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.

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.

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.

The Myth of Classlessness in Capitalist Society

by Joseph Dubonnet

In the era immediately following the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, when so much was made of the triumph of democracy, liberal forms of equality expressed as “equality of opportunity”, potential for social mobility, classlessness and the end of history (which is an euphemism for the total and eternal victory of capitalism over other forms of social relations), it has remained a fact of daily life for the working classes in advanced capitalist countries everywhere in the Western world, that the vast majority of women and men have been governed, represented, influenced, manipulated, judged, and driven to war by people drawn from another class, one vastly superiour economically and socially.

While the business elite of our country does not necessarily run our affairs directly, it’s influence on our daily lives is substantial and real in it’s consequence. Governments may not be completely beholden to the forces of Capital but they are constantly subjected to strong pressures from its protagonists and it is an undeniable fact of life that government officials and elected representatives alike cannot altogether ignore.

In Canada, we have been fed the myth of classlessness, the belief that everyone is a member of the middle-class. This is something that we have been led to believe by our parents, peers, the media, and the schools. We have also been inculcated the corollary belief that we succeed or fail by our own efforts, that if we do not enjoy the benefits of the middle-classes it is our own fault.

For most Canadians this is an accepted notion, one that can be challenged only with great difficulty. We are taught in school that education will lead us to satisfactory occupations and incomes and that those who refuse to follow that path cannot be expected enjoy the benefits offered to all so freely.  We are taught to ignore and insulate ourselves from those at the extremes, the rich and the poor alike, thus making class a theoretical concept difficult to grasp.

Canadians believe that they can be insulated from the extremes of wealth and poverty.  Paupers and millionaires are the stuff of television. The lifestyles of wealth and power, of helplessness and impoverishment is not something we need to concerns ourselves with.

We ignore the plight of the Aboriginals on reservations. We ignore the plight of rural and isolated areas devastated by the collapse of the forestry and mining industries. We ignore the growing inequalities in our cities. We ignore the loss of unionized and well-paid industrial jobs. We ignore all of those things because we are not aware of the power of our own class because the Canadian ruling class is deliberately manipulating agencies of socialization such as schools and the mass media, in order to consolidate its position of class advantage.

We need to bring the concept of “class” back into our understanding of the world, in our theory and in our political action.

Political action, to be effective, needs to have the following components. It must:

• be imbedded in the needs and demands of the working class,
• offer a practical alternative to current municipal, provincial and federal policies which are essentially capitalist in nature,
• include agitation, demands and protest in order to keep the pressure on those in power, and
• develop a nation-wide political social movement which will be promoting long-range revolutionary solutions.

This movement must also be hemispheric in scope, in support of struggles from our socialist friends in other American countries.

This is the challenge ahead of us, one that we dare not ignore.

The Republic of Canada

By Rick Gunderman

To many Canadians, we live in the most perfectly free, democratic society in the entire world. Our government works for us, they listen to us, and they never, ever trample on our rights, so the tale goes.

It would seem odd, however, that a people whose head of state lives in and rules over another country across the Atlantic Ocean would consider themselves politically independent. The fact that she (Queen Elizabeth II) is a monarch also never seems to perturb many.

An Ipsos Reid poll from 2002 suggests that 65% of Canadians believe that the monarchy should have no formal role in Canada’s government. The same poll found, however, that only 48% prefer to have a republican government as opposed to a constitutional monarchy. This is further complicated by the same poll revealing still that 79% support the constitutional monarchy. It is clear from this that Canadians are largely ignorant or misinformed about our options for a system of government.

A long-running debate among the socialist community has been whether to accept a bourgeois-type republic as a step towards a socialist government, or to fiercely fight for socialism now. A similar debate split the First International among communist-anarchist lines, and those same lines were drawn again during the Spanish Civil War. In the case of the latter, the USSR-supported Communist Party of Spain insisted on focusing on an anti-capitalist revolution only after the war with Franco’s Nationalists was over, while the anarchists vehemently pursued their goals of a free, socialized society.

The experience in Spain, though, cannot be compared directly to Canada’s current conditions. For one, Canada has developed far beyond where the Republic of Spain had in the 1930s, and hence capitalism is far more entrenched in Canada. Secondly, Canada’s history of anarchism and communism in the labour movement has fizzled to a large degree, whereas Spain had many active anarchist and communist movements at the time (although not always working in cohesion).

The question of the republic for Canadian socialists must be approached in light of our current conditions. We are an advanced capitalist society with a constitutional monarchy system of government. Such a fusion combines the capitalist rule-of-the-privileged with a federal state whose only elected officials are the members of parliament – Senators and the Governor-General are appointed, as are many, many government portfolios.

We must ceaselessly challenge capitalism, but the Canadian people are in no position for a spontaneous libertarian socialist uprising as was seen in Spain. Our best hope, then, is to unabashedly proclaim our support for a republic with a unicameral legislature and a head of state both elected by popular vote. We should support the abolition of the Senate in favour of greater autonomy for the provinces, who would similarly be remodelled as republics in their own rights.

This is not to suggest that should a Spanish Revolution-style uprising take place that we not immediately rally behind it – quite the contrary, we would be fools to make a mistake that history has taught us will lead to, at the worst, a fascist victory. Until Canadians are ready for a commune-based system of socialism/communism, however, Canadian socialists should stand behind the republican movement.

Information on the republican movement can be found at http://www.canadian-republic.ca/

Fighting the Capital-Fixated Immigration System

by Rick Gunderman

The parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration issued a report in May 2009 titled “Temporary Foreign Workers and Non-Status Workers”. From March 31 to April 17, 2008, the Committee travelled across Canada soliciting facts and opinions from people in twelve cities.

The report stated that the Committee found that Canadians overwhelmingly believed that permanent immigration is more desirable than bringing in increasing numbers of temporary “guest” workers. Just how well we treat our guests was also under investigation with many organizations laying out to the Committee just how bad conditions are for temporary foreign workers, virtually amounting to a form of modern-day slavery.

Despite all this, the report fails to recommend replacing the guest-worker system with a more comprehensive, more fair program that allows guest-workers to achieve status. As the report says, “Because employers rely on the temporary foreign worker program for the short-term and because it takes time to implement more sustainable solutions, the Committee proposes no change to the current temporary foreign worker programs in terms of scope or purpose.”

It’s no secret that the Canadian government cares far more about the profits of employers than about the wellbeing of workers (Canadian or otherwise). To come out and say it in such a brazen manner, however, highlights just whose side the government is on in the class struggle.

It is worth noting that the Committee is made up of thirteen members of parliament – six Conservatives, three Liberals, three from the Bloc Quebecois, and one New Democrat.

Any expansion of the guest-worker program presents a new set of issues for socialists to work through. Primarily, the guest-worker program creates a new stratum of workers. It is an attempt to divide the working class further.

Guest-workers are most common in the live-in caregiver and agriculture sectors. If the guest-worker program is expanded, more and more foreign workers will be doing many jobs that could otherwise have been done by the domestic unemployed. This has two noticeable repercussions: one, the unemployed of Canada will blame the guest-workers for “taking their jobs” (a phenomenon already in play in the United States), and two, the Canadian working class will be thrown into further disunity.

As it is, the Canadian working class is far better off than their foreign counterparts in the fields and in the guesthouses of suburbia. As socialists, our goal is to unite the working class against the capitalist class so that we may overrun them and recreate our economic relations so that there is no more exploitation. But if animosity does develop between the domestic working class and the temporary foreign workers, our task becomes exponentially more difficult.

The capitalist class knows that many Canadians are unwilling to work for the low wages offered by such vocations as being a live-in caregiver or an apple-picker in an orchard. By filling those jobs with foreign workers, they placate the domestic working class and steer their focus away from the tyranny of the exploiting capitalist class.

The socialist movement must make an effort to publicize, as widely as we can, the conditions faced by temporary foreign workers. We must also take care to place these facts in the context of the class system and explain how they adversely affect the prospects of the working class for advancement.

Most importantly, we must be clear that we will not stand for the degradation of human beings as experienced in the guest-worker program. They are entitled to attempt to become Canadian citizens as much as anybody else in the world, and the work they do to keep our economy moving and our standard of living what it is makes them that much more deserving.

Don’t forget; the agriculture industry alone is worth over $25 million in Canada. If there were no capitalists sucking wealth from the industry without doing any work themselves, farm workers could be paid much, much more for their labour. The bosses need us, we don’t need them.

If all workers were paid fairly for their labour, we wouldn’t need to import guest workers in the first place. But they are here, they have done great work for all Canadians and they must be rewarded with a path to citizenship.

No to the temporary guest worker program: status for all guest workers!

Resolving Canada’s National Question

by Rick Gunderman

What a strange experiment Canada would appear to be from the start.

Colonization of the St. Lawrence River valley went about much quicker than similar French attempts at settlement. Even so, by the time New France fell to the British Empire there were only a little over 70,000 inhabitants compared to over one million in the British colonies. That base of 70,000, however, would form the modern French-speaking nations of North America – the Quebecois, the Acadiens, the Franco-Ontarians, the Fransaskois, the Cajuns, etc.

The territory that made up New France, outside of the St. Lawrence Valley and the Atlantic Provinces of modern Canada, was sparsely populated and, subsequent to the British conquest, opened up to Anglophone settlement. A particularly important segment of these settlers were the United Empire Loyalists – English-speaking Americans loyal to the British Crown who fled the Thirteen Colonies during the Revolutionary War.

Of course, there are the multitudes of Native Canadians who were displaced and had their livelihoods assaulted by the expansion of British North America. Among them include the Inuit (formerly known as “Eskimos”), the Metis (those of mixed Native and European descent) and the First Nations (non-Inuit or Metis Natives). Some have retained their indigenous languages to this day and many continue to live on reserves.

Generally speaking, almost all Canadians can be placed in one or more of these categories. Immigrants who do not use English or French as their first language are expected to, and usually do, learn one or the other depending on where in Canada they settle. As a result of this, both English Canada and French Canada are ethnically and racially diverse.

In order that the so-called “National Question” may be laid to rest following a socialist revolution, the new constitution would have to include clear and agreeable arrangements for the preservation of Canada as a united land, while at the same time granting all nations within the country proper autonomy and the means to achieve cultural well-being.

The Quebecois may be recognized as a distinct nation – as opposed to part of a united “French Canada” – only in the context of British imperialism. Their borders were drawn (or clarified, if you will) by the British Crown to consolidate their gains from the War of the Conquest, at least partially with the intent to isolate them from Acadians and Franco-Ontarians. The latter two populations found their homelands overrun by English-speaking settlers, but have still maintained their distinct identity.

Quebec, by virtue of the peoples’ continual pursuit of a distinct identity, has developed a rich culture to an extent that Acadians and other French Canadians have been unable to. This is not, however, to suggest that Quebec has lost all ties with their French Canadian brethren. Rather, Quebec serves as an anchor for French Canadian culture and an example of the positive results of cultural autonomy.

The Native Canadian population is similarly divided, although they have always been far less homogeneous than French Canada ever has. Even within the province of Ontario alone there are populations of Cree, Ojibwa, Algonquin, and Iroquois, all distinct from one another with their own subdivisions. The number of distinct First Nations in Canada is extensive and their diversity is remarkable and something to cherish.

The troubles with finding an arrangement for a political union of these three nations are exacerbated by the capitalist-colonial nature of the Canadian political system. Canada’s political system is based off of British constitutional monarchism, and the economic system is an integration of American ultra-capitalism and European social democracy. Parliamentarianism has failed, in over one hundred years, to find an equitable approach to crafting public policy that benefits all nations, particularly as the English Canadian nation has unquestionably dominated the legislature and executive since the British North America Act. The capitalist system, the sole function of which is to accumulate wealth for idle, non-working owners at the expense of the working class, is ipso facto exploitative and relies heavily on inequality. Through propagating inequalities between linguistic, racial or ethnic groups, they distract from issues of economic class.

A socialist revolution will abolish capitalist ownership of the workplace in favour of workers’ self-management, and replaced representative liberal democracy with local, direct democracy. A major facet of this project will be crafting a new arrangement to allow for cultural autonomy and economic unity between Canada’s nations.

If we suppose that Canada can be divided into three distinct, diverse nations (English Canada, French Canada and Native Canada), our focus turns to ensuring that all three nations are constitutionally guaranteed:

•    Land
•    Political autonomy
•    Economic co-assistance
•    Mutual respect for culture

This is an integral part of the socialist revolution in Canada, because it would effectively break the intense hold that the Canadian and American capitalist class has over the three nations’ economies.

For Native Canadians, this would mean no more non-consensual exploitation of natural resources on their land. As it is, the governments of Canada and the provinces employ this technique often: grant permission to strip-mine and drill on land that is outside of their jurisdiction. Socialism will bring an end to this phenomenon.

For French Canadians, it would mean that domestic products would benefit the domestic population. French Canada would also extend beyond Quebec to include not only Acadia, but also an archipelago of French-speaking communities across the country. Given this cultural autonomy, the non-Quebecois Francophones of Canada would be free to develop a culture every bit as vibrant as Quebec’s.

For English Canadians, as the demographically dominant nation, this would be a task equal but different in enormity. English Canada would have to seriously commit itself to fostering a unique culture so as to preserve sovereignty from the United States. Given the geographical diversity of English Canada there will likely be little homogeneity from one region to the next. The Anglo-Canadian culture that develops on the British Columbian coast will differ markedly from the Ontarian culture and the Atlantic culture.

An emphasis would need to be placed on local/municipal governance, especially in the case of the national exclaves (it is likely that every province will have them). Provincial government would be limited to harmonizing the economic relations between communities, regardless of national affiliation.

There would need to be three distinct national governments – English, French and Native. The various communities would sign up to one of these three national entities and, through these institutions, develop their cultures and economic cooperation.

At the top would be the federal government, represented by population and elected through popular vote with right of recall. Their primary purpose would be the justice system, national defence and the high authority to maintain economic and cultural goodwill between Canada’s three nations.

It may be far down the road that socialism is applied in Canada, and by that time the national conditions may be markedly different from today. Nonetheless, new and creative theoretical models for forging a united socialist Canada must be presented and considered so that some day in the future we may put to rest the superficial differences and build the egalitarian, libertarian, democratic society that all Canadians deserve.

Consensus With the Liberals Will Destroy the NDP

The New Democrats have got to get their act together, rethink their strategy of reaching out to the so-called “middle class”, and pick a new federal leader.

Recent polls and newspaper commentary suggests that the NDP is taking a nosedive, hard-hit as they are by the rise of the Liberals in this era of the Ignatieff Redemption. But the reascendance of the Liberal Party cannot be credited exclusively to Michael Ignatieff’s public persona, nor can the decline of the New Democrats be solely the result of Jack Layton’s public persona.

While the New Democratic Party has never been revolutionary, and has since the 1956 Winnipeg Declaration abandoned the fight against capitalism for the fight for government authority in the free market (a recipe for overbearing government and a strange concept for anti-capitalists and capitalists alike), they had the zeal to fight for universal health care and important social reforms.

They have become impotent. The nineties wreaked further havoc on what little socialism remained in the party as the leadership embraced Tony Blair’s neoliberal “Third Way” policies, only to become virtual clones of the Liberals by the turn of the millenium. Canada now had two federal parties claiming to be for working peoples’ rights while actively courting pro-capitalist petit-bourgeois progressives.

Jack Layton, while personally popular with many people, has thus far failed to inspire a single working person with anything other than his firm social progressivism. He may be a leader in the fight for gay rights, First Nations rights, women’s liberation and immigrant advocacy, but his greatest David-and-Goliath moment was simply asking banks (nicely) to eliminate ATM fees.

Hardly a Spartacist.

Under Layton, the NDP has cemented itself as another party of the establishment, playing the same election-time games as the Liberals and Conservatives (i.e. popularity contests and mudslinging). No tough issues are raised (that might alienate Red Tory voters!), no challenges to the capitalists’ hegemony (that might scare off the middle class!), and definitely no talk of constitutional reform (it’ll be Meech Lake and Charlottetown all over again!).

The NDP wants to come off as anti-war, but one would be hard-pressed to hear the word “imperialism” from them to frame Canada’s participation in the occupation of Afghanistan. Instead, they adhere to petit-bourgeois liberal arguments about whether the war is “winnable”, whether it is “affordable” for the government, or, worst of all, the horrible toll it takes on Canadians (because nobody cares about the literally thousands of dead Afghanis, right Jack?).

If the NDP doesn’t want to see half of their seats picked off by a strengthened Liberal Party, they had better get back to their roots, to rediscover their raison d’etre: the class struggle.

Let the National Post and GlobalTV paint them as commies. The NDP has to mobilize their members to get out there and start talking anti-capitalism. The NDP has to stop worrying about fancy offices and slick $200-per-plate dinners and start empowering their riding associations to get some work done. They have to start signing up members and making them part of the party’s campaigns, both during and between elections. They have to get more newsletters going and less expensive, watered-down TV commercials.

Most importantly, they have to be serious when telling the working class that the NDP is on their side. They have to seriously starting telling the capitalists that they have no right of lordship over the working people of Canada, that their ownership of the factories, mines, ports and roads is illegitimate and that they will be toppled. The NDP has to make it known that the NDP government will give working people control over their own lives, for once.

But of course, this is not likely to happen. The NDP has sold out to the capitalist system, and not even the most hopeful entryist could hope to do anything about it. There is as much a chance of saving the NDP as there is of converting the Liberal Party.

Well, if the NDP does finally realize that only open and clear socialism can save their party, perhaps they can turn to the CPC for guidance. It’s working out well for Hugo Chavez, after all.