No. 4
March 2023
March 31, 2023
53rd Anniversary of the Communist Party of Canada
(Marxist-Leninist)
The Indelible Impact of CPC(M-L) on the Canadian Polity
Video
CPC(M-L)
Honours Its Members Who Have Passed Away
Long Live CPC(M-L)!
The Communist Party of Canada
(Marxist-Leninist) was declared founded on March 31, 1970 -- 53
years ago -- at a mass rally in Montreal. On this occasion, the
Central Committee sends warmest revolutionary greetings to all
Party members and supporters across the country and all friends
and fellow travelers. Our deepest respects go to the memory of
our founder and leader, our comrade and friend, Hardial Bains
who spearheaded the founding of CPC(M-L) and led it until his
untimely death in 1997. We also pay deepest respects to the
memory of all the comrades who have passed away.
Through all the twists and turns of the 1960s, '70s and '80s,
to the transition period we are experiencing today, Comrade
Bains led the communists and advanced forces to set the party's
line of march consistent with the requirements of the times,
always based on the summation of the experience of the communist
and workers' movement at home and abroad. In 1995, based on the
Party's analysis since 1985 that no force could act in the old
way as a result of the changes taking place which left the
post-World War II arrangements behind, he led the Party to
launch its Historic Initiative as a great nation-building
project. The Historic Initiative is designed to transform the
Party into a mass communist party which leads the working class
to constitute the nation and vest sovereignty in the people. It
requires settling scores with the old conscience of society
based on Covenant Thesis which introduced an unequal structure
of those who rule above those who are ruled, with the former
imposing colonial, racist values and morality onto the society
to decide what is right and what is wrong, and who is legitimate
and who is not, while the latter have no say over the decisions
which affect their lives.
On this occasion, with utmost pride we can repeat what we said on March 31, 1970: There Is Such a Party! Ours is a force which refuses to conciliate with what is old, anachronistic and a burden on society. On the basis of this refusal, this force realizes its striving to bring a new democratic personality into being. It does so based on establishing a mass democratic method of decision-making so that everyone in the society can participate in setting the agenda for the economy and taking the decisions which affect their lives on all fronts, domestic and international. The aim is to emancipate the working class, guarantee that Canada is a Zone for Peace and that the human factor/social consciousness is activated. This will humanize the natural and social environments so that they flourish in favour of all the human beings and their collectives which exist no matter who they are, within a state structure which provides equality of membership and acts as a force to prohibit discrimination of any kind.
As the sons and daughters of the working people from coast to coast to coast and their fighting legacy, we can do no less.
Long Live CPC(M-L)!
CPC(M-L)'s Defining Quality
|
Hardial BainsIn 1970,
after several years of preparation, the Communist Party of
Canada (Marxist-Leninist) was founded under the bold
leadership of Hardial Bains. The Party's bold leadership
since its founding is testimony to the indispensable need of
the working class for its own Party which can find its way
in tumultuous times. Such a Party is necessary to deal with
the reckless course the Canadian ruling circles and
cartel-party system, racist raison d'้tat and
anachronistic institutions are taking the country by
integrating Canada more and more into the U.S. economy,
government of police powers, civil war and war machine.
Since the period of retrogression and retreat of revolution came into being with the advent of free trade and the collapse of the former Soviet Union and people's democracies in eastern Europe, the need to replace old forms of rule with new forms suitable to the conditions today, takes centre stage. The old forms no longer function to sort out any problems nationally or internationally without resorting to the use of force. In Canada all previous civil society arrangements have been wrecked. The only vestiges of the public authority that remain are its police powers represented by the executive, judiciary and intelligence agencies. They rule by decree, with the intelligence agencies going so far as to operate directly through the media to dictate policy which is rooted in the aims set by the U.S. executive and Pentagon. This is further integrating Canada into U.S. Homeland Security and the U.S. war machine.
Internationally, Canada appeases the U.S. in its striving for world domination which pits China and Russia as enemies along with all those who refuse to submit to U.S. demands and dictate. Meanwhile, they collude and contend with the big powers of Old Europe, expanding and arming NATO to the detriment of the peoples of the NATO countries themselves and the peoples of the entire world. Canada continues to play a role second to none in destroying the arrangements, institutions and international rule of law that were created following the Second World War.
The battle over the control of Europe to dominate Asia is an anachronistic dream given the massive developments in Asia and the aspirations of the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The wars which were instigated when NATO bombed and destroyed the former Yugoslavia, have continued to wreak havoc not only in Europe but in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in the imperialist heartlands. Supranational private interests in the form of oligopolies running amok as they fight over the political power cannot but be destructive. While they can no longer be contained by the old arrangements and are running rampant dictating that everyone submit to them or face destruction, the human productive power unleashed by the technical scientific revolution is also without limits. The call of history is for the working class to channel this power in a manner that directs it to favour the interests of the peoples of the world.
The ensemble of human relations of humans and humans and humans and nature reveal that inherent to the current developments lies the striving of the working class and peoples of the world for their own empowerment, which is striving to prevail. This striving is an integral part of the clash between the Old and the New and is the life-giving force.
The technical scientific revolution is bringing into being prospects for humankind beyond the scope of the imagination limited by the arrangements and suffering of the present and past. The old relations of production and power are causing havoc and untold sufferings on a world scale as human beings pay the price for the wanton destruction the forces of the Old are presiding over. Their striving for world domination has unleashed unprecedented anarchy and violence and revealed the impossibility of their restoring or creating anew an equilibrium among themselves. The peoples of the world and the countries that maintained or are seeking independent development are fighting the retrogressive pressure, waging a valiant resistance struggle against the anti-social offensive and imperialist dictate as well as the brutal wars of aggression and coups d'้tat. It is this striving of the New to break out of the stranglehold of the Old which inspires humankind to attain new heights of splendour.
Since its founding, a defining quality of the Party is to put the problems facing the society on the agenda in a practical way and involve the working class and people in providing them with solutions. The Party has faced the period of retrogression by summing up anew the Necessity for Change analysis, on which it was based at its founding, so as to provide the Party work with a new impetus.
The quality of putting its political work on par with the demands of the times makes the Party the vanguard of the class. The Party has created a human force that puts itself at the disposal of what the society needs. It opposes the agenda of all those rulers who are indifferent to the damage their narrow private interests cause to the social and natural environment. With this quality, the Party in 1984-85 was able to sum up the objective conditions pointing out that the world had reached a turning point in which no force could continue to act in the old way. It provided itself with its most important project of work up to that time, the building of the technical base for the Mass Party and Mass Non-Party Press as the necessary condition for strengthening the links of the Party with the class and for the development of an enlightenment movement which serves the people under the conditions today. In this way, the Party provides the theory and orientation the society requires to find its bearings and not fall victim to retrogression and destruction.
The Party's project to build the technical base for the Mass Party and Mass Non-Party Press remains an essential element to develop the Party's leading role. In 1995, under the leadership of Hardial Bains, the Party launched its Historic Initiative by integrating a Modern Communism Information Project to its work. This ensures that modern communism provides the people with the most advanced vision and an outlook of their own directed at the creation of a modern society in which nothing is left to chance.
The Party analyzed that without developing the movement for enlightenment, without imbuing the movement with the revolutionary theory that comes from modern communism, also referred to as Contemporary Marxist-Leninist Thought, and strengthening the mass democratic forms through which decision-making power is firmly grasped by the people, it is not possible to organize the working class and strengthen the conscious factor. Without putting at the centre of the work the development of the Mass Party Press and the Mass Non-Party Press, the movement for enlightenment, the elaboration of modern definitions and the defence of the edifice of communism, no other work will succeed.
The movement for enlightenment and the Party's Modern Communism Information Project present communism to the people of Canada with vigour, elaborating with clarity what the ensemble of human relations reveal. They show that this stage in history has brought to the fore the task of opening society's door to progress by giving rise to a modern democratic personality on the basis of solving the problem of people's empowerment.
By making the claims they must, the striving of the people for
empowerment will find the ways to open a path for the progress
of humankind. This striving will achieve the historic task of
emancipating the working class and, on this basis, humanize the
natural and social environment. CPC(M-L) is convinced it will
happen because the people will make it happen. The Party is
dedicated to achieving this aim.
The world as is has no takers
The world as it should be has billions of makers!
The Indelible Impact of
CPC(M-L)
on the Canadian Polity
|
Anna Di CarloMembers, supporters, friends and fellow travelers of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) look back with great pride at the historic struggles and uninterrupted work they have carried out and sustained to organize the Canadian working class and broad sections of the people under the leadership and influence of the Party. At every stage of its existence, CPC(M-L) has taken up those tasks that were critical to opposing the retrogressive measures and pressures of the moribund capitalist ruling class and opening society's path to progress.
Notwithstanding the relentless campaign of the ruling elite to convince everyone that CPC(M-L) is irrelevant, "fringe" and of interest only to the radical few, the work of the Party has had an indelible impact on the Canadian polity. In many regards, it can be said that Canada would be a different country were it not for the existence and leadership of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) at critical times in foiling the efforts of the ruling elite to impose retrogressive qualities onto the society and the thinking of the people.
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have come into contact with the work of the Party have had their spirits and outlooks lifted by the awareness that there is an organized political force in Canada that persists in proclaiming that there is an alternative to the current state of affairs. Their spirits have been lifted by the prospective horizon of a new society based on the recognition of the human rights of all, where the natural and social resources of the country are not squandered for the benefit of the few but put into the service of the entire working class and people.
Tens of thousands of Canadians have participated in the campaigns of the Party, such as the broad work to recognize the rights of the Quebec nation and Indigenous Peoples, as well as to define minority rights and human rights on a modern basis, as in the historic work to defeat the racist Green Paper on immigration and the efforts of the Canadian government to blame the people for racism and whitewash the role of the state in the promotion of racism. The campaign to defeat the Charlottetown Accord was another which involved the entire polity to take a non-partisan approach to modernizing the Canadian democracy and end the 19th century British colonial constitutional arrangements upon which the current anti-people democracy is based.
Tens of thousands of young people have participated in struggles on various fronts bolstered by the ideo-political work of the Party, leading to transformations that cannot be reversed in the Canadian collective consciousness. The demands of the youth and students under the influence of the Party guide today's teachers and education workers to boldly proclaim that education is a right, not a privilege. So too on the front of health care, the Party has always gone to the heart of the matter: health care is a right, not a privilege. This is confirmed by current unfolding events. The right to health care must be affirmed in the form of making sure Canadians have enough doctors, nurses and properly provisioned health facilities readily at hand. The treatment of health professionals and workers must come first in the plans of governments. The right to health care must be enshrined in a modern constitution and not permitted to be reduced to the distribution of financial resources in self-serving ways. Privatization of health care and seniors' care which reduces human beings to "clients" who must enhance profit-making should be banned.
It is the Party's mass democratic method of work, of maximum ideological and political mobilization and reliance on the working class and people to play their role, that transforms the Canadian polity. Today the quality of being human means that all human beings must lay the claims which they must so as to humanize the natural and social environment. The most basic human right is the right to participate in making the decisions which affect our lives.
Today, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) stands as the indispensable political organization of the Canadian working class and people because its striving to humanize both the natural and social environment is based on the mass democratic method which brings forward the modern democratic personality. On the basis of this method, CPC(M-L) practices internal democracy and extends this to all spheres of endeavour. As it has at every stage of its work over the past five decades, it has taken up the task that is most crucial to opening the path for society's progress by involving the people in making their own history. At a time when the very word "politics" has been disgraced, CPC(M-L) honourably practices the conception of a political party that serves the purpose of involving the people in decision-making and participating in the political affairs of the society so that decisions favour the people and not the private interests of the rich. The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is committed to putting everything in place to achieve the transformations Canada needs. Canada will then be fit to play a role as a champion of peace, freedom and democracy internationally as well.
There Is Such a Party! All out to support it, build it and finance it so that together we can turn things around in our favour!
(Originally published on March 31, 2020 on the occasion of the Party's 50th anniversary celebrations. TML Archives.)
Video
CPC(M-L) Honours Its Members
Who Have Passed Away
(To access articles individually click on the black headline.)
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca