The Vanguard and Democratic Centralism

by Rick Gunderman

Successful revolutionary activism requires the all-around strength and unity of the forces of the people. These forces can be looked at as comprising of three parts, each with its own contributions to make – the masses of people at large, the organized masses in popular, democratic organizations, and the vanguard leadership.

The masses are largely apolitical. They are content to go about their lives without concerning themselves too much with politics, instead limiting themselves to their immediate surrounding and conditions. As such, they are prone to vacillations, supporting whichever idea or person sounds best at the given moment.

The masses of people are mobilized for revolutionary action by campaigns. Petitions, demonstrations, pickets, recreational events, film screenings, pamphleteering, postering – all of these are means by which the masses of people can be injected with revolutionary energy. With this energy, many choose to join mass organizations.

Mass organizations can work around a single campaign and be expedient, or they can be firmly established, ostensibly permanent and working on many campaigns surrounding a single idea or cause.

Mass organizations are where the people who wish to learn about political struggle and activism go. This is because there is no time when the reality of class society is made more apparent than in the heat of battle. It is where a progressive and revolutionary consciousness is developed, where activists can see the bankruptcy of class collaborationism and see the necessity for prolonged, principled struggle of the working and oppressed peoples.

It is where the people can be organized and mobilized, and in the process they learn to take up leadership and develop all of their skills. It is where leadership is made.

It is from this leadership that the central vanguard is composed. The vanguard is made up of those activists with the most experience, the broadest connections among the organized and unorganized masses, and as a consequence of this, the most advanced and developed political consciousnesses.

Anarchists reject this model because it is supposedly “undemocratic”. In their view, only mass organizations should exist, and their purpose is rarely seen as being to provide leadership. Rather, they are to be the source of all power in future society – or rather, they are to be the force that prevents any power from being had by anybody.

So as not to digress, the anarchist vision of a perfect society will not be addressed in depth. General opposition to authority, however, must be dealt with briefly.

Since the demise of the First International, anti-authoritarians has defined itself as the rejection of all authority. In this view, nobody should be able to compel any other person to do anything against their will. Everybody should be free to do whatever it is that they wish, so long as it does not harm another.

In his iconic work, On Authority, Friedrich Engels deals with this undeveloped, primitive view of social relations. His argument is essentially that any time there is a combined action of individuals, the absolute autonomy of the individual must to some degree or another be subordinated to the general will of the group. Engels asks:

Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?

Engels answers with an emphatic no. The organization of multitudes of people into a series of tasks, each dependent upon the other for the successful completion of the overall goal, requires that each individual submit herself or himself to the task they have been assigned. This task can be assigned in a variety of ways, some ways with democratic character and others with autocratic character, but it does not alter the necessity of the task’s fulfilment to the overall goal.

Engels uses various examples to illustrate the absurdity of the anti-authority bend of the anarchists. Referring to railways:

Here…the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here…the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested.

In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.

As Engels heavily infers, the breakdown of order, and particularly the authority that characterizes it, always comes with the threat of unnecessary danger to peoples’ lives. Another inferable position of Engels is that anybody who has ever worked with more than one other human being should be instantly aware of the absurdity of the anti-authority fixation.

Does this mean that Engels and the socialists fetishize authority? Quite the contrary! Engels admits that, “all socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society.”

The social revolution draws the people in. The people are organized into mass organizations, they learn politics, they elevate themselves to leadership, and before long all of society is buzzing with revolutionary energy. The masses of people evolve into a thoroughly advanced, revolutionary force when they are all or virtually all organized. After a long process of education, campaigning and mobilization, full of varied experiences and requiring the utmost patience and devotion from all those involved, every person is eventually capable of performing the administrative tasks needed for society to function.

A coherent, logical, scientific vision for the development of revolutionary society into an ultimate classless, stateless society. To Engels, this represented the “conversion of political rule over men into an administration of things and a direction of processes of production – that is to say, the “abolition of the state”, about which recently there has been so much noise.”

If Engels’ logic is to be considered sound, that authority is unavoidable until all people are capable of collectively managing society without a division between the leaders and the led, then the anarchist obsession with authority loses its relevance to any serious political movement.

However, as with all central leadership, the vanguard runs the risk of corruption. There is every chance that a vanguard leadership, no matter how pure in origin or intent, if left on its own will develop into a despotic clique of autocrats. This is indisputable – the leaders, to be good leaders, must always be connected to and a part of the masses at large.

There is a structure capable of ensuring the greatest reach of democracy with the most coherent leadership. This is the model of democratic centralism.

Democratic centralism works in a very simple way. In any organization, the rank-and-file elect their leadership from among themselves. They keep this leadership constantly under their watch, issue principled and comradely criticism, and have the power of instant recall.

The leadership is bound by the decisions of the rank-and-file, often expressed in conventions or congresses of the membership. The leadership does the day-to-day work of the organization and ensures that the decisions of the central convention/congress are carried out at all levels of the organization. The leadership is not a source of power or arbitrary authority – it is the force behind the authority of the membership at large, overseeing the implementation of their decisions.

Democratic centralism is not a model exclusive to the vanguard, but can apply to mass organizations as well. Leadership is democratically elected at all levels of the organization, ideally based on their ability and will to lead, and they are always subordinate to the decisions of the membership.

This, the anti-authoritarians would have us do away with. In favour of what? Rarely is anything offered as an alternative, but when it is it usually revolves around the idea that mass organizations can function without defined leadership.

Have these individuals ever been members of an organization? Every organization requires that somebody does work in order for it to function. Every organization requires that decisions be made and plans be formed in kind. Every organization requires that somebody, whether one individual or a committee, oversees the implementation of decisions. You cannot have organization without having some variety of leadership and authority. That is to say, the authority to enforce democratically-reached decisions.

The children of Western society, reared with a thoroughly bourgeois education, are taught the inviolability and indisputability of individualism. They may pay lip service to the words of fictional characters, such as “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one”, but veritably the core philosophy of Western society is to look out for number one.

With this view, a surprising number of individuals have shown the ability to do mental gymnastics. They get jobs working with innumerable numbers of other people; they may take public transit which requires some amount of co-operation and respect from all riders; or they may drive on roads where they must show deference to the speed limit, the lanes and the mandated direction of traffic; they absorb media created by other people; they eat food grown and often prepared by others; they go in and out of buildings built by others; they wait in lines while other people are served before them; they cross roads when it is indicated to be safe; and often, doing this requires that they surrender some of their resources (i.e. money) in order to procure that which they need.

And yet after all this, they exalt themselves as completely sovereign individuals, living in a bubble, their will unrestrained by anything at all.

This may be an extreme interpretation of the anti-authoritarian consciousness, and it may be more philosophical than an explanation of what a vanguard is normally would require, but it highlights the fundamental issue that most have with the vanguard and democratic centralist models – that they are too “authoritarian”.

The petit-bourgeoisie, whether they actually do or not, aspires to work individually. And why should they not? Their nature as a class is rooted in individual competition and in the fantastical illusion of being one’s “own boss”. Why should they conceive of the importance of collective activity?

Those who have had to work for other people, on the other hand, should be fully aware of the value of co-operation and collective activity. In a sense, it becomes a matter of grasping one’s own insignificance and making peace with it. That is something that most petit-bourgeois individuals will roundly fail at, but something that genuine revolutionaries have no problem with.

What does this have to do with the vanguard? When one can let go of their own over-inflated sense of self, they are able to effectively place themselves in the political struggle. It leaves their development from apolitical and apathetic to organized and learning, and ultimately to experienced and wise. Somebody who has not shed her or his obsession with resisting authority is unsuitable to participate in any organized action, let alone lead it.

As such, anti-authoritarians confine themselves to a position of permanent opposition. They best they can do is be a sometimes-logical (but rarely so) voice in the lower ranks of a mass movement, muse on sometimes-valuable (but rarely so) philosophical questions of personal lifestyle decisions like polyamory, and offer sometimes-comradely (but rarely so) criticism of the organization, its line and its leadership.

In order for the vanguard model and democratic centralism to make sense, juvenile and obsessive anti-authoritarianism needs to be rejected in favour of dealing with actual political realities and actual social relations.

Trotskyists. Go figure.

An old revolutionary walks across the Brooklyn Bridge one day, and he sees man of a similar age standing on the edge, about to jump. He runs over and says: “Stop, don’t do it!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he asks.

“Well, there’s so much to live for!”

“I’m just depressed, I’ve been a Communist all my life and the revolution seems as far away as ever.”

“You’re a Communist?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I am as well!! Did you originally join the Communist Party USA?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too! Did you join the pro-Trotsky Communist League of America in 1928, which later merged.with the American Workers Party to form the Workers Party of America in 1934?”

“Yeah.”

“Spooky, me too! After the WPA was expelled from the Socialist Party of America in 1936, did you then go on to join the Socialist Workers Party USA and the Fourth International?”

“I did, actually!”

“Me too! In the 1940 dispute did you side with Cannon or Shachtman?”

“Cannon.”

“Me too! In 1962 did you join Robertson’s opposition caucus, the Revolutionary Tendency?”

“Yep.”

“Holy shit! And of course like me you were expelled and went on to join the International Communist League (Spartacist)”

“Well, that goes without saying!”

“In 1985 did you join the International Bolshevik Tendency who claimed that the Sparts have degenerated into an “obedience cult””

“No way!”

“Nah, me neither. In 1998 did you join the Internationalist Group after the Permanent Revolution Faction were expelled from the ICL?”

“Yeah! I can’t believe this! Maybe I won’t kill myself after all.”

“Die counterrevolutionary scum!” he yells, and pushes him off the edge.

Remember Once In Libya

by Rick Gunderman

Remember once in Libya
It wasn’t long ago
There was a Jamahiriya
A state built from below

Remember once in Libya
A great idea did rule
But media spin did twist the truth
And made us into fools

Remember once in Libya
Health care was a right
Education was for all to have
And streets lit up at night

Remember once in Libya
Before the NTC
The people’s lives were paramount
They had democracy

Remember once in Libya
A noble soul did reign
He stepped aside in ‘79
From power he’d abstain

Remember once in Libya
The Brother Leader said
“Women, like men, are human beings”
Now their rights are torn to shreds

Remember once in Libya
It was safe to have dark skin
Now lynched and disenfranchised
They’re enemies within

Remember once in Libya
Before the NATO bombs
Now Bani Walid and Sirte
Are today’s Vietnams

Remember once in Libya
When Muammar was alive
The oil wealth fed everyone
Now they struggle to survive

Remember once in Libya
The people knew what’s good
And now resistance carries on
Let this be understood

Remember yesterday’s Libya
Remember what was lost
Remember al Jazeera’s lies
Remember what it cost

Mass Campaigns as an Apparatus for Broadening the Struggle

by Rick Gunderman

The success of every revolutionary movement is at the mercy of its ability to rally large numbers of people behind it. Mass organizations give the people a way to take direct action in a democratic way for causes they wish to take up. On their own, however, mass organizations are still only a means for the core activist vanguard to connect with non-political people and bring them into the struggle.

The simple reality of the matter is that non-political people have existed everywhere, in all phases of history, and it is the furthest thing from a simple task to change their beliefs. Decades worth of effort in many socialist countries still left considerable segments of the population apolitical. Plainly put, these are the people who are content to go about their lives as long as there is political and economic stability.

When there is stability, it is less likely that large swaths of the population will take up political struggle. Political struggle materializes when the people rise up against those aspects of their conditions that they cannot tolerate, and conversely political complacency is the norm  when large enough numbers of people can tolerate their conditions.

One major aspect of the manufactured satisfaction with capitalism is the efforts, especially of neoliberal, ultraconservative and libertarian ideologues, to convince the people that capitalism is the only way. The people are hypnotized by their claims that socialism has “failed” and that capitalism has proven itself to be immutable, unshakeable and  unequivocal.

In order that progressive activists may shake up this false sense of permanency, it is necessary to be cautious, tactful and discreet. Preaching the revolutionary theory of  Marxism-Leninism to people who may think that a parliamentary cabinet is a piece of furniture where legislators store their canned goods is about as useful as trying to fly with cardboard wings.

Explaining all the complexities of the communist movement’s history, philosophy, economics, political structures and the capitalist class’s unceasing disinformation campaign against it cannot be done in one short sitting. Even sustained efforts at educating somebody on this topic are useless if not a part of the learner’s personal growth as a class-conscious fighter for social justice and working class power.

Apolitical people can sometimes be deaf to any talk of politics, but other times they prove to be very open-minded as long as the facts add up and the argument is rational. Focusing on hard, readily verifiable facts and offering intelligent but easy to understand solutions that can be campaigned for is the best way to draw otherwise apolitical people into a political struggle.

This is also the best way to win over to the communist movement people who have pre-existing political inclinations. By solidly demonstrating good leadership in the mass organizations based on decidedly Marxist-Leninist principles and appealing to the common beliefs of the organization’s members, the non-communists can see with their own eyes the effectiveness of an activist armed with genuine revolutionary theory. This offers the best chance to attract even the most committed anarchists, social democrats and libertarians to our ideology.

Put in the simplest terms, actions speak louder than words. Chanting complex and esoteric political slogans with convoluted and tangled theories that make sense only to political science graduate students will advance a movement no further beyond campus pubs. The core vanguard of activists must be have the deepest and most composite understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory to help them guide the struggle for social justice and working class power, but only for this purpose. As a tool for advancing the mass political struggle it is virtually useless.

This is not to say that the masses should not be exposed to communism and some aspects of Marxist-Leninist theory. On the contrary, it is necessary for the relevance of the vanguard to the current struggle and for the constant replenishment of the vanguard with new leadership.

This is one of the major purposes for building the mass organizations, from the vanguard’s perspective. Those in the vanguard do not cherish their leadership as some sort of noble title. They know that their leadership is only legitimate only so long as they are actively carrying out the duties democratically assigned to them by those they are responsible to. While it is important for the leadership to retain stable working relations with each other, the vanguard leadership must keep in mind the value of refreshing their ranks as often as possible.

If the core vanguard leadership is composed of the most advanced and dedicated activists, it is self-apparent how developing the mass organizations is a matter of developing good leadership skills among the people. When all of the people are capable of good leadership, there ceases to be a distinction between the leaders and the led. The ultimate result – far off as it may be – is all of the people running society collectively.

For the replenishment of the vanguard, strong mass organizations are needed. How do the ranks of the mass organizations get replenished, then?

In a word, mass campaigns. A mass organization is not just an organization of the masses – it is an organization for the masses. They must be composed of, as well as constantly among, the people. They must be public and visible, able to attract attention by calling on the people to struggle for the betterment of all of humanity.

A student union federation cannot just stay silent and unperceived to the students it claims to represent. It must get the students involved in campaigns to demand lower tuition fees, better learning facilities and student housing, access to well-paying jobs, a university administration that solicits their opinions, etc. It must ask the students what they want, and as a democratic body reach conclusive plans of action in the name of the students.

To build a student union, clubs and student associations under their umbrella must always be expanded. Their executive and legislative institutions must be democratic to the core, with expansive representation and direct democracy employed and expanded on a constant basis.

Another example is the Palestine liberation movement. Organizations exist that are dedicated to this goal, and for their campaign’s goal to be achieved they must always be out agitating among the people. The activists in the Palestine liberation movement must be patient and sensitive to the masses, working to educate without aggravating the wrong segments. At the same time, they must be vigilant of a powerful, well-organized, resourceful enemy – the Zionist movement. Their task is, through their campaigns, to win the masses away from Zionist ideology and toward the ideology of national liberation.

However the tactics are put into exact practice, the paramount determinant in a student union’s success as a mass organization is its drive to engage every single student in their campaigns for the betterment of all students. The most interested students will become leaders in the student union, building it as a mass organizations. These leaders, if exposed to a core vanguard with a solid revolutionary theory, will be of the highest quality and will be worthy to lead the whole movement to victory.

It is important to understand that although the vanguard is in the leadership, a true revolutionary movement vests all power in the masses – that is, those masses that will participate. The mass organization, in a revolutionary society, is the source of all power. The vanguard simply serves to direct the masses in their development – they are there to elevate the masses.

If a revolutionary movement can be thought of as a tree, the masses are the tree’s sustenance– sunlight, soil nutrients, water, etc. The mass organizations are the leaves and the roots, the means by which the tree absorbs its sustenance and converts it into energy. The vanguard is the trunk and the branches, channelling all of these processes to ensure the healthy development of the tree.

As inexact a metaphor as this undoubtedly is, it shines light on what role the vanguard, the organized masses and the masses at large all play in revolutionary activism. If the tree hopes to absorb sustenance, its leaves and roots must be healthy and open to input – but also capable of filtering out that which harms it.

*originally written and posted on Facebook on January 12, 2012.

Build the People’s Mass Democratic Organizations

by Rick Gunderman

In those countries where organizing is legal enough to allow it, the first task in starting political struggle is to form a core group of leaders that are capable of rallying a periphery of supporters into action. This core vanguard must be politically advanced, class conscious, dedicated to social justice, but above all else must have strong, deep-rooted connections with the broad masses of people. In this way, the vanguard does not condemn itself to political obscurity and irrelevance, but exists with and for the people.

It is of great importance that those in the vanguard are able to effectively marshal people, especially their supporters, into action. When the vanguard is capable of this, this periphery of supporters must be shaped into various mass organizations that are capable of attracting and mobilizing ever-larger numbers of people to achieve political goals.

Mass organizations are the peoples’ progressive forces in the struggle against capitalism, imperialism and reaction. It is in these organizations, where large amounts of people can unite on a common basis to work for a specific and defined set of goals, that the foundations for a socialist society are laid.

Mass organizations are where the people learn what it means to challenge and confront the powerful, and thereby develop class-consciousness in a practical way. It is where information related to political struggle is disseminated and discussed, and the progressive movement as a whole is strengthened by this collective generation of knowledge. It is where democracy is learned and applied, where the will of the people is clearly expressed in concrete ways.

It is not out of thin air that mass organizations appear – they appear naturally in the course of political struggle. This is true universally, although from one country and one historical period to the next they can take on greatly different forms.

Sometimes mass organizations are started by experienced and dedicated activists, other times by regular people inspired to take up arms for a particular cause. Sometimes full-time activists and casual activists work together. This does not change the nature of mass organizations – they are always the seeds of mass, socialist democracy. Whether they yield a good harvest, however, depends entirely on the quality of their leadership.

An example of what mass organizations are and how they work can be found in labour unions. Labour unions can encapsulate whole workplaces of people into a single democratic unit, where all workers are members and where their will is elucidated and their opinions constantly solicited.

The labour union can work for its membership, using their funds not only in the struggle to better their members’ lives but to enrich them as well. Many unions provide or subsidize recreational activities and vacations alongside housing and pensions for their members.

The quality of leadership of a labour union is directly correlated to their success as mass organizations. A union is successful when its members are paid fair wages for their labour, when its members are actively involved in both the decision-making process and the social life of the union, and when it is constantly striving for the education and consciousness development of its members.

A labour union is not successful when its leadership exists above and disconnected from its membership. When its leadership collaborates with the capitalist bosses, when its members are hardly or not at all involved in the decision-making process, and when it fails to bring benefits and good wages to its members, the union is a moribund shell of a mass organization.

Another example of a mass organization is Greenpeace, an international group for environmental activism. Greenpeace unites environmentalists of all political stripes for action on issues like climate change, nuclear waste, whaling and deforestation.

For Greenpeace to be a successful mass organization, its members need to be active participants not only in their actions but in their decision-making process as well. Its publications must be regular, informative and free of charge. The path to irrelevancy is lined with solicited donations and bumper stickers as the primary means of member engagement.

Labour unions and environmental groups alike are flexible and stable mass organizations with broad, long-term goals. Conversely, there are mass organizations that are impermanent and narrow in focus.

One such example is the historic movement for women’s suffrage. While the women themselves were often politically involved on multiple fronts, they united on the basis of winning the franchise for the female sex. Upon winning this, the women’s suffrage movement lots its raison d’être and became a chapter in history.

Impermanency in no way negates the value of these types of mass organizations – although the term “mass movement” may be more accurate if they are not united in a single organization. Rather, they can be a great impetus for expanding the progressive movement as a whole. The women’s suffrage movement was not a fly-by-night act of rebellion, but a part of the wider movement for women’s liberation. From the women’s suffrage movement emerged many great feminists like Nellie McClung, Alice Paul and Emmeline Pankhurst. 

This shows that mass organizations can either be permanent and broadly focused, or temporary and narrowly focused, depending on exact goals and purposes.

In either case, the core vanguard must clearly understand the purpose of mass organizations as they relate to the long-term goal of achieving mass socialist democracy. Mass organizations are the fertile ground where socialism grows. They are the fountains from whose heads spring the waters of democracy. If the core vanguard is the roof of the house of socialism, the mass organizations are the foundation, the frame, the bricks and the mortar.

It is a mistake to view mass organizations as the guiding force in the revolutionary process, or to believe that they need no guiding force at all. Every revolution needs plans, direction, leadership and the ability to replace old state institutions with new and radically different ones. This is the role the core vanguard fills.

A car could not run without an engine, and that engine cannot run without gas. A revolution cannot succeed without a vanguard, but the vanguard cannot succeed without the masses. Herein lies the reason for the importance of mass work, and also of maintaining a solid and effective vanguard.

*originally written and posted on Facebook on January 11, 2012.

On How the “Real Women Have Curves” Movement is Inherently Anti-Feminist

by KaylaJo O’Lone-Hahn

In a capitalist, patriarchal society, women are seen first and foremost as child-bearers and as objects of beauty. In American society, full to the brim with capitalism and sexism, women have been split apart for advertising, entertainment, “traditional family values,” and the rape culture, amongst a myriad of other things. In this society, women are valued for and completely identified by their physical appearance. Beauty is the main thing a girl can have, because beautiful girls find rich men to love them and take care of them.

As a kid, it always infuriated me that all the girl role models were just pretty. Maybe they sang, maybe they acted, but in the end, they were all just pretty. Boys got to identify with superheroes and astronauts and great world leaders. I got to identify with women who had big tits and sparkly eyes. That being said, women’s identity is their looks. If a woman is beautiful and successful, they say it’s only because of her appearance, or because she “sleeps around.” If a woman is not seen as attractive and successful, it’s just because she wasn’t “pretty” enough to do other things, like get married and pop out babies.

Within the last fifty or so years, women who are thin with large breasts have been idealized as beautiful. The idea of beauty varies a bit from decade to decade in American society, but it rarely has anything to do with the woman looking like she’s a healthy or physically empowered person. Nowadays, anorexia runs rampant with models being so thin that they disappear when they turn to the side. Girls (and boys) are developing eating disorders and nearly or completely destroying themselves. Society idealizes women that are unhealthy and unable to defend themselves, and because that’s all society let’s young girls look up to, that’s what they try to become.

There has been a long response to this in recent years with anti-anorexia campaigns and most prominently, the “real women have curves” movement. The movement started out well, it made the point that full-figured women are just as beautiful as thin women, and we should all love our bodies no matter what. Truer words were never spoken, in that case, but the movement has turned into something much, much different. Now there are things all over the internet and TV proclaiming, “real women have curves!”

First off, let me explain what’s wrong with that statement as a whole. “Real women” are people who identify as a woman. That’s it. I don’t care if you’re the size of a hippo or the size of a toothpick, if you call yourself a woman, then you’re a woman. To say only real women have curves reminds me a lot of a bill known as the “Small Breast Ban” in Australia. Basically, the ban said if your bra is an “A” cup or less, you can’t act in pornography because it “encourages pedophilia.” So if you have small breasts, that makes you a child. Thankfully, that bill got torn down, but the society we have around fat-positivity is teaching us the same thing, just without a legal action for it. This idea that large women are more beautiful than thin women, and that thin women are all anorexic, inherently demonizes and demeans thin women.

It also shames women with eating disorders. Women who have eating disorders are generally suffering from terrible self-esteem and are either trying to look like the models or are on a mission to self-destruct, be it conscious or unconscious. The movement shames women with legitimate struggles, and that shame only adds to what they’re already feeling thanks to this sexist society. Why people go around on this movement to make themselves and others feel better while disrespecting and demonizing others is beyond me.

Finally, the movement still continues the same problem we have with patriarchy and sexism. It identifies and values women on their physical appearance. It says “if you look this way, you’re better, if you look that way, you’re worse.” I’d really like to know how it helps women at all to shift a movement in a slightly different direction that still hangs onto the same old principles that are destroying women’s bodies. Sure, larger women and girls can feel better about their bodies, and I’m all for that, but to hate thin women and continue to only identify by appearance perpetuates the same cycle. I don’t care if the trend is being as thin as can be or as heavy as can be, as long as society and these movements keep allowing women to only be valued by their body, the problem will never be solved.

In the end, I’m tired of seeing this movement take things too far. I’m tired of thin women and fat women hating themselves. I’m tired of eating disorders and constant pressure to look a certain way. I’m tired of the sexism that values women only on their bodies and harms women’s psyche. But most importantly, I’m tired of women and men being too blind to see that this movement will not affect real change.

What will affect real change is rising up. It’s loving yourself no matter what you look like. It’s not giving a damn about what you look like. It’s making yourself braver, more knowledgable, more independent, more caring, more loving and more free. It’s understanding that anyone who will think you’re worth something who is also worth something won’t value you only on your appearance. They’ll value you for all those other things.

It’s taking a stand for yourself and everybody else so that the world can understand that no one is allowed to make you an object, and no one will stop you from being who you are and loving who you are. That is feminism, and that is real change.

*originally posted on Red Sociology 101 on February 9, 2012

If We Looked At America The Way We Look At North Korea (And Other Socialist Countries)

by Rick Gunderman

With the death of Kim Jong-Il, the chorus of hate against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is once again being loudly broadcast. Despite the best efforts of many dedicated socialists in the West, the fact is that the powerful in our society are almost universally hostile to the DPRK.

Kim Jong-Il, and the country he led for seventeen years, are perhaps the most demonized of any leader and country in history. From al Jazeera to Team America, there is no shortage of Western media that goes out of its way to make North Koreans look poverty-stricken and brainwashed, and to make Kim Jong-il look ridiculous, insane, unbalanced and tyranical.

Anyone familiar with Chomsky and Hermann’s “Propaganda Model” knows that our media is not to be trusted, especially when it comes to foreign countries, but even more when those countries are run by governments that don’t kiss Western ass. As soon as a government stands up for the interests of its people over the interests of Western capitalism, they are labelled with all sorts of bad and evil-sounding terms, and what is fact and what is fiction becomes harder and harder to decipher.

To demonstrate just how ridiculous the spin in our media is, I have crafted my own dictum on the United States based on half-truths, misrepresentations, outright fabrications and gross exaggeration. Enjoy!

Life Funds for American Refugees

Currently there are anywhere between 900,000 and 2 million American refugees living in Canada. Total Americans living abroad number anywhere between 3 and 6 million.

What the United States does not tell you is that Americans have been fleeing their country for centuries to escape the tyrannical republican government!

That’s right – after the American Revolution in 1776, thousands and thousands of Americans fled their homes to escape to a better life in Canada. Their descendants have tried asking for compensation from the US government, but so far they have been refused. Proof that the United States will trample all over anybody’s property rights without a second thought!

There have been numerous cases where American citizens were forced to join the US military, and instead tried to flee to Canada. If they were caught at the border, they were usually taken into back rooms in Homeland Security buildings, where they were shackled and beaten. There have even been instances of military veterans being seriously assaulted by police in public, but their media barely even talks about it!

In fact, the police in the United States are known to regularly abuse citizens. Poor and racialized communities often suffer the brunt of police brutality. Torture is commonplace, and the government has now moved to legalize the indefinite detention and torture of citizens. A culture of fear exists among these communities, many of whose members are dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night, surrounded by their hysterical family members, because they are “suspected” of dealing illegal drugs. The worst thing is that the government of the United States has been documented selling these very drugs to the communities they brutalize!

The military is all-pervasive in American society. You can hardly go anywhere in the whole country without being confronted with the military, whether it is in the form of bumper stickers, military recruiters in parking lots, recruiting stations in the downtown of every major city, billboards urging mindless support, politicians who ostracize all those who question the military’s place in society…even sporting events include military displays! It is a disturbing sight, to see so many Americans standing and clapping in unison, as if they have not a single independent thought. The synchronization of this ritual is solid proof that it has been rehearsed – they would need to, since these types of displays happen no less often than once a week.

Americans clearly have an unhealthy devotion to their leaders. In their capital city, not only are many buildings named after past presidents, but they have WHOLE MONUMENTS DEDICATED TO THEM! One such monument is dedicated to George Washington, and it’s just a giant spire in the middle of the downtown. A waste of public space, and a waste of money that should have gone toward feeding the starving population!

Americans have a cult-like worship of their past leaders. Pictures of them are to be found everywhere – on their currency, on their classroom walls, in government buildings, you name it! Some people even put up pictures of past presidents in their private homes. They refer to their first president, George Washington, as the “Father of our Nation”, or if you translate it another way, “Father of our People”. If this isn’t a sign of mass brainwashing, I don’t know what is!

In the United States, presidents all come from the same social class. Many of them are members of the same social organizations, like the Skulls and Bones, an evil cult society dedicated to global domination by killing 99% of the population through vaccines.

Not only that, but the United States has a history of dynastic politics in the presidency: John Adams was succeeded as president by his son John Quincy Adams; Benjamin Harrison succeeded his grandfather William Henry Harrison; and George H.W. Bush was succeeded by his son George W. Bush. What’s more, family members of presidents have occupied other powerful state offices – William Clinton was president in the 1990s, and his wife is now Secretary of State, the third-highest ranking position in the US government! Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s son Rand is a Senator from Kentucky. And this isn’t to say anything of the Kennedy family, which has had a stranglehold on American politics for generations. The lack of democracy in the United States is obvious for all to see.

Life in the United States of America is terrible and unbearable. The people live in miserable poverty, with most unable to survive if they miss even one paycheque. Homelessness is out of control, the people are frequently starving, and all of the state’s money is directed toward the military because of a policy known as “Counter-Terrorism”. Counter-Terrorism is basically republicanism combined with an obsession for the military. They have clearly strayed far from their original principles, as espoused by their political prophet Thomas Jefferson. Yet they continue to revere Jefferson as a god-like being, with statues of him all over the country – they’ve named various cities, towns and counties after him, and they even proposed naming an entire state after him in the Pacific Northwest.

The United States spends millions of dollars every year on upkeeping their roads, but some of them are hardly ever driven on. There is one case of a bridge that was going to be built in Alaska, using millions of dollars of public money, to connect an island of only fifty people to the mainland. This while thousands of Alaskans live in desperate poverty!

Every day, millions and millions of schoolchildren are forced to recite a prayer called the “Pledge of Allegiance”. This is a solemn vow to always support the government of the United States. Those children who do not comply are publicly shamed, and this stigma carries on into adulthood. Any adult American known to refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance is subject to harassment by the government and by fellow citizens alike.

Anybody moving to the United States is expected to immediately learn English, never use their native tongue in public and minimize its use in private, and adopt Western-style clothing without hesitation. Anybody failing to do so is harassed, belittled, and in many cases “offenders” are beaten or even killed.

In some parts of the United States, interracial marriage is discouraged or openly forbidden. Interracial couples have been known to face verbal and physical attacks, especially in the Deep South and in Appalachia.

While their people starve, the United States not only spends opulent amounts of money on the lifestyles of their political leaders, but also to ensure that foreign dignitaries are well-housed, well-fed and kept entertained. Several mansions along a district in the national capital known as “Embassy Row” belong to foreign embassies, and they are some of the best palaces in all of Washington.

Whenever the United States goes through a severe drought, almost no funds or personnel are deployed to help the people. In one such instance, in the 1930s, over one million refugees from the state of Oklahoma migrated to the state of California, where they were shuttled into horrible concentration camps. If you try to find anybody who survived these camps, it is almost impossible, which proves that few ever made it out alive. Worse still is the callous response of the nation’s media commentators on the subject, with one going so far as to suggest that the one million refugees immigrating from Oklahoma to California made both states “smarter”. What evil arrogance!

The most alarming thing about all of this is the Americans’ continued fervent patriotism in spite of the horrible society they live in. On the average American street, almost every house can be seen to be flying an American flag. National symbols are everywhere, from flags to eagles to images of the Statue of Liberty. This statue stands at the entrance to New York harbour, strategically placed to impress itself upon all who pass it, and it is an idol to which the Americans actually pray!

Unfortunately, only 10,200 Americans were able to make the arduous crossing into Canada last year. This is undeniable proof that the US government is restricting the movement of its people. American refugees frequently testify to a highly militarized border with heavily armed officers, secret detention centres in the depths of the border posts, and extreme difficulty with getting permission to enter Canada. This is proof that the Canadian government is complicit in the American state’s efforts to oppress their people!

Below are pictures that prove the sadistic, malevolent, depraved nature of American society. Most of them were smuggled out of the United States at great personal risk by some of the refugees. It is imperative that all foreign countries do whatever it takes to free the oppressed American people (the white ones, anyway) from their psychotic, tyrannical, bloodthirsty, savage, megalomaniacal government!

American women, starving because the government directs all funding to the military.

These two women died two days after this photo was taken of their arrival as refugees in France.

Starving children in Atlanta, Georgia.

An American child in St. Louis, Missouri begs the world to overthrow her evil government. She was sent to prison after this photo was found by authorities.

A young American girl in rural Utah goes foraging for food.

American children waiting for food in a state-run detention centre for the politically insane.

American children are forced to labour all day, every day.

Translated from American English – “Down with the Satanic Regime” and “Help Us, China! We Will Work For Food!”.

Seattle Police use trained wolves to assault a young Mexican-American last year.

A starving American child in Riverside, California.

An American family living in their car in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Chicago Police arresting a man for reciting poetry on the street corner.

Boston Police physically assaulting a young woman.

A young man is arrested by Nashville Police for saying that President Obama resembles Steve Urkel.

*originally written and posted on Facebook on December 20, 2011.

Chomsky’s Words Will Not Stop The Revolution

by Rick Gunderman

“Speaking to the Observer last week, (MIT professor and noted political analyst Noam) Chomsky has accused the socialist leader (Hugo Chavez) of amassing too much power and of making an ‘assault’ on Venezuela’s democracy.” –The Guardian, UK

Accompanied by a photo of President Chavez riding a horse and pointing skyward, flanked by three llanero-looking individuals, the UK’s Guardian ran an article entitled “Noam Chomsky denounces old friend Hugo Chávez for ‘assault’ on democracy”.

Aside from being an exhaustingly typical example of editoralizing through photographs, the article proceeds to go in depth on how Noam Chomsky’s friendship with Hugo Chavez (“Hugo Chávez has long considered Noam Chomsky one of his best friends in the west”) has been compromised by the imprisonment of Venezuelan judge María Lourdes Afiuni, head of the 31st Control Court of Caracas.

The Guardian’s explanation of why Afiuni was jailed:

“Afiuni earned Chávez’s ire in December 2009 by freeing Eligio Cedeño, a prominent banker facing corruption charges. Cedeño promptly fled the country.”

Not a word more of detail, but conspicuously followed by:

“In a televised broadcast the president, who had taken a close interest in the case, called the judge a criminal and demanded she be jailed for 30 years. “That judge has to pay for what she has done.””

The casual reader could be forgiven for concluding that Afiuni’s detention was totally arbitrary and without cause.

Imagine if, in the Conrad Black case, or the Scooter Libby trial, a judge had not only allowed the accused to slip out of the back of the courthouse so they could escape to Mexico, but had personally summoned the accused for a hearing without notifying the prosecutor, all in order to allow the escape.

The judge would be arrested for assisting a fugitive, at the very least.

This is analogous to what happened in Venezuela. Eligio Cedeño, the prisoner illegally released by then-Judge Afiuni, was a Venezuelan banker arrested in 2007 for allegedly circumventing government currency rules to gain U.S. dollars. To the tune of $27 million USD. Cedeño is now living it up in Miami (no explanation necessary there).

According to Edward Ellis of Correo del Orinoco International (which, unlike the Carr Institute, actually operates in Venezuela):

“While it is true that Cedeño had indeed been held beyond the stipulated time for pre-trial detentions, it is also true that Afiuni’s rogue actions were made in violation of all judicial protocols and legal procedures. In fact, hundreds of trials in Venezuela fall victim to bureaucratic slow downs and judicial delays that prevent the timely delivery of justice in the country.”

And in fact, the judicial system managed to secure Afiuni’s arrest without any intervention from Chavez, although the Guardian would have it framed otherwise. Chavez went on television condemning corruption in the justice system, used Afiuni’s case as an example, and described how she would be punished, i.e. how the legal system works, which a president certainly ought to know. To the Guardian, this is proof of Chavez’s tyrannical ways.

Nor would Chomsky have us believe Venezuela’s judicial system is impartial:

“I’m sceptical that [Afiuni] could receive a fair trial. It’s striking that, as far as I understand, other judges have not come out in support of her … that suggests an atmosphere of intimidation.”

To Noam Chomsky, the lack of judges willing to speak out in favour of a corrupt public official who helped a known criminal escape justice must be a sign of the impending realization of Chavez’s totalitarian agenda. Implicitly, we should have expected this. All socialist countries destroy democracy and succumb to Stalinism sooner or later.

If one continues through the list of international human rights groups joining in the chorus of anti-Chavez voices that makes up the rest of the Guardian’s article, one arrives at the much-lauded Chomsky letter.

Helpfully enough, he sets off the Leninist reader’s radar in the second sentence by referring to the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University as the source of his alarm over Afiuni’s detention. The Canadian reader would be interested to know that the Carr Centre was headed from 2000-2005 by our very own Michael Ignatieff, former Liberal Party leader and open admirer of American imperialism.

Following this vain attempt to establish institutional credibility, Chomsky gets on his high horse and begins shedding crocodile tears for Afiuni’s situation. She has been in prison for a little over a year, and on top of having cancer was a single mother. Indeed, nobody doubts that this is a bad situation to be in. With poor health and young children to care for, one wonders why Afiuni would put herself in the business of assisting fugitives.

Chomsky and the Guardian fail to mention that even among the bureaucratic mess that is the judicial system the Attorney General managed to intervene to have her transferred first to isolation from the general population to ensure her safety (she was sharing a cell block with inmates she had sentenced) then to house arrest so she could receive cancer treatment. Some “cruelty”.

Nor is it evidently worth noting that neither Afiuni nor Cedeño were known to be supporters of the opposition, which compromises the claim that this is a case of political persecution.

Communists should not take lightly the influence that Noam Chomsky has on the petit-bourgeois left. His books are widely available at Chapters and Indigo (why capitalist publishers would print literature with true subversive potential, and why capitalist bookstores would sell them is a rather glaring contradiction), and every university has one political science professor who salivates at the mention of Chomsky’s name. That Chomsky is an arrogant, bourgeois critic-of-everything while having made seemingly few contributions to real activism and revolution is of little relevance – he speaks the truth.

It is this kind of mentality that we as communists must stand against. Not for our own benefit – we already can sniff opportunism from miles away – but because it is poisonous to our allies, the masses, and the entire movement. It is a liberal, petit-bourgeois attitude, no matter the actual class of the individual who holds it.

The mentality can be summed up as “it’s a war of information – we win the revolution through education!”

This is a noble slogan, with a perfect place as a maxim for our media and newsletter staff. Or for a socialist bookstore, or education centre. But it is useless as a slogan that is central, defining or paramount. It can be useful as a very specific slogan for a very specific group or campaign, but only for that.

This, the mentality of the liberal progressives who we often work alongside confines our roles and duties as activists to debates, demonstrations and maybe the occasional leaflet. Without real mobilization of large numbers of people, under the leadership and initiative of the most dedicated activists who can make real demands to the right people to get real victories achieved for the masses (i.e. free education, universal health care including dental and preventive care, changes in government labour policy, unionization of workplaces, etc.), it is a plain fact – nothing gets done.

The organization grows or shrinks, but in any case becomes irrelevant. The policies of government, education and business become more vicious, more reactionary, and more damaging to workers, youth, students, women, visible minorities, recent immigrants, children, First Nations peoples, etc.

That is the practical effect of the Noam Chomsky mentality, of the liberal progressives. Romanticized “political prisoners”, the likes of which they have made disgraced judge María Lourdes Afiuni out to be, seem to pale in comparison.

For we know that the 5.7 million members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela/Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), and their thousands of comrades in the Communist Party of Venezuela/Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV), will not put the brakes on the progress of their revolution just because an MIT professor, high in his ivory tower, shouts at them.

But here at home, where we’re in the embryo stages of getting things going, the liberals in our ranks keep stopping to ask directions from the enemy.

*originally written and posted on Facebook on July 4, 2011

Canada’s Colonial Present

by Zainab Amadahy

First Nations people are the original inhabit­ants/caretakers of the land we refer to as Turtle Island, which includes all of North America. Our languages, cultures and very identity are intimately connected to/rooted in this land. To separate us from the land either ideologically or physically is an act of genocide. The very concepts of Canada, Mexico and the US (not to mention every so-called nation in the Americas) are premised on this geno­cide and the concurrent seizure of land and the resources within the land. The standard of living we enjoy in North America (some of us more than others) is founded on genocide, stolen land, stolen resources and stolen African and indigenous people who were enslaved (stolen labour). These original thefts were committed in the past but their legacy impacts us all in the present.

This does not mean that indigenous people don’t recognize other forms of oppression on which capi­talism depends. We want and need to make alli­ances. But we need allies who recognize and take responsibility for their history as settlers on this land (albeit we do not generalize about the settler experience and settler power in Canadian society; we know that not all settlers enjoy the stolen wealth of this land equally.) We need allies who wrestle with the implications of being a settler on anoth­er’s land while they wrestle with the fact that set­tlers are not equally empowered due, in large part, to Canada’s historic and current role in displacing people globally.

Though the relationship between First Nations and European settlers has a longer history, we can only briefly review some of that here in an effort to demonstrate how the colonial past has shaped our colonial present.

The Indian Act

In 1876 Canada passed the Indian Act which imposed the band council system of government on the indigenous people of Turtle Island (North America). Among other things, this law:

• Deposed already existing leadership to estab­lish band councils and the areas over which they had jurisdiction. The Indian Act was passed without consultation with any indigenous leader, usurped the treaty process (nation to nation agreements) and made First Nations (FN) governments null and void, despite the fact that these governments had served our ancestors for millennia before Europe­ans arrived on Turtle Island. This is akin to the US government passing a law that disbanded the cur­rent Canadian government, determined what type of government Canada must have and designated the limitations of its power.

• Made First Nations Communities economi­cally dependent on Ottawa. The federal govern­ment controls the only sources of revenue for social programs, economic development projects or job creation in FN communities. Ottawa determines through a variety of legal and financing mecha­nisms what band councils can and cannot do for their communities. Even the process of pursuing a land claim is legislated by Ottawa, funded (or not) by Ottawa and decided ultimately in Canadian courts. Land usage on FN territories is determined by Ottawa. There are many examples in history when the federal government leased or sold First Nations lands or resources and consequently reaped huge profits that did not accrue to the community. Clearly, the poverty that exists in First Nations communities is, and always has been, by Ottawa’s design.

• Blatantly discriminated against women by recognizing Native descent through the male line so that First Nations citizenship rights for women were recognized only through their fathers’ lineage and husbands’ status, and by prohibiting them from voting or running for office in band elections. This was in complete contradiction to traditional First Nations practices, in which descent for many com­munities was reckoned along the female line, and where women had significant authorities in politi­cal, economic and social life. While there were many nations and many practices, it is safe to generalize and say that women held positions of leadership di­rectly and/or appointed male leaders and held them accountable. This was completely overturned by the Indian Act.

Although women now have the right to vote and run for band office, almost a century of being excluded from political, economic and social deci­sion-making has left First Nations women on and off reserve in very vulnerable situations. Women are among the poorest in First Nations commu­nities. They have been targeted through various amendments to the Indian Act and thousands were stripped of their status along with their homes, benefits and any treaty rights they may have had. The hundreds of women who are missing from our communities, dead and murdered, is a direct result of a deliberate and calculated attack on the rights and authorities of First Nations women by the Ca­nadian government.

• Determined who could call themselves an “Indian” and live in First Nations communities. The Indian Act established an Indian registry and with subsequent amendments there has emerged a com­plex set of legal categories (status and non-status Indians, Treaty Indians, Bill C-31 Indians, etc.) designed to divide and disempower First Nations families and communities. Non-status Indians are those who are not recognized by Ottawa as First Nations. They cannot live in their communities, do not enjoy benefits or treaty rights and are not permitted to participate in band council elections. Again, this is akin to the US determining who could be a Canadian and who could not, as well as who could live here and vote in Canadian elec­tions.

Initially through the use of Indian agents with sweeping powers and more recently through purse strings, Ottawa has controlled band councils, band chiefs and the Assembly of First Nations. Whether this current control is perceived of as friendly or hostile is irrelevant and sidesteps the basic assump­tion that First Nations people are children who cannot manage their own affairs. To recognize that some band councils, their chiefs and police are sin­cerely interested in serving their communities while others are corrupt may be true but fails to recognize that the band council system is itself inherently cor­rupt, paternalistic and racist.

Establishment of Reserves in Canada

To provide more insight into some aspects of Canada’s colonial foundations, the following is excerpted from a presentation I made on the “Es­tablishment of Reserves in Canada” (delivered on February 3, 2006 during Anti-Apartheid Week at the University of Toronto, organized by the Arab Students Collective and edited and updated on January 17, 2007)

It is important to address the establishment of reserves in the context of the overall genocide proj­ect on Turtle Island.

Today we estimate that about half of all status Indians in Canada live off reserve. So “status In­dians” are people who are actually registered and recognized by the federal government as “Indians” under the Indian Act. When you include non sta­tus Indians, you see that the vast majority of indig­enous peoples in Canada live off reserve and have been living off territory for some generations.

Despite the stereotype that Native people live on reserves or come from a reserve, the reserve experi­ence is only one part of the North American in­digenous experience and it’s a minority experience among indigenous peoples. Even so, it is still inte­gral to understanding the larger picture of where we find ourselves today as indigenous people and it’s important to understanding the history and strug­gles of First Nations communities because they are of course linked to all of our other struggles as in­digenous peoples.

By the way, the politically correct way of refer­ring to reserves these days is First Nations commu­nities, which is the term I’m going to be using from here on.

There are so many legal terms and categories of indigenous people in Canada its mind boggling. To name a few we have status, non status, treaty Indi­ans, Bill C31 Indians, and many, many more.

The way one got registered initially under the Indian Act was to line up in front of the govern­ment-appointed Indian agent’s table whenever he came to your community and register with him. So if you were off hunting the day he was there or you were sick or injured or had just given birth or you were too elderly to make what might be a long trip or you didn’t give a shit about registering or what­ever, and you didn’t make it to register, you and all of your descendants to this day are not “status In­dians,” regardless of your ancestry or how long your ancestors have lived on Turtle Island.

This is important because it is only status Indi­ans who were originally supposed to live in First Nations communities. There were mechanisms, through amendments to the Indian Act, by which indigenous people who had status – and the benefits that came with it – lost status over the years. (One must understand that the so-called benefits were – and are – only available to the extent the govern­ment lived up to the terms of its own legislation or negotiated treaties and provided benefits.) We can’t talk about that much because it’s not the topic. But the benefits on paper include health care, hous­ing, education and so on. But these commitments weren’t kept in whole or in part – or the services were carried out in such a way that they did more harm than good – and today we still find attempts by the feds to extinguish these benefits completely.

The first thing I want to address is where re­serves come from. They were made possible under legislation enacted in 1850 to set aside tracts of land reserved for indigenous communities. There­after, specific reserve territories were negotiated in treaties. So it’s important to understand that not all First Nations signed treaties with the government, particularly on the west coast or in the far north, which means that not all “status Indians” or First Nations bands recognized by the feds have reserves or territories that the settler government recognizes. Even though they may have lived on, cared for and held ceremonies on that land for millennia before European arrival it doesn’t give them legal right to it. That’s why we have, for example, disputes in BC where a corporation has the support of the police and the courts to bulldoze over people’s homes and sweat lodges so it can expand a ski resort.

In addition, there are examples of people whose leaders signed treaties that allocated land to the community but the community never moved onto those lands and thus their descendants fell from the band rolls and never had status. One example, which I learned about when I was helping someone with research for a publication, is a community of Algonquins in the Ottawa valley who were urged by one of their chiefs not to move off territories their ancestors had lived on for generations in favor of relocating onto Golden Lake Reserve. So to this day we have people who live on these territories, carry Algonquin names, still do the ceremonies, still hunt and fish, still care for the wild rice beds but do not have status and do not want status (as they have said in their interviews) and in recent years have issued their own Algonquin identity documents, hunting licenses, fishing licenses, selected their own leaders, established councils to address their com­munity’s needs and so on. Sometimes local officials try to curtail their inherent rights by challenging them in court over the hunting and fishing licenses, or they’ve tried to sell off the wild rice beds to cor­porations or whatever, but to this day the non-sta­tus Algonquin have prevailed.

Back to reserves. So, treaties created reserves. And keep in mind that indigenous leaders who signed treaties did so under duress of one kind or another. In some cases, they signed treaties in return for protection from the Americans or be­cause settler incursion on their lands had resulted in dwindling food supplies and they were facing starvation or whatever. Nevertheless, no indigenous leader ever surrendered their nation’s sovereignty; never gave up their right to self government. Trea­ties were nation to nation agreements.

Then the Indian Act came along in 1876, which usurped the treaty negotiation processes and made the assumption that the settler government had an inherent right to make laws and govern people who already had fully functioning governments of their own. And those governments, by the way, were far more democratic than anything the Euro-Canadi­ans insisted they adopt.

While the traditional governments of the many hundreds of indigenous nations differed from each other in various ways, we can still generalize about some things. For example, we never voted but had consensus decision making processes that involved everyone in the community. Decision making and leadership didn’t exclude women. In fact, we didn’t even exclude children from decision-making.

Basically it’s the Indian Act that to this day gov­erns every aspect of life on reserves and has certainly impacted as well on off reserve indigenous people. The Indian Act decided who was an “Indian” and who wasn’t – who could live in First Nations com­munities. It laid the basis for the residential school system, it completely undermined indigenous sys­tems of governance and imposed a band council system which was modeled on the parliamentary system, it blatantly discriminated against women by denying them the right to vote or run for band council office, and, because it is still an active law, affects us in many, many other ways.

The Indian Act completely contradicted and un­dermined the authorities that indigenous women had in their communities prior to European arrival. While, as I mentioned, practices varied across Tur­tle Island, we can generalize and say that women had significant political roles and responsibilities: in some cases they directly assumed positions of leadership, in other cases they appointed and held leadership accountable. In some cases it was a bit of both of these. But whatever the system, women held significant authorities in government as well as economic, family and community life. This was completely overturned by the Indian act.

Recent scholars like Kim Anderson and Bonita Lawrence have demonstrated that this wasn’t just the result of patriarchal attitudes that coincidental­ly undermined women’s authorities, but that these measures were deliberate, premeditated strategies to disempower indigenous women in order to satisfy the objectives firstly, of causing such disruption to indigenous social organizations that settlers could more easily access the land and the resources within and secondly, satisfied the objective of assimilat­ing indigenous peoples – i.e. cultural genocide. So women were very specifically and deliberately tar­geted in legislation and other repressive measures.

Under the Indian Act, the settler government as­sumed what are called “fiduciary responsibilities” for Indigenous peoples. They could hold land “in trust” for indigenous people and were supposed to make decisions regarding the resources of First Nations communities that were in the best interest of those communities. So we were looked on as children who were incapable of managing our own financial affairs. But of course, we have numerous examples of First Nations lands being sold and leased and so on where the extraordinary profits that resulted did not accrue to the First Nations communities at all but lined the pockets of settlers.

For example, the Whitefish Lake band just re­cently received $37 million in compensation for a deal in 1886 where the band was paid only $399 for their timber rights and a year later the feds sold those rights for $43,000, a huge profit that never accrued to the community. That’s a somewhat hap­py ending but there are many bands still awaiting some form of justice in Canadian courts or haven’t gotten to Canadian courts.

The feds even today control how First Nations lands are developed, which is the main reason why unemployment rates in First Nations communities is and always has been high. Today unemployment rates are between 50 and 80 percent (Assembly of First Nations’ website: hyyp://www.afn.ca/). There are few jobs, many seasonal, because there is no commercial or industrial activity unless the feds make it possible and when they do make it possible there are often conditions or situations that result in jobs going to people outside the community, to non-Natives. There’s a lot of disparity among re­serves but, by and large, we’re certainly not talk­ing about wealthy communities. So the impover­ishment of those communities was created and is maintained by design (as is most poverty).

Early on, life on reserves was very much characterized by the arbitrary abuses of power of Indian agents. Indian agents were appointed by the feds, assigned to each First Nations community and giv­en extraordinary powers to enforce the Indian Act and control every aspect of life. The Indian Agent:

• Could depose traditional leaders and replace them with band council chiefs.

• Was not elected but could overturn elected band council decisions and remove elected chiefs from office.

• Could withhold food rations or use them to coerce people to sign documents or whatever else was wanted. In fact they could force or coerce the signing of land treaties and other agreements with impunity.

• Were the arresting officer, prosecutor and judge in the community.

• Had the power to determine who qualified as a Status Indian. As I mentioned, they did the origi­nal count for the Indian registry that was basically a complete farce. They also interpreted the amend­ments to the Indian Act that further defined status, which I’ll speak to later.

• Upon the death of a band member, the Indian Agent dispersed property and valuables (that often ended up in their own pockets).

• Had the power to determine who could live on reserve and who could visit. So when a woman lost status due to the discriminatory aspects of the Indian Act, the Indian Agent could evict her and deny her the right to return to live or even visit her family and friends. An amendment addressing trespassing allowed for the Indian Agent to arrest anybody visiting a reserve after dark.

• Anyone who wanted to work for wages off re­serve had to obtain the permission of the Indian Agent who, if he approved, would issue a pass stat­ing where one could go and for how long.

• Was complicit in coercing or forcing par­ents to send their children to residential schools. And they weren’t above kidnapping children and handing them over to school officials. (Residential schools, contracted out by the feds to the churches, were places where children as young as four were subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse; where they were forced to work in fields, shops and laundries; where some children, because of the treatment they received, ended up dead.) The last federally run school closed in 1988, so we’re not talking about ancient history here.

• Made decisions concerning the use of reserve lands. For example, he could decide to lease lands out to pulp and paper mills or mining companies. In Kahnawake in 1954, the Indian agent, without consultation, ceded a huge tract of territory for the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In the passage below, Dan Ennis of the Tobique First Nation gives a first hand account of life under the Indian Agent’s authority (from Sharing our Wa­banaki Perspective by Dan Ennis, http://www.unb.edu/web/bruns/0001/issue5/oped/wabanaki.html).

“In 1940, when I was a child, I experienced the poison of the racist mindset firsthand. It was a trau­matic experience for a boy of three or four to watch as my dad was taken away from our small family to jail because he tried to keep his family warm. It was cold and we needed wood for heat so my dad went out to the woods to cut firewood for his family. He did it without asking permission from the Indian agent because the Indian agent was away on vaca­tion. As it was winter, my father could not wait to ask for permission. He knew he had to take care of his family and that wouldn’t wait for the return of the Indian agent. My dad did what had to be done.

“When the Indian agent returned from vaca­tion, he was immediately informed about my dad’s wood cutting. My father was summoned to the Indian agent’s office where he confirmed that he had, in fact, cut the wood for his family. The Indian agent tried him and found him guilty of an offence and imposed a sentence of five days in jail to teach him a lesson. Within the span of just a few minutes from leaving his home, my father was in jail for cut­ting wood to keep his family warm.

“In those days, the white Indian agent was god on the reserve. He was accountable to absolutely no one and certainly not in any way to the Indian people. The irony of this particular situation is that the wood cut by my father at that time was located on Indian reserve land and there was no such legis­lation to charge my father with this offense. It was simply the white Indian agent’s way of asserting his power, control and authority over my father and our people. My dad had to be made an example to en­sure no other Indians would get similar ideas about doing anything without the agent’s permission.”

So that gives us some taste of the kind of cor­ruption that was enshrined in the government and justice systems imposed on First Nations commu­nities. It really makes me laugh bitterly when I hear of Canadian officials these days charging First Na­tions bands or band members with being corrupt. The system itself is corrupt and settler authorities and Christian clergy over the years have hardly ever been role models of integrity and honesty.

Through various amendments to the Indian Act, we also saw over time an erosion in the total amount of territory allocated to First Nations communities. In some cases, reserves were dissolved or relocated to allow for the expansion of towns and municipali­ties, like Edmonton, for example. A 1911 amend­ment allowed portions of reserves to be seized by municipalities for roads, railways or other public purposes. A couple of amendments prohibited First Nations from contesting in court decisions where all or parts of their territories were taken. The law for a crucial time very blatantly prohibited Indian people from hiring lawyers, filing court papers and even raising money with the intent of contesting a land claim. In 1936 the Department of Indian Affairs was transferred from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Mines and Re­sources, which made it even clearer what the settler government was really concerned about.

As reserve territories were being stolen, exploit­ed or encroached on by settlers there were also In­dian Act amendments that were designed to strip people of their status (particularly women) and force them off reserves. The rationale for this was, as I mentioned, assimilation – or cultural genocide – another form of genocide.

So women who married non-status men, wheth­er they were white or not, lost their status, benefits and treaty rights and had to leave their communi­ties and families. It was a completely discrimina­tory process, not in the least because, when men did the same thing, they were allowed to keep their status and, in fact, status would be granted to their white or non-status wives and even step children that pre-existed the marriage. So you had white set­tlers with status cards and the right to live in First Nations communities while there were full blooded indigenous women who couldn’t set foot on their territories. This was in complete contradiction to matrilineal indigenous practices where the mother’s nationality and clan membership determined the child’s.

Some men and their families as well lost status and the right to live in First Nations communities when they enlisted in the military or in some cases when they enrolled in secondary educational insti­tutions or, until 1960, when they wanted to vote in federal elections. Sometimes whole communities were declared non status so that their land could be taken, and that affected everyone. Blood quantum became an issue at various times and enabled the eviction of people from reserves because they were deemed to not have enough Indian blood (From “Real” Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Na­tive Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood by Bonita Lawrence. University of Nebraska Press. 2004). In 1951 an Indian Act amendment made provincial law applicable in First Nations communities to cov­er gaps in federal legislation and this paved the way for what we now call the “60s scoop” because it gave provincial child welfare agencies the power to seize hundreds of First Nations children and place them in non-indigenous foster homes, again furthering the genocide project.

There are many stories of the experiences of what happened to people after they were stripped of their status. The traumatic implications of having to leave your home and family for often urban set­tings where you may not have spoken the language, where there was no community, family, financial or emotional support of any kind are huge. Increas­ingly non-status communities have been organiz­ing. Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of time to discuss that now but Bonita Lawrence’s book, Real Indians and Others, speaks to the history of non-status, mixed race indigenous communities and some of the struggles people have faced over the generations.

According to some analyses, amendments to the Indian Act since 1951 are considered friendlier to indigenous peoples because they were made in consultation with indigenous organizations or were made in response indigenous activists who lobbied for the changes. Bill C31, another amendment to the Indian Act passed in 1985, falls into this cat­egory of being a “friendly amendment.” C31 ad­dressed the concerns of women who had lost their status, housing, benefits and access to their com­munities through marrying non-status men. C31 allowed them to apply for status and something like 120,000 women have had their status reinstat­ed. What is often not mentioned however is that 107,000 women did not have their status reinstated after applying. The federal government of course determined all the criteria and conditions regard­ing who could have their status reinstated.

The C31 amendment has been criticized about, among other things, the “second generation cut-off,” which prohibits reinstated women from pass­ing status on to their children. So it doesn’t address the genocide issue at all. Basically if we accept the definitions of status offered by the Indian Act, it’s been predicted that First Nations people will cease to exist in a few generations. Not because the actual people have ceased to exist but because the legally defined category of “Indians” (i.e., First Nations people) won’t exist and everybody will be unregis­tered, non status and assimilated. We’ll all be Cana­dians with no land rights and no recognition of our inherent rights as Aboriginal peoples generally.

Of course sovereigntists question the right of the Canadian parliament now or at any other time in history to make laws that govern our nations, in­cluding laws that define who is and is not a member of our nations, where our territorial boundaries lie and so on.

So, that’s a very brief synopsis of how reserves were established and it should give the reader in­sight into the history of some of the struggles be­ing waged today by First Nations people on Turtle Island. It should also help people question the myth commonly referred to as the “Canadian history.” The simple truth is that the land and resources of First Nations people have been subsidizing the Canadian economy for generations. The basis of the wealth and standard of living that we enjoy on Turtle Is­land is premised on the theft of land and resources from the First Peoples, a process that continues to this day.

While First Nations children were being abused in residential schools and foster care, the colonizers were reaping huge profits exploiting the resources of First Nations territories. While First Nations people were being jailed for hunting and fishing without a license or for working off their reserves without a pass from the Indian agent, the settlers passed laws that said, for example, that “Indians” could not sell their produce in Toronto’s St. Law­rence market (because white farmers didn’t want the competition).

Nevertheless our communities across Turtle Island continue to struggle with great courage for their very survival as well as the inherent rights of future generations. While most media like to focus on dramatic events like the Oka Crisis, the murder of activist Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park or the current Six Nations land reclamation (all important struggles), anti-genocidal activities are practiced in all communities and include things as basic as cultural and language programs.

In this struggle, our Elders, cultural leaders and warriors talk about a paradigm shift that recognizes our relationship to the land on which we depend for life; recognizes our roles and responsibilities to each other in a community that includes other spe­cies besides human beings as well as those yet to be born. They speak of spiritual development, dig­nity and peace. In their wisdom we find a system of values that challenges political, economic and social institutions of Canada. In the wisdom of Elders we find encouragement to share, trade, learn, grow and create something new and wondrous.

Zainab Amadahy is a writer, activist, community worker and an active member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid. Her achievements include contributing to the anthology, Strong Women’s Stories: Native Vision & Community Activism, co-edited by Bonita Lawrence and Kim Anderson (2004, Sumach Press) as well as author­ing Moons of Palmares (1998, Sister Vision Press). Zainab is a founding member of the Coalition in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty, is a Board member of the Association of Native Development in the Performing & Visual arts and is the Executive Director of Community Arts Ontario.

40 Helpful Tips For Becoming a Successful Anti-Communist

by J. Slavyanski

1. Constantly insist that Marxism is discredited, outdated, and totally dead and buried. Then proceed to build a lucrative career on beating that supposedly ‘dead’ horse for the rest of your working life.

2. Remember, any unnatural death that occurs under a ‘Communist’ regime is not only attributable to the leaders of the state, but also Marxism as an ideology. Ignore deaths that occur for the same reason in non-Communist states.

3. Communism or Marxism is whatever you want it to be. Feel free to label countries, movements, and regimes as ‘Communist’ regardless of things like actual goals, stated ideology, diplomatic relations, economic policy, or property relations.

4. If there was a conflict involving Communists, the conflict and all ensuing deaths can be laid at the feet of Communism. Be careful when applying this to WWII. Fascist movements who fought against the Soviets or Communist partisans are fine, but try not to openly praise Nazi Germany. Save that for private conversations if you must do so.

5. You decide what Marxism “really means”, and who the rightful representatives of Communism were. Feign interest that Trotsky was somehow robbed of power by Stalin, despite the fact that you hate him as well.

6. Constantly talk about George Orwell. Quote from Animal Farm or 1984. Do not worry about the fact that he never set foot in the Soviet Union and both of those books are novels.

7. Quote massive death tolls without regards to demographics or consistency. 3 million famine deaths? 7 million? 10 million? 100 million deaths total? You need not worry about anyone checking your work, which is good for you seeing that you probably haven’t done any.

8. Everyone ever arrested under a Communist regime was most likely innocent of any crime. Communists only arrested harmless poets and political prophets who had a beautiful message to share with the world.

9. Everything Stalin did or didn’t do had some sinister ulterior motive. Everything.

10. Keeping with the spirit of #9, remember that Stalin was an omnipotent being, perhaps an incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu, who had full awareness of everything going on in the Soviet Union and total control over every occurrence which took place between 1924 and 1953. Everything that occurred during that time was the will of Stalin. Stalin knew the exact details of every criminal case that took place during that era and out of his boundless cruelty, had tons of innocent people shot for no reason regardless of where they were or their position in life. Being omnipotent, he was not dependent on information passed up from tens of thousands of subordinates.

11. Constantly attack ‘Communist’ regimes for actions that occur in capitalist regimes up to this very day.

12. Claim that Marxism is utopian because of its description of a possible future society. Alternately claim that Marxism failed because it never gave a detailed description of how a Communist society would look. Do not pay attention to the massive contradiction here.

13. Start referring to Marxism as being some kind of religious faith, Messianic, or whatever other spiritualist bullshit you can come up with. When people point out that you can draw similarities between virtually any political ideology and other religions, ignore them.

14. Remember the one-two anti-Communist attack: Attack the post-Stalin system on economic grounds, and claim it just doesn’t work. Since an informed opponent will most likely point out that actual socialist economics did indeed work during the Stalin era, and in fact worked very well, attack that era on human rights grounds.

15. Two words- Human nature. What is human nature? For your purposes, human nature is a quick explanation why political ideas or systems you don’t like are wrong.

16. Bolshevik revolutions were carried out with violence and bloodshed. Bourgeois revolutions were all carried out by democratic referendums, and there was no violence whatsoever.

17. Use words like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ constantly. Do not accept any challenge to define these terms.

18. Communists can be for or against whatever is popular in your particular area. If you are preaching to a right-wing crowd, Communists are for degeneration and homosexuality. If you are preaching to a more mainstream audience, Communists were homophobic. Essentially, Communists are for moral degeneration and puritanical prudery at the same time. Again, do not notice the contradiction.

19. Constantly flog Stalin over the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, while totally ignoring massive support and collaboration with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan on the part of America, Britain, and France, long before the war and even after in some ways. As usual, do not allow your opponent to examine the context of the non-aggression pact.

20. Praise the newfound “freedom” of Eastern Europe. Ignore the massive depopulation via migration, plunging birthrates, huge alcohol and drug problems, political instability, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, sex trafficking and child prostitution, organized crime, high suicide rates, unemployment, disease, etc. Who cares about all that when you have freedom of speech?!

21. Constantly talk about the culture of fear in Communist nations, about that ‘knock on the door’ in the middle of the night. Ignore the ‘kick in your door in the middle of the night, stick a shotgun in your back, and haul your ass out of bed etc. because you are suspected of dealing,’ a normal occurrence in the American War on Drugs.

22. Attack Communists for suppression of religion. Attack Islamic fundamentalists for not being secular. What contradiction?!

23. Do not notice the irony that the US is currently fighting an incredibly expensive, losing war against an opponent which it funded, supported, and even handed its first victory in Afghanistan.

24. What should you say when confronted with all the continuing and often worsening problems in the world today, and asked for a solution? FREEDOM!! (Repeat as necessary until your opponent goes away)

25. Nothing from “Communists” can be trusted. Unless it somehow works in your favor, ala Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ from 1956, or anything Trotsky wrote.

26. Communist leaders were ‘paranoid’ for devoting so much time to security against counter-revolution. Ignore the mountains of evidence, including the restoration of capitalism in the East Bloc, that this threat was indeed real.

27. Communist regimes were never popular. If proof is presented in various cases to show otherwise, claim that the people were brainwashed. Make no effort to consider the budgetary and logistic constraints on such an undertaking.

28. Communist propaganda is crude and primitive. If someone mentions Red Dawn or worse, mentions the J. Edgar Hoover-endorsed comic book series known as The Godless Communists, run away.

29. Praise secularism in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘pluralism’ until faced with a Communist. Then play the religion card.

30. Atrocities and other bad things that happen under non-Communist regimes are the fault of individual ‘bad people’. Anything bad that happens under a ‘Communist’ regime is the fault of the ideology and system. And Stalin.

31. Being an anti-Communist means not having to have any sort of ideological consistency whatsoever. Preach populist left-wing pseudo-socialism 90% of the time, and then compare the capitalist system to “Stalin’s Russia”(if you never really studied the subject, just read 1984 and Animal Farm). Bitch about capitalism 99% of the time, but balk when someone suggests Communism as an alternative. Far right wing Fascist? Constantly bitch about cultural degeneracy under capitalism, while remaining fanatically opposed to Marxism for no discernable reason save for your affinity for historic nationalism.

32. If you’re an anarchist, keep pointing out the ‘failure’ of Marxism while ignoring the fact that your ideology has a 100% failure rate throughout its entire history. Blame those failures on Communists, or stronger military powers. Ignore the fact that the most wonderful society is worthless if it can’t defend itself from reaction.

33. Neo-Nazi? Communism is Jewish!! Debate over.

34. Neo-Hippy? Tibet!

35. Constantly condemn the genocide that allegedly occurred under Mao, while ignoring the US’ relations with China established by Nixon, and the massive role capitalist China has played in the modern US economy. When you want to talk positively about China, it’s a capitalist country. If you need to criticize it, it’s still ‘Communist’.

36. Claim Marxism is not empirical. Neither are neo-liberalism, ‘democracy’, or ‘freedom’, but don’t worry about that.

37. Always insist that despite the location, country, historical era, past experience, and all other factors, Communists must want to recreate a modern-day copy of Stalin’s Russia, and all that entails according to you. Do not notice the inherent idiocy in this concept, such as your particular country being already industrialized, and not having a historical problem of severe backwardness.

38. Learn to use the magic word ‘totalitarian’. This word allows you to link two ideological opposites, Communism and Fascism.

39. Ignore the fact that socialist states experienced more economic problems parallel to the number of market reforms they made.

40. When challenged about numbers or historical context, resort to labels like “ruthless tyrant”, “cruel murderer”, and such. Remember, people like Stalin were mass-murderers because of all the people they killed, and we know they killed all those people because they were mass-murderers. It totally tracks!

Anti-Stalinism for Dummies!

by J. Slavyanski

In the past, I wrote an article on how to be an anti-Communist. Today we are going to focus on the proper techniques of handling Josef Stalin. See, just as Tupac Shakur has somehow released albums long after his death, so has Josef Stalin committed crimes. In fact, it’s very likely that somewhere, somehow, Stalin is having people put to death, possibly in your very neighborhood. Any unsolved murders in your city lately? It could be him!

1. This is the most important technique: Everything Stalin ever did, or didn’t do, was negative if not evil. Stalin never did anything right, and anything he did that could be seen as positive actually had some hidden evil motive. All your work should begin from this starting concept.

2. Everything that happened in the Soviet Union during the time of Stalin’s leadership was the direct will of Stalin. If someone was shot- Stalin did it. He may have done it personally, possibly bursting through the window of a room full of innocent people, wielding matching gold-plated Tokarev TT-33s, diving sideways in slow-motion as he squeezed off round after round into the surprised occupants. If someone died in a mine accident in the Urals, that was also Stalin’s fault. If someone was run down by a bus in Stalingrad, you had better believe that was a planned murder, the death warrant having been signed by Stalin.

3. Stalin’s orders regarding Red Army POWs was cruel. His application of those same rules to his own son was also cruel. Of course had he not applied those rules, he would have been an evil hypocrite as well.

4. Stalin was evil because he directed the famine against Ukrainians. Of course there is a great deal of documentary evidence showing that he was not even aware of the extent of the famine until conditions were severe- but that was his fault too. He had to have been feigning ignorance about the genocide he ordered!

5. Stalin’s “Dizzy with Success” was actually written to cover the fact that everything in the countryside was actually going precisely as he planned it! Remember, whenever Stalin openly criticized something, it was because he actually devised and ordered that to occur.

6. Stalin’s cynical quotes on some subjects prove how cruel he was. George Orwell’s cynical comments show how well he grasped “ugly truths”.

7. Stalin was only supporting the Spanish Republic in order to foment a Communist revolution in that nation. However, Stalin is also evil for curtailing the “real” revolution there in favor of the Republican government. The weapons Stalin provided were actually “obsolete”; pay no attention to the fact that the small arms were often standard issue in the Red Army at the time, the I-16 fighters dominated the Nationalists’ CR-32 Fiats and Heinkels, the SB-2 was an exceptional bomber at that time, and the T-26 dominated Nationalist armor until the last year or so of the war. Stalin was also evil because he charged the Spanish Republic for these things. Pay no attention to the fact that the Spanish Republic was desperately trying to buy weapons but was prevented from doing so by the Non-Intervention agreement.

8. Stalin helped start WWII. Never mind the fact that France and Britain had totally emboldened Hitler and Mussolini for years while the USSR was practically begging for some kind of anti-Fascist pact. Never mind the fact that the USSR only considered such a non-aggression pact until there were no viable options left.

9. All regimes after Stalin were in fact Stalinist. No matter the insane lengths they went to remove Stalin from their history, to denigrate him and his regime, even if they opposed him during his life time, they were Stalinist. Whenever a capitalist or layperson asks why such and such socialist country failed, one need only blame Stalin, and the argument will be over!

10. Stalin was in favor of a bureaucracy. Never mind all the articles he wrote encouraging people to struggle against it; remember everything Stalin criticizes, he was actually for! Stalin’s will was omnipotent, despite the fact that there are plenty of contemporary source documents showing Stalin’s proposals being ignored and opposed in the Central Committee throughout his entire term.

Follow these steps and you’ll be on your way!

What Lies Ahead for the Communist Party of Canada?

“Why vote Communist?”

A question I am frequently asked as a Communist Party candiate in Ontario’s provincial election. A vote for the Communist Party is a vote like no other.

When you vote Liberal, PC, Green or NDP, you vote for capitalism. You vote to accept that the system we have now, whether it is working presently or not, is good for the people.

When you vote Communist, you vote for capable worker-politicians. You vote for dedicated activists whose work among the people, for the people, gives us a unique quality. We know how government policies affect the people, how they play out on the ground, and how the people can be organized into the engine that turns the wheel of history.

We are not a party who takes its advice and cues from big business, small business, or foreign business. We learn from, and develop policies for, the working and oppressed people in this land.

Our aim is a socialist Canada, brought about by a large coalition of peoples’ and democratic forces under the leadership of the Communist Party. As the most dedicated activists, we aim to be the most strong-willed and capable leaders. We aim to keep the people firmly grounded in our position in the struggle, directly facing the exploiters and oppressors. We wish to marginalize and weed out those leaders of the people that preach retreat and concession when advance and determination is the order of the day.

Big business in Canada and their talking heads in the media advance anti-communism because communism is bad for them, not bad for the people. When they talk of communism, they focus on leaders and countries far detached from the current realities of Canadian life. When we talk about communism and craft our policies and positions, we base it all on nothing but the realities of that life. They demonize socialist countries for things that are present in our society, and often to a worse degree.

Forget what they say about “economic stability”, about “freedom and democracy”, about “trickle-down economic” or “rising tides lifting all boats”. Forget the business section of the newspaper – it is not neutral or unbiased. No news or information is. All news and information serves a purpose and is spoken from a certain bias. Anybody who says anything to the contrary is not accepting reality. And the business section, the financial advisors on camera, the “wisdom” taught to economic students…all of this serves the interests of the capitalist class.

We, not just the Communist Party but all progressive forces in society, are marginalized. We own no mass media; we do not write the history or economics textbooks; our only resource is the people and their determination to escape the mindlessness, misery and alienation of life under capitalism. Capitalism breeds no solidarity, no peace and certainly no justice. Capitalism breeds division, hate, isolation, and neverending conflict.

Socialism – that which we fight for – puts the people, their views, their needs, their interests and their culture, ahead of the interests of the elite. We work at the grassroots to bring power from the grassroots.

Canada in 2011 is not Russia in 1917, China in 1949, or Cuba in 1959. The means used to achieve and consolidate revolution in those countries will not be the same as used here, just as they were not the same among themselves. But however we bring about a socialist state, whose aim will be to bring all working people into running the country and conversely to knock the capitalist class out of power and out of existence as a class, we must bring it about.

To that end, we advance a program that is progressive to its core that calls for immediate action to improve the lives of working and oppressed people in Canada. We do so to rally all progressive, grassroots organizations around our party’s leadership. The mass organizations and trade unions are the social and economic foundation of socialism; the Communist Party and its allies are the political foundation.

It is the Communist Party that will guide the revolution, but the people and their mass organizations that will make it happen – it is they who will consolidate the revolution at every level of society.

This revolution will not come out of nowhere, or be a matter of the spontaneity of the masses. For this revolution to be a possibility, the Communist Party must achieve trusted leadership among the people. Our members are today working as leaders of the trade union, peace, democratic, farmers, student, youth, LGBTQ, women’s and national liberation movements in Canada. But our leadership needs to be expanded, brought together, and working cohesively. We are working always to achieve this goal.

The necessity of securing firm, committed, unrelenting, Marxist-Leninist leadership over the peoples’ movement has rarely been more pressing. As the presently-dominant social democratic leadership wavers and retreats, the forces of reaction grow stronger. The victory of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives at the federal level, various right-wing mayors exemplified by Rob Ford in Toronto, and the impending possibility of Tim Hudak becoming premier of Ontario, reactionary politicians, activists and businessmen are overjoyed. They have already started the war on the people, and to fight back against that is the duty of every progressive person. It is the duty of every communist to take up the leadership of that fightback.

Worse yet, the signs of nascent fascism are rearing their ugly heads everywhere. Seemingly-isolated incidents like Gary McHale’s antagonism of the Six Nations people fighting to protect their rights, the unleashing of state violence on peaceful protesters at the G20 and Montebello summits, and increasingly aggressive attacks by police on immigrant and guest worker communities are in fact connected to the rise of the reaction in Canada.

The nature of the right-wing is a reaction to progressive forces. In France, the revolution of 1789 met with hostility from the monarchs and lords who wished to preserve their feudal privileges. In America, the revolution of 1779 saw elements loyal to the British Crown battle for years before fleeing to settle in Canada. In interbellum Germany, the Nazis rose as a reaction to the strength of the Communist Party in the country – at the time, the German Communist Party was larger than the Soviet Party.

When capitalism is in extreme decay, and the forces of liberalism no longer enjoy the confidence of the people, fascism enters to fill the void. When that happens, the decisive question becomes a matter of life and death – we must do everything possible to resist the rise of fascism. We cannot do that by conceding, as the Social Democrats fatefully tried to do in Germany.

Politics is the expression of economics through the state. In a moment of extreme crisis, three political options are present:

-Fascism takes over in the interests of the most reactionary elements of capital, and their most subservient and treacherous members of the underclasses;
-Liberalism regains its footing and gains a new lease to rule as a system of class collaboration;
-The working class overthrows liberalism, crushes fascism, and begins to wage a protracted struggle against capitalism to construct socialism, led by their communist party.

The recession of 2008 was a minor speedbump for liberalism, not any sort of real threat to its ability to rule. However, if we are on the cusp of a crisis much worse than the ’08 recession, we may find that the option of liberalism disappears before us.

If that happens, it will only be the widespread faith of the people in the Communist Party’s ability to lead them to power that can prevent fascism’s rise. It will require that at the decisive moment when we must choose one path or the other, that the Communist Party issues correct leadership and makes the right decisions.

Whether we will soon be confronted with this task or not, we must work tirelessly to ensure that when we are confronted with it, we will be ready for it.

 

*originally written and posted on Facebook on September 24, 2011.

Announcing the Return of Red Continent to the Blogosphere!

Dear friends, comrades and readers,

Red Continent has been inactive for the last two and a half years. And by inactive, I mean totally inactive.

All that is about to change. I am proud to announce my return to the world of blogging!

Several events have spurred me to this decision. Chiefly, my involvement in the progressive student movement, the communist movement and in intellectual discourse on politics, sociology and history have confronted me with this immediate task. My training in journalism at Mohawk College would seem to have been a total waste if I were to not put it to use, and what better use than to advance the causes that are so dear to me?!

In the two and a half years since my last post (October 16, 2009, according to my dashboard), much has changed.

Although I am, sad to say, no longer involved in the United Socialist Movement of the Americas in any real way, I am proud to proclaim my membership and involvement in the Young Communist League of Canada and the Communist Party of Canada. I joined them in Fall 2009 and Spring 2011, respectively.

Along with this change in my organizational membership has come a shift in my political thinking. While I used to strictly identify as a “libertarian socialist”, I am now a shameless communist in the Marxist-Leninist tradition. All of my old beliefs remain strong – anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-imperialism, support for national liberation, the labour movement, feminism, etc. All that has changed is my approach to activism and my view on socialist countries.

But, I’d prefer to let my journalism and my ideas speak for themselves. The more I write for the progressive student movement at McMaster University, where I am currently enrolled in Humanities I with an eye for Honours History, the more I feel like I’m doing exactly what I was made to do!

On that note, to new readers – welcome! To former readers – welcome back!

To everyone – I hope you find the content on Red Continent, whether my own or anybody else’s, informative, thought-provoking, and worthy of further exploration into the topics at hand!

In peace and solidarity and with red salutes all around from the heart of the Golden Horseshoe,

Rick Gunderman