The Working Class Has an Alternative

May Day Statement of the MRC of CPC(M-L) – April 30, 2005

May Day, the International Day of Working Class Solidarity, workers across Canada and around the world are organizing in defence of their rights. The Manitoba Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) joins with them and calls on them to oppose the divisions imposed on them by the bourgeoisie and to unite in defence of their own interests and their own agenda.

Internationally, resistance to neo-liberalism is creating problems for the world bourgeoisie, especially in many South American countries. Movements for sovereignty, democracy and pro-social domestic programs are gaining strength in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru and Bolivia. The resistance of the Iraqi people to the U.S.-British military occupation is continuing to tie down a significant section of the U.S. armed forces and is limiting the options of the U.S. imperialists in responding to these and other challenges to its hegemony. The Cuban people continue to wage an uncompromising struggle in defence of their revolution, their national independence and their right to determine their own socio-economic system. The MRC of CPC(M-L) reaffirms its support for all of these struggles the only sure way to open a path for social progress.

The Canadian working class comes to May Day 2005 having endured over 15 years of the neo-liberal offensive against wages, working conditions and social programs. These attacks have remained consistent whether the governments in power have been Liberal, Conservative, NDP or the Parti Quebecois. During the entire decade of the 1990s an intense ideological campaign was conducted against the working class claiming that there was no alternative to neo-liberal, anti-social policies. As more and more working people reject that claim and are actively searching for alternatives, a new ideological offensive is being prepared to convince workers that the solution to their problems lies in the failed policies of Keynesian social democracy. Just as in the 1990s, this ideological offensive is designed to block the working class from looking for real alternatives and real solutions and to bind it forever to the interests of its class enemies, the bourgeoisie.

For the past several weeks a political drama has been playing out in Ottawa. On the one hand are the Conservatives asking the working class to support them in their struggle against political corruption and in defence of “Canadian values”. They are counting on working people forgetting the corruption of the Mulroney Conservatives, the Harris Conservatives and the Saskatchewan Conservatives. On the other hand are the Martin Liberals, who are not only asking workers to support them in rooting out corruption within the Liberal Party, but promising to protect working people from the “extremist” policies of the Conservatives. The NDP is hoping to benefit from the Liberal credibility crisis by portraying itself as the only party capable of truly defending Liberal values and policies while being above the petty corruption that is endemic to that party. In this way, the NDP hopes to gain seats at the expense of the Liberals and hold the balance of power in a future Liberal or Conservative minority government. Therefore, at this time the NDP is calling on workers to support the Liberals, although it is hinting that it may call for something else in the future. For its part, the Bloc Quebecois is calling on Quebec workers to forget the neo-liberal policies of the Parti Quebecois and to line up behind a section of the Quebec monopoly capitalist class.

As we have witnessed so many times before since the Second World War, virtually the entire trade union apparatus, while formally allied with the NDP, is being mobilized behind the Liberal Party. As an election campaign gets into full swing, the spectre of a “right-wing” Conservative government will be raised to convince workers that they have no alternative to voting for the Liberals. In this way the past 12 years of neo-liberal, anti-social policies will be swept under the rug. The consistent policy of the Liberal party of binding Canada hand and foot to the U.S. empire will be denied and the Liberals will be presented as the defenders of Canadian sovereignty. Nowhere will there be any hint that the working class may have its own interests and its own agenda in opposition to the Liberal agenda. This is how the Liberal-Labour alliance functions to paralyze the working class and prevent it from acting in its own interests. Only by rejecting this blackmail and fighting for its own program for renewal of society can the working class break out of its current political marginalization and make headway.

A solution to the perpetual political crisis which has gripped the country since at least 1993 cannot be found in the policies of any of the political parties currently in parliament. A solution to this crisis can only be realized on the basis of the economic, political and social renewal of Canadian society. Central to this must be a new arrangement between all of the nations and peoples of Canada, an arrangement which vests sovereignty in the people and provides that sovereignty with constitutional guarantees. It must also place control of the electoral system in the hands of the electorate, rather than in the hands of the political parties. All of the current parliamentary parties oppose such a solution, proposing instead that the problems confronting Canadians can be solved by opting for the status quo or through further integration of the Canadian economy and society into the U.S. economy and society. All of these parties are unanimous that sovereignty must remain in the hands of the monopoly capitalist class, which, in practice, means that the sovereignty of the Canadian people, the Quebecois and the Aboriginal peoples is negated and the path to progress is blocked. Democratic renewal must also include changing the direction of the economy to ensure that it meets the needs of the Canadian people rather than the needs of the foreign and domestic monopolies. Democratic renewal also means the democratization of all of Canada’s international relations, including the withdrawal from trading blocs NAFTA and the FTA and from all aggressive military blocs, such as NATO and NORAD. Canada must adopt relations with other countries based on equality and mutual benefit amongst sovereign nations and the principles of peaceful coexistence.

The forward march of society can only be brought about by those who stand to gain from its advance. On May Day the working class is once again proclaiming that it has an alternative for this society, an alternative that puts an end to all forms of exploitation and oppression and creates a society fit for human existence.

Hail May Day, the Day of International Working Class Solidarity and Struggle!

Workers of All Countries, Unite!

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