On the 32nd Anniversary of CPC(M-L)
The Communist Movement Must Put Politics at the Centre of its Work
March 31 marked the thirty-second anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). CPC(M-L) emerged out of the movement of the youth and students of the 1960s, in particular that section of the movement which recognized the necessity for fundamental social change, but did not see an existing vehicle to achieve it. From the beginning CPC(M-L) considered itself to be a contingent of that section of the international communist movement which stood for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism through revolutionary struggle.
Throughout the period since the early 1950s, even while the national liberation struggles were winning victories throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, the communist movement was suffering serious setbacks. A large section of this movement had become conservative, complacent and had lost its revolutionary, internationalist quality.
In The Manifesto of the Communist Party published in1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels defined the basic qualities of communists in the following manner: "The Communists...have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality; 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole."
These qualities are just as important today as they were in 1848, if not more so. A broad movement for social change is emerging on a global scale. This movement will not accept communism which seeks to impose sectarian principles and dogmas on the movement. It will not accept communism which opposes collective rights to individual rights. Nor will it tolerate communism which insists that ideological considerations take precedence over political considerations. This is as it should be. Those forms of communism have caused great damage to the movement and have been of great service to the old forces which want to hold onto the past; they have no place in a modern communist movement.
In his 1991 Author's Note to Communism 1945-1991 (of which only the period from 1989 to 1991 was completed prior to his death), CPC(M-L)'s founder Hardial Bains stressed: "For the sake of emphasis, I reiterate that political work is the starting point of emancipation and the role of ideology is to serve it. It cannot be the other way around."
Despite the setbacks suffered by the communist movement over the past 50 years, the Manitoba Regional Committee of CPC(M-L) is of the opinion that there continues to be a role for a modern communist movement whose members are capable of thinking for themselves and rejecting all forms of dogmatism, who have the courage of their convictions and the confidence to be their own models. The movement is searching for solutions, for a way forward, for those "who always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole." The challenge facing all communists today is to prove in practice that they represent those qualities described so well by Marx and Engels in 1848.