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Open Letter to the Members and Supporters of the Communist Party of Canada The Tasks Confronting Canadian Communists
By: Don Currie Canadians for Peace & Socialism Box 168 Slocan BC V0G 2C0 1 250 355 2669
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca February 3, 2010 CPS posted two statements to our website yesterday (February 2, 2011). http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=612, http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=611. More will be forthcoming after Harpers meeting with Obama. Part of that deal will relate to more energy sell out. We need to watch for that… In addition to circulating material from everybody else, let us try and keep focused on our primary internationalist duty which is to expose and defeat those in our country who support Mubarak and Israel, US imperialism and NATO. That is the Harper Government and its right wing extremist supporters which are moving farther right every day. The NDP and the Bloc are considering a deal to keep Harper in power in exchange for a few crumbs in the next Flaherty Budget. We need to connect the dots, between the Harper foreign and domestic policy and his government’s support for imperialist reaction everywhere. Harper is Canada’s version of Mubarak…let’s not forget that…We live in Canada. We cannot go into the streets of Cairo with our brothers and sisters there…but we can keep the heat on Harper and his imperialist ambitions and his abject support for Israel as he is providing in his trip to Washington this Friday. Ten thousand Hamilton Steel workers and their families demonstrated for their economic rights the very same day that the heroic people of North Africa and the Middle East were defying their oppressors. It is one struggle at different levels of development. Harper and Ignatieff and Layton seek to create the impression that Canada is an exception from what is happening elsewhere in the world …It is not…Canada is an imperialist state with a vicious and predatory ruling class within which the pro-Israeli Zionist forces play a particularly nasty role… The June G20 violent response to the legitimate protest of our youth is the real face of Harper and it is not much different in appearance from Mubarak. The international class of exploiters is loosely united around the IMF, NATO, EU, line. Flaherty’s budget is an IMF budget. Harper’s foreign policy is a NATO foreign policy. The EU-Canada Trade deal is another NAFTA. About the federal election…There is a Council of Canadians meeting in Nelson on the 11th where at least 2 NDP MP’s will be present. I am receiving emails from disgruntled NDP supporters who will not vote NDP in the next election if Layton is so stupid as to support the Flaherty Budget. I intend to say likewise to Atamanenko and Peter Julien that the NDP will be compromised and possibly decimated in the next federal election if it is identified with propping up the Conservatives… The NDP, the Liberals and the Conservatives, have all been tepid in the statements about events in Egypt and that is because they are all compromised in their support for CPCCA and the Tribute to Liberty anti-communist cabal…Historically liberalism and social reformism have always striven to find an accommodation with Zionism and anti-communism.  They are not likely to break with those reactionary forces, but we can tell them forthrightly the political price they will pay if they continue to do so. Moreover there is a brave and courageous people’s movement inside Israel, led by Communists and pro-Palestinian progressives against the Israeli government’s expansionist policy. Layton and Ignatieff have a choice and they choose to support that section of Israeli society that are the direct beneficiaries of US government largesse at about $2.7 billion a year, excluding all of the military deals. An undifferentiated Israel is the line of Harper, Ignatieff and Layton and also it is now apparent Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc. Mubarak was paid $2.7 billion in hard US cash to do the dirty work of US imperialism. The Harper administration buys 65 F35’s for $9 billion rising to$16 billion at that will come back in both political and economic largesse to Harper cronies so what is the difference? About Hamilton…I have one report that Layton didn’t attend or speak at the Hamilton steelworker’s rally. Is that true? Who from the NDP hierarchy was there? It was significant that the CLC, CAW, and the Ontario Fed were all there along with the USWA. What caused Georgetti to be there? Was he pressured or did the CLC brass actually get out of their offices and provide some leadership? Do we know. Is it a secret? Is there any change in the CLC view of the politics of the fight back? The CLC sponsored CPP pension fight was good but in the final analysis it was an appeal to Prime Minister and Flaherty not to do what everyone including the CLC brass knew they would do, betray the Canadian people and their need for an expanded CPP pension plan and then to hand the whole thing as a gift to private insurers. Now the CLC is launching a freedom of information probe to find out who influenced Flaherty to change his mind.  My lord! Flaherty had his mind made up before he went into the federal-provincial minister’s meeting. Back to Hamilton…It appears that CPCML has the inside track on the Hamilton situation. Is that so? The slogans were CPCML slogans. In itself that is not bad if they are correct slogans…Gerstenberger seems to be their man…that is the reality if it is so… How did it happen? If it is  a rank and file development in search of a political line that means the workers are ahead of their trade union leaders and prepared to undertake forms of political struggle to answer their economic needs. How do we assess that development? We need the views of communist trade unionists on that score. The speeches at the Hamilton rally have not been fully reported. The Manufacturing Matters CAW campaign seems to still resonate as it should. The de-industrialization of eastern Canada continues. The USWA is part of that campaign. The working class employed in steel fabrication and all of its ancillary industries, in particular those that produce for the oil sands mega project is still significant. That is the basis of labour unity between eastern Canadian and western Canadian workers that is never addressed properly. We are one class regardless of where we work or live. Even Suzuki is being forced to acknowledge that the environmental demand to shut down the oil sands and throw hundreds of thousands of workers and their families out of work is asinine and flawed and he is being forced to temper and reconsider that line. Leo Gerrard of the USWA seems to be a show boat. I heard him at Sudbury…more catholic than the pope including the obligatory swearing to show how working class he is…that is not what is needed. What is needed is an economic program of development for the industrial and manufacturing sector at the centre of which is steel the potential for a great steel making and fabrication industry in Canada. That needs to duplicated everywhere in the country from coast to coast and enunciated by the Communists and fought for by a rank and file organization clearly identified by its spokesperson and its program as expressing the labour policy of the Communist party. That is what the CPCML appears to be doing. Why hasn’t the CPC done it? The CPC didn’t like what I said in my pre-convention contribution and suppressed it …so be it…come up with something better comrades…what are we doing…building underground caucuses again and waiting for the next feel good “teach in led by Sam Gindin etal?” My lord…! We used to have what was called industrial concentration…now what is it called? We need a communist inspired rank and file organization again in the 21st century. It doesn’t matter how modest…it can be organized the same way as we did in reviving the Canadian Peace Congress. Yes it is somewhat mechanical. That’s the reality. But if there are a dozen or more trade unionists in the CC convene a meeting, throw it open and get on with it. It is urgent and it is my deep conviction that it is our internationalist duty to do so. There is a WFTU world meeting upcoming in April. The WFTU still commands the support of about 72 million world-wide. Not bad for an organization the imperialists had written off after the Soviet Union was undermined by counter revolutionaries. It along with the WPC is part of the global renaissance of our movement. Will we be getting a clever analysis by comrade Sam after it is over…or will we begin now to speak to workers about it and actually send a delegation to Athens to attend or do we continue to allow the ITUC to have sway in Canada? The ITUC Congress in Vancouver came and went without a ripple…the class collaborationist line of the ITUC is promoted by the CLC everywhere in the labour movement in Canada and who is challenging it if not the communists? The events in Quebec with Solidaire emerging as the defacto opposition to Charest get barely a mention in PV. What is happening in Quebec and what is the PCQ doing as part of this movement? Solidaire is presently working on a program that is scheduled for adoption in March? It appears to have rank and file support among FTQ and CSN trade unionists. What is the PCQ’s view of this development and what are they proposing as a program for this promising left movement. Amir Khadir seems to be a straight shooter and is typical of what we can expect going forward as the working class throws up new leaders. We need to be prepared for more developments of this type everywhere in Canada. It is most frustrating sitting here in the boonies with only the CPCML as a source of information on what is happening in one of the biggest working class demonstrations in the recent past. Where is the on the ground, up to the minute reports by the CPC. The CPC website is a disgrace. Nothing goes out nationally in the way of regular bulletins and then when CPS attempts to fill that void it is branded as hostile to the CPC for trying. The Communist Party’s techno skills are abysmal. There is no nice way of saying that…The YCL is miles ahead…and so is Mike Lucas and his group…and Spark we are told by the last CC resolution is about to go out…again…that seems to be its normal state…about to go out… Liz Rowley’s article on Hamilton was good. That is not enough for the CPC. Either we are part of the rising struggles of the working class or we are not. It is not up to us across the country to guess. That is what the CPC has a TU Commission for or at least that is what it used to be for…leadership. We don’t need clever after the fact analysis. We are not stupid we can do that ourselves. What we need to know is what is the CPC’s labour policy is going forward…do we have one? Back to the next federal election… If the CPS’s reading of the situation is correct, that the Liberal and Conservative backrooms are setting up the NDP caucus to take the fall in the next federal election that poses a threat to democracy and to organized labour and the people. The Lib-Cons are maneuvering the NDP Caucus into supporting the Conservative budget and then as NDP supporters, especially on the left of the NDP (and there is still a left in the NDP) become angry the corporate back rooms will sit back and watch the internal fight unfold and then go to the polls and split up the NDP federal vote between them. What does the ruling class care which party of the profit system is in power, the Conservatives or the Liberals. What they fear is a mass electoral breakaway from their political control. We shouldn’t and we should encourage it wherever we can. Even if it is messy and not the pristine type of movement we describe in our latest omnibus resolution. The left progressives don’t need the CPC to tell us about social reformism as though we were the new kids on the block. We learned that with our mother’s milk. What we need to know are the political trends that are developing and that militants should be taking advantage of to advance the cause of the working class today. Harper if he is defeated will be defeated with Liberal and NDP votes. Harper will not be defeated with Communist votes. Sorry that’s the reality. That is not the question. What will be level of political awareness of those voters as they go to the polls? That is the question and that is something the CPC can influence. That is what the Communist Party is for to attempt under all circumstances to raise up the political consciousness of the working class. That is what the CPC needs to think about and isn’t. Put our candidates in the field as soon as possible and arm them with a clear tactical orientation which has to be to appeal for electoral unity at the polls (a tactical question) to defeat Harper (the strategic aim). Please don’t say that is Sam Webb’s line in Canada. It is not. The CPUSA has abandoned the electoral struggle and relegated the CPUSA to a cheer leader for Obama. The Canadian communists to their credit have not. The CPC is well placed if it clears up its thinking on the difference between what are electoral tactics and strategic aims. To demand a perfect anti-monopoly coalition as a prerequisite for going into a federal election where there is no mass party of the working class is just plain stupid. Canada is not Greece. We are not the KKE commanding millions of supporters. Comrades, an anti-monopoly coalition is not a federal election tactic, it is a strategic aim. You have got it backwards. The tactic going into a federal election in 2011 is an electoral tactic, to defeat Harper and if we bring every single Harper vote into play to do that that opens up the question of what’s next which is the social alliances, anti-monopoly alliances, call it what you will that leads to a new type of people’s democratic government. We can speak about it but workers will not understand us in the lead up to the federal election if we continue to insist they must abandon all of their illusions at once and embrace the CPC concept of what is in fact is a proposal for an anti-monopoly government. And moreover we insist they do that and abandon the NDP and even the Liberals before we unite at the polls to defeat Harper. That is not reality in a Canadian federal election in the year 2011. That is why Hargrove with all of his bluster, was essentially correct in 2006 when he called for a Liberal NDP electoral alliance to defeat Harper. It’s too late now. We allowed our ivory tower Marxism (which it wasn’t) t0 muddle things up. Now we are saddled with this regime and we need to get rid of it before it becomes a majority. The period we are living through is creating internal crises in all political parties and that includes the CPC. That is not surprising. What is required is to admit it exists and to confront it and deal with it. Comrades; let’s face up to the disarray that characterizes the CPC today. Some of the infantile stuff that is coming out of Calgary is not Communist…it sounds Trot. Does the CPC leadership even know what its own spokespersons are saying? The party in Edmonton where the right wing is splitting is silent. Is there a party leader there or not? What is the position of the CPC Alberta section on what is happening to the Conservatives? Stelmach, Morton, and now the Liberal leader have all quit and hit the campaign trail. WHY? What is the CPC analysis of that crisis of bourgeois politics in the heartland of big oil that employs 200,000 directly and hundreds of thousands more indirectly and spills over into northern BC and Saskatchewan. What is happening in Alberta are splits on the right…not over fundamentals, but over fear of big oil investors and the Obama administration as the Bush administration before them, that they are losing their dominance over the people for their cheap oil low royalty rate policy. The people of Alberta are seeing their hard won gains being threatened. They are being loaded with health care costs. The Alberta Advantage is a joke. The struggle has sharpened between those who get the benefits of oil profits and those who are excluded. Stelmach represents big land owners and they are being frozen out of some of the big plays in the oil sands…the Alberta Fed has a generally not bad position that is never mentioned in PV and I doubt if Sam or any of those on the TU Commission even go there to have look. There is a country west of the Ontario Manitoba border and east of the lower mainland and it is becoming and will continue to do so be a major factor in labour struggles going forward. We said years ago and were ignored that the Conservatives were the party of big oil. That has evolved but there is still a powerful connection there. Jason Kenney comes from Alberta as does Harper. Kenney wins in the federal election with 70% plurality in his Alberta riding and yet when Galloway spoke there he packed a hall with over 700 in attendance. The right wing has feet of clay and we must keep the heat on the real enemy in our country, the extreme right wing. If the CPC is dormant in these areas say so…that is the reality and lets discuss what needs to be done. What is the connection between Alberta and Egypt and the Middle East…it is the price of oil for one thing…the CPC has a template statement on the energy issue and then goes for a nap. That is just not on today. It takes work…hard work to try and keep up to these developments…and to advance on a day to day, week to week, month to month and year to year frontal attack on state monopoly capitalism. That requires a federal-provincial analysis that is coherent and not eclectic. The CPC leadership does not do that well…and it must start to do that seriously if it seeks to advance… That is how we help the people of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. That is how we express our internationalism by attacking our own capitalist class and effectively not with doctrinaire nostrums which is easy. We cannot match nor should we try, the excellent work of Global Research, CCPA Monitor and others. But all of them suffer from letting our own oppressors off the hook and we need to tell them that…in solidarity not in the smarmy stupid, self righteous giddy infantile way some who call themselves communists are doing trying to impress their academic friends most of whom are trots and their ilk. My god…! If Bill Beeching and Tim Buck or for that matter any of the old guard were alive today they would be tearing the hide off Harper, the Liberals and the NDP and so must we…We cannot not continue they way we are by being  correct after the fact…the PV is eclectic and is unfocused on federal politics. That must change. There needs to be a regular labour column, a regular federal politics column and a regular internationalist column that gives primacy to our international movement and the CPC. There is risk involved in going forward…It is not a crime to make a mistake…it is a crime not to admit it so we can all learn and then move forward…but the worse crime of all is to say nothing… Comradely Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism. |