Originally posted by
[email protected] 06, 2007 12:45 pm
It's already been mostly explained in this post but I'll elaborate.
The FLQ was a nationalist entity, not a progressive, pro-worker or anti-capitalist entity. Their targetting of English corporate assets in Quebec show only their recognition of the fact that foreign corporate assets are the most visible and tangible form of "outside control" -- their aim was not to attack capitalism but simply to attack what they saw as the means for "Anglo" control over Quebec.
So in my view, they are reactionary, for several key reasons. First, the act of targetting foreigners (and they didn't limit themselves to English Canadian targets) goes against the "international" aspect of anti-capitalism. Second, their actions served only to strengthen the national Quebec bourgeoisie who were, at the time, in the process of supplanting Canadian bourgeoisie and who successfully called upon workers of Quebec to support them, promising them freedom and the usual package of bullshit that national bourgeoisie give to workers they are trying to manipulate. Have the lives of workers in Quebec benefited from English companies suddenly being replaced with French companies? Are their lives better now that a French bank prints out their slave wages rather than an English bank?
In my view the FLQ epitomize the problem with Quebec seperatism which still occurs today even in left-wing circles: they are attempting to replace a mix of Anglo and Franco exploitation with pure Franco exploitation and expect this will somehow free them, when in reality it does nothing but further divide workers and further divide the movement. We're supposed to be eradicating the bourgeois state, not creating new ones.
Well while they were definitively a nationalist entity, they did have some elements of marxism although they were probably not true communists. They openly praised Castro, Guevara and Marx after all.
Fidel Castro is obviously not a nationalist, but there were strong elements of patriotism in the Cuban revolution. The way Fidel Castro saw his nation, Cuba, as a serf to the imperialist United States is reminiscent of the FLQ's position against English Canada and Great Britain although the FLQ did IMO express some views inherently incompatible with communism.
Being an Italian immigrant to Canada, what I know about the FLQ is obviously limited because I was not here to see it. But as far as I can tell, beyond their obvious racism, there does seem to be a brand of marxism in their writings. For example, their published manifesto that was read on television:
http://english.republiquelibre.org/Manifesto-flq.html
Once, we believed it worthwhile to channel our energy and our impatience, in the apt words of René Lévesque, into the Parti Québécois, but the Liberal victory shows that what is called democracy in Quebec has always been, and still is, nothing but the "democracy" of the rich. In this sense the victory of the Liberal party is in fact nothing but the victory of the Simard-Cotroni election-fixers (8). Consequently, we wash our hands of the British parliamentary system; the Front de Libération du Québec will never let itself be distracted by the electoral crumbs that the Anglo-Saxon capitalists toss into the Quebec barnyard every four years. Many Quebeckers have realized the truth and are ready to take action. In the coming year Bourassa is going to get what's coming to him: 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized! (9)
Yes, there are reasons for the Liberal victory. Yes, there are reasons for poverty, unemployment, slums, for the fact that you, Mr. Bergeron of Visitation Street, and you too, Mr. Legendre of Ville de Laval, who make F10,000 a year, do not feel free in our country, Quebec.
Yes, there are reasons, the guys who work for Lord know them, and so do the fishermen of Gaspesia, the workers on the North Shore; the miners who work for Iron Ore, for Québec Cartier Mining, for Noranda know these reasons too. The honest workingmen at Cabano (10), the guys they tried to screw still one more time, they know lots of reasons.
Yes, there are reasons why you, Mr. Tremblay of Panet Street and you, Mr. Cloutier who work in construction in St. Jérôme, can't afford Le Vaisseau d'or (11) with all the jazzy music and the sharp decor, like Drapeau the aristocrat, the guy who was so concerned about slums that he had coloured billboards stuck up in front of them so that the rich tourists couldn't see us in our misery (12).
Yes, Madame Lemay of St. Hyacinthe, there are reasons why you can't afford a little junket to Florida like the rotten judges and members of Parliament who travel on our money. The good workers at Vickers and at Davie Shipbuilding, the ones who were given no reason for being thrown out, know these reasons; so do the guys at Murdochville that were smashed only because they wanted to form a union, and whom the rotten judges forced to pay over two million dollars because they had wanted to exercise this elementary right (13). The guys of Murdochville are familiar with this justice; they know lots of reasons. Yes, there are reasons why you, Mr. Lachance of St. Marguerite Street, go drowning your despair, your bitterness, and your rage in Molson's horse piss. And you, the Lachance boy, with your marijuana cigarettes...
Yes, there are reasons why you, the welfare cases, are kept from generation to generation on public assistance. There are lots of reasons, the workers for Domtar at Windsor and East Angus know them; the workers for Squibb Ayers, for the Quebec Liquor Commission and for Seven-up and for Victoria Precision, and the blue collar workers of Laval and of Montreal and the guys at Lapalme know lots of reasons.
The workers at Dupont of Canada know some reasons too, even if they will soon be able to express them only in English (thus assimilated, they will swell the number of New Quebeckers, the immigrants who are the darlings of Bill 63).