Perspectives of the class struggle in Canada.

[North Star]

So I'm sure there are some Canadian comrades who are a little uneasy with the results of the May Federal elections. It's a little scary but at the same time there is tremendous opportunity. Let's look at this story to see what Canada may look like during the next 4 years.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/a...-rich-and-poor

Now I gave support to the NDP in the past election volunteering and such. I'm a supporter of the United Front and I even met other Marxists doing it. The simple fact is that there is class consciousness in the Canadian working class but they are still oriented towards the NDP. Some would be frustrated by this but I was impressed because many write off workers as completely uninterested in politics especially in the developed world. I saw members of the working poor living in underfunded public housing give strong and enthusiastic support to the NDP. This is not simply them being deluded by reformism but an opportunity for them to be exposed to more radical ideas. They understand that Harper does not care about them and that there needs to be change. I think a non-sectarian approach going through the mass movements can convince many Canadian workers on the need for socialism. Even if the NDP makes a full blown capitulation to capital by severing their union links we need to be there to provide a revolutionary perspective in order to make sure that working class Canadians just don't give up on politics entirely.
I'd like to hear other comrades ideas about "what is to be done" in Canada.

[JoeySteel]

Start with the difficult process of getting around to where the class struggle is going to be at in Canada. If you think first of Stephen Harper and the NDP when you think of the class struggle in Canada you are automatically headed in the wrong direction, and this is what the pervasive and poisonous liberalism and social democracy in Canada breeds. This is a serious defect of the Canadian left dating back to the capitulation of the CPC to Browderism. The NDP is not going to be anywhere near a communism-oriented class struggle in Canada, and the best thing that leftists can do is to totally disassociate themselves from the Dipper party apparatus and build communist pre-party formations and organizations leading towards a popular cross-Canada communist movement in a few decades and participate in building mass orgs that break with social democracy and the state and will be ready to support the new state. Nobody can afford to be led around by right opportunists , parliamentary cretins, revisionist communists, trying to get their hand at managing capitalism, any longer. I don't want to turn this discussion into a "but can't we support the NDP just a little teensy bit??" conversation either please, I think it's a fundamental question and we should be clear that we are communists, and it really is one thing or the other.

[North Star]

Start with the difficult process of getting around to where the class struggle is going to be at in Canada. If you think first of Stephen Harper and the NDP when you think of the class struggle in Canada you are automatically headed in the wrong direction, and this is what the pervasive and poisonous liberalism and social democracy in Canada breeds. This is a serious defect of the Canadian left dating back to the capitulation of the CPC to Browderism. The NDP is not going to be anywhere near a communism-oriented class struggle in Canada, and the best thing that leftists can do is to totally disassociate themselves from the Dipper party apparatus and build communist pre-party formations and organizations leading towards a popular cross-Canada communist movement in a few decades and participate in building mass orgs that break with social democracy and the state and will be ready to support the new state. Nobody can afford to be led around by right opportunists , parliamentary cretins, revisionist communists, trying to get their hand at managing capitalism, any longer. I don't want to turn this discussion into a "but can't we support the NDP just a little teensy bit??" conversation either please, I think it's a fundamental question and we should be clear that we are communists, and it really is one thing or the other.

Ah yes I see you belong the the boycott2011.ca group. I'll give you Maoists over at BASICS and Revolutionary Initiative some credit, you've been organizing hard. Have you recruited any workers or are you still mostly just university students? How's that line on the progressive nature of Hutu nationalism working out for you? Or are you a member of RCP Canada? Then how goes the efforts for a People's War in Canada?
There are problems when you go and create your own mass organizations out of thin air. That's not what the workers are looking to. They are still looking at the NDP, traditional community groups and the traditional unions. Unless you link up and start making communist demands within these organizations, the workers will never find you. Why would they want to take a chance on some small group they've never heard of? Maoists posture as these radicals opposed to the treachery and opportunism of the Trotskyists, Hoxhaists, social democrats etc. but to properly do that they would have to formally critique and reject Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder" which I have never seen happen.

[genstrike]

Have you recruited any workers or are you still mostly just university students?... Then how goes the efforts for a People's War in Canada?

Have you social democrats pretending to be Trots "won the NDP to socialism" yet? Gotten any closer since the Waffle days?

[North Star]

I'm not a Trot and I'm not trying to convert the NDP to socialism. The Waffle weren't Trots either btw. We need to have a debate on how to best engage the working classes here. I'm simply saying you can't ignore the traditional mass organizations. That is where the workers are. I know that it's the line of groups like Socialist Action and the IMT, but the Trots can't claim a monopoly on the issue. I once even had an elderly member of the Communist Party of Canada tell me that they are always open to an alliance with the NDP. These ideas are hardly somehow counter-revolutionary. I'm thinking towards the Comintern Second Period and Lenin's Left Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder. Would someone from Canada who dismisses the NDP and these other strategies of engaging the traditional mass organizations please tell me how they plan to build a revolutionary working class? JoeySteel calls this a fundamental question for Marxists to build pre-parties and stuff. Been going on in Canada for quite sometime, the Maoists haven't made much progress since the 1970's. My ideas are hardly un-Marxist, I'm taking them from the Bolsheviks and the early revolutionary Comintern! The fact is all of this anti-revisionist Maoist stuff is silly ultra-leftism which doesn't even resemble Maoism as it was practiced in China or in actually existing Maoist movements in the third world that are larger than three university students. The bizarreness of Maoism in the West has a lot to do with its dreadful application in the 1970's and has a lot to do with its class basis with all of these groups of petit-bourgeois students wanting to pose as radicals, moving underground etc. The Bolsheviks operated in an autocratic state but still kept the workers informed of their ideas and organization. Which is more than the Western Maoists can claim with their closed secretive nature.
This quote from Mao flies in the face of what Maoists in the West have been up to

But while the principle remains the same, its application by the party of the proletariat finds expression in varying ways according to the varying conditions. Internally, capitalist countries practice bourgeois democracy (not feudalism) when they are not fascist or not at war; in their external relations, they are not oppressed by, but themselves oppress, other nations. Because of these characteristics, it is the task of the party of the proletariat in the capitalist countries to educate the workers and build up strength through a long period of legal struggle, and thus prepare for the final overthrow of capitalism. In these countries, the question is one of a long legal struggle, of utilizing parliament as a platform, of economic and political strikes, of organizing trade unions and educating the workers. There the form of organization is legal and the form of struggle bloodless (non-military). On the issue of war, the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries oppose the imperialist wars waged by their own countries; if such wars occur, the policy of these Parties is to bring about the defeat of the reactionary governments of their own countries. The one war they want to fight is the civil war for which they are preparing. But this insurrection and war should not be launched until the bourgeoisie becomes really helpless, until the majority of the proletariat are determined to rise in arms and fight, and until the rural masses are giving willing help to the proletariat. And when the time comes to launch such an insurrection and war, the first step will be to seize the cities, and then advance into the countryside' and not the other way about. All this has been done by Communist Parties in capitalist countries, and it has been proved correct by the October Revolution in Russia.

marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_12.htm

Note how Mao is saying that the CPs in capitalist countries should be using parliament as a platform!

[JoeySteel]

Ah yes I see you belong the the boycott2011.ca group. I'll give you Maoists over at BASICS and Revolutionary Initiative some credit, you've been organizing hard. Have you recruited any workers or are you still mostly just university students? How's that line on the progressive nature of Hutu nationalism working out for you? Or are you a member of RCP Canada? Then how goes the efforts for a People's War in Canada?
There are problems when you go and create your own mass organizations out of thin air. That's not what the workers are looking to. They are still looking at the NDP, traditional community groups and the traditional unions. Unless you link up and start making communist demands within these organizations, the workers will never find you. Why would they want to take a chance on some small group they've never heard of? Maoists posture as these radicals opposed to the treachery and opportunism of the Trotskyists, Hoxhaists, social democrats etc. but to properly do that they would have to formally critique and reject Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder" which I have never seen happen.

LOL. I am not affiliated with BASICS or RI, I am a supporter of RCP Canada outside of Quebec. Thanks for countering my criticism with some nice invective.

Just because a minority of workers are currently organized into unions which pay people to tell them to vote for the NDP doesn't mean that the working class is permanently attached to the hip of social democracy. You've managed to equate the lack of a mainstream communist space with the lack of an opportunity for a mainstream communist space. There is opportunity, you just think "the working class" are all just 40 year old life-long NDP voters in public service unions, by the sound of it. If the Maoists in Nepal were as creative as you, we could have a "People's Monarchy" by now!

I'm not really going to address your claim that Maoists are sneaky evil folks hiding in small rooms and keeping secrets from workers. It's just BS and sounds like the steamy articles from People's Voice (edit: accidentally said people's daily lol) about how Maoists are all terrorists. Nevermind the fact that Maoists around Canada are involved in both organizing yellow unions and mass orgs. Every revolution has been about building power for the new state to destroy the old but you're still stuck in the CPC ultra-revisionist line where Canada supposedly is a special unique place in the world, and we can't have real communism here, we should just keep talking about whatever is going on in parliament. It's a disgrace to communism and our ancestors!

If you don't think BASICS for instance, which I'm not at all affiliated with, does not play an active role in working with non social democratic mass orgs then it is nothing more than your own bias and acceptance of revisionist-communist pabulum and refusal to investigate for yourself.

You can quote Mao up and down. The fact is, it doesn't matter what Mao said if it's incorrect and doesn't correspond with the situation we are in! It's very easy to show that Lenin's ideas about Parliament in Left-Wing Communism are wrong today, and may have been wrong in the past! Here is one essay written in a Canadian context dealing with Parliament and Left-Wing Communism: http : // sorev . wordpress . com / 2010 / 01 / 03 /a-communist-position-on-bourgeois-democracy-and-the-parliamentary-system / - There are others too out there, RI probably has some.

Obviously I don't know how to "create a revolutionary working class," I would be a pretty special person if I did! My point is that when you start from the assumption that the first thing we need to do is to get in the camp of the social democrats, traitors, revisionists, and parliamentarians we are automatically steered in the wrong direction and if we actually advocate this as a path towards revolution we are full-throated lying to the masses. It's not, and has never been, communism. It's laziness, Canadian exceptionalism, and many other rotten things which you should be able to identify. Spare me, and please spare me any resentment about how much Maoists have been organizing. There is a lot of organizing to be done!

[JoeySteel]

I think it's astonishing to claim to be a supporter of the united front today in Canada. It's more understandable why such decisions would have been made after WWII, but since then it has ONLY resulted in the total subjugation of communist politics to bourgeois politics. Rather than create a "respectable" space for communism hand-in-hand with a so-called "labour" party like the NDP, it has totally destroyed an independent communist movement in Canada. The front is so united, in fact, that we have TWO "communist" parties that run for elections on thoroughly social democratic platforms. That's what I call cooperation!

Edit: Look at all these Canadian maoists, hiding from the masses!

www .montrealgazette . com / news / 4707018.bin?size=620x400

PS: Since you refer to "western maoists", do you think maoism is an "eastern" phenomenon or characteristic?

[North Star]

LOL. I am not affiliated with BASICS or RI, I am a supporter of RCP Canada outside of Quebec. Thanks for countering my criticism with some nice invective.

Just because a minority of workers are currently organized into unions which pay people to tell them to vote for the NDP doesn't mean that the working class is permanently attached to the hip of social democracy. You've managed to equate the lack of a mainstream communist space with the lack of an opportunity for a mainstream communist space. There is opportunity, you just think "the working class" are all just 40 year old life-long NDP voters in public service unions, by the sound of it. If the Maoists in Nepal were as creative as you, we could have a "People's Monarchy" by now!

I'm not really going to address your claim that Maoists are sneaky evil folks hiding in small rooms and keeping secrets from workers. It's just BS and sounds like the steamy articles from People's Voice (edit: accidentally said people's daily lol) about how Maoists are all terrorists. Nevermind the fact that Maoists around Canada are involved in both organizing yellow unions and mass orgs. Every revolution has been about building power for the new state to destroy the old but you're still stuck in the CPC ultra-revisionist line where Canada supposedly is a special unique place in the world, and we can't have real communism here, we should just keep talking about whatever is going on in parliament. It's a disgrace to communism and our ancestors!

If you don't think BASICS for instance, which I'm not at all affiliated with, does not play an active role in working with non social democratic mass orgs then it is nothing more than your own bias and acceptance of revisionist-communist pabulum and refusal to investigate for yourself.

You can quote Mao up and down. The fact is, it doesn't matter what Mao said if it's incorrect and doesn't correspond with the situation we are in! It's very easy to show that Lenin's ideas about Parliament in Left-Wing Communism are wrong today, and may have been wrong in the past! Here is one essay written in a Canadian context dealing with Parliament and Left-Wing Communism: http : // sorev . wordpress . com / 2010 / 01 / 03 /a-communist-position-on-bourgeois-democracy-and-the-parliamentary-system / - There are others too out there, RI probably has some.

Obviously I don't know how to "create a revolutionary working class," I would be a pretty special person if I did! My point is that when you start from the assumption that the first thing we need to do is to get in the camp of the social democrats, traitors, revisionists, and parliamentarians we are automatically steered in the wrong direction and if we actually advocate this as a path towards revolution we are full-throated lying to the masses. It's not, and has never been, communism. It's laziness, Canadian exceptionalism, and many other rotten things which you should be able to identify. Spare me, and please spare me any resentment about how much Maoists have been organizing. There is a lot of organizing to be done!

Ah so we've made some progress. You are willing to repudiate those theories from from Lenin and Mao that you think aren't applicable in a modern context. That's a good thing.
I've seen BASICS work alongside non-revisionist mass organizations. I've also talked to people in it. They work hard, they really do, but I've seen Trots build larger bases in some proletarian neighbourhoods than they have.
The NDP voting base is not a bunch of 40 year old union members. I have encountered youth living in dismal Toronto Community Housing Corp. buildings who immediately gravitate towards the NDP. I'm not sure if you think all the proletarian youth are politically apathetic and are ripe to be converted to Maoism so I don't want to suggest that, I'd like some clarification from you. So there is a gravitation towards social democracy even in the youth. I consider that a good start because they are at least open to political ideas.
Getting into the camp of social democrats, revisionists and traitors is unavoidable. If BASICS becomes some sort of serious mass force by doing what it is doing now it will be unprecedented. The Bolsheviks emerged from the RSDLP of which there were many more local groups and factions that just the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Communist Party of China came together as many different Communist currents had taken up Marxism during the May 4th movement and they eventually unified. The UCPN(M) emerged from the various splits in Nepalese Communist parties but many of its cadres had come of age during the 1990 People's Movement in Nepal. The CPI(Maoist) heritage can be traced all the way back to the original CPI which you would consider a revisionist organization. So the trend is that radical parties come out of the traditional mass struggle that happen within countries. Getting a small group together to do mass work is an uphill battle. If different circumstances arise and you are willing to engage that larger mass struggle that may be led by social democrats and yellow unions, you will find space to recruit members because these forces will never demand as much as the workers want.