First paragraph (Teaser):

This is the fourth part of the booklet From Nationalism to Internationalism. We will publish it in six parts. This booklet tells the story of an activist over a period of about 35 years. His booklet is both intended as a criticism of past activities (for example, a critique of the Maoist current in which he’d long evolved) and to show that these same activities were alien to the proletariat. In fact, he is writing this booklet so that young workers and students can avoid the same mistakes and gain an understanding of the politics of the Communist Left, the real proletarian camp.

Internationalists Communists of Montreal (ICM)

http://www.cmaq.net/en/node/38437 First part
http://www.cmaq.net/en/node/38799 Second part
http://www.cmaq.net/en/node/38837 Third part

Rest of the text:

L’Atelier Ouvrier

Of all the groups I’d known before the Communist Left, only one was truly proletarian, inasmuch from its perspective of ideas as for its composition. This was Atelier Ouvrier (AO) whose inception dates back to March 1973. It was around a struggle lost on account of the union that the workers in the garment, fur, footwear and railroads coalesced to form this group. Soon their analysis led them to understand that their defeat was due to the very structure of trade unionism. They had to work to "pressure" the union or to take action beyond it by creating committees of struggle. Afterwards, they write, "it is because we believe that economic struggles don’t automatically unblock-emerge on the awareness of political interests of the working class[that we seek] through this line of reasoning to get past this situation.” AO militants are looking for a revolutionary political organization… But they will be picked up by a leftist organization..
[See Appendix VI : Excerpt from The Question of Trade Unionism in Quebec]

At the same time, the EDJ (Equipe Du Journal which gave rise to the Maoist group, ‘En Lutte!’ in spring 1973) had links with the AO. Up to its first conference in November 1974, EL (En Lutte!) carried the same position on unions as the AO. A booklet on unionism, critical of unions as being intrinsically integrated into the State, was even published. Discussions on preparatory texts at the 1st Congress by EL’s founding committee, myself included, return to the classic Stalinist position. It is the union bureacracy that must be replaced. An AO militant and I share the same point of view. Criticisms of economism and of leftism are launched against the AO: economism, because too much time is spent on the study of the straitjacket that is the collective agreement, and not enough time on rallying workers to the M-L group; leftism because the unions are denounced. Today, I’d say that the denunciation of trade-unionism by the AO did not go as far as Left Communism has. But it was too much for the majority of the founding M-L committee. The debate on trade unionism was practically nonexistent at the first conference and the classic Stalinist position was passed. After that, a typically Stalinist attitude prevailed. A directive from the management (that I was no longer part of) ordered all the militants to destroy all copies of pamphlet critical of trade unionism as a pamphlet closer to the Stalinist line was to replace it.

In their text, The Question of trade unionism in Quebec, the AO responds to the critique of economism: "Why our work is not economist. It is simplistic to assume that what makes a work economist is that it focuses on the economic conditions of work, just as it is absurd to describe it as legalist because it seeks a collective agreement. After all, and in the same way, a work is not ideological because it conveys new ideas, even if they are "Marxist-Leninist" in their form. A struggle is ideological because it tends to destroy all forms of bourgeois ideology and petty-bourgeois within the working class and replace it with proletarian ideology. This replacement can only take place in and through the action of militants, illuminated by the right line.

By integrating EL, the AO, whatever its origin, class and initital tendency, was caught in the cycle of Maoist ideology and ceased to be a part of what one calls the left swamp, a quagmire regarding its real and instinctively proletarian interests which would have been able to create a true class consciousness, sharp, in preparation for organizing itself around an internationalist organization: the only real threat to the bourgeosie.

EL thereafter assisted and supported, through militants and propaganda, the establishment of the Solidarity Committee with Luttes Ouvrières (CLSO). This committee was the outcome of a coalition of leftist groups and community groups that supported workers struggles without criticizing trade unionism. Its activity was very similar to what NEFAC is doing today. In September ’75, the CSLO was dissolved.

The In Struggle!En Lutte! team

In February 1973, I became involved with the newspaper, ‘In Struggle!’ s editorial team (l’Équipe du journal En Lutte! - EDJ) which would become in 1974 the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada In Struggle! (MLOC). Ignorance, once again, of the achievements of Left communism, had me campaigning in another Stalinist organization worse than the CPC (m-l) – adventurist and dogmatic but ideologically more dangerous. I left that organization six months before its dissolution in May 1982.

The pamphlet that is the basis for the formation of In Struggle! , Pour un Parti Prolétarien, written by Charles Gagnon, applied Stalinist theses to Quebec and to Canada:

1. This is the Stalinist premise of “socialism in one country” .

2. There is no analysis of the establishment of State capitalism in Russia in the latter part of the 1920s. The failure of the revolutionary wave, particularly in Germany in 1919-23, which led to the isolation of the revolutionary Russian proletarian revolution in the former part of the 1920s, isn’t mentioned.

3. The author puts forward the national liberation struggle of Quebec in a first edition only to abandon it in subsequent editions. (Decision of the 1st Congress of In Struggle! in November 1974) but in supporting the national liberation struggles in the world. At the time of the decadence of capitalism since the end of the First World War, this support is tantamount to supporting national bourgeoisie, which is based on one imperialist power against another. Cuba, for example, which freed itself from American imperialism in becoming increasingly subject to Russian imperialism. Thus, Cuba has been the supplier of cannon fodder to the Russian block in the African wars (Ethiopia, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique) and in South Yemen, wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of Cuban workers.

4. The critique of union bureaucracy and not the unions themselves. Moreover, members of L’Atelier Ouvrier criticized the Marxist-Leninist approach on the union question. Having become members of In Struggle! , they were obliged to undergo a self-criticism because they had been “economists”.

****
EDJ’s objective was the regular publication of a newspaper to be distributed throughout Quebec. The first preliminary issue was published at the end of April 1973, and distributed the next day on May Day. But in that issue, was an improbable typo that makes for a rather comical anecdote, looking back on it now: in 10,000 printed copies, Marx’s phrase “Prolétaires de tous les pays, unissez-vous” had become “Propriétaires de tous les pays, unissez-vous” . And so, the night before May Day, we had to correct the typo in 10,000 copies.

The newspaper, of eight to ten pages, began to appear regularly in September 1973, twice a month. There were only ten of us activists to produce In Struggle! It entailed meeting with workers, strikers, and involved not only the writing, but also collective discussion of each article. This was one reason the articles were not signed, but another was for security reasons, as police would have surely been interested in the identities of the signatories. And it had to be distributed – which meant planting ourselves in the doorways of factories at 5:00, 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning to sell the paper. All militants, to begin with, had to be there – profs, students, workers. However, once a militant had risen in the Stalinist hierarchy, he or she was exempt from this task.

There were other Maoist groups as well in Quebec (a year later they had spread across Canada) so it was necessary to meet to discuss our political ideas. The schedule for each of the dozen or so activists, in the beginning, was about thirty hours a week spent on the production, distribution of the paper, and on internal and external meetings. Meetings went on late into the night, and weekends were taken up. This put a strain on relationships. I personally paid the price, especially as my proletarian wife was not a militant, and we had children. Such was the degree of activism in a Maoist organization. Things improved later on with the arrival of new members, for we could not have continued long at that rate.

We distributed the paper, In Struggle! across Canada with a circulation of 10 000 copies a week starting in 1977.

The aim of the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada In Struggle! (MLOC) was to distribute a newspaper that would rally elements of society that should come from the working class, in particular, with the aim of creating a revolutionary party of Canada only. This party was intended to lead a socialist revolution in Canada. Of course, in view of OMLC’s Stalinist perspective, it would be Stalinist, and thus based on the Stalinist-Maoist theory of socialism in one country – a form of nationalism that is a far cry from workers internationalism.

During federal as well as provincial elections, the paper consistently called for spoiling the ballot. Elections leave you the choice between several people who can only be counted on to play the exploitation game for the next three or four years. The position on spoiling the ballot was utterly bourgeois, for it implies that parliamentary opportunities exist for workers. The Left communist position maintains that nothing can be expected from elections and parliament – that total abstention from elections must be put forward. It’s workers councils – or another form of organization, even more effective for the proletariat, yet to be realized – that will represent the working class, guided, not led by an international revolutionary party.

The police continued their work of espionage.

Indeed, for some time, in a large apartment at 3939 rue St-Denis, a member and his sympathizing partner lived there with two rooms reserved for In Struggle! At one point, this militant told us of a racket he’d heard around 3 a.m. the night before. Taking a look in one of the rooms reserved for us, I notice a little scratch on a wall near the ceiling. On lifting the peeling paint, I see what looks like a little section of tubing, which was in fact the end of a microphone. It had been barely three weeks since we’d taken possession of the premises, and already police had bugged it from the adjoining vacant apartment… Faced with this police espionage, we had a questionable attitude. We pretended to have seen and heard nothing. And for a year, we watched what we said, acting as if unaware of the bug. A few years later, we learned that the RCMP installed microphones everywhere, such as the Agence de Presse Libre du Quebec and in militants’ homes. And I remember, in that regard, being videotaped by a plainclothes cop, even though I’d taken a quiet street on my way back from the printers with copies of In Struggle! .This sort of thing is one of the oldest modus operandi used by police to intimidate those involved in one way or another in challenging the established order.

****

Up until November 1974, In Struggle! was a group that advocated Quebec independence. In Maoist language, this meant taking political positions in favor of the Quebec national liberation struggle on condition that the workers revolutionary party heads it.

Today, I endorse the idea that since capitalism’s entry into its period of decadence during the First World War, national liberation struggles are only intended for the proletariat to choose the side of one or more factions of the bourgeoisie. These struggles lead them to oppose one another, leading them into war in which, once again, it’s the proletariat who die on the front line.

The following extract from Socialism or Barbarism from the Communist Worker’s Organization (CWO) , British section of the International Bureau for a Revolutionary Party, written in 1994 is very explicit on this point.

"To those who argue that Marx supported certain independence movements or that Lenin supported a policy of granting self-determination, we reply that such mechanical ‘Marxism’ is not Marxism at all. Marx was writing at a time when he could see that capitalism was developing a working class, new technology, machinery and scientific thought. All the things necessary to make communism possible. As a result, Marx and Engels supported some nationalist movements where they thought it would get rid of feudal and other pre-capitalist social structures. This was the basis for a new area for capitalist development. In this ascendant period of capitalism it was possible for new independent capitalist nations to emerge and thus widen the basis for the creation of the working class, the future gravediggers of capitalism.

However since the opening of the present imperialist phase of domination of the planet no such independent capitalist formation is possible. It was Luxemburg, not Lenin, who grasped this reality better despite her erroneous analysis of the roots of imperialism. The further development of capitalism this century has only underlined the correctness of Luxemburg’s position on the national question. Lenin had expected that the political struggle of the colonial nations would provoke a huge crisis of the system. In fact this did not happen because when decolonisation took place it simply cut the military costs of imperialism. It did not alter the economic relationship. In many instances decolonisation itself was part of an inter-imperialist struggle since it was forced on the older imperialist powers by the USA after its emergence as the dominant imperialist power in 1945.

Indeed, in the epoch of imperialism we can say that no imperialist power is independent since all states are part of an imperialist hierarchy in which there are only degrees of domination. Those states at the edge of the system are in the weakest position. Here, the local bourgeoisie, will occasionally use ‘anti-imperialist’ (i.e. nationalist) rhetoric to disguise the fact that they have simply become an integral part of capitalism’s global domination of the working class. The only sure path to liberation for the world’s workers is through the international class war, not through support for some bourgeois national liberation gang. The aim of the proletariat is the abolition of all nation states and all frontiers."

At the first convention of In Struggle! in November 1974, there was a unanimous vote in favor of the unity of all Canadian and Québécois workers. The convention, following certain resolutions, realized that Québécois workers had the same enemies as their Canadian counterparts, and so they became their main allies. The rationale was that Francophone political leaders like René Lévesque as well as economic leaders, such as those at the head of Bombardier or of Donohue may have had an interest in establishing an “independent” capitalist Quebec with its stamps, its flag and its dollars – and even if at the time many nationalists were ready to opt for the US dollar as currency in Quebec. This resolution was a very important organizational change, and led to the distribution of the newspaper as well as encounters with Maoist groups across Canada. This led to the production of a bilingual newspaper every two weeks in 1975 and the printing of the same newspaper every week in 1976. Furthermore, despite this resolution, which seemed to extend the terrain of political action to Québécois workers confined to provincial boundaries, In Struggle nevertheless remained in the political vacuum of Stalinist theory of building socialism in one country. Support for national liberation struggles, which boiled down to support for one bourgeoisie to the detriment of another (a position, needless to say, completely anti-proletarian), in the peripheral countries capitalism thus continued.

In 1975, ‘76 and ‘77, In Struggle! rallied many small Maoist groups in Quebec as well as in the other provinces, and a host of other individuals besides. The number of members at the time amounted to around 350.

And so, In Struggle! met with other Maoist groups in view of discussions or even to win them over.

I remember an invitation to debate from the CPC (m-l). Their messenger was none other than the current leader of the extreme nationalist right, Rhéal Mathieu. I was at this meeting along with two other members of IS. Facing us on the other side of the table, were Hardial Bains and two members of his “parti”.

This “party” never had anything in common with a real internationalist proletarian party. It had been founded in 1970, completely cut off from working class struggles. As with all the Maoists, it advanced the Stalinist concept of “socialism in one country”. The guru of the “party”, Hardial Bains, took himself for the “Canadian Mao”. He had at least one thing in common with Mao, as we would see later on. A huge turnover of “party” members had been due to his provocations with the police, among other things. Its membership never exceeded fifty. In leftist circles, the CPC (m-l) was best known as the party of the 2x4, named after the sticks they used at demonstrations – not only against police but also against any group which dared to get in front of his procession at demonstrations. From China in the early ‘70s, then to Albania, they moved to support Cuba in the ‘90s – in short, from one capitalist state to another.

At another point, we discussed the split that occurred in 1971 in the CPC (m-l). One of its leaders was Pierre Dupont who had founded le Mouvement Révolutionnaire Ouvrier (MRO) in autumn 1971, which only lasted one season. It was still a Maoist group that simply criticized the adventurism of the CPC (m-l), its isolation of francophones and finally the egocentrism of the guru, Hardial Bains. Even if he had only been a sympathizer of the CPC (m-l), Bains, as we learned, had been targeted by his own group for assassination, however conditions were not conducive for it at the time. (sic!) This “Canadian Mao” was tight-lipped about the settling of this score, which he had been considering. The CPC (m-l) was well within the Maoist political line. From the PCC of Mao, to the Maoists of Nepal or Peru, not to mention the Khmer Rouge, the assassination of political opponents, within their group or outside of it, was part and parcel of their political mores.

Maoists in Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver had already joined the organization. But to consolidate the OMLC throughout the country, some Québécois were dispatched to other provinces to spread the positions of In Struggle! . Militants left voluntarily for places like Vancouver or Edmonton on behalf of the organization. Unemployment was lower at the time, so it was relatively easy to find work and to integrate, in order to attract new forces through political agitation.

In Struggle! then organized conferences to unify Marxist-Leninists. At one such conference, 3,000 people turned out at Cégep Édouard-Montpetit. About a thousand people linked to the organization also regularly attended May Day, March 8th parties and anniversary celebrations of In Struggle! . At the same time, the Worker’s Communist Party – Maoists more “pure” than IS – had similar attendance at their public meetings. Only lecturers from the “correct line” Maoists were allowed to speak. Internationalists from the proletarian camp would never have been able to express themselves freely as they would surely have destroyed the character of Stalin and Mao, while shattering the theory of socialism in one country and their nationalist and sectarian conception of a party that had nothing proletarian about it.

1976 Olympic Games Underground

During the arrival of the Olympic Games in Montreal, we learned that police would be arresting people shortly before the games were to begin. Members of the Central Committee and others in much the same situation as mine (numerous arrests) would either disguise themselves or go into hiding for the duration of the games. In April, RCMP came around twice, to my partner’s disgust, telling her that they absolutely wanted to see me. I’d had no run-ins with police since 1971. But finally, one evening, two cops managed to catch me at home. Since they had no warrant, I told them I wasn’t interested in any of it, and that they could piss off. One of them told me that he’d be sure to nab me that summer. So I spent the duration of the Games hiding out in the United States.

Actually, there were arrests but not of militants; instead the police got their jollies from persecuting tramps, vagabonds, undesirables and the like, on the pretext of cleaning up the city for the Games, tossing them in jail or “deporting” them from the Island of Montreal.

The Parti Québécois had been in power since November 1976, and the first law they passed was to prevent all forms of inquiry into the construction of the Olympic stadium. No investigation would uncover how Québécois capitalists, with the complicity of the unions in the construction industry, fraudulently enriched themselves in the stadium’s construction. One little example: cranes were rented at an exorbitant rate of $1,000 per day; they also ensured a second crane was in place in case of a breakdown; and a third if unfortunately the second were to break! The new PQ government voted, by a special tax on cigarettes, that smokers assume the skyrocketing costs of stadium construction; which is to say that it’s still largely the proletariat who paid for it, since the proletariat makes up the major part of the population in any country!

An accident involving Premier Lévesque revealed just how much the application of law can vary depending on one’s social class. February 5, 1977, Lévesque hit and killed a man with his car that night after an evening with friends. Had Lévesque been wearing his glasses? Had he been drinking? We’ll never know. Lévesque got off easily. Not even an inquest… And he was given a private chauffeur a day after the “accident”.

****
After stating that “longer-term objectives of spreading the program and of rallying workers had stagnated in large part” and that “there was perhaps only one terrain [national liberation struggles] on which we have really advanced”, the campaign supporting national liberations struggles continued: El Salvador, Iran, Ireland and Nicaragua. Articles were published in newspapers and magazines, funds were raised and activists were even sent to Nicaragua when the Sandinistas took power. In spring 1980, IS condemned PLO terrorism. However, it is reminiscent of the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR – Parti communiste Révolutionnaire) which backs the Maoists in Nepal. The Maos of IS had “then realized that it was pointless to consider these struggles as being in the vanguard or leading to socialism in an immediate sense, and we gave up criticizing parties or fronts that were committed in terms of the immediate struggle for socialism.” On the crisis of the Marxist-Leninist movement, Charles Gagnon 1981.

This quote alone is sufficient to show that IS was completely outside the proletarian camp and at the service of the bourgeoisie whatever that was. Workers no longer came around, but the organization really progressed in its support of national struggles in the countries mentioned above. IS didn’t criticize the parties or fronts that combine the interests of the bourgeoisie with those of the proletariat of these countries because it was not a struggle for socialism. Was it any wonder then that the rallying of the proletarians was stagnating?

Another matter that struck me in particular was the funding of this organization. I can speak with full knowledge of the facts, as I was in charge of their national finances for several years. Around 1978, at a certain point we even ran a nation-wide fundraising campaign that raised $147,500. When I think of the money taken from the pockets of workers for an organization of capital, there’s no cause for celebration. In Struggle! also had a whole range of enterprises for the dissemination of Marxist-Leninism: a publishing house, printing press (les Presses Solidaires), which also printed for the unions, a theater troupe (le théâtre de la Shop) bookstores in Quebec, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, a band of singers as well as a distribution agency for brochures, films and records. Two record albums of revolutionary songs were produced by In In Struggle! All these enterprises had a lot of standing (1) which, with the majority of the elect liberated from their day jobs, having a lot of political clout in the organization. I have never been a full-timer and I still think that a real revolutionary organization should have as few full-time activists as possible.

In 1976, a theoretical journal, Proletarian Unity, produced in English and French,(2) began publication with more in-depth articles than the one newspaperIn Struggle! ! The articles were based on Maoism and Marxist-Leninism, though, and always poles apart from the ideas that I actually advocate – the general political positions of Left communism. Moreover, few if any activists were even aware of Left Communism’s existence.

An international journal in French, English and Spanish (International Forum) had been published since 1977. This journal published articles from various Stalinist groups: Maoists, Marxist-Leninists, pro-Albanians... Sometimes In Struggle! ! activists went to other countries to help groups organize better. In Struggle! was financially independent of any group or country in the world. But its newspapers and journals promoted Chinese and Albanian State capitalism, which they called socialism.

In Struggle! claimed that China had been socialist up until Mao’s death but that after, without any workers uprisings, it became State capitalist. Bizarre dialectic, for if China had really been socialist, the working class would surely have fought strongly against losing power.

Faced with evidence of the reactionary aspect of Third-Worldist theory, In Struggle! eventually denounced this Maoist idea. Indeed, this theory completely eliminates working class struggle against the bourgeoisie. It maintains that there were two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union, which constituted the first world. The second world was represented by all the imperialist countries under the thumb of the first world countries. The third world comprised all other countries including the “socialist” ones such as China. Regimes of the so-called third world, rotten as they were, as for example, Romania under Ceausescu and Pinochet’s Chile, were to be supported in their struggles against the first world! A Maoist party as the “communist” worker’s party (PCO) went so far as to support Canadian imperialist ambitions by supporting the independence of the Canadian bourgeoisie against American imperialism. As for the “communist” Chinese party, it went so far as to support the actions of US imperialism against Soviet imperialism. Indeed, for the Chinese Maoists, the main enemy was represented by Soviet imperialism – going so far as to induce China to give foreign aid to the Pinochet regime in Chile because it was against Russian imperialism.

Here is what the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party had to say in its platform:
"In China a different process led to the same result: A state capitalist regime which, even today is still searching for its 'true' role within the international alliance system of imperialism. The essential difference in Chinese history is that it has never had a proletarian revolution to compare with the Russian October of 1917. The history of the present Chinese regime begins with the tragic defeat of the proletarian movement in Canton and Shanghai in 1927. This was followed by a national war conducted by a bloc of classes in which the peasantry acted as the shock troops. It ended with the establishment of a regime under [Stalinist] auspices and based on the same kind of highly centralised state capitalist relations. This regime, which broke away from the Russian sphere of influence in the ‘60s under the banner of neo-Stalinism, found itself turning to the US in the 1970s. Both these apparently contradictory moves stemmed from attempts to maintain control of the economy and encourage capital accumulation. At no time has China been a proletarian power and the ideology of Maoism was nothing but the means for dragooning the masses into sacrificing their interests for the benefit of the national capital."

The position of In Struggle! during the 1980 referendum – in the face of the working class – put it even more formally in the camp of parliamentary political parties – their only concern being that the question in the referendum be posed clearly. In the parliamentary democratic system, only bourgeois political opinions are permitted. In Struggle! ! thus advocated spoiling the ballot during the referendum although the PCO called for abstention. So In Struggle! set up a committee for spoiling the ballot which was illegal because all the voters, according the laws of the PQ, should be under the umbrella of YES or NO. A booklet was published titled, “Neither renewed federalism nor sovereignty-association”. It was distributed across Canada. Where do proletarian interests lie in a choice as rotten as that? Far from all this, far from parliamentary questions which always serve only bourgeois interests, no matter what. Again: despite any semblance of proletarian appearance, In Struggle! never belonged in the proletarian camp. The leftist positions it carries, as all leftist positions in general, serve only to benefit the bourgeoisie by sowing confusion among our class.

****
In summer 1980, I organized a trip to Albania with about 20 members and sympathizers. This was quite an undertaking, as Canada had no relations whatsoever with this country – an outcome of the Cold War. In Albania, Enver Hoxha’s Stalinists took power during the Second World War. During inter-imperialist quarrels between Russia and China, Albania fell into the camp of Chinese imperialism. In 1976-77, contradictions between the pure Albanian Stalinists and Maoist Stalinists were exacerbated, and Albania aligned itself with French imperialism and that of the Scandinavian countries. For in the era of current decadence, where capitalism has succeeded in extending its dominance around the globe, each country becomes imperialist. So, mired in the Stalinist swamp of Marxist-Leninism, we were preparing a trip to Albania like Muslims to Mecca. We visited this small country of two million for two weeks. We visited factories, a hospital, a day-care, museums, a co-operative, a dental center and I forget what else. What a disappointment for most of us! First of all, it was utterly impossible to meet with leaders of the Labor Party of Albania, the Stalinist party that ran Albanian State capitalism recognized only the sect of the CPC (m-l). Secondly, Albanian nationalism was everywhere and our ideal of "proletarian internationalism", even through the Marxist-Leninist telescope, had suffered a blow.

Once again, the police and their mercenaries

Another incident with police at Katevale (Sainte-Catherine d’Hatley) in the Eastern Townships, September 29, 1978… In Struggle! militants and community groups had rented a camp for the weekend for political formation. About twenty RCMP agents proceeded to surround the location. Their purpose? More than likely it was another repressive maneuver aimed at hindering the work of certain activists and intimidating the younger ones. We had to think of something. A few activists managed to get out of the camp without the police noticing and then got on the phone to some journalists who were always on the lookout for some sensational story or other. They told them that a peaceful meeting in a rather quiet camp in Katevale was being surrounded by plainclothes police. But it was no longer necessary for journalists to show up to in order to obstruct the police in their arrests. We had photographed a few of them disguised as hunters. Following this monumental blunder, the Sûreté du Québec claimed to have been unaware of this meeting and the activities of its agents there. At the same time, however, these lying cops were ransacking cars in the village of Katevale. Of course, the bourgeois media had little to say about this major foul-up by the police.

While we’re on the subject - in spring 1970, a Maoist bookstore in Montreal was set on fire (arson), with the guy from the bookstore inside. He tried to put the fire out with his hands and with towels, getting severely burned in the process. Police arrived almost immediately after the fire broke out and set about arresting the guy in charge of the bookstore. He was sentenced to six months in jail allegedly because he’d set his own bookstore on fire as a publicity stunt for the Maoist cause. The evidence – he’d burnt his hands setting the fire!

One summer afternoon in 1977, as I was leaving the adult education center where I taught, listening to the radio, I heard that striking workers at Robin Hood Flour Mills had just been shot at. So I headed straight over there to see what had happened. I found out that the company had contracted “hired guns” to shoot at workers on strike. Fortunately none of the strikers had been injured. Though on the other side of the street, a bullet had pierced the window of an apartment, hitting a wall just above a crib in which a baby was taking its nap. So at the scene of the clash, I see armed security guards and/or hired guns retreating to company property. Police got there a bit later. In the wake of this shooting, everyone was a loss as to how to react. I then started to agitate near the strikers, saying that, “those company guards just shot at us in front of everyone and the police did nothing. Look, these guys are killers; come on, you’ve got to arrest them.” We then pushed for the cops to arrest these potential killers… At our insistence, two cop cars drove up onto company property… Half an hour later, cop cars high-tailed it out of there with what looked like only cops inside, no guards. Afterwards we found out that the cops had let the guards duck down in the back seat to avoid being seen. No surprise, then, that at their court hearing, they were all acquitted. According to the judge, they were within the law; they were responsible for defending the private property of Robin Hood. The strikers were supposed to remain on the sidewalk and not to encroach so much as a meter or two on company grounds, otherwise the capitalists and their security guards had the right to shoot over their heads.

This is just one of many examples of how the State is not neutral, but a tool of repression for the protection of capitalist property. At Regent Knitting Mills at St-Jérôme, before its closure, there were similar incidents: workers were beaten for having dared take a few steps onto company grounds.

Dissolution of the Maoist group In Struggle! !

By 1980, it had become increasingly difficult for In Struggle! ! to rally workers, particularly laborers. Throughout its entire existence, In Struggle! only had a minority of laborers in its ranks. The organization was composed of far more college and university professors, and students than proletarians. As In Struggle! had called for the spoiling of the ballot during the 1980 referendum, a lot of militants left following the victory of the NO vote, some put forward that it should have been proposed to call for a YES vote, but a critical Yes (sic). Françoise David who founded Québec Solidaire (QS) was part of that group.

Also, after the dissolution, some became anti-communist because they equated communism with Stalinism, while others opted for Québecois nationalism in a kind of feminist gravy with a dash of social democracy like one of the cadres of Françoise David’s organization. There were some as well who outright joined the bourgeois feminists and social democrats. As for others, they got rich from the businesses they started.

The Stalinist program of In Struggle! was no longer defensible –with certain reservations– and that of a small minority: the Singular committee. I joined this minority for a while, up to its disappearance a few weeks after the dissolution of the organization. As for the majority, they defended social democratic positions.

The MLOC In Struggle! was dissolved in May 1982 with 187 votes in favor of dissolution, 25 against and 12 abstentions. In Struggle! could not find in its Stalinist studies, the theoretical and political force to draw lessons from the succession of defeats in Germany, Russia, etc. It did not find that the isolation of the Russian revolution in the early 1920s was the main cause of its rapid degeneration. It was the chief point that really indicated that IS was not in the proletarian camp.

Actually, In Struggle! had proven a very good training ground for cadre and leaders of bourgeois organizations. It was the same with other rival Stalinist formations. Here are a few examples but the list is far from complete. From In Struggle! , there was Françoise David, head of QS; François Saillant, QS candidate and leader of the housing rights group: Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU); Raymond Legault from Collectif Échec à la guerre (Collective Failure of the war); André Paradis from the League of Rights and Freedoms; André Lavallée, Borough Mayor of Montreal for the party of Mayor Tremblay; Monique Séguin and Diane Fortier, former presidents of Montreal Teachers Alliance; journalists from media organizations such as Christian Rioux of the Devoir and union lawyers. From the PCO, there was Marc Laviolette, former president of the CSN and PQ activist; Gilles Duceppe, head of the Bloc Québécois; Pierre-Paul Roy, former Chief of Staff of Gilles Duceppe and former adviser to Lucien Bouchard; Jean-François Lisée, journalist et former Special Adviser to the PQ. From the CPC (m-l), there was Arnold August, president of the travel agency Travel Culture Cuba; Pierre Dupont journalist with Radio-Canada. From Union Bolchévique, there was Pierre Dubuc, director of the Aut’Journal and candidate to lead the PQ. From Mobilisation, there was Pierre Baudet at Alternatives. These individuals introduced amongst the working class the nationalist position of “socialism in one country”. These people essentially never betrayed, they simply continued within bourgeois politics, but in a different vein.

I had already resigned back in October 1981 after having spent nine years of my political life in this organization. This wasn’t because I was aware that In Struggle! had been a Stalinist organization but rather because I felt that for the last year, the organization had leaned more towards social democracy. My political activism in nationalist and leftist groups or parties had wasted my time, money and days off, and above all had disoriented me in my desire to be part of the struggle for communism. Some would say that in being an activist in these groups I had become politicized. Not at all and even worse, the habits and ideas acquired in leftist groups have impeded my knowledge of a true living Marxism. Activism in such groups or parties made me an accessory to these organizations of capital by getting conscious elements of the proletariat mixed up in the same boat that I was in, sowing confusion amongst them. There is no continuity between militancy in groups in the political camp of the bourgeoisie and the proletarian camp. To suggest that revolutionaries can go part of the way or “share an experience” with Maoist groups is, in the best case, an opening to frontism… what Left Communism has always fought against. To suggest that there might be any link, any action or joint analyses in common between the Maoism and Left Communism in building a communist party is to open the door to all manner of organizational and political compromises, or even the entryism that Left Communism has just fought. These militants must take stock of their political past and politically break with it. It’s a precondition for developing a revolutionary practice unencumbered by the remains of leftism, as much as it is in understanding the political questions as it is in understanding the organizational questions. This is the main purpose of this work.

****
I have not touched on Trotskyism and Trotskyists in this political autobiography. The reason for this is quite simple – I’ve never been active directly or indirectly in any of their organizations. I consider Trotskyist organizations to be as harmful to the proletariat as the Maoist ones.
For more information, I suggest reading the booklet, Trotsky, Trotskyism, Trotskyist: From the revolution to Reformism. The booklet is a text from the Communist Workers Organization dating back to October 2000

(1 )In Struggle! had 68 employees in 1978 over 37 members or 18%, which is enormous and very bureaucratic.
(2) Christian Rioux, the director, was able to carry on his work as a hack-writer by becoming a journalist for the Devoir.

Appendix VI

Extract from ‘‘ The Question of Trade Union in Quebec’’

This text of 71 pages published in December 1973 by l’Atelier Ouvrier (Workers Workshop), gives a point-by-point analysis of the clauses of a collective agreement for shoe workers. Two workers and a secretary were involved, as well as an intellectual, and a few supporters like myself. These militants, completely unaware of the discoveries of the Communist Left, came to a very similar position on unions. The birth of l’Atelier Ouvrier took place in March 1973, continuing until its dissolution in spring of ‘74. These members, after undergoing self-criticism, returned to En Lutte! I believe that the disappearance of l’Atelier Ouvrier was a setback for the working class, when they entered a Stalinist organization.

En Lutte believed it was only necessary to change the union leadership, without further developing their analysis of unions. The unions were simply in error due to corrupt management and not due to the fact that the unions are fully integrated into the capitalist system and its state.

…”B. General comments on unionism:
Trade unionism has not always existed. It appeared with capitalism, i.e.: the mode of production based on the search for maximum profit rather than the satisfaction of human needs.

As capitalism grew, expanding from one country to the next, from one industry to another, unions in turn expanded their ranks.

Thus we can already give an initial definition of unionism that we’ll complete later. Unionism first makes its appearance as the CAPITALIST ORGANIZATIONAL FORM OF THE WORKING CLASS. Note these words.

Trade unionism is a form of capitalist organization in the working class. i.e.:
A mode of organization grouping workers to defend their economic interests - wages and working conditions - against the bosses. This form of organization is called capitalist because it developed with the birth and development of capitalism around the 19th century. Previously, workers organized differently, because the bosses of that time operated by different means with different production methods and working conditions.

This method of organizing is called capitalist as well because it obeys, in its small way, pretty much the same rules as those prevailing in the capitalist enterprise.

This last statement has two meanings. First it means, as we elaborate above, that unionism developed parallel to capitalism. Secondly, it means that in its structures, its internal organization, its MODE OF OPERATION, and its supervisors, the union works much like a capitalist enterprise.

That is to say that in the union, there is the BASE and the SUMMIT. The summit decides for the base, which has little to say about it. In short, there are BOSSES in the union as there are bosses in the company. Moreover, even if the union had originally been built to defend the workers’ interests, today it seems that, more often than not, instead it is the workers who are forced to fund the union. Indeed, the union lacks the enthusiasm it began with.

Why? Because it has become a RESPECTABLE INSTITUTION WITHIN THE ESTABLISHED SYSTEM. Because the current system has passed laws governing the operation of unionism, workers' struggles, grievances, negotiations, etc ... These LAWS LIMIT the action of a union thereby INDOCTRINATING the working class into a LEGAL STRAITJACKET, binding its hands and feet.

The third reason why trade unionism is a form of capitalist organization for the working class is precisely because of the last point. Because of the many LAWS GOVERNING the practice of association, the union is obliged to maintain relations with the STATE, particularly with the MINISTRY OF LABOR.

Thus the unions are always in a situation of DEPENDENCY vis-à-vis public authorities. Evidence of this is shown in the many reports that union federations send to the government in order to show that their actions will not be “detrimental to the population”.

But this STATE intervention in the field of labor relations has had a crucial effect on unionism. Indeed, in the early 19th century there was no distinction - and rightly so - between the economic struggle of workers and the political battles that could be traced to the bosses.

Economic struggles for working conditions and wages, and political struggles were not as separate in the plan ORGANIZATION OF the WORKERS as workers’ struggles are today. Yet for over a hundred years state intervention in the field of labor relations have delineated the rules of practical association, its scope, etc… Likewise, unionism especially in North America developed collective bargaining and left it to others to carry out political activity. It’s from this time on that we see the separation between economic and political struggles. But for the working class, economic struggle and political struggle should be one and the same thing. Each involving the other. "

Following criticism of the economists from ml En Lutte! On their work, here is their answer (underscores and quotes are not mine):

"Why our work is not an economist
It is simplistic to think that what makes this work economist is that it focuses on the economic conditions of work, as it is equally absurd to call it legalistic because it seeks a collective agreement. Finally, in the same way a work is not ideological because it conveys new ideas, even if they are "Marxist-Leninist in their shape. It is an ideological struggle because it tends to destroy all forms of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology within the working class and replace it with proletarian ideas. This replacement can only take place in and through the action of militants, illuminated by the right line. "

In “What is to be done?” Lenin fought hard against the economists: "Instead of moving forward, to consolidate the revolutionary organization and expand political activity, it was a retreat back to trade unionism. It proclaimed, "the economic base of the movement obscures the tendency to remember the political ideal."
Their text clearly shows that l’Atelier Ouvrier was not economist when they write: "But for the working class, economic struggle and political struggle should be one and the same thing. Each involving the other. "