First Published:The Workers’ Advocate Vol. 6, No. 4, May 12, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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(Note: The Montreal Branch of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) organised a private meeting of comrades of the Party to hail the Sixth Anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in Montreal on March 31st, 1976. Comrade Bains addressed thetwo sessions which were attended by over two hundred comrades from the Montreal area.We are reproducing the text of the speech delivered by Comrade Bains at the meeting. The text is edited by the author for publication).
Comrades:
The Party was founded after a three month discussion on a document circulated to all the comrades who had come forward to join the Canadian Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist). The same document was also presented for discussion to the delegates who attended the revolutionary conference held in Vancouver from December 26th to December 31st, 1969. The founding of the Party was declared at the Patriot’s Conference held in Montreal on March 31st, 1970. Thirteen members were nominated to the Central Organising Committee of the Party (a majority of whom are still working in the Party). The First Congress of the Party was held in Guelph, Ontario from May 8, 1971 to May 22nd. The Constitution of the Party was adopted during the Congress and the Central Committee was elected. The Second Congress of the Party, held in March of 1973, adopted the Political Report and the Constitution. The Second CC of the Party was elected there. The Third Congress of the Party will be held when the time is suitable in the not too distant future.
I am going to speak on three basic points.
Various individuals and groups have raised the question: Why did we organise? Certain opportunists have even advanced various theories as to why we should not have organised the Party. They advance the thesis that everything which came into existence before their arrival onto the scene has been premature. The founding of our Party was premature. So they are organising Struggle Organisation to Build the Party. Thus the material conditions are mature to build the Struggle Organisation to Build the Party while premature to build the Party. In short, the thesis is that material conditions are mature for the opportunists to establish anything they like while material conditions are always premature for Marxist-Leninists to organise anything. One of the opportunist groups asked us during discussions as to why did we organise in 1970.
Our comrades resolutely pointed out that founding the Party was absolutely necessary to fight revisionism. Without a revolutionary Party based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung thought, it would have been impossible to fight and combat revisionism.. This group couldn’t see why a Party should be organised to fight revisionism. They went to such absurdities that revisionism is not the issue in Canada because it is not strong and is irrelevant as far as Canada is concerned. More particularly, revisionism does not have much influence in Quebec etc. Further they put forward the erroneous thesis that Party should be declared when it is already full blown. I pointed out to my comrades during the summation of our meeting with this group that even though the meeting with the group was a positive step and we should carry on discussions seriously, the content of their views on Party building is wind-baggery of the first order.
A Communist Party is not a corporation with its board of directors and with a franchise to lead the working class with its already incorporated aims and objects. Founding of the Communist Party is a declaration, a manifesto on the part of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. But the Communist Party itself is not just a declaration and a manifesto. It is more than that. It is a vehicle, an organised detachment of the most advanced section of the proletariat, a political organisation of the proletariat which has the historical mission the seizure of political power by revolutionary violence, guiding the proletariat in its struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat so as to achieve communism. The Communist Party is the instrument of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat where it does not exist and of consolidating and expanding it where it does exist.
In the series of articles refuting revisionism in 1973, I wrote: In the 1950’s the opportunists took over the Party completely and degenerated very quickly to the level of actually revising the theories of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. The 1954 Party Program is a water shed in this respect and contains all the basic anti-Marxist ideas on the state which the revisionists of all time have held: To regain control of our country and its government, the people will elect a parliamentary majority pledged to re-establish Canadian independence. This program speaks of fundamental changes in the old relations of production coming into being by constitutional processes. It rattles on about the transformation of Parliament. These bogus ideas go against everything that Marx and Lenin taught – the cornerstone of their teaching was that the state is a class institution and that the proletariat cannot merely take over the state of the bourgeoisie but must resolutely smash up and destroy the old state in order to build a new proletarian state. Thus the Canadian revisionists began to attack the very core of Marxism-Leninism.
The 1958 Draft Program of the revisionist clique revised the basic theses of Lenin and Stalin on imperialism and cold war. The Canadian revisionists wrote: ’The deep-going permanent shift in the relative strengths of the forces of capitalism and socialism on a world scale, in favour of socialism, is the foremost of the new favourable conditions which assist the forces of socialism in Canada. War...is no longer inevitable because the forces for peace are, for the first time in history, powerful enough to prevent war. What are these forces for ’peace’? For the revisionists ’forces of peace’ are not revolutionary struggles for national liberation and revolutionary class wars but policies of superpower politics of Khrushchov and Co. When U.S. imperialism was launching wars against the real ’forces of peace’, the revolutionary struggles for national liberation,and against revolutionary class wars under the slogan of ’defence of the free world’, everywhere in Korea, in Iran, in Guatemala, Lebanon, Viet Nam, etc. the revisionists were talking about ’War ...is no longer inevitable because the forces of peace, are for the first time in history, powerful enough to prevent war’. This distortion of Marxism-Leninism makes the question of war into a policywhich the imperialists may or may not implement, depending on their whims and fancy. Comrade Stalin pointed out in 1952 that war is an essential component of imperialism and the only way that the revisionists have been able to forget this is that it serves their class collaborationist policies to do so. Stalin pointed out: ’To eliminate the inevitability of war, it is necessary to abolish imperialism’.
Why did the revisionists write such trash as ’War...is no longer inevitable’? In fact, the purpose of writing it is to undermine the struggle to establish socialism around the world. By saying that socialism has won and capitalism has for all intents and purposes been defeated, the revisionists wanted to convince the people to stop struggling and to accommodate themselves to the revisionists’ version of ’peaceful coexistence’: collusion and contention with the U.S. imperialists.
What the revisionists hide from the people is that the stronger the forces of socialism become the more vicious and bellicose will the forces of imperialism become. On their deathbeds the imperialists are capable of genocide against the people of Viet Nam, are capable of trying to start a world war for the purpose of saving their class. Does this mean, as the revisionists say, that we should therefore stay quite still and not resist at all? This revisionist line tries to say that the people are the cause of war because if people rise up in revolution, the imperialists will unleash a world war. Therefore concludes the revisionist philistine, the people should not make revolution, should avoid armed conflict, because ’any small local war might spark off the conflagration of a world war’ and ’today any sort of war, though it may break out as an ordinary non-nuclear war, is likely to develop into a destructive nuclear-missile conflagration’. With this sophistry, the Soviet and Canadian revisionists have found the rationale for opposing revolution. We should oppose revolution, they say, because the imperialists might use it as an excuse to unleash world war. That is the real meaning of the statements of the Canadian revisionists on the strength of the forces of socialism and peace.
The rise of revisionism in Canada was facilitated by the betrayal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by Khrushchov and others who transformed the CPSU into an anti-Leninist Party. The CPSU then launched an all out offensive both against Marxism-Leninism and against the other Marxist-Leninist parties in the world. The struggle against modern revisionism of the Khrushchovite type was led by the Communist Party of China and the Albanian Party of Labour. Inspired by this struggle, Marxist-Leninists the world over began to oppose the betrayal of the working class and of the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism. In Canada too the period of the early sixties was a turning point in the communist movement. (1)
Thus, one can see that the revisionist leaders of the Communist Party took the revolutionary content, the manifesto of the seizure of political power by revolutionary violence, guiding the proletariat in its struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat so as to achieve communism, out and threw it away while keeping the shell, the name Communist Party and tied the proletariat to the chariot wheel of bourgeois democracy. So the question facing the Marxist-Leninists was the restoration of this content, that is reorganisation of the Party on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as its first task. We vigorously undertook this task. Founding of the Party was a declaration, a manifesto, a clarion call against revisionism. The Party was established to carry this manifesto through to the end, that is struggle against revisionism through to the end. But this opportunist group couldn’t see why the Party should have been founded just to oppose revisionism.
Referring to groups and sects like the one I just referred to who couldn’t comprehend why we did organise in 1970, I pointed out on the morning of January 1st, 1975 in a celebration organised to usher in the New Year: So comrades, even if these events look very innocent, behind them is a sinister campaign to undo the gains the revolutionary people, especially the communist movement have made over the past 10 to 15 years, since the criticism and repudiation of revisionism. And they are trying to float revisionism and provide an opportunist line (2) A few months later all these groups and sects exposed themselves by actually providing an opportunist position on all questions. It is no wonder that some of these groups could not see how a Party could be organised by simply basing itself on opposition to revisionism.
These groups and sects which are taking the revisionist road pretend that they are Marxist-Leninists, genuine Marxist-Leninists at that. But for them to say that they are Marxist-Leninist is merely to strike a posture, a frill, like adorning their hats with plumes, but in essence, they are the same – reformists, terrorists, anarcho-syndicalists – you name it. And their social base is petty bourgeoisie and lumpen proletariat.
There is a struggle against capitalist restoration and right-deviationist tendencies going on in China at this time. These groups and sects are for capitalist restoration in China and have been given legitimacy by international opportunism. It is international opportunism mainly comprising Anglo-American chauvinism which is inciting these individuals, groups and sects to attack Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and they have encouragement from the forces for capitalist restoration, those who are following right deviationist line in China. Finally, they are united with all the opportunist forces internationally which are apologists for Soviet social-imperialism.
I have repeatedly pointed out that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought belongs not just to the proletariat of China but to the international proletariat. Opportunism, on the other hand, belongs to the international bourgeoisie. These individuals, groups and sects which came into being on the orders of international opportunism are a bit too hasty in declaring their victories and too impatient about attacking Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. But they should know that if international opportunism is united, is providing sympathy, support and encouragement to one another and inciting them to attack us. Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is also united internationally and various Marxist-Leninist parties, groups and organisations are also providing sympathy, support and encouragement to one another. These opportunists should never forget that while Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is progressive and bound to win out, opportunism is only retrogressive and bound to lose. Furthermore, opportunism is riddled with innumerable internal contradictions. Life is extremely bad tor all opportunist groups and sects while for the Marxist-Leninists life is getting better with every passing day. In this era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is bound to win one epochal victory after another. It can also be said that this is the epoch of victory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought on the world scale.
I also pointed out in my speech of New Year’s 1975 that: ...just as on previous occasions, the opportunist line is sanctioned not in Canada, but from somewhere else. According to the opportunists spreading these ideas, the correctness or incorrectness of ideological and political lines has to be ascertained not by analysing the concrete conditions of Canada and the actual situation prevailing on the world scale, but by whether or not some foreign official of Partyagrees with the line. (3) It is no accident that opportunists have to seek sponsors abroad as, on the basis of their own work, they will have a very difficult time to makehead-way here. Opportunism has always been imported into Canada. Besides straight-forward ruffians and hooligans coming to Canada from the U.S., we also have so-called Marxist-Leninists in the U.S. trying to do dirty work for U.S. imperialism here. The Progressive Labour Party organised its branch plant in Canada in order to disrupt the revolutionary movement here. Currently, certain organisations are desperately trying to establish their agencies in Montreal. But opportunism is an alien trend to the communist and workers’ movement and is bound to be defeated.
Over the past year, particularly, opportunists from Canada have been running around seeking sponsorship and legitimacy abroad. Furthermore, we have a certain organisation in Britain which has been sending its decadent forces to cause trouble in the revolutionary movement of this country. We have also seen the reorganisation of the left-sloganeering front of Khrushchovite revisionism in Montreal as an agency to carry out propaganda against Armed Agrarian Revolution in India, against CPC(M-L) in Canada and against various national liberation organisations in Southern Africa.
For over six years, we have faced the disruption of the revolutionary movement in this country from abroad and we have opposed it tooth and nail and we have succeeded in driving the disruptors out. We are not going to stop opposing the disruption of the revolutionary movement organised from abroad now. If Castroism bit the dust in the 1960’s at the hands of the Internationalists, the current opportunists will suffer the same fate. It does not matter how much they scare certain innocent bystanders to the revolutionary movement, the revolutionary movement of this country will cast them aside.
CP, the so-called Communist Party wouldn’t last for a day in this country if it did not have sponsorship from Soviet social-imperialism. Trotskyism ekes out a living at the mercy of imperialism and the blessings of social-imperialism. The current opportunists are no different than revisionists and trotskyists. Their lot will be no different than that of the revisionists and trotskyists.
Only the CPC(M-L) has been organised at the call of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and grounded in the history and tradition of the communist and workers’ movement of this country. It does not matter how much Anglo-American chauvinists squirm and their agents in Canada whimper that Hardial Bains is not Canadian, the facts remain for all to see that the CPC(M-L) is the only legitimate organisation of the Canadian proletariat which came up at the crucial historical juncture when revisionism had converted the Communist Party into a revisionist and a fascist party and Progressive Workers Movement had espoused neo-revisionism. To understand how the Party was reorganised on the theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is to understand the many, many struggles which our comrades waged against all forms of opportunism and against many historical problems facing the communist movement. It is this history of the 1960’s and early 1970’s which the opportunists have declared out of bounds for the proletariat and the revolutionary forces of this country. The opportunists have a very negative view of the past. For them nothing existed until they came along. The story of rebuilding the Communist Party in this country is the story of militantly and vigorously facing storms, scaling the heights which no one had scaled before, overcoming difficulties which came in the path and facing many totally new and unpredicted situations. But we marched on. Now that the Communist Party is re-established, its caricature has come into being to chide us about primitive forms of organisations we established in the past, about twists and turns we had to go through in order to re-establish the Party.
It is appropriate here to reprint the quote I gave from Lenin in my speech to the Second Congress of the Party. Lenin states: Picture to yourself a man ascending a very high, steep and hitherto unexplored mountain. Let us assume that after overcoming unprecedented difficulties and dangers, he has succeeded in rising higher than any of his predecessors, but that he has not yet reached the summit. He is in the position where it is not only difficult and dangerous to proceed in the direction and along the path he selected, but positively impossible. He has to turn back, descend, seek another path, longer, perhaps, but one which will enable him to reach the summit. The descent from this height, unreached by any one before, proves to be more dangerous and difficult for our imaginary traveler than the ascent: it is easier to slip; it is not so easy to choose the spot on which to get a footing; there is not that elevation of spirit that one feels in going upwards, straight to the goal, etc. One has to tie a rope around oneself, spend hours with a mountaineer’s pick in cutting footholds, or a projection, to which the rope could be tied tightly; one has to move at a tortoise pace, and move downwards, descend, away from the goal; and still one does not know whether this extremely dangerous and painful descent is coming to an end, or whether a fairly safe detour can be made by which one can ascend more boldly, more quickly and more directly to the summit.
It would be almost unnatural to suppose that, notwithstanding the fact that he had risen to such an unprecedented height, a man who finds himself in such a position does not feel moments of despondency. And in all probability these moments would be more numerous, frequent and harder to bear if he could hear the voices from below of those who, through a telescope, and from a safe distance, are watching this dangerous descent, which cannot even be called what the ’Smenovekhists’ call ’descending with the brakes on’; for brakes presuppose a well-planned road, one that had already been traversed by some vehicle, a road prepared beforehand, already tested by some mechanism. In this case, however, there is no vehicle, no road, absolutely nothing that had been tested before!
The voices from below are gloating voices. They gloat openly, chuckle gleefully, shout: ’You’ll fall in a minute! Serve him right, the madman!’ Others try to conceal their malicious glee and behave mainly like a Judas Golover. They moan and raise their eyes to heaven in sorrow, as if to say: ’It grieves us sorely to see that our worst fears are being justified! But did not we, who all our lives have been engaged in drawing up a reasonable plan for ascending this mountain, demand that the ascent be postponed until our plan was complete? And if we so passionately opposed the path from which this madman is now retreating – Look! Look! He has gone back! He is descending ! He is spending hours in preparing the possibility of moving forward a mere yard! And yet we were treated with frightful abuse when we systematically demanded moderation and accuracy! – if we so fervently censured the madman and warned everybody against imitating and helping him, we did it entirely because of our devotion to the great plan of ascending this mountain, and in order to prevent this great plan from being discredited!(4)
The declarations of the opportunists issued during 1974-75 are the declarations like thevoices from belowof which Lenin writes They gloat openly, chuckle gleefully, shout, ’You’ll fall in a minute! Serve him right, the madman!’
I pointed out at that time that our progress from the Second Congress on will be slow and very difficult. What I said at that time has come true. The voices from below; the opportunist declarations have raised lots of dust and we have courageously persisted to keep the proletarian revolutionary line dear. Now that the voices from belowhave played out their role, the Party must advance further.
Those who under-estimate the question of opposing revisionism are actual conciliators with revisionism. To these opportunists, opposition to revisionism is not a life-death struggle. If revisionism seizes control of the Communist Party of China and capitalism is restored there, it will bring not only disaster to the Chinese nation but also to the communist and workers’ movement on the world scale. Even though the setback will be temporary it will be of grave consequence to the entire world. The possibility of a third world war will become an actuality. What Chairman Mao has said, that either war will give rise to revolutionor revolution will prevent war will come true. Stopping the capitalist restoration and opposing the right deviationist tendency is preventing war. This struggle against capitalist restoration and against revisionism is also not confined to China, it is also international and has to be waged on the international scale.
We are a contingent of the international proletariat, international communist movement. It is incumbent upon us that we also make a contribution against revisionism. Those groups and individuals who do not see the necessity of building the Party on the sound proletarian revolutionary line of opposing revisionism have forgotten that not opposing revisionism in Indonesia led to the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of progressive Indonesians. They have also forgotten that revisionism brought about the fascist regime in Chile and caused slaughter of thousands of progressive people there. Not opposing revisionism in this country and countries of North America and Europe means assisting the rise of fascism in these countries. Conciliation with revisionism and not opposing it vigorously and not carrying this struggle through to the end means exposing the people of the country to the real fascist danger. There is real danger of re- emergence of fascism in Europe and emergence of it in North America and the revisionist parties are the main tool of bringing this about. Opposing fascism, its emergence and organising resistance to it is the real practical task of every Marxist-Leninist but to oppose emergence of fascism necessarily means opposing revisionism.
So comrades what should we have done in the late 1966’s and in 1970 except to build the political party of the proletariat, the CPC(M-L), against revisionism? The only reason for organising the Party in 1970 was to oppose revisionism and once this reason is abandoned then we may ask: for what other reason would we have organised the Party? The concrete condition of the Canadian communist movement demanded that we establish the political party of the proletariat, the Communist Party, against revisionism. Not to recognize this much is to be blind and not to see anything concrete at all.
Comrades, we, the Internationalists, the Marxist-Leninists, the organisers of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), by basing ourselves on the concrete conditions right here, organised the Party in opposition to the parliamentary and peaceful swindle of the revisionists and this is why the CPC(M-L) was viciously attacked from all sides. Every kind of reactionary force save direct armed suppression and extermination was used against us. A holy alliance of revisionists, trotskyists, and police came into being. This alliance attacked us from all fronts. We responded to these attacks in like kind. We gloriously opposed the holy alliance and the police attacks. Hundreds of our comrades courageously faced the bourgeois courts and went to the enemy’s prisons. Very few of our comrades broke down in the face of these attacks and those who did are cherished by the genuine Marxist-Leninists. We were vilified by the opportunists and told that to resist the state is to be ultra-left. We contemptuously rejected this spinelessness and carried on the proletarian revolutionary path of resistance and revolution.
We also organised LEARN FROM PEOPLE CAMPAIGNS under the slogan: DIVIDE THE FORCES TO AROUSE THE MASSES. These campaigns were unprecedented in Canada and yielded tremendous positive results. Certain opportunists are ridiculing us that we used to run around the country, at the same time, they cannot grasp why the CPC(M-L) is the only political party of the proletariat organised coast to coast. They have some devious theories to explain away the fact that the Party is organised nationally and they do not concede that the reason the Party is established all across Canada is because of its resolute opposition to revisionism. In practical terms we opposed revisionism on two fronts: 1. We did not capitulate to the bourgeois state. The essence of revisionism is class-collaboration and capitulation to the bourgeois state. We resolutely opposed both. 2. We always put daring in command from the day we organised a discussion group in 1963 to the day the Party was founded in 1970 and six years from that time on. DARE TO STRUGGLE AND DARE TO WIN was and is still our guideline. But opportunists capitulate to the state and are opposed to daring. They dare only at the beck and call of international opportunism and internal reaction.
When the bourgeois state was attacking us, these opportunists prepared reactionary public opinion that the CPC(M-L) provokes police. Last year, a number of opportunist sects sang songs in praise of bourgeois democracy. The revisionist and opportunist line on bourgeois state attacks on us is: Long Live Police Attacks on CPC(M-L)! Down With Provocations of CPC(M-L) Against Police! Long Live Bourgeois Democracy!It is a very interesting point to note that when all these sects and groups, at the call of international opportunism, were writing tracts against the revisionism and opportunism of the CPC(M-L), they did not write a single word against revisionism. Most significantly, they did not denounce the peaceful and parliamentary road of revisionism and, in fact, praised bourgeois democracy to the skies. They vilified the CPC(M-L) for upholding the line that the bourgeois state is reactionary and fascist etc. They did not write a single word on the basic line of seizure of political power by revolutionary violence, guiding the proletariat in its struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat so as to achieve communism. One group falsely asserted that the CPC(M-L) is against dictatorship of the proletariat but did not write a word about revisionism and in opposition to it. The same group has recently written a sermon against individual acts of terrorism when no such terrorism exists at this time. Wouldn’t your mind boggle for a minute as to why at this time when there are no individual acts of terrorism anywhere they are writing treatises about it? Or could it be that they are telling the bourgeoisie that they will behave themselves at the time when economic crisis is broadening and deepening and every day bourgeois reactionary leaders are issuing one threat of reactionary violence after another against the proletariat. When the bourgeois reactionaries are threatening the proletariat with draconian laws and threaten individual progressives, these individuals are writing essays against individual acts of terrorism in order to save their skins. Instead of writing such trash, it would have been better if they had preached against turning the other cheek.
The thesis that the Party will come full-blown from the heavens is entirely wrong as well. The founding of the Communist Party is a declaration, a manifesto but the Party has yet to be established in the masses of proletarians and oppressed people. Establishing the Party in the masses is the whole historic period of preparation for social revolution which means that the masses have to grasp the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class and then these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world. This means that the Party has to wage incessant revolutionary struggles during the preparatory period through which the masses will grasp the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class. This entire period has to be objectively led by the Party. A Party may be big or small which depends on the circumstances but it must carry the proletarian revolutionary line on all questions in the masses. The declaration of the founding of the Party in 1970 was a manifesto against revisionism. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist- Leninist) was founded on the politics of opposing revisionism.
6 YRS OF CPC(M-L) cont’d next issue)