After we have overthrown the capitalists we will establish socialism in Canada. Socialism will mean the rule of the working class. It will put an end to the exploitation of man by man. It will bring freedom to all those oppressed by capital and open up a new period of history for our people.
We shall found a workers’ socialist republic in Canada.
In place of the bourgeois state, which the proletariat will dismantle, we will set up the workers’ state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. It will be a working class dictatorship over the capitalists. There will be the broadest democracy for working people, “a society a thousand times more democratic” (Lenin) than the present bourgeois society.
Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the workers’ state will enable us to build the new society. The capitalists use their state to protect their reactionary interests. The workers’ state will defend the working people, the vast majority, and exercise its dictatorship over the handful of former exploiters. The dictatorship of the proletariat will safeguard the gains of the revolution, prevent the capitalists from returning to power and defend our socialist Canada from foreign intervention.
Once the working class has seized power we will do away with the capitalist parliament and abolish the monarchy.
In their place the workers’ state will have a socialist government composed of deputies representing workers, the various nationalities and all the working people, elected by the people throughout the country. The deputies will meet together to make the laws and administer socialist Canada in the interests of the Canadian working class and the whole people.
Deputies in the central and local people’s government will be responsible to their electors. They will be subject to recall at any time should they not fulfill their responsibilities. They will be paid the salary of an average worker.
We will have a socialist constitution that will guarantee the rights of the Canadian people. A socialist legal system will defend the full political rights of the working people and not protect the right of private ownership of the means of production as does capitalist legality today.
Workers will participate directly in running the country from top to bottom.
Directly after taking power, the working class will nationalize the major means of production. We shall confiscate the factories, mines, railways, banks and large stores from the capitalists without compensation and turn them into the property of the people. The holdings of both Canadian and foreign capitalists, like those of US imperialism, will be expropriated.
The working class will take possession of the oil installations, the fleets of trains and planes of Canadian Pacific, Inco’s mines, the GM and Ford plants, etc. Why should the capitalists be allowed to keep the wealth they have plundered from the working class? While confiscating the property of these parasites socialism will protect the possessions of the working people and their families.
Under socialism, the workers’ state will administer the vast riches of our country, its lands, forests, mineral resources, lakes and rivers as well as the means of production, for the common benefit of all. There will be an end to all exploitation. The wealth will be the property of the people and not of individual capitalists.
A socialist Canada will have a planned economy. This planning will guarantee the well-being of all the people and guide the process of socialist economic construction.
Gone will be the anarchy of capitalist production. Gone, too, its resultant economic crises which today bring so much misery to Canadian workers. Unemployment and inflation will be things of the past, unknown under socialism.
The workers’ state will distribute the resources of society according to the needs of the people, not to satisfy a few capitalists’ hunger for profits as is the case today. Through planning we shall build up and modernize the factories and other productive facilities and eliminate backward and backbreaking labor. We will construct new houses and medical, cultural and sports facilities for the working people. The quality of everyday life will improve vastly and wages will be increased as socialist construction proceeds.
Socialism will enable us to eliminate the regional economic disparities that today plague the country. For example, in the Maritimes and Newfoundland we will develop industry. With the help of the state workers can develop the full potential of their region.
The enormous waste of capitalism will be abolished. There will be no more billions in profits squandered by the bourgeoisie. There will be no more destruction of goods and productive forces as there is today in times of crisis.
In the socialist republic we will apply the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” Each worker will contribute “ to society according to his capacity and each worker will receive a salary that corresponds to his or her contribution. We will eliminate the terrible waste of human resources as is the case today with a million unemployed. It will be impossible for idle parasites to live off the backs of the workers as the capitalists in Canada do today.
The state will take care of retired workers, the disabled and those who cannot engage in normal work, and encourage them to contribute what they can to socialist construction.
We will also have socialist relations of production to replace the capitalist organization of labour. The repressive system of foremen, supervisors and efficiency experts, who today ride the workers, will be wiped out. Workers will participate in the running of the factories by electing the managers and drawing up the factory plan under the leadership of the state’s economic planning department. They will collectively assume the responsibility for the running of production, ensure labour discipline and the quality of production. The workers will set production quotas and decide on the speed of the assembly line. Engineers and technicians will put their knowledge at the service of the working class and people. We will also train new generations of specialists recruited from the ranks of the workers themselves to ensure that the working class exercises the greatest possible control over production.
Under socialism we shall encourage the small owners, like farmers and fishermen, to form cooperatives and work together. This will enable them to raise their standard of living and contribute more to the development of socialism.
All these measures mean that in the workers’ socialist republic in Canada we shall abolish capitalist ownership and establish socialist relations of production and distribution.
While forbidding private ownership of the means of production and denying the rights of the exploiters, the socialist constitution will guarantee the basic rights of the working people.
The right to a job that is today denied under capitalism will be guaranteed for all. Every Canadian will be able to have a job and earn a living.
The right to education. Under socialism we will raise the level of education of the whole people. Canadian youth deserve an all-round decent education – technical and professional, as well as political, moral, physical and cultural. We will train youth to be “red” and “expert.” The universities and educational institutions will serve the working class and people and will be opened up to the proletariat. Education will no longer be reserved as the privilege of an elite.
The right to health care. No more will the working people face deteriorating health and safety conditions on the job or declining health care facilities. Under socialism, the labouring people are the most precious resource and great attention will be paid to preventing and eliminating industrial accidents and diseases and to improving the physical well-being of the people.
All democratic rights for the working people will be protected by the socialist constitution: workers’ right to strike, freedom of speech, press and assembly, as well as the right to criticize the Party and state officials, freedom of religious belief and freedom to propagate atheism and so on.
Socialism will put an end to all national oppression. All democratic rights will be guaranteed to the peoples of the oppressed nationalities.
The Quebec people will have their right to self-determination. Should they decide to remain part of the multinational Canadian state their rights will be assured.
All the formerly oppressed nationalities will have regional autonomy; that is self-government in their areas of concentration.
In the socialist republic these peoples will develop in a way never dreamed of under capitalism. Their languages, cultures and identities will be protected and will flourish. The state will encourage their development and will pay special attention to developing the economy of the regions where the previously oppressed nationalities are concentrated.
There will be no more oppression of women and their full democratic rights will be ensured. Women will be encouraged to participate actively in social production and the state will assure that all the conditions necessary for this, like daycare, maternity leave, etc. are put into place.
Domestic tasks will be gradually socialized to free women from this drudgery.
Socialist Canada will throw off all foreign domination, in particular the domination that the two superpowers, US imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, presently exert over our country. The proletariat will build up a strong independent socialist Canada through self-reliance.
We will engage in commercial exchanges with other countries on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.
We will also support the just struggles of the peoples of the world and lend the international working class and the oppressed nations assistance in their struggles for liberation.
A socialist Canada would unite closely with the world’s other social states.
The socialist republic will have its own workers’ Red Army to defer the dictatorship of the proletariat. A people’s militia will be organized in the factories and communities. The armed workers will safe guard the gains of the revolution.
The revolutionary armed forces will be closely tied to the people. They will protect the workers’ state from any attempt at capitalist restoration or foreign intervention.
Socialism represents an enormous historical advance over capitalism. Our country will develop rapidly as the productive forces are liberated from the bonds of the profit system and all Canadian working people are mobilized to build the new socialist Canada.
It is easy to imagine how quickly a socialist Canada could progress. We have seen in China and other socialist countries the rapid advances the proletariat can make once it has put an end to exploitation.
Under socialism, there will no longer be capitalists siphoning profits out of the country and no more destruction of the productive forces. The million unemployed will have jobs to build the country, and women will also be gradually mobilized to participate in production. In an industrialized country like ours, production will no longer crawl at a snail’s pace but will push full steam ahead. We will thus be able to shoot rapidly ahead and our people’s well-being will improve considerably. Not only will the material wealth of the people rise quickly, but education, the arts, scientific and cultural pursuits will also flourish under proletarian rule. In a socialist Canada, the working people will be masters of their own destiny. Their enthusiasm, dynamism and innovations will spur forward socialist construction. The Communist Party and the various mass organizations, like the trade unions, will continue to educate the working people and bring their initiative into full play.
Under socialism, we will strive to have working people participate in all aspects of society.
An ideological struggle will be waged to criticize reactionary ideas – like great-nation chauvinism, narrow nationalism or the conception that men are superior to women – that have been left over from the old society.
The various contradictions that exist among the people can be resolved through debate, discussion and persuasion. Thus the unity of the working people can be constantly strengthened.
All these are the great benefits socialism will bring to the Canadian people.
But socialism is not the end of the struggle of the working class. Despite its enormous superiority, socialism is still marked by the capitalist society from which it emerged. There are still imperfections.
In particular, during the entire period of socialism, classes and class struggle continue to exist and the danger of capitalist restoration is ever present. The bourgeoisie is made up of members of the old exploiting classes who still dream of returning to power, and corrupted new bourgeois elements who themselves want to become exploiters. It tries frantically to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The continuing existence of small commodity production creates fertile terrain for the growth of capitalist tendencies. The new socialist state is also still surrounded and threatened by the remaining capitalist powers.
Thus, socialism is a long period of struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat where the working class step by step builds socialism and continues to carry forward the revolution. Throughout this period the working class must maintain a high degree of vigilance to avoid a return to capitalism like that which occured in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. It must beware of bourgeois elements which infiltrate into the Party in order to attempt to restore capitalism. The Communist Party must lead a determined fight against revisionism. The bourgeoisie will try to hide behind a Marxist-Leninist mask to sabotage socialist construction and to preach a return to the former ways. The Party must constantly raise the political consciousness of the masses and educate them so to preserve the gains of the revolution and prevent the possibility of the bourgeoisie seizing power. It must correctly distinguish contradictions with the class enemy from those among the ranks of the people, in order to consolidate the proletarian dictatorship.
In this way it will be possible to continue the revolution and reach a developed communist society.
Communism is the final goal of the proletarian revolution. It is the future of humanity, a radically new society where classes and the state will have been completely eliminated.
In the end it is possible to do away with classes and the state since these only exist during a specific period of society’s development.
Humanity has not always been divided into classes. In the primitive communal societies all the members cooperated together to assure their survival.
But as mankind progressed, as the productive forces – the way in which man made his living – developed and it became possible to accumulate wealth, society was split into antagonistic classes.
Since that time all of human history has been the history of class struggle; the struggle between slave and slave owner, between serf and feudal lord, between worker and capitalist.
Each of these major periods in the development of society – slavery, feudalism and capitalism – corresponds to a particular level of development of the productive forces. Each of these societies is marked by a sharp division between the masses of toilers on the one hand, and a small handful of exploiters who live in luxury on the other.
The state is simply an instrument by which one class dominates another. It became a necessity when society split into classes. Just as the ancient slave state served the slave owners to suppress the countless slave rebellions, so too the modern capitalist state is a tool of the bourgeoisie to maintain its dictatorship over the working class.
Throughout history there have been many revolutions where the oppressed classes have broken the fetters that bound them and overthrown the reactionary decadent ruling classes.
However, in previous revolutions, the new ruling class which rode to power on the backs of the masses eventually substituted itself for the old exploiters, and in turn had to be overthrown. In this way the bourgeoisie who fought along with the workers and peasants to overthrow feudalism set up its own exploitative system – capitalism.
But now the development of society has created a class more revolutionary than any yet known in history – the modern working class. It has provided us with the opportunity for a revolution that will not just replace one exploiting class with another, but will open the way to the final abolition of all classes and an end to all oppression and exploitation.
The proletariat will seize power, replace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class, and fight to build a socialist and communist society.
It is not possible to go immediately from capitalism to communism. After the overthrow of the bourgeoisie there must be a transition period before a developed communist society can be achieved. This transition can only he the period of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Socialism means tremendous progress. In all the former societies, the state was an instrument for the domination of a minority of exploiters over the vast majority of working people. Under socialism, the state serves the vast majority allowing it to keep its hold over a minority of capitalists.
But the final aim of the socialist revolution is to realize world communism.
When communism is realized, classes and class inequalities will have been eliminated.
The state and its instruments of repression will have ceased to exist; the class antagonisms that necessitated their existence will have ended.
In communist society all social inequalities will have been banished; there will be no rich and no poor, and all members of society will contribute to the common good. Peoples of all nationalities will be entirely equal, as will men and women.
Under communism, the immense advance of the productive forces and the tremendous abundance of social wealth will allow for the application of the principle: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Each person will contribute to society according to his capacities, while society in turn provides for his needs. The differences between workers and farmers, town and country, and manual and intellectual work will have disappeared.
In communist society, each individual will develop to his full potential.
Communism is not an end to human development but just the beginning – the beginning of a further development of production, the people’s well-being and all facets of human society.
But before we arrive at this far-off goal we must take the first steps forward. We must take power from the Canadian bourgeoisie, set up the dictatorship of the proletariat and begin to build socialism in our country.