November
11, 2024
Remembrance Day
The Time Has Come for Human Beings
to Make History
As is well known, November 11 marks the day in 1918 when on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the armistice treaty which ended World War I was signed. Crocodile tears will be shed by the warmongers as they blame their adversaries and especially Russia which launched the Great October Revolution in 1917, took Russia out of the war and cancelled all unequal imperialist treaties. But they also use the occasion to blame Russia today as an avowed enemy. This despite the fact that the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the losses and damage caused during World War II in Europe, along with the working people of Europe, the Jews, the Roma, those the Hitlerites considered deviants, as well as the communists, anti-fascist resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war. They will have a very hard time this year presenting the U.S. as the champion of freedom, democracy and peace, as those who liberated Europe along with the British and, maybe, a few French and Polish aristocrats.
Already, the NATO Association of Canada has informed on its Instagram account that for November 11 this year, "we are proud to announce multiple NATO Wreath Laying Ceremonies across the country [...] in Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. [...] Join us in commemorating those who sacrificed greatly to protect the values we hold dear."
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) resolutely opposes such attempts to militarize culture by militarizing wreath-laying ceremonies which honour Canadians and Quebeckers who were sacrificed as cannon fodder in World War I. Through sleight of hand, the NATO Association of Canada conflates all those whose lives were sacrificed in World War I, which was an inter-imperialist war for the redivision of the world, with those who fought Nazi Fascism in World War II and with the crimes NATO has committed since World War II and the U.S./NATO wars of destruction, regime change, and brutal war crimes they are committing today. This includes assassinations, torture, mass killings and now genocide in Gaza and massive destruction, displacement and killings in Lebanon. All of this, the NATO Association of Canada says uphold the values Canadians hold dear.
This is said at a time today when the U.S. democracy and the democracy of its Genocide Cartel, which includes Canada, and their claims to stand for peace, freedom and democracy, have never been so isolated on the world scale. Far from democracy, the U.S. election results show a country entering a period of police rule which is suffering profound psychological trauma, a profound existentialist crisis. So too the response of the ruling circles in Canada and Quebec to the election of Donald Trump as next president of the United States reflects the same thing. In Canada and Quebec, it is expressed in heightened hysteria about immigrants and refugees invading Canada, Trump imposing more tariffs on trade, more assaults on women and immigrants and the need to save Canada by walking in lockstep with the new U.S. administration.
This
is a time to strengthen the work of CPC(M-L) and all Canadians,
Quebeckers and Indigenous Peoples to set another agenda, an
agenda
which puts the claims they are within their rights to lay on
society
which defend the rights of all, in first place.
This is the
time to advocate for the mass democratic renewal of the
electoral
process and a modern Constitution and support the modern
conception
that our peoples' identities are and always have been forged in
their
resistance struggle against exploitation, oppression, colonial
rule and
Anglo-Canadian arrangements which deprive them of political
power. A
people is not defined by the identity of two founding races
imposed on
them first by the colonial power, and then sustained by
the
Anglo-Canadian state to divide the people and permit Canada's
integration into the U.S. war machine and that of Quebec along
with it.
Today, the dregs of the deposed ruling classes from the time of the Russian Revolution and the reactionary forces of this period continue to be consumed with a spectre of communism. It is a spectre which haunts them every time they engage in practices which go against the people's interests. They have created a stereotype of socialism and communism and defence of the rights of peoples of the world to wage resistance struggles against their enslavers and oppressors, which they equate with terrorism. The stereotypes are figments of their deranged imaginations, dominated by a morbid preoccupation with their own demise.
To keep the peoples out of power, the ruling elites of countries that espouse what is called "representative democracy" and its "liberal democratic institutions" push rule through ministerial prerogative powers that are exercised above the rule of law. This is then called a model of a democracy that should be imposed on others. It is a model which has no credibility whatsoever because you cannot both sanction genocide and claim to defend democracy. Meanwhile the so-called rules-based international order espoused by those who are backing genocide and war threatens to destroy any who refuse to submit to their dictate. At the same time, maintaining the use of veto power by a select few countries in the United Nations who are charged with defending the international rule of law, in actuality preserves power relations which keep entire peoples and nations out of power, and is used to shield those who commit genocide and their backers from being held to account.
Propaganda about the "enemy within" and "foreign interference" is used to divert the attention of the workers and peoples of the world both from how decision-making takes place within what are called the paradigms of democracy, and how to create a system which is able to effectively channel all the human and material resources of their countries in a manner which favours them.
The experience of
the Great October Socialist Revolution showed that
order cannot be imposed from on top or without. It comes out of
the
conditions inherent to the ensemble of human relations and what
they
reveal. In speaking about world order, new world order or old
world
order, international
rule of law or rules-based international order, something which
has
become very apparent is that these are attempts to keep people
disempowered on the basis of the belief that order is imposed
from
above. In fact, it is brought into being by the peoples when
they speak
freely in their own names and
wage resistance struggles in defence of their rights and the
rights of
all.
It is most obvious today with attempts to impose governments of police powers as the U.S. imperialists and their allies, including Canada are doing, as well as the Legault government in Quebec and provincial governments across the country. Never has the system called a representative democracy and its claims been so isolated on the world scale as is the case today. An order is not something which can be imposed from above.
In fact, the more the counterrevolution launched since the fall of the former Soviet Union deepens, the more the significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution to human history increases. Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1989-91 as a result of the restoration of capitalism in that country and imposition of a rule which deprived the people of Soviet power, the consequences of the U.S.-led brutal neo-liberal anti-social offensive and the wars it has unleashed to achieve regime change and domination continue to cause tremendous damage to the peoples of the world and Mother Earth. The crimes of the U.S. and its allies today are unprecedented. Those committing these crimes include Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Their intelligence agencies together with those of the U.S., make up the so-called "Five Eyes" political police services which are dictating policy which permits the takeover of the state by police powers and criminalization of the people in the name of "values." It is only the peoples striving for their own empowerment who can bring this state of affairs to an end.
In the conditions of the retreat of revolution, the extreme violence unleashed by the U.S./Zionist killing machine in Gaza, as well as the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine and in other countries of the world is a state of affairs possible because the initiative is not in the hands of the peoples. So long as the big powers by entering into cartels and coalitions with other countries are expected to stop it, the suffering of the peoples will continue to increase.
The current international system is discredited because it does not stop the violence, the killings, the threats of expanded war. Thus, the peoples are supporting the Resistance Movements, expressing confidence that they will open a way forward which vests sovereignty in the people, not ruling elites.
What it means to have a society such as the one which came into being in 1917 in Soviet Russia is once again relevant. Soviet Russia created a new society by establishing Soviet power which put the initiative in the hands of the workers, peasants and patriotic intelligentsia. It put the building of a revolutionary party of the working class on the basis of Soviet power at the centre to make sure the workers were educated and trained to decide all matters of concern in a manner which favoured their interests and then they led the masses of the people to do likewise. This is what is to be achieved today on a new basis, with the people working as one to provide the rights of all with guarantees of their own making.
On this occasion,
we salute all those who have waged and continue to
wage a courageous resistance in our country. This includes not
only the
workers from all sectors of the economy, the self-sacrificing
health
care personnel, teachers and education workers and peoples in
the towns
and villages
giving their all to stop the privatization and sellout of our
resources
but importantly, the youth and all those speaking in their own
names to
support the Resistance movements in Palestine, Lebanon, Haiti,
Cuba,
India and all countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, the
Caribbean,
Oceania, Europe
and the United States.
The peoples are on the cusp of making great headway in humanity's fight to turn things around in their own favour but these are trying times which contain great dangers. We must strengthen ourselves by taking up the program of organizing the people on a new basis.
As we commemorate all the lives lost in World War I, the Duty of Memory leads us to draw the conclusion that we must all work hard to strengthen the mass movements for peace, freedom and democracy. We must strengthen the work to build a mass communist revolutionary party which trains its members in mass democratic methods of work and decision-making. Such a party must be capable of creating transitional forms of organization within all spheres of endeavour, also based on mass democratic ideological and political mobilization which empowers the working class and people to take the decisions on all matters which affect their lives.
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 52 - November 11, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54521.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca