This polemic draws on two publications by the MREQ: Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization and CPC(ML): A Caricature of Communism. The pamphlet Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization is the MREQ’s major work on the question of Party-building. It is presented in ’opposition’ to two previously committed errors. First, the CPC(ML)’s “precipitation” method of Party-building, that is, proclaiming one organization the Party before the necessary conditions have been developed. And second, the MREQ’s own error of the “spontaneous conception” of Party-building, that is, passively waiting for the Party to be formed, or more precisely, for the necessary conditions to develop, and not actively taking up that struggle oneself. The MREQ intends to rectify its error by forming, as the title indicates, some sort of pre-Party organization. The purpose of this organization will be to “...immediately take up the work of building the Party – to prepare the conditions that will be necessary for its creation.” (MREQ Towards the Marxist-Leninist Organization p.18)
The ’conditions’ or “political tasks” which must be accomplished are: 1) concrete analysis of Canada “...(and Quebec in particular)...”; 2) “...to develop links with the working class and sink roots in the masses...”; and 3) “...to build the largest possible unity among Marxist-Leninists.” (TMLO p.17).
What is new in the MREQ’s formulation? These are tasks facing all organizations, groups and individuals within the movement. It is perfectly clear for a Marxist-Leninist that when there is no Party, our work must be directed to laying its foundation. Then why this talk of one organization “immediately” taking up the work of Party-building? Objectively, this entire process has been going on in our movement for the past few years. If the movement has been oblivious to the task of Party-building, if it has not been “taking up the work of building the Party” and of “preparing the conditions that will be necessary for its creation” then what, may we ask, has been going on? Perhaps we’ve just been suffering from an optical illusion when we see various groups putting forward their analyses of class relations in Canada and Quebec. Perhaps all those groups of Marxist-Leninists who are discussing various questions, trying to build ideological unity, are in reality not exchanging views, are not developing debate on line. Perhaps those group banners we see in demonstrations are a fiction. Perhaps the representatives of these groups inside the facteries and “at the factory gates” are merely figments of our wishful thinking.
Perhaps, but we think not. It is not our movement which has failed to pose the question of Party-building and begun working for it. No. The MREQ is imposing its own lack of “political orientation”, the fact that it did “not openly deal with the problems of proletarian revolution in Quebec and the rest of Canada”, and that it “avoided having to determine the tasks necessary to build such a Party” onto the movement as a whole. The tasks the MREQ outlines as needing to be taken up “immediately” are neither new nor original for our movement. They are new only to the MREQ, which has recently “gone through a process of study, research, analysis and discussion in order to deepen (its) political line.” (TMLO p.A). If it were not for its presumptuous attitude towards the rest of the movement, we would congratulate the MREQ for its ’discovery’ of the ’new’ tasks facing us. Indeed, if the MREQ had simply wanted to cease being a student movement, had wanted to actually rectify its petty bourgeois conception of Marxism-Leninism, had raised itself to a consistent Marxist-Leninist footing and had joined with the rest of the movement in our common effort, we would have reason for welcoming their appearance in the movement. But this is evidently not what the MREQ intended, for it certainly is not what it has done. Instead, it has put forward a ’plan’ for the entire movement based only on its own narrow experience and suited only to its own narrow aims. In seeking to foster its own errors and inadequacies onto the movement as a whole, the MREQ has revealed that its turn to Party-building is in fact only a continuation of its original narrowness, its guideline that served it so well when it quite openly based itself in the student, petty bourgeois intelligentsia. Where our movement has been struggling for correct positions on the major questions before us, the MREQ suddenly steps in and pronounces, with the impertinence of a college sophomore, “...we intend to begin a debate...” and “...we will conduct this debate...”. It may come as a surprise to our new arrivals, but this debate has been going on for some time before we were ’blessed’ with their presence, and will continue in a principled vein despite their generous efforts.
If the MREQ wants to contribute to the movement by “clarifying our tasks” and providing some direction to our work, that is in fact welcome. But, this contribution must be based on an objective analysis of the movement as a whole, its historical development to date, and must propose a solution for the movement as a whole. But as we will see, the MREQ is less concerned with the objective tasks of our movement as with the problems of substituting itself in place of the movement. Hence, the MREQ’s peculiar interpretation of the ’pre-Party organization’: the MREQ casts itself in the role of that organization.