Comrades,
Our collective, located in Vancouver, has set as its major objective to study and demarcate from the most advanced lines in the country-wide Marxist-Leninist movement. On the basis of the positions we arrive at through this process we expect to liquidate ourselves as a collective in order to allow our members to take up the proletarian revolutionary struggle at a higher level of organizational and political unity.
It is quite clear to us that the movement is divided organizationally and politically. Uneven development exists everywhere. These problems prevent us from providing proper leadership to the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and popular masses.
These contradictions are real; they have an objective basis in the current conditions of the struggle. The resolution of these contradictions cannot simply be “declared”. A leading line and its organizational vehicle can only be established through a process of struggle which involves the entire Marxist-Leninist movement across the country, including the advanced elements of the proletariat. The founding of the organization which will build the party of the proletariat must be politically justified by a qualitative transformation of the conditions of the revolutionary struggle.
We agree with IN STRUGGLE! that the movement as a whole is ready and willing to take up this task. We would add our own sense that Marxist-Leninists across Canada are acutely conscious of the need to build a party which is truly country-wide in character, and that many comrades are basing their work on this understanding.
For all these reasons we welcome the proposal of IN STRUGGLE: as a principled and fundamentally correct method of approaching the tasks of the current phase. In particular, we agree that the creation of the proletarian party – our central task – must pass through the constitution of a single Canadian organization of struggle for the party. The struggle to build this organization is an immediate task facing the entire Marxist-Leninist movement. We must unite the greatest number of Marxist-Leninists in the country on the basis of a political program to be debated by the whole movement and in front of the proletariat and popular masses before the creation of the organization. In order to consolidate political unity, apply the political line and correctly carry out the two-line struggle, the organization must apply the principle of democratic centralism to all its work.
IN STRUGGLE!’s method for determining who is in the movement and demarcating from opportunist and counter-revolutionnary trends is based on a correct approach. The ideological line which they advance contains a set of specific and objective points which can be tested and applied in a scientific manner. By avoiding subjectivism in this area, IN STRUGGLE!’s method is a basis for recognizing that no single group has the proletarian line while the others are only opportunists.
Unfortunately, we are not ready to comment on other aspects of the proposal at this time.
To sum up, we would like to point out a major strength which is at the heart of the proposal before us. It is the view that, while struggling to correct errors and weaknesses in the Marxist-Leninist movement, we must seek to draw on all its capacities in order to advance the struggle.
May the Party spirit prevail in the struggle to unite the Marxist-Leninist movement!