First paragraph (Teaser):

It is with serious and enthusiasm that the delegates from the RCP(OC)'s local committees, gathered for the organization's Second Congress, have unanimously decided to declare officially the foundation of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) after more than six years of struggle for party-building.

Rest of the text:

A few weeks after the holding of the Canadian Revolutionary Congress, which gathered about 100 activists from many cities and provinces across the country who supported the Party's creation (see the special edition of the Red Flag newspaper, published in December, which presented a report of the event), the RCP(OC) members assessed that the time had come to create the Party and to forge ahead in the deployment of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist propaganda across the country.

This decision, quite bold indeed, represents both an important victory and a huge challenge that the group of activists now organized in the RCP certainly intend to take up, being conscious of their historic responsibility. Still, the creation of a party like the RCP, whose fundamental goal is to lead the proletarian revolution until communism, is only a starting point. It's a decisive first step, which allows the organization to move on to a superior stage. Thus from now on, the RCP will be more and more present throughout the country, where there are proletarians and oppressed, where people are ready to fight and resist, where revolutionary potentialities emerge.

But what's a revolutionary communist party, and why creating it now? To answer these questions, here are a few excerpts from the Political Report presented by the Central Committee to the RCP's congress:

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The party is often presented, with reason, as the revolution's headquarters -- the leading center around which evolves all the forces constituting the revolution's camp in a given country (these headquarters acting themselves as a detachment of the international communist movement). [...]

The party, as we see it, is a set of capacities -- in the ideological, political and organizational domains -- assembled, reinforced and put in the service of a single struggle for revolution, socialism and communism. [...]

[The period of the last three years of struggle for party-building] was marked, in parallel, by important setbacks for the other trends that are also pretending to be political alternatives in the present capitalist world. The vast majority of anarchist trends moved away from revolutionary action. The "leftist" reformists have taken many steps to the right (the Trotskyists' blending in Québec's PDS, then in the UFP where they joined the revisionists; and now in the new Québec Solidaire party, where they represent nothing more than an inform fraction of election manpower for the bourgeois reformist project of Saillant, David and Co). As for the "anti-globalization" movement, it eventually mostly broke up, and its figureheads have lost much of their ascendancy as they chose to look for a place behind the scenes of the imperialist power.

In this context, it's not meaningless to remind that our organization, and the Maoist trend it embodies, have made a progression -- an insufficient one certainly, but an incontestable one nonetheless.

[Despite our weaknesses and the difficulties we sometimes faced], we persisted! We can base ourselves on a solid ideological line, and on a programme expressing a clear and resolute strategic line; and not only we didn't backtrack when most of the others did, but we rein-forced our convictions regarding the necessity to struggle for the proletarian revolution, to build a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist vanguard party and to prepare the launching of the protracted people's war that will ensure the destruction of the Canadian bourgeois state and the emergence of the new proletarian state.

So, we think we have established on a long-term basis the existence of Maoism in Canada, and of the only organization embodying it. We are of course aware that all this is still too small; and the challenges ahead of us appear quite breathtaking! But it's up to us to take them up: nobody or no other group will do it for us. [...]

To create the RCP now is to express clearly our political will to transform what must be transformed, in order to establish durably the RCP as the revolution's leading center in Canada.

The party's initial core exists: a clear ideological and political line; and a solid group of activists defending it and putting it into practice.

If we understand correctly what a vanguard party is, then we know that such a party can only be built from the top downwards. The party's construction -- and the success of the revolutionary project depending on it -- thus requires the constitution of a strong and solid leadership. Such a leadership won't come out of the blue; its constitution requires a constant struggle. [...]

We know our weaknesses and lacks. However, we don't start from scratch: our experience is limited, but far from insignificant. Furthermore, we benefit from the Canadian communist movement's experience, and from the even richer experience of the international communist movement. Finally, we have a conception, objectives and we propose a clear procedure; and we are surrounded by millions of proletarians, poor and oppressed, for whom capitalism only reserves a future that's getting darker.

There is no easy way or path already mapped out; and there is surely not an already formed vanguard group that's fully apt to lead the struggle for revolution, well hidden somewhere and waiting to be given a signal for action...

It's up to the vanguard elements who took the first step, those who understand the party's necessity and have begun to make it a material and living reality, to deploy all their talents and intelligence for the party, for the cause of communism!

If we take up this challenge and act in a consequent way, then it will be possible to say, in a few years from now, that this congress had really been historic.

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THE RESOLUTION ADOPTED BY THE RCP'S CONGRESS:

CONSIDERING:

That the struggle for socialism and communism requires the creation of a vanguard revolutionary party that will assume the responsibility of initiating and leading it until its victory;

That the construction of such a party is the very first task revolutionary activists must undertake;

That, to deserve its name, the party must be firmly supported by a clear ideological line synthesizing the international proletariat's rich experience of revolutionary struggle since 150 years;

That, since more than six years, the RCP(OC) defends, applies and develops Marxism-Leninism-Maoism;

That it has adopted a programme expressing clearly and correctly the path of revolution in Canada;

That it has initiated the task of deploying communist propaganda among proletarian masses, creating links with them and participating in their struggles;

That it has taken initiatives and undertaken many political campaigns to popularize the communist point of view and demonstrate the viability of revolutionary action;

That it has constantly supported the party's necessity and succeeded to organize the first solid core of activists around this perspective;

That is has initiated a unity process based on principles with the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and reinforced its links with Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations from abroad;

That it has convoked and gathered with success the first Canadian Revolutionary Congress, during which communist activists from across the country took note of the RCP's positions and activity and came down in favor of the party's creation.

THAT THE RCP(OC)'s SECOND CONGRESS proclaims the foundation of the Revolutionary Communist Party -- a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party, the Canadian proletariat's vanguard party, linked to the international communist movement.

That this congress be known as the first RCP's congress.

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First published in Arsenal-Express, No. 2, March 25, 2007.

Arsenal-Express is an electronic newsletter that presents the viewpoints from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) of Canada.

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