Comrade readers, this pamphlet has a rather special character. It is entirely devoted to studying the line and the practice of one group, a group which calls itself the “Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)”. Undoubtedly, the large majority of ours readers have at least heard of this group, even if very few really know the line, history and practice of this phoney party. Some will no doubt remember seeing the name on their ballot during the last federal election. To distinguish it from the “Communist Party of Canada”, that great friend of Moscow, the chief returning officer had “Marxist-Leninist Party” marked on the ballot beside its name. That was lucky: if he hadn’t, we might have made a mistake. Others will have identified it as that mysterious group which is never seen, but whose posters seem to grow on the telephone poles like leaves on a tree. But for many of our readers, the five letters “CPC(ML)” will immediately bring to mind memories of “2x4’s” and the thug-like attacks against East-Indian immigrants in Vancouver in 1976, railroad workers in 1973, and students in Montreal in 1976.
What’s the real story behind this so-called “political party of the working class” which, from the little red book of Mao quotations in 1970, to the Internationalist Meeting in 1978, has never been able to put itself across as anything other than a caricature of Marxism-Leninism? That’s the question which this pamphlet intends to answer. And if we have taken the trouble to devote such a voluminous work to the answer, it’s because this answer is potentially heavy with consequences.
This group presents itself as the champion of the struggle against revisionism, that is, the revision of Marxism-Leninism by parties such as the Communist Party of Canada or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which revised the revolutionary theory of the working class and substituted the theory of the sabotage of the socialist revolution. The truth however is that the “CPC(ML)” only represents a variation of the same betrayal, of the same revisionism, a variation which is all the more insidious because it tries to use the prestige of great communist leaders like Mao Tse-tung and Enver Hoxha, firm defenders of the interests of the working class who made enormous contributions to unmasking the revisionist traitors – Khrushchev and his cohorts. The name given to this new variation of counter-revolution which hides behind the mask of the struggle against revisionism to better deceive the workers is neo-revisionism. But Marxism-Leninism is not a question of labels: it’s a question of political line, and of political program which must be translated into concrete acts.
Throughout this study we are going to give detailed examples of CPC(ML)’s history, practice and main political positions which all go to prove that this phoney Marxist-Leninist party is really nothing more than a clique of provocateurs whose line and actions, in a word, have more in common with fascism than with Marxism-Leninism.
This is clearly a serious conclusion which should leave no one indifferent. Yes, this pamphlet has a special character because this phoney party has a very special nature, although the path which it has followed since its origin is, ultimately, not so very different from the one which certain other groups, such as the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist), seem increasingly inclined to follow. These groups use their claim to be part of the struggle against revisionism to better spread their line of collaboration with imperialism.
We ask the reader to study this pamphlet carefully, for it lays the basis for unmasking a group of saboteurs and provocateurs as well as laying out the real Marxist-Leninist point of view and allowing the profound truth of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism to shine in spite of distortions and caricaturizations by groups like the CPC(ML).
The objectives of this pamphlet are to identify what class interests CPC(ML) represents, to pinpoint the central aspects of its revisionist line, and to furnish concrete examples so as to sharpen the struggle against this group, as well as the entire political trend which it stands for. Since the class nature of a political organization must be judged on the basis of the questions of program, the first part of this pamphlet will be devoted to a criticism of the basic positions of the CPC(ML) on the international situation (chapter 1) and on the path of the revolution in Canada (chapter 2). We will see that the CPC(ML) in no way adheres to the scientific analysis of imperialism as the highest stage of the system of capitalist exploitation. On the contrary, its point of view is one of petty-bourgeois anti-imperialism which reduces all social contradictions, and particularly the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production – the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie – to a single contradiction between the most powerful imperialists and all those who oppose them. This simplistic vision of the world situation, which ignores class analysis, results in denying the imperialist nature of the Canadian bourgeoisie and advocating strengthening it under the cover of the struggle of the “Canadian colony” against the US superpower.
In part two of the pamphlet we will tackle the history and practice of the CPC(ML). We will see how this group completely liquidated questions of program and substituted organizational tasks for a political line, tactics for strategy and the spontaneous movement for the conscious political struggle, thus sabotaging the rebuilding of the proletarian party (chapter 3). The history of this fringe group is the history of the worst opportunism imaginable where anything goes if it promotes the career of “Chairman Bains” and his “International”, where anything goes in trying to impose the hegemony of the radical petty-bourgeoisie over the working-class movement.
But there’s even more to it than that. For not only does the CPC(ML) have a completely revisionist line, not only does its organization have nothing in common with the organization of a proletarian party, not only are its tactics totally opportunist, but the CPC(ML) is also actively opposed to the revolution and the masses in this country (chapter 4). To sum up, the CPC(ML) is a direct agent of the counterrevolution in Canada and an enemy of the Canadian working class and people. An essential aspect of our struggle to rebuild the revolutionary party of the Canadian working class is to combat and unmask this counter-revolutionary organization, to totally and profoundly demarcate from its bourgeois revisionist line.