, of the debate of three years ago between the supporters of organization, (of the creation of “workers committees”, of “implantation”, i.e., mainly the Secteur Travail of the C.A.P. St-Jacques) on the one hand, and the supporters of the spreading of Marxism-Leninism principally by means of propaganda, in order to reach the advanced workers, on the other hand. Now the C.M.O. qualifies these divergences as “false debates between the “implantationists” and the “propagandists”. There are false debates that are hard to kill. And for a very good reason: with a new vocabulary, seemingly inspired at the same time by the journal Mobilisation and by geology, or maybe botany (as the organizations include many categories and different levels: vanguard (in the plural), mass and intermediate; large or restricted; of an inferior or a superior level), the C.M.O. assumes the same positions as the Secteur Travail three years ago.
Besides, opportunism, more particularly economism, was not born in 1972 along with the Secteur Travail. It was one of the main deviations in the Russian social-democrat (communist) movement at the beginning of the century. We see it manifesting itself again today in France and in the United States where “intermediate organizations” and the “rank and file committees” find many supporters. This trend claims that, to bring about the link with the workers’ movement, communists should not only “implant themselves” in factories (in the sense of sending intellectual militants there), but also build up several “intermediate organizations”, also called “mass political organizations”, of which the Italian neo-trotskyst organization Lotta Continua has been a great supporter well before Mobi1isation.
The C.S.L.O., by the way, presents all the characteristics of this type of organisation: built up and animated by Marxist-Leninists who comprise the majority of its membership, the C.S.L.O. has nevertheless a non-communist program or, as it is said in the C.S.L.O., puts forward a “minimal line”. In practice, the C.S.L.O. has a non-communist line following which its activities have nothing to do with the raising of the level of the workers’ political consciousness, a concept that we can incidentally find, under other forms, in the constitution of many of the most reactionary “intermediate national unions”. But the Marxist-Leninists of the C.S.L.O. prefer to call their anti-communist positions a “minimal line”!; Social-democracy (revisionism) has always been the main defense of the bourgeoisie against the rise of communism; we only have to think of the historical role of the N.P.D. and of its ancestor the C.C.F. party in our own country.
Today, as well as in the time of the Secteur Travail, the economist trend is based upon two main errors: first, a shameless distortion of the teaching of the international communist movement, Russian in particular, on the means for communists to win over to communism the advanced workers, through them, the working masses, to which is added a subjectivist, unilateral and condescending analysis of the Quebec and Canadian workers’ movement, second, a completely incorrect conception, not at all dialectic, of the link to the masses and of organizational work, particularly in their relation to communist agitation and propaganda.
First, let us look at the question of “advanced workers”. The C.M.O., for reasons that will become clear later on, tries to demonstrate that the conditions prevailing in the Canadian and Quebec workers’ movement differ at least on one point from those that prevailed in Russia in 1899, that is that there was a strata of ”advanced workers” in Russia at that time and that there is none either in Canada or in Quebec today. To prove this, the C.M.O. has Lenin saying that at the end of the XIXth century there would have been in Russia a strata of “advanced workers”, “who were already socialist, those who led the workers’ circles, etc.” De Quelques Questions Brulantes..., pp.15-16).
But if we go directly to the text of Lenin used by the C.M.O., that is “A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social-democracy” (written in 1899), in Complete Works, volume 4, p.280 and following, we can see that Lenin describes what he means by “vanguard workers” or “a working class intelligensia”, not by relying on the situation in Russia in particular, but mainly on the “workers’ movement of all countries”, and the examples he then gives are French or German, Proudhon, Waillant, Weitling and Bebel. And he goes on: “Our Russian workers’ movement promises not to lag behind the European workers’ movement in this respect (...) an impassioned desire for knowledge and for socialism is growing among the workers...“. He then adds that these workers, despite difficult conditions, “possess so much character and will-power that they study, study, study, and turn themselves into conscious social-democrats”. He finally affirms that such ”a working-class intelligensia already exists in Russia, and we must make every effort to ensure that its ranks are regularly reinforced” (emphasis by EN LUTTE!). In short, Lenin doesn’t claim, as the C.M.O. implies, the existence of an important stratum of ”advanced workers” as defined by the C.M.O., that is to say already socialist workers leading the workers’ circles, but he speaks of promise, and hopes and the existence of “a working-class intelligensia” of which he does not state precisely the numerical importance.
It is completely incorrect to assume that there existed a social-democrat (communist) workers’ vanguard in Russia before 1900. Stalin is very clear on this question. In an article written in 1901, The Russian Social-democrat Party and its Immediate Tasks (in Complete Works, Volume 1, pp. 25 and following, French edition) Stalin writes that ”the Russian workers’ class consciousness was then (five years ago) very weak.”(p.28). And further on: “The mass of the Russian workers had not even the slightest idea of the need to change the existing regime, to eliminate private property, to organize a socialist regime” (p.29). Stalin then ends his paragraph with an affirmation that we will have to remember for the continuation of our argument: “And while a part of Russian social-democracy considered as its duty to introduce its socialist ideas into the workers’ movement, the other part, all devoted to economic struggle, the struggle for a partial improvement of the workers’ situation (...) was ready to totally forget its grand obligations, its grand ideals.” Nothing in Stalin’s works claims the existence among these working masses, which had no idea of the struggle for socialism, of a communist workers’ vanguard in Russia before 1900.
In an other article of the same year, Rapid survey of the differences in the Party, in Complete Works, Volume 1, pp.83 and following, (French edition), commenting on Lenin’s What’s to be done?, Stalin writes: “Some think that the St-Petersburg’s workers who were striking from 1890 to 1900 had a social-democrat consciousness; but this is again an error! This consciousness, they did not have...”(p.97). Can it be any clearer? And still Petersburg is the very city where Lenin and other Marxist intellectuals, who animated workers’ circles, had founded “the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class” in 1895. There is no doubt that Lenin had this situation in mind when he wrote “A Retrograde Trend Which has not prevented him from writing that there were advanced workers in Russia, of whom some were linking up with social-democracy (communism). Lenin did not confuse “advanced workers” with “social-democrat (communist) workers”: there is an important difference. On the contrary, Lenin was putting all his energies to fight the trend to reduce the activities of Russian social-democrats to the level of intermediate or backward strata of the proletariat. An ever present struggle which we see clearly today.’[1]
In conclusion, we can affirm that if, between 1894 and 1900, the overall situation in the whole of Russia was comparable to the one prevailing at St-Petersburg, the Russian workers’ movement was far from having an important stratum of “advanced workers” as conceived by the C.M.O., that is to say “already socialist workers who were leading workers’ circles and all the social-democrat activities” (De Quelques Questions Brulantes... p.15). The overall picture (and not isolated sentences) that we can find in Lenin, Stalin and Kroupskaia on this period from 1895 to 1900 bring us to the conclusion that a stratum of socialist workers did not exist in Russia at that moment, even though many workers aspired to socialism, even though many advanced workers recognized the leadership of social-democrats, the great majority of whom were intellectuals, even though, and this is very important, the process of merger of the social-democrat movement and of workers’ movement was well on the way. This is important, indeed, for Lenin, when speaking of the Russian workers’ movement, always takes this situation into account, that is to say of the existence in Russia, after 1895, of a social-democrat movement beginning to link itself with the workers’ movement.
Therefore, it would be useful to examine for a moment the very notion of advanced workers, if only to point out that there are always and everywhere “advanced workers”, (i.e. workers who are relatively more advanced than the masses) as well as there are always and everywhere backward workers, (i.e. workers relatively less advanced than the masses). Mao-Tse-Tung uses this concept as a general law which is applicable everywhere. For instance, in Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership (1943), he writes:
“The masses in any given place are generally composed of three parts: the relatively active, the intermediate and the relatively backward.” (in Selected Readings, p.288, emphasis by EN LUTTE!).
Lenin does the same when he writes: “The history of the working-class’ movement in all countries shows that the better-situated strata of the working-class respond to the ideas of socialism more rapidly and more easily. From among these come, in the main, the advanced workers, that every working class movement brings to the fore.” (A Retrograde trend..., p.288. emphasis by EN LUTTE!)
This brings us to the claim of the C.M.O.(unsubstantiated, and for a very good reason!) that there are in Canada and in Quebec only a few ”isolated advanced elements” in the working class. Let us let the C.M.O. speak for itself, whose eloquence on this matter is convincing, (emphasis by EN LUTTE!)
The militant workers have undeniably a certain leadership, but their weak ideological development results in them often tailing labour’s aristocracy and union bureaucrats, or losing patience with intermediate and backward workers, showing contempt and authoritarianism towards them. (De Quelques Questions Brulantes…, p. 17)
As for the advanced workers, their state of isolation and relative impotence often results in their pessimism and their developing of opportunist and revisionist deviations. (id. p.18)
They feel like crying... and begin bitterly regretting not having had the chance to live in Russia in the midst of the Tsarist regime: there the police knew how to strike hard, exile was at the hand for everyone, but at least the advanced workers were more advanced and more numerous than the Canadian ones; no doubt they were also less pessimistic and less condescending. But the C.M.O. should be well aware (especially those of its members who are “implanted” in factories) that “isolation” and “relative impotence” lead to “pessimism” and from there easily to opportunism and revisionism...
Actually, the proportion of advanced workers in our country is most probably higher than it was in Russia in 1895. The differences between the present Canadian workers’ movement and the Russian workers’ movement are certainly important and numerous. For instance, the Canadian proletariat is considerably more important numerically in relation to the whole of the labouring masses; the Canadian proletariat is not illiterate; a large part of the young workers has even reached a secondary level of education; there is in Canada a tradition of union organizing going back over three quarters of a century, and workers have led struggles, sometimes important ones, in most of the large enterprises in the country; for more than half a century now, there have been “a working-class intelligensia” who have not only studied their class situation but who often have been leaders in their own milieu, in unions and political parties, (including the Communist Party of Canada). Just in referring to the last two or three years, some workers’ struggles have revealed the existence of quite a number of workers aspiring to socialism, those who are respected leaders among their comrades and who show a great sense of organization and militancy; we only have to refer to the struggles of Firestone in Joliette, at Great Lake Carbon in Berthierville, at the M.U.C.T.C. in Montreal, at Quebec Telephone in Rimouski, and many others...
These workers are not communist! True. And that is the principal contradiction in the Canadian workers’ movement; the contradiction, upon the resolution of which depends the resolution of all others at this time, the resolution of which lies in the winning over these advanced workers to communism, in the triumph, among principally these workers, of proletarian ideology over the now dominant and even omni-present social-democrat reformism and petty-bourgeois nationalism. For it is certain that even if the Canadian and Quebec workers’ movement is more developed that the Russian movement of the 1890’s, there are extremely important negative characteristics, stemming principally from the bribing of the workers’ aristocracy and from the monopolizing by bourgeois ideology of the leadership of the union movement through the increasing interference of the State in union affairs (e.g. The Cliche Commission and the laws and enforcement which follow). Thus is defined the principal battle-ground of the communists at this present stage: to win over to communism these advanced workers, advanced but still under the domination c the reformism of bourgeois ideology.
This point made clear, shouldn’t we acknowledge that this a situation in many fundamental ways, comparable to the situation of Russia from 1895 on, when the social-democrat movement had begun to grow and to organize itself in order to achieve the merger with the workers’ movement. This is the reason why the teachings of the Russian communist movement of this period are so important to us.
Let us now look at the second error at the root of the deviation according to which communists should now create “political mass organizations”, or “intermediate organizations”. The teachings of the Russian communist movement such as found in Lenin or Stalin are that, at the stage of the merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers’ movement, the principal tasks of communists are agitation and propaganda winning over principally the advanced elements of the proletariat, but an agitation also aiming to win over and mobilize the working masses into the economic and political struggles of the proletariat, and of the people. Both the teaching of the international communist movement and the experience of the Canadian Marxist-Leninist movement itself (Quebec in particular), even if it is still now quite small, indicate that propaganda and agitation can not be cut off from the struggles of the masses: is it conceiveable for a genuine communist agitation to be outside of the struggles opposing the people to the State? And, finally, organizational work is an aspect of these different tasks: in other words, the organizational work of communists always consists in establishing the relationships, the structures, the groupings required to carry out their tasks. Communists will link themselves to the masses only by carrying out their activities of propaganda, agitation and organization within the framework of their intervention in the workers’ and peoples’s struggles.
But the supporters of “intermediate organizations” consider organizational activity as a particular and autonomous activity, of communists, leading us back to the incorrect conceptions of the “Secteur Travail” in the years of 1971-72. These conceptions mechanically separate and isolate from one another, agitation-propaganda, and struggles, organization, and finally (a recent innovation born thanks to the C.M.O.) the forms and means by which communists can link with the masses! Let us see the result in this magnificent synthesis taken from “De Quelques Questions Brulantes. ..”(p.35), a master-piece which no doubt will go down in history:
We have defined our principal task at the first stage of the struggle for the Party as the winning over of the vanguard of the proletariat. To achieve this task, the principal activity of communists is agitation-propaganda. Nevertheless, in the meantime, communists are not to ignore the struggles of the labouring masses; on the contrary they must involve themselves in them, to the best of their ability, in order to transform them into political struggles using their agitation and propaganda activities. In their work within the working class and the masses, communists cannot forget to build and to work within the mass and vanguard organizations, always keeping in mind their goal: to win over the vanguard to communism. In order to succeed in this work, communists must be linked with the working class and the masses; this is the reason why we put forth, as the principal means of linking ourselves with the masses, the implantation in enterprises without neglecting the other forms of merging with the masses. (Translated by EN LUTTE!)
Quite complicated! We can now understand why so many Marxist-Leninists make mistakes: first, they have to carry out their agitation-propaganda; “nevertheless in the meantime”, they have to wage struggles; third, they must not forget to build mass and vanguard organizations, without speaking of the “intermediate organizations”, here “open to all”, there “restricted”, sometimes “superior”, other times “inferior”, and, fourth, to cap it all, they have to link themselves to the masses, ... by implanting themselves mainly in factories! We can be sure that if they have succeeded in this “tour de force” in doing all the preceeding, propaganda, agitation, intervention in struggles, building of vanguard, mass, “open to all”, “restricted” and intermediate organizations, without linking themselves with the masses, then they have then nothing else to do than to implant themselves in factories, if only to acquire a little bit of practical sense!
But let us leave this game of blocks (the block “implantation-linking with the masses”, the block ”agitation-propaganda-winning over of some advanced elements”, the block “mass work-wide open or restricted-intermediate organizations”, the latter being a-symmetrical, wide on one side, restricted on the other, with the risk of the building crumbling to the ground), let us leave this game to those who enjoy it and let us see what is actually meant by this call to win over the advanced workers to communism by means of agitation-propaganda.
Let us suppose a group or an organization involved in the struggle for the merger of Marxism-Leninism and the workers’ movement, the essential condition for the creation of the Party. Let us mention, in passing, for the sake of those who have just discovered the teaching of Leninism on the ways and means to achieve this merger, that such groups exist in Quebec and in Canada! What will this group do? It will develop communist propaganda and agitation aimed precisely at demolishing bourgeois ideology, including reformism, still dominating, to a large extent, the workers’ movement and the masses, thus inducing first the advanced workers and then the others to recognize the validity of Marxism-Leninism to the point of assimilating, and of using it as a guide in their struggles, to the point of joining in the ranks of the Marxist-Leninist organization.
To do so, this group will have to study society, its contradictions, in the light of Marxism-Leninism and to spread as widely as possible its analyses by means of a journal, a review, and booklets, among workers, women, students, progressive intellectuals. ... It will take advantage of each and every workers’ struggle and each and every social conflict to make known the communist point of view. It will associate itself with workers in struggle, in inquiring about their conditions and demands, by spreading among them the communist point of view on their struggle, and by having it recognized as valid. To correctly do so, it will always have to better and better know the workers’ conditions in general, and those of the workers in struggle, by multiplying its means of inquiry.
On every possible occasion, it will look for the participation of the workers in the process of analysing their own situation, of writing and distributing of leaflets and appeals directed at the working masses. In the case that some of them favourably answer to its propositions, it will offer them a firm association to intervene in the struggle on a revolutionary political basis and to involve itself in all the practical tasks, of the various committees required in any struggle, it may even suggest the creation of a support committee in order to channel popular support for this struggle. If some, among these workers, appear to be eager to learn more, it will invite them to its political meetings, to its workers circles, or will even create special ones to have their struggle widely known, to study its causes in the capitalist relationships of production, etc... We could still go on and on with the description of the numerous aspects of the task of communist agitation and propaganda, the central task of Marxist-Leninists at the present stage. Suffice to add that communist agitation need never limit itself to the workers’ economic struggles, but rather must strive to lead the advanced workers and the labouring masses in all mass struggles, particularly those directly attacking the bourgeois State power.
This being said, it is not necessary to stop and prove how totally abstract and anti-dialectical the positions of the C.M.O. are, as shown above, isolating from each other agitation-propaganda, struggles, organizational work, and linking with the masses... Propaganda and agitation are meant to allow the political merger of the Marxist-Leninist movement and the workers’ movement. To present “implantation in the factories” as the principal means to link ourselves to the masses is an aberration, for at best, “implantation” (meaning “militants working in factories”) will only be but a particular means for a group or an organisation to achieve the tasks of agitation-propaganda in a given factory; again should these “implantees” devote their energy to carrying out communist agitation and propaganda among their comrades and not organizing them into intermediate organizations, on the pretext that one should not forget to create organizations! By the way, this has nothing to do with the position which has been for a long time generously attributed to EN LUTTE! whereby we would be opposed to the reeducation of intellectuals by their working in factories: this is a completely different question, and a very secondary one at this time in Canada.
In the same way that the merger of the Marxist-Leninist movement with the masses is the result of its work of agitation-propaganda among them, organisational work is necessarily associated with agitation-propaganda. To organize is essentially for a group or an organization, to build the proper relationships and structures to achieve its tasks. This means that communists must today organize themselves to achieve their task of agitation-propaganda, and create all the other permanent or temporary organizations necessary to achieve all their specific tasks. Thus, cells are the essential permanent organizations of the Party, mainly cells in enterprises; they carry out the general tasks of the Party by applying its programme. To do so, they have to build the required organizations to achieve these tasks: study circles, agitation and propaganda committee, ...
Nowhere in the history of the communist movement can there be found a basis for the following position: we agree with agitation and propaganda directed towards the advanced workers, but for the intermediate and inferior strata, we need intermediate organizations, why not? maybe inferior organizations as well. Nowhere can such a position find a place in a revolutionary strategy. Specifically in our country now, it comes down, in practice to denying the Party. The well known experience of the R.C.T. and its satellites is the most eloquent local demonstration of that. When we say that agitation-propaganda is the central task, we must know how to apply this “call” by finding out all the forms necessary in carrying out this task, and not to be mislead in parallel tracks under various pretexts, and particularly not the really gross pretext claiming that, to correctly achieve our task of agitation-propaganda, we must be “linked to the working class and to the masses” (De Quelques Questions Brulantes... p.15). Our very intention in insisting on agitation-propaganda is to politically link ourselves to the masses. We would have thought that the nonsense of the R.C.T. which relegated communist agitation and propaganda to secondary importance, under the pretext of taking the actual situation into account, had served their time not only at a verbal level but also at a practical level.
Mao-Tse-Tung has clearly formulated in Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership (1943) how communists are to link themselves to the masses, how “to link the direction to the masses, the general to the particular”. For whoever wants to study this text, among other teachings of the communist movement, the proposition: “implantation in factories as the main (emphasis by EN LUTTE!) means to link ourselves to the masses” (De Quelques Questions Brulantes... p.15) will quickly be seen for what it is: a enormous simplification of the complex reality of the links of communists with the broad masses, particularly the advanced elements of the proletariat. To be sure, these positions taken by Mao-Tse-Tung have been at a time when the Chinese Communist Party had a long experience of effectively leading the broad masses; which confer an even greater value on them. But we must not forget that a communist group strives to constitute a leadership among the masses; communist militants are leaders, or at least struggling to become such, wherever they intervene. But to become real leaders, they must be developed in such a perspective.
And how will communists link themselves to the masses? By constituting solid “nuclei of leaders” coming from among the masses, knowing their conditions, closely linked to them and able to draw them into the struggle. To work at winning over these advanced elements of the proletariat to communism, is precisely to create such cells of working leaders won over to communism. Thus crumbles the tactic of “implantation” as the principal means to link ourselves with the masses, as well as that of the building of “intermediate organizations” beside mass organizations (unions) and vanguard organizations (the Party and who knows what else...) as a means to win over the militant and progressive workers. It falls upon these “leading nuclei”, the communist cells, to work wherever they intervene in such a way as to have the proletarian line triumph among all the working masses; there are enough reactionaries and social-democrats to create non-communist organizations without communists helping them.
The role of the communists is not to work at reinforcing bourgeois ideology among the working masses but to destroy it. To reach this goal, the teachings of the communist movement are that we must first strive to win over the advanced elements and then, by relying on them, to undertake the conquest of the backward and intermediate strata of the proletariat and labouring masses in general, by intervening without respite in all the workers’ and people’s struggles with always the same intention, of having the proletarian ideology triumph and of constantly increasing the number of fighters for the liberation of the masses.
[1] Finally, for additional information to help demystify the alleged existence of a workers social-democrat (communist) stratum in Russia before 1900, the alleged existence of which the local trend for “intermediate organisations” would like to use to better convince itself that the Canadian and Quebec workers’ movement is relatively backward, the reader can refer to the reminiscences of another active witness of this period, Nadezhda Krouspkaia, Lenin’s companion, who was herself a militant in Petersbourg between 1894 and 1898 and whose record of the activities of the circles, and remarks on the state of the Russian Social-Democrat Workers’ Party (R.S.D.W.P) in 1898, should help bring back some people to a less euphoric perception of the Russian workers’ movement and social-democrat forces at the time. Without a doubt, this would allow them to have a less condescending view of the Canadian and Quebec workers’ movement. (See Reminiscences of Lenin; by N. K. Krouspskaia, New York, International Publishers, 1970, in particular pp. 17 to 30 and others.)