Preparing for May Day 2024
Becoming an Effective Organized Political Force Is the Challenge Facing Workers' Movement in 2024
May First is the day on which the working class expresses its unity across Canada and Quebec and with its peers around the world. Above all, it is a day on which workers take stock of what they have achieved in the previous year and what they estimate needs to be achieved in the coming year.
From May Day to May Day,
workers all over the world set their course to turn things
around in
their favour. At this historic turning point when nothing has
remained
the same, predictability has given way to uncertainty, anarchy,
violence and attempts on the part of the rulers to control
everything
by imposing their dictate in all spheres of life in the most
autocratic
way. This is accompanied with laws which criminalize the
participation
of the people in political affairs, and much more. Grave crimes
against
humanity and against peace, as in Gaza, also increase the danger
of
world war.
It is crucial that the working class, youth, women, seniors and all those who have been raising their voices against injustice and for the protection of the rights of all ensure their voices cannot be silenced. They have to act intelligently, not permit police provocateurs to infiltrate their ranks, and not fall prey to confusion and incoherence. We know that by working with their peers and recognizing the necessity to take stands by speaking in their own name, and not falling down every rabbit hole in their path, it can be done because it must be done.
Last year, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) set for itself the task of strengthening its journalism and focusing discussion on the challenges facing the workers' movement to delineate what is pertinent and what is not and determine their course of action. Now, moving forward, the situation reveals that workers in this country face the challenge of taking the next step by working to become the kind of organized political force they need today. The decisions made by governments at every level are detrimental to the well-being of the working people and to the the natural environment and to society itself. They also undermine the international cause of peace, freedom and democracy. This indicates that the workers must pay first rate attention to the need to renew the democratic process so that they can exercise control over how decisions are made, by whom and with what aim, as well as oversee their implementation and how the results are accounted for.
In essence, it is the lack of political power in the hands of the working class and people that blocks any progress in society. The ruling class uses its positions of power and privilege to step up the anti-social offensive, betray the country's sovereignty and integrate Canada into the U.S. war machine. This causes many problems, not only for the working class and people but also for the ruling class itself which is sinking deeper and deeper into disrepute because it is corrupt and serves narrow private interests at the expense of the needs of the natural and social environment. Those who call themselves elected representatives are, as a whole and in many cases individually as well, seen to be corrupt as they conciliate with the most backward laws in the name of high ideals. Conflicts among the factions of the ruling class feed civil war scenarios, such as those seen in the United States but also in Europe and other countries. Countries where what are called liberal democratic institutions prevail, including Canada, have resorted to autocratic measures to control speech, outlaw dissent and block a way forward which benefits the people.
Taking measures to become an effective organized political force is the challenge facing the workers' movement in 2024. This task is becoming ever more urgent as Canada's integration into the U.S. war machine and its support for the most reactionary forces destroy the fabric of society and cause serious problems for the working people. Canada's colonial and Cold War anti-communist, racist and anti-worker values resulted in the past year in a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament for a Nazi collaborator, unwavering support for the crimes committed by Israel's Zionist government against the Palestinian people, and intimidation and criminalization of those who support the Palestinian resistance, among other things.
Across the country, so-called green projects are pursued without even carrying out environmental assessments and in violation of constitutional protections and principles. The Legault government in Quebec and federal and provincial governments are imposing irrational measures on the people of this country. In the case of the Northvolt battery plant, the Legault government and its ministers act with impunity, rejecting opposition from all quarters demanding protection of the natural and social environment. So too, the Ford government in Ontario is riding roughshod over laws which were designed to protect the environment, the hereditary rights of the Indigenous Peoples and workers' rights. In the case of the Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, narrow private interests dictate what governments can or cannot do to avoid dealing with arsenic emissions. Governments at both the federal and provincial level refuse to guarantee a roof over the heads of all members of society, and have now embarked on a huge program to give public money to banks and real estate companies, as announced in the federal government's latest budget.
We cannot let governments get away with imposing the dictate of supranational narrow private interests on the polity. Workers are aware that this blocks any possibility of providing what the society needs to open its path to progress. They are demonstrating their opposition to this orientation of the economy and speaking out to put forward the claims they are entitled to make as the producers of society's wealth and guarantors of its well-being. However, when it comes to exercising political power, they are not politically organized. The cartel party system is in total disarray and disrepute. This raises the need for the workers to speak in their own name, not just in the domains of labour relations and social justice, the environment and so on, but also in the political field which must not be left unattended.
The
Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) has been holding
forums on
political affairs throughout the past year, calling on its
members,
supporters, working people, youth, students, women and seniors
to hold
roundtables among their peers in all sectors of the economy,
educational
institutions and communities to provide information on new laws
being
passed, their implications for the economy, society and the
working
people, and to take a stand based on their own vantage point,
not the
vantage point of the rich whose aim is to exclude them from the
political process. With
these roundtables to provide information and exchange views,
workers,
young people and retirees are beginning to solve the problem of
creating the forms they need that enable them to exercise their
political power in a way that favours them.
In the coming year, CPC(M-L) will continue to provide information on these laws and give views on their significance. It will encourage those who organize roundtables to report on the views expressed about them.
Today, the enactment of laws which are very harmful to the polity has become commonplace. Laws which claim to control hate speech and extremism, measures on the electoral front which further restrict and gag the working class and prevent it from participating in governance on all issues that concern it, including the deplorable budgets that pay the rich, are some examples of how the citizenry is dispensable in the political process being put in place.
In Quebec, the government has just tabled a bill to criminalize citizens who want to make their voices heard. It is doing this under the guise of protecting elected officials from intimidation, without bothering to conduct an analysis of the sources of the problem and without consulting those who will be the target of injunctions, fines and imprisonment. It is incredible that elected officials would pass such a bill to criminalize the people who want to make their voices heard.
Workers are not enemies of stability, order, national security, peace or a healthy economy and environment. On the contrary, their lives are dedicated to a healthy natural and social environment, but to say that all these things can be achieved by giving money to the rich, by restructuring the state to make it even more hierarchical, unequal and discriminatory, is to indulge in disinformation to disorganize the working class and prevent it from going beyond the arbitrary limits decided by the rulers, their constitution and their laws.
For example, the latest contract negotiations involving more than 600,000 public service workers in Quebec illustrate very well that the old way of negotiating working conditions no longer works. The government has done everything to break Quebeckers' support for these workers, without success. Workers are aware of the need to renew their unions' way of doing things so that action to bring about the changes that need to be made to their working conditions are not restricted to a period called negotiations when in the end decisions are imposed irrespective of what the workers are within their right to claim. Eighty thousand Quebec nurses have just rejected the government's proposal for an agreement in principle. The Secretary of the Treasury Board's response is: "We will meet with the union to understand what the stumbling blocks are. However, the context and our objectives will remain the same, particularly in terms of flexibility," which is why the nurses have rejected the proposed agreement time and time again!
Rally of Quebec public
sector workers, September 23, 2023
Workers in all sectors of the economy refuse to be treated as disposable, with no role to play, because they are not an organized political force. They are silenced and criminalized for demanding what is rightfully theirs and what is just and necessary in a modern society.
To
speak in one's own name, to represent oneself politically on a
collective basis and to fight for one's rights in the context of
the
struggle for a society that defends the rights of all is the
greatest
challenge facing the workers' movement today. This breaks with
dependence on a so-called
higher power that decides what the working class and the people
should
think and what they can and cannot do, when the decisions taken
do not
serve their interests nor those of their society and country,
nor the
cause of peace, freedom and democracy in the world. It also
breaks with
the role the
ruling class gives to the people of begging, instead of seeing
how in
every situation they can defend the common cause and hoist the
banner
of working-class dignity, which is synonymous with human
dignity.
Intervening in a way that empowers us opens the way to progress, and literally makes history. Since May 1, 2023, the workers' movement has made progress in this respect, taking steps to reject mechanisms that do not allow workers to speak out and intervene during negotiations. This gives workers confidence and puts an end to the humiliation caused by passivity in the face of the dangers inherent in the present and what lies ahead.
CPC(M-L) and its Workers' Centre devote all their efforts to cultivating this perspective and practice. All those who wish to join the roundtables must register without delay! Onward and upward!
Together on May Day in Defence of the Rights of All!
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 3 - April 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M540031.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca