ON ITS WAY TO SOCIALISM: CANADA
A
contribution of Tim Buck and Vladimir Lenin
By Daniel
Paquet
dpaquet1871@gmail.com
It is the intention of La Vie Réelle in English to
bring to the knowledge of its readers some important Marxist works closely
related to the present and future of Canada:
Lenin and the Founding of the
Party of a New Type in Canada, in Lenin and Canada (author: Tim Buck); The End of “Permanent Prosperity”, in Thirty Years -1922-1952, The Story of the Communist Movement in
Canada (author: Tim Buck); The
Communist Party In the Constitutional Crisis, idem.; and The Seventh
(April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (B.) (Author: Vladimir Lenin), April 24-29, 1917.
The
following article is basically a set of quotations of those articles. It refers to the need to build a strong and
mass communist party in Canada; the so-called exception of the economic
situation in Canada especially in Québec, that avoided the recent financial
crisis; the outdated Constitution of Canada and the solution to the unequal
union in Canada where –if “officially” recognized nation on paper- the
French-Canadian does not fully enjoy its right to self-determination up and
including secession if such is the wish of the population.
Lenin and the
Founding of the Party of a New Type in Canada
“The first
attempt to found a Communist Party of Canada was in February 1919. The plans for the founding conference were
betrayed and the police caught several of the participants. [Then] most of us became members of the
Communist Party of America when it was founded, others joined the United
Communist Party of America shortly afterward.
As members of U.S. parties the
Canadian memberships had not direct contact with the International, but the
spirit of its Second Congress, especially Lenin’s polemics against the leftist
sectarians, combined with the situation in Canada, convinced the majority of
us, in the Canadian units of both the Communist Party of America and the United
Communist Party of America, that we should unite in a distinctly Canadian
Communist Party.
The unity
convention was held, of necessity illegally, on the outskirts of the city of
Guelph, Ontario. The unity convention
founded the Communist Party of Canada on June 1, 1921 (the CPC is 90 years old in 2011, this year, Ed.). (Photo
Internet: The General Secretary of the
Communist Party of Canada, Tim Buck, with comrades at the Toronto Maple Leaf
Garden).
This led to the formation in February 1922 of
“The Worker’s Party, “a legal organization which became the Communist Party of
Canada when the government allowed the repressive wartime legislation to lapse
in 1923.
Albert
Wells, a member of the Communist Party of Canada and at the suggestion of its
Central Committee published “Left”- Wing
Communism in installments. The keen interest
of the workers is indicated by the fact that the circulation of the paper
increased from less than 9,000 to 40,000 per issue as a result.
The
convention met in the Labor Temple, headquarters of the American Federation of
Labor in Toronto. [The party was] guided
in its activities by the policies of the International and its resolutions and
decisions as adopted from time to time.
Canada was a youthful and rapidly growing capitalist state.
[Already
Lenin] urged revolutionaries to work in the unions, including the reactionary
ones.
The End of
“Permanent Prosperity”
The fact
that the Workers’ Unity League was founded three weeks after the great Wall
Street crash was partly coincidence, but it illustrated the correspondence
between the attitude of the party’s new leadership and the trend of
development. The W.U.L. was established
to meet a need that had been developing for some considerable time --- the need
for coordinating the efforts to build industrial unions in the “open-shop”
industries, [for, amongst other things]: independent working-class political
action; nationalization of key industries; and trade union unity in One
National Centre.
(Photo
Internet: Banks behind the Canadian
Government).
The real difference between him
(Prime Minister R.B. Bennett, Ed.) and the Liberals was that he apparently
really believed in liberal economics, with the qualification that he did not
conceal his opinion that the function of capitalist government was to serve
monopoly capital. He increased the cost
of living for Canadian people despite falling world prices.
The Tory
government under Bennett, which followed, concentrated its attention and energy
upon enacting measures to protect the interest of big business at the expense
of the working class. Eventually the
Bennett government did take action to deal with the problem represented by the
tens of thousands of unemployed young men.
It
established “labor camps,” operated by the Department of National Defence. Single men who applied for public relief were
herded into those camps across the country and put to work building roads,
clearing the bush, etc., at the wage of twenty cents per day. They became known as “Bennett’s slave camps.”
All the
illusions about “permanent prosperity” were dissolved by the facts of
life. The Trotskyites and the “American
exceptionalists” merged t heir organizations and tried to secure support by
attacking the Communist party “from the ‘left’.”
The
Workers’ Unity League, through the left-wing unions, mobilized the workers who
were employed to support their unemployed fellow-workers who were being united
for self-defence in the local councils of the National Unemployed Workers’
Association.
The Communist
Party in the Constitutional Crisis
The Supreme
Court disposed of the “New Deal” and, so far as legislation was concerned, the
workers and farmers of Canada were back where they started form. They were not “back where they started from”
politically, however. Disintegration of
the two old parties of Canadian capitalism had started and King’s action
speeded up the disillusionment of tens of thousands who had previously
supported the Liberal Party. Broad
sections of the population were groping for progress. The vote cast in the federal elections had
given victory to the Liberals but, politically, it was a vote against the
Conservative Party and the policies that it stood for.
The only political party which submitted a
brief to the royal commission setting forth a documented analysis of the source
of the crisis and a full program of constitutional reform, was the Communist
Party of Canada. It
is an illuminating commentary upon the level of democratic political action at
that time t hat, except among very limited circles of the C.C.F., there was no
protest against that crass betrayal of democratic responsibility by party
leaderships.
(Photo
Internet: Russian communist leader, Vladimir
Lenin).
The
constitutional history of Canada is really the history of the struggle between
the democratic masses of workers and farmers and the vested interests and
monopolists… The constitution, insofar 
as we have a constitution, records
some of the formal rights of citizens; but no regard is given t to the
conditions for exercising those rights… The material basis of real political
equality and democracy is lacking because the exploiting class dominates the
economic life of the nation. The masses
have attained democratic rights through their struggles for economic
improvement and security against the vested interests.
as we have a constitution, records
some of the formal rights of citizens; but no regard is given t to the
conditions for exercising those rights… The material basis of real political
equality and democracy is lacking because the exploiting class dominates the
economic life of the nation. The masses
have attained democratic rights through their struggles for economic
improvement and security against the vested interests.
The brief
showed further that only 23,600 Canadians, only one fifth of one per cent of
the population, had incomes of more than $ 5,000 during that year (1934,
Ed.). But that one fifth of one per cent
of the population received $ 940,000,000, half as much as was received by all
the millions of workers whose labor had produced the national income.
‘The
Communist Party of Canada proposes that responsibility for all social
legislation shall be assumed by the Dominion government [and] control of all
companies to the end that the Dominion shall be able to control the monopolies
which at present act as complete dictators of the economic life of the country.’
The report
of the commission, submitted by Mr. Justice Sirois included modified versions
of several of the proposals put forward in the Communist Party’s brief. The report was rejected by Premiers Hepburn
of Ontario and Duplessis of Quebec.
The Seventh
(April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (B.), April 24-29, 1917
Beginning
from 1903, when our Party adopted its programme, we have been encountering
violent opposition on the part of the Polish comrades. [But] the Polish
Social-Democratic (Communist, Ed.) comrades have rendered a great historic
service by advancing the slogan of internationalism and declaring that the
fraternal union of the proletariat of all countries is of supreme importance to
them and that they will never go to war for the liberation of Poland.
Why should
we Great Russians, who have been oppressing more nations than any other people,
deny the right to secession for Poland, Ukraine, or Finland? The Polish Social-Democrats argue that, just
because they find the union with Russian workers advantageous, they are opposed
to Poland’s secession. What you have to
do is to stress, in Russia, the freedom of secession for oppressed nations and,
in Poland, their freedom to unite.
Freedom to unite implies freedom to secede. We, Russians, must emphasize freedom to secede,
while the Poles must emphasize freedom to unite. (Photo Internet: Members of the
Comintern on Red Square in Moscow).
If Finland, Poland or Ukraine secedes
from Russia; there is nothing bad in that.
What is wrong with it? Anyone who
says that is a chauvinist. One must be
mad to continue Tsar Nicholas’s policy.
Didn’t Norway secede from Sweden?
Alexander I and Napoleon once bartered nations, the tsars once traded
Poland. Are we to continue this policy
of the tsars? This is repudiation of the
tactics of internationalism; this is chauvinism at its worst. What is wrong with Finland seceding? After the secession of Norway from Sweden
mutual trust increased between the two peoples, between the proletariat of
these countries. The Swedish landowners
wanted to start a war. But the Swedish workers
refused to be drawn into such a war.
Do as you
please… Anyone who does not accept this
point of view is an annexationist and a chauvinist. We are for a fraternal union of all
nations. If the Ukrainians see that we
have a Soviet republic, they will not secede.
Any Russian socialist who does not recognize
Finland’s and Ukraine’s right to freedom will degenerate into a chauvinist. And no sophisms or references of this
“method” will ever help him to justify himself.”
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