Modern Communism and the Political Legacy of Hardial Bains - Part 4: The Break With Mao Zedong Thought

With the successful founding of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) on March 31, 1970, the attacks by the Canadian state escalated. During the next few years, over 2,500 members and supporters of CPC(M-L) were assaulted and arrested by the police for the "crime" of distributing revolutionary literature. Many spent months in jail and others faced deportation. The MacDonald Commission Report on the Wrongdoings of the RCMP included an entire book (announced, but never released to the public) on RCMP crimes against CPC(M-L), but no members of the RCMP were ever charged or held accountable for those crimes.

While the members and supporters of CPC(M-L) faced these unprecedented levels of violence from the state, much of the "Left" in Canada effectively sided with the state, labelling the communists as agents provocateurs and "CIA agents". During this period, CPC(M-L) also faced intense pressure that it should reduce itself to a mere appendage of the Communist Party of China. When it refused to submit to this pressure it became the target of various intrigues, including attempts to overthrow Hardial Bains' leadership and the sponsorship by China of various "genuine Marxist-Leninist" groups within Canada.

All of these pressures were also reflected inside the Party, strengthening those who rejected Marxism-Leninism in favour of dogmatism, sectarianism and revolutionary posturing. Within this situation, the survival and strengthening of CPC(M-L) as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party was no small accomplishment.

The rapprochement between China and the Nixon regime in the United States during 1970 and 1971 resulted in a distinct shift in the politics of China and various suspect theories began to emerge from that country. Initially, it appeared that these theories were being promoted by factions within the Communist Party of China which were hostile to Mao Zedong, but when denunciations of these theories by Mao Zedong failed to materialize, CPC(M-L) began to systematically investigate all of the views coming out of China, and especially those of Mao Zedong. In the meantime, CPC(M-L) continued to develop its own analysis of the world, an analysis which clearly contradicted the line emerging from China. The work of CPC(M-L) to establish its own line and its own analysis culminated with the successful convening of the Third Congress, held in the winter of 1977. That congress overthrew the line that CPC(M-L) should convert itself into an appendage of the Chinese or some other party and marked the victory over all of the anti-Marxist trends within the Party.

Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the Communist Party of China began to publish many of his writings which had previously not been available. While this was done to support the maneuvering for power of one or another faction of the Communist Party of China, these writings shed a lot of light on Mao Zedong's political philosophy, including evidence that Mao, himself, was the author of the various anti-Leninist theories emerging from China. A special congress of CPC(M-L) was held in 1978 to examine this evidence and to work out a program to eliminate the adverse consequences of Mao Zedong Thought on the Party and its work.

For CPC(M-L), the entire period of the 1970s represented a colossal struggle for the ideological, theoretical, political and organizational integrity of the communist party. During this period, every anti-Marxist theory or tendency that existed outside the Party, also had its reflection inside the Party. Furthermore, during this period the position represented by Hardial Bains was actually in the minority within the leading organs of the Party. Every Party Congress became a battleground between the politics of Hardial Bains and those who were content with posturing, with being sideline pamphleteers or those who merely wanted to set up their own personal fiefdoms. At each step the line of Hardial Bains triumphed, not on the basis of taking administrative measures, but on the basis of appealing politically to the members and supporters of the Party.

Though defeated several times during the 1970s, this pressure to liquidate the communist party by reducing it to a mere propaganda sect continued to exert itself on CPC(M-L) throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with the defeated anti-Marxist positions re-emerging again and again in new forms and with more and more sophisticated disguises. However, because Hardial Bains insisted that this pressure must be resisted politically, not only was CPC(M-L) strengthened ideologically, politically and organizationally, but in the course of this life and death struggle a conception of a modern communist party began to emerge.

The struggle during the 1970s for the survival of the Party and against the adverse consequences of Mao Zedong Thought was a defining period for CPC(M-L). Its resistance to state attacks and its fight for political rights for all Canadians established it as a revolutionary organization, an organization which was not afraid to put its theory into practice and challenge the status quo. Its protracted struggle against Mao Zedong Thought not only led CPC(M-L) towards a more profound appreciation of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, but established it as a serious political organization which was not afraid to criticize its own beliefs and practices. The break with Mao Zedong Thought was not a hasty decision on the part of CPC(M-L); it came only after several years of very serious investigation and discussion. But when the Party issued its political critique of Mao Zedong Thought, it did so with such ideological, political and organizational thoroughness that it destroyed any further possibility for Mao Zedong Thought to find root in Canadian soil. This contribution opened the path for the emergence of a movement for the renewal and modernization of communism in Canada and is one of the lasting legacies of the political work of Hardial Bains.