Maoism in the Developed World

The CPL issued a statement of its position in which it asked, “Has the ruling class been weakened by the Cross and Laporte kidnappings? Have we workers moved ahead in our struggle against the rotten boss system and for socialism as a result? NOT A BIT! … FLQ actions have never had anything to do with working-class struggle. While workers have been fighting year after year, and needing better organization and class unity more than ever (that is needing a real communist party which knows how to lead our fight), the FLQ has spent its time planting bombs in letter-boxes, factories, statues and stock exchanges. Today they abduct diplomats. Tomorrow it will be political assassination or skyjacking. And what do we workers have to do with all this? Nothing.”

The CPL presented working-class unity as the solution to the separatist problem. Its statement said that “All of us, workers of both nations, have the same foot on our necks: the bosses’ state. To get rid of it we need to unite in a single fighting organization. … We need unity. The bosses and the FLQ led us into isolation. Unite with the French-speaking workers, fight anti-Quebec racism and nationalism, the bosses’ double-edged knife! French and English-speaking workers fighting together can win!”[104]

The Canadian Party of Labor, which had been closely associated with the U.S. Progressive Labor Party, joined the PLP in breaking with the Chinese after President Nixon’s trip to Peking in 1972.[105] They clearly continued to regard one another as sister organizations as late as 1978, although by that time they were engaged in a polemic over the issue of self-determination for Quebec. In that discussion, the CPL was supporting the concept, and the PLP was opposing it.[106]

The Canadian Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)

By 1970, the largest Maoist group in Canda was the Canadian Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist) or CCM. In Quebec it was known as Les Intellectuels et Ouvriers Patriotes du Quebec (Marxistes-Leninistes), and it was said to be “the only cross-Canada Maoist organization,” but “it has no great strength in any one area.” It had organized a number of front organizations among students, Afro-Asian youths, and in other fields.

The CCM had its origins in the Canadian Internationalists (Marxist Leninist Youth and Student Movement). A Trotskyist source reported in 1970 that “although the activity of the leaders of the Internationalists spans a number of years, it is only over the past two years, since they shifted their major forces from Vancouver to Montreal, that they have become a significant force. Their only relation to other Maoist currents has been the loose working relationship which they had until recently with the Vancouver-based Progressive Workers Movement.”

This same source said that “The CCM sees Canada, and the world generally, as being in an immediate revolutionary situation. The task for them is not mass actions around popular and defensively formulated demands which are designed to raise consciousness, but super-militant confrontations and violence by a small group to propel the awaiting revolutionary masses out onto the streets behind the bright red banner of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought’ and the Canadian Communist Movement.”[107]

In 1970, the CCM became the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) or CPC (M-L). Ivan Avakumovic noted at the time that The membership consists mostly of young persons and includes a fair number of recent immigrants from the United States, the West Indies, and the Indian subcontinent. Leaders include Hardial Bains, chairman of the Norman Bethune Institute, and Robert A. Cruse, national secretary of the CPC (M-L). Bains was an immigrant from India.

Unlike Maoist groups in some countries, the CPC (M-L) participated fairly regularly in elections. In 1972 it ran 52 candidates in federal elections in a campaign in which it demanded “elimination of U.S. imperialist domination of Canada and Quebec” and “ascendancy of the working class as the ruling class.” Avakumovic noted that the party’s nominees received 9,000 votes as opposed to the 7,000 for the pro-Soviet party. He added, “All the Maoist candidates lost their deposits and polled fewer votes than members of the CPC when both presented candidates in the same riding.”[108]

The CPC (M-L) held a congress in March 1973, with 57 delegates and alternates from 17 local groups. Fraternal delegates from Maoist groups in Ireland, Great Britain, and the United States were also present. A new Central Committee of 21 members was elected, and it was decided to move the party headquarters from Toronto to Montreal.

By that time, the party was publishing two periodicals. One was Mass Line, a theoretical organ. The other was People’s Canada Daily Newsy edited by Hardinal Bain, the party chairman, and consisting mainly of news items from the New China News Agency.[109]