First Published:The Workers’ Advocate Vol. 2, No. 1, January 1970.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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300 militant communists met in Vancouver, B.C., Dec. 26-31, to discuss methods of work in dealing the death blows to U.S. imperialism. Workers and students came from Quebec, Canada and the U.S. as well as from Ireland, England, India and China. They bitterly denounced U.S. imperialism, the New Tsars who have restored capitalism in the Soviet Union, and all their local lackeys for oppressing the people of the world. They declared vigorous support for the Peoples Republics of China and Albania, for the national liberation struggles of the people of the oppressed nations, and for the struggles of the working people in the imperialist countries. They declared their intention to ORGANIZE TO CHANGE THE WORLD and to SMASH THE OLD TO BUILD THE NEW by applying Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the concrete conditions of their own countries, thus tilling the soil and planting the seeds of revolution.
The conference was called as the Second National Conference of the Canadian Student Movement, and it continued the work of the historic North American Conference of Anti-imperialist Youth held last May at Regina, Saskatchewan.
The main accomplishment of the Conference was putting forward the revolutionary line in methods of work in carrying out the political tasks set at the Regina Conference. These political tasks were to build new communist parties based on Mao Tsetung Thought in each country and to lead and develop the anti-imperialist struggles. Once these political tasks were set the key problem became methods of work in carrying them out.
The Regina Conference was also called on the slogan Organize to Change the World! and struggle continued at Vancouver on this question. Some people prefer to sit in armchairs and try to understand the world without going out to change it. These people represented the reactionary line at both conferences. Their line was totally smashed by the revolutionary line of summing up actual experience in discussions, drawing concrete guidelines and going out immediately to put these guidelines into practice in changing the world. “Act according to our understanding and rectify our mistakes,” as one leading comrade put it.
In this light, the Vancouver Conference produced immediate action. The American Student Movement (Anti-imperialist) was formed by communist students from the U.S. It will serve the American working class by fighting their oppressors in the very place where they get their training – on the university campuses. The American Student Movement will follow the leadership of the American Communist Workers’ Movement and has a militant program (see elsewhere in this issue) which is presently being put into practice in many areas of the country. (A full report of ASM activity will appear in the February Workers’ Advocate.)
Taking an active attitude right from the start, ASM has called its first national conference for Cleveland March 6-13. This too will be a gathering of communists, anti-imperialist fighters and supporters from several countries, and we hereby invite all interested workers and other oppressed people to join the students in attendance.
At Vancouver, action was also taken by the entire conference in publicizing the militant rallies held each evening at the conference hall. For a rally in support of the Peoples’ Republic of China, bright red bastion of world anti-imperialist, socialist revolution, all the conference participants went out to factory gates with leaflets, papers and Chairman Mao’s Red Book of Quotations. The comrades entered a number of factories and sold and distributed literature inside and held discussions with the workers. This produced fights with the management and union hacks, several arrests and strong support from the workers. The rally that night was the most successful of all.
The most important aspect of methods of work, however, is the use of mass democracy in organizing to change the world. Some people prefer to try to fool the people into taking action, to manipulate them, to discuss their own real purposes behind closed doors, to remain “experts” with the masses as their stepping stones. This method is typical of the slick fakers presently controlling most unions and community organizations and also of a horde of careerists infesting the anti-war movement and the “new left”.
Even among people who genuinely want to fight imperialism, the mass bureaucratic method predominates. Some organizations, for example, have a theoretical journal for their petty bourgeois intellectuals (in which they discuss what they really aim to do) and another paper for workers, written in slang and dealing only with strikes, housing problems, etc., on a low level. Some of these people criticize The Workers’ Advocate for using scientific Marxist language and for discussing socialist countries and the international revolutionary movement. These people love the mass bureaucratic method and cling to it like a life preserver.
The revolutionary line stands for the mass democratic method and in fact represents the desires of the working and oppressed people, who always call for the cards to be laid out on the table, for the people to sum up their experience in open mass discussion (and to fight for their right to democratic discussion whenever it is denied), criticize mistakes and expose lies, and agree on guidelines for action. We communists hold the view that the people can only solve their problems by organizing a communist party, following its lead in mass struggle, picking up the gun, overthrowing the monopoly capitalists and their governmental machinery, putting the working class in power and establishing socialism. We put forward these ideas openly, especially in The Workers’ Advocate, and will defend them anywhere.
We follow Chairman Mao’s line: “We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.” The imperialists always use trickery against the working and oppressed people; how can we defeat them if we sink to their level? Mao has also written: “Whatever we do is to serve the people. How then can we be reluctant to discard any of our bad traits?” Thus the mass democratic method of putting all questions before the workers and the rest of the people is the only method which serves the people and in fact builds revolution. This method was firmly supported at the conference and is the basis for all our work at home.
Thus the conference began to smash the old method to build the new in organizing to change the world.