Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Open Letter to the Members and Supporters
of the Communist Party of Canada
The Tasks Confronting Canadian Communists
By: Don Currie
Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Editor Focus on Socialism
February 3, 2011
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca
Canadians for Peace & Socialism
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
1 250 355 2669
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca
www.scribd.com/FocusOnSocialism
editor@FocusOnSocialism.ca
February 3, 2010
CPS posted two statements to our website yesterday.
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.
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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