During the ten years of our experience, the mass democratic method is becoming increasingly popular all over Canada. Mass democracies have broken out in all major cities, first in the universities, then in the communities, and we are on the eve of mass democracies erupting at the place of work where they have already taken place on a low level.
The holy alliance and the reactionaries are extremely hostile to the mass democratic method, and whenever a mass democracy meeting erupts they lurk around the fringes impotently wishing to somehow stop it.
The reason they oppose the mass democratic method is twofold: 1) They usually pick up a backward element, because only such a person can buy their social fascism, and promote him as a “communist”. When such a person is confronted with the mass democratic method that he must explain himself to the masses he becomes terrified and runs, instead of joining the masses and developing revolutionary ideas with them in order to build their revolutionary consciousness. 2)The mass democratic method educates people about revolutionary ideology, and they get inspired as soon as they see through the bourgeois reactionary line. Once the revolutionary ideas become widespread among the masses, and are grasped by them, they become a material force which builds the unity of the people and smashes the social fascists. Then their ideas of social fascism are thoroughly denounced and they have to run from the masses. Because of these two reasons, the social fascists oppose the mass democratic method and normally appeal to the most decadent ideas of racism and slander etc. Like fascism, the holy alliance flourishes on rumours and character assasination. Mass democracy meetings clarify these rumours and help build the material conditions whereby the mystifiers are completely unable to cause confusion among the people.
The key or the main content of the mass democratic method is that 1.) it is immediately in the service of the broad masses of the working and oppressed people and 2.) it relies on them for its defence. Which means that in the process of using the mass democratic method in disseminating revolutionary ideas amongst the masses, they adopt it as their own and begin defending it because it is most consistent with their material conditions. The imperialists use various subterfuges and devices to stop the development of ideas among the people and suppress the truth. The mass democratic method immediately opposes the suppression of ideas and brings facts to light for all to see. People have nothing to hide so they are very candid about the crimes which the imperialists and their agents are committing, while the imperialists have everything to hide from the people so they are reluctant to explain themselves. Because this method is consistent with the true aspirations of the broad masses of the people, it is consistent with the new life under socialism and communism where contradictions among the people will be settled through this method.
For more than ten years, in mass democracy meetings, thousands of people have familiarised themselves with communist ideas and have come over to support them. This has terrifled the reactionaries most.
The imperialists attempt to sanctify their anti-people laws by suggesting that the people do not have the democratic right to oppose them. Through this activity, the imperialists give themselves the right of aggression, plunder and repression while the people have no rights to fight back. Mass democracy teaches us how to fight back because the soul of a mass democracy meeting is:“It is right to rebel against reactionaries.” Mass democracy does not at all mean just holding large meetings. It means that we stand up for the true aspirations of the masses using the two basic guidelines of mass democracy: 1) No Investigation, No Right to Speak; 2) No Sophistry or Rhetoric Allowed.
This is our most fundamental right that we will never give up. This means that we have the initiative to fight against the reactionaries and this fight must take place amongst the masses. The worst form of revisionism, which at its lowest stands exposed as naked social fascism, preaches that to “fight” the imperialists we have to acquire all the tools of the imperialists big and centralised bureaucracies, big armed force and state machinery keeping no initiative in the hands of the people. Under the hoax of secrecy etc. they say the people must be the spectators and the cannon fodder while the fascists and the social fascists decide who has the right to exploit them. Revisionism means social fascism which means that the people have no initiative to fight their class enemies. The only way the people can be subjugated is if the revolutionary ideology, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, is taken away from them and they are incapable of understanding it due to the influence of the revisionists. For years the revisionists have done their best to stop the large-scale dissemination of revolutionary ideology, and their party has become a fascist party where some people are “experts” and others “ignorant”. This division is necessarily inconsistent with a communist party because the only way centralism which means conscious voluntary discipline among the party members will prevail is if the people are armed with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought in the process of their struggle. Without revolutionary ideology, the people have nothing. Mass democracy exposes the revisionists attempts to take revolutionary ideology away from the masses, and it makes them extremely uncomfortable.
The mass democratic method is an instrument in the hands of the working class. It builds the unity of the people by clarifying revolutionary ideas among them and is also a sharp weapon in the hands of the people to fight back against the attack of the monopoly capitalist class. It is the responsibility of all Marxist-Leninists to take the mass democratic method among the people and persevere in developing and enriching it through the actual struggle of the masses.
The mass democratic method is based on the revolutionary thesis that the “masses are the real heroes” and “the masses are capable of real wisdom”. The more Marxist-Leninists go among the masses and oppose bourgeois ideas and theories, and popularise the policies and tasks, of the Party, the more the masses will be able to differentiate real communists from sham ones. This is a basic part of the revolutionary struggle to educate the working and oppressed people against alien ideological, political and organisational influences. This will ensure that we unite the advanced elements, mobilise the middle elements around the advanced elements and arouse the backward elements, and that the Party is built right amongst the masses and not in some back room far away from the class struggle.