History of Party Building & Communist Regroupment in Canadav. 0v1

Table of ContentsHistory of Party Building & Communist Regroupment in Canada...........................................................1

The United Front as Practised by the CP of Canada.............................................................................2Post World War II Antecedent: Fergus McKean...................................................................................4First Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1964-1970.............................................................................................5

Progressive Workers’ Movement......................................................................................................6Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)..............................................................................7Canadian Party of Labour.................................................................................................................9Canadian Liberation Movement.......................................................................................................9

Second Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1971-1983.......................................................................................10The Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada, In Struggle!..........................................................12In Struggle!’s “Conferences of Canadian Marxist-Leninists”........................................................14The Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist)/Workers’ Communist Party......................14Canadian Revolution......................................................................................................................16The Bolshevik Union......................................................................................................................16Red Star Collective.........................................................................................................................16Halifax Study Group.......................................................................................................................17Alive Magazine...............................................................................................................................17Western Voice ................................................................................................................................18The Organization of Communist Workers (Marxist-Leninist).......................................................18

1

The United Front as Practised by the CP of Canada[Excerpt from “On The United Front” by Revolutionary Initiative]

In order to understand the correct application of the United Front to Canadian conditions, it is necessary to assess the United Front as practised by the first Communist Party of Canada. The CPC was the first Communist vanguard to be established in Canada and remains the most significant Party building experience in our history. It was also the first Party in Canada to attempt to implement the United Front strategy. However, their policy was far removed from the policy as laid out by Dimitrov. A revisionist current within the Party used their version of the United Front to implement a revisionist line, liquidate the vanguard Party along with its associated mass movement and place the leadership of the proletariat under the imperialist bourgeoisie. It was this perversion of the United Front that was the death knell of the first Party-building movement in Canada.

Over the course of the 1920s and 30s, the CPC built up the first large scale proletarian revolutionary organization in Canadian history. At a height of 16,000 members, the Party was surrounded by many times that in allied mass organizations, including the Canadian Labour Defence League, Women’s Labour League, Young Communist League, Workers’ Sports League, Progressive Farmers Education League, and the Workers Unity League. The Party enjoyed significant influence amongst Jews in Winnipeg, Finns in Northern Ontario, and Ukrainians in Western Canada. The Party also established a variety of cultural associations, such as ethnic choirs and summer camps. This revolutionary movement fought some of the most dramatic battles of the Depression era, including calling 90% of all strikes, coordinating massive demonstrations across the country and staging the On To Ottawa Trek along with other militant actions.

Despite these successes, the Party also had members who were disconnected from the masses and formed a growing revisionist current within the Party. There was insufficient emphasis on developing rank and file members into cadre, with the general level of ideological development in the Party remaining relatively low. Combined with divisions between mental and manual work in the Party this left many of the leadership positions in the hands of Party members with petty bourgeois backgrounds. It was many of

these leaders that formed the conservative trend, remaining standoffish from the masses, exhibiting petty bourgeois desires for “respectability” and opposing the militant action of the working class until it was presented to them as a fait accompli.

From the very first report issued by the Canadian delegation on its return from the 7th Congress, the revisionist current was already twisting the United Front into a bourgeois democratic line. From a tactic for revolutionary class struggle, the United Front was transformed into an uncritical defence of bourgeois democracy and the liquidation of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. Gone was Dimitrov’s United Front based on material classes and their interests – the “fighting alliance between the proletariat on the one hand, and the toiling peasantry and basic mass of the urban petty-bourgeoisie.” Substituted was an idealist conception of the United Front as “all people who stand for peace, for democracy, for economic betterment against the reactionary oligarchy” (Toward a Canadian Peoples Front, p.13). This conception was broad enough to include almost anyone, regardless of their class background, including enemies of the working class, as long as they fit the vague qualification of being “progressive”.

The United Front was no longer based on the struggle of the working class and its allies, with factory committees as its backbone, but solely a vehicle for parliamentary struggle. The “central problem” in building this idealism-based United Front was identified as “the question of how the CCF, the trade unions, the farmers organizations and the Communist movement can be brought together into a broad united front party.” (Toward a Canadian Peoples Front, p 21) This amorphous federated Party would be won through electoral agreements, exactly the kind of opportunist maneuvering rejected time and again by Lenin and Dimitrov.

The leadership of the working class over the United Front was also abandoned, with the urban middle stratum taking on the role as the primary force against Fascism. The Party targeted its work on the organizations of the petty bourgeoisie, particularly the CCF, Merchants Associations, Universities, and

The United Front as Practised by the CP of Canada 2

various professional associations. The League Against Fascism and War, a coalition group of intellectuals devoted to propaganda work was considered to be of decisive importance. This resulted in an influx of petty bourgeois members that joined the Party more out of appreciation for the anti-fascism of the USSR rather than a commitment to proletarian revolution in Canada. This could only bolster the revisionist current within the Party.

Instead of using the United Front against the monopoly bourgeoisie and targeting the faction currently wielding state power, the CPC openly allied with the Liberal Party under Mackenzie King, even while the Liberals held state power. The King government had jailed Communists and striking workers, raised taxes and reduced support for unemployed workers, expanded the labour camps system, clamped down on civil rights, and clearly backed the interests of monopoly capital. Yet the CPC hailed the re-election of Mackenzie King as “a setback for reaction in Canada” and urged the masses not to direct their forces against the government, as this would “open the path for the ultra-reactionary Tories”. (The Road Ahead, p.16-19) By 1938, the United Front was broadened again, this time to even include “progressive” elements of the Conservative Party as “part of the great line-up of democratic forces”. (Carr, A Democratic Front for Canada) While claiming that this move was necessary to prevent the rise of fascism in Canada, the Party placed the leadership of the working class under the parties of the the monopoly bourgeoisie – the very class that was the basis for fascism in the first place.

Having discarded the leading role of the working class and the primacy of the class struggle, the revisionists proceeded to liquidate the revolutionary movement. Instead of fighting against the ban on the CPC and asserting the leading role of the Party, the Party surrendered. The Party leadership declared that “the sinister spectre of Communism… stands in the way of victory” (Canada Needs a Party of Communists, p.30). The Party was liquidated in favour of the above-ground Labour Progressive Party, a propaganda party devoted to electoral struggle in accordance with bourgeois legality. The new LPP explicitly rejecting

any means of struggle or winning support other than those used by the parties of the bourgeoisie, abandoning the Leninist principal of dual tactics. References to socialism and revolution were dropped and a no-strike policy was pushed in the factories. Mass organizations, including the Workers Unity League, were dissolved without consultation with the workers. Even after the destruction of the fascist powers, the Party continued its line of class collaboration – calling the reconstruction period “a new era of peace and democracy”.

The LPP entered the post-WWII years on a weak foundation, without a clear ideological line and with a membership based in the hesitant and vacillating petty bourgeoisie. Without a solid basis in the proletariat, the Party was left unprepared for the post-WWII rise in state repression against Communists and many of the petty bourgeois members deserted the movement. Those that remained became disoriented by the rise of Khrushchevite revisionism in the USSR, spy scandals in Canada, and other crises within the ICM, further devastating the ranks of the Party. The Party began its slide into obscurity from which it has never – and likely will never – recover.

Despite the overall negative experience of the United Front as practised by the first Communist Party of Canada, it is important to identify positive lessons from the first Party building movement in Canada for the current generation of proletarian revolutionaries. The error of the Party in this case was not in rallying the petty bourgeoisie, but in abandoning the proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie were key allies in the struggle against fascism and struggled in the mass movement on the side of anti-fascism and for the defence of the Soviet Union. A few, such as the revolutionary hero Norman Bethune, abandoned their class background and joined whole heartedly with the cause of the proletariat. These petty bourgeoisie elements could have been won over to the side of the proletariat without surrendering the leading role of the Party and proletarian class composition of its membership. There is need for further study of how the Party worked with other classes and on what basis they were able to win them over.

The United Front as Practised by the CP of Canada 3

Post World War II Antecedent: Fergus McKean[From Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line]

The first major attack on revisionism in the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) occurred in the immediate post-World War II period, and is linked to the name of Fergus McKean.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Communist Party of Canada was heavily influenced by the Communist Party of the United States. As a result, as Earl Browder, the head of the CPUSA, moved his party in an increasingly revisionist direction during World War II, many of these moves were echoed in the CPC. For example, in 1943 the CPC emerged from illegality by changing its name to the Labor-Progressive Party (L.P.P.).

An example of the new reformist trajectory was demonstrated in the 1945 federal election when national leader of of the L.L.P.,Tim Buck denounced the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation for promoting a program of “Socialism Now” (his words). He argued that calls for socialist planning would alienate the majority of the Canadian working class and instead advocated the largest possible unity against the Tories.

In April 1945, however, the international communist movement intervened to sharply criticize Browder and Browderism, particularly the 1944 decision to dissolve the CPUSA and reconstitute itself as a Communist Political Association (CPA). This intervention came in the form of an article by the French Communist Party leader Jacques Duclos, in the FCF’s journal, Cahiers du Communisme, which characterized Browderism as a “notorious” form of revisionism.

The Duclos article was translated into English and appeared in the US communist press as well as in the L.P.P.’s National Affairs Monthly in July-August 1945. The L.P.P. thereafter moved quickly to abandon Browder and endorse the Duclos line. As L.P.P. leader, Tim Buck, noted, “It must be recognized frankly that we identified with the CPA in support of comrade Browder’s ’new course’ and our evaluation of the bearing that comrade Duclos’ article has upon our own party work must start from this fact.” However, Buck and the rest of the L.P.P. leadership soon insisted that the L.P.P.’s line had been basically correct all along and declined to undertake any serious critique.

The only prominent L.P.P. leader to challenge this view and to indict the party for a fundamentally revisionist theory and practice was Fergus McKean. McKean had joined the CPC in 1932 and four years later was appointed district organizer for British Columbia. Two years later, he became district secretary. After reading the Duclos letter and reviewing the historical record of U.S. and Canadian communism, McKean charged that the L.P.P. had become little more that a “petty-bourgeois, social-democratic, parliamentary election machine.”

For his criticisms, McKean and a small handful of his supporters were expelled from the Party in August 1945. In May 1946, he published a long book, entitled “Communism versus Opportunism,” which presented his case in detail. McKean hoped that the book would rally other Canadian communists to the need for a new, anti-revisionist party. As he later admitted, however, this did not occur.

This, the first effort to build an anti-revisionist communist party in Canada, thus ended in failure.

Post World War II Antecedent: Fergus McKean 4

First Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1964-1970The first wave of anti-revisionist organizations in Canada were inspired by the Communist Party of China in its struggle against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Members of this movement saw the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao zedong as a revolutionary alternative to existing left formations such as pro-Soviet Communist Party of Canada, the social-democratic New Democratic Party, or the Trotskyist and new left organizations.

The first group to be identified with this trend was the Progressive Workers Movement (PWM) which split from the Communist Party in 1964. Other groups, such as Canadian Party of Labour (CPL) (which was associated with the Progressive Labor Party in the United States) and the Canadian Liberation Movement (CLM), would emerge from the tumult of the late 60s. The largest anti-revisionist organization during this period, however, was the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) (CPC (M-L)) which was formed from the Internationalists, led by Hardial Bains. Although these groups would constitute a minority in the Canadian left, they would make up for the lack of numbers by a hyper-activist approach to political activity.

During the early 1960s, Quebec emerged from the socially and politically stifling Duplessis era into a period known as the “Quiet Revolution”. This period saw the birth of the modern independence movement that viewed Quebec as a culturally and economically oppressed colony of Canada and its struggle as an anti-colonial struggle linked other anti-imperialist struggles in the world. Quebec independence movements ranged from the bourgeois nationalist Rassemblement pour l’Indépendance Nationale (Rally for National Independence) and the Parti Québécois to left movements such as the Front de Libération du Québec and the Mouvement de Liberation Populaire.

This new movement challenged the rest of the Canadian left in relation to organizing in Quebec. The first anti-revisionists decided to break with the traditional approach of organizing a single party within Canada and sought a “two-nation” solution. Groups such as PWM and CLM refused to organize in Quebec, stating that Quebec would develop its own separate struggle for independence and socialism. The Internationalists also held the same position, but decided to form a separate Quebec organization with a separate press. The exception to this position was the Canadian Party of Labour which organized on a pan-Canadian basis because of its adherence to Progressive Labor’s “all nationalism is reactionary” position.

A second feature that would define this first wave of anti-revisionist groups was Canadian nationalism. Many on the Canadian left argued that high rates of U.S investment and cultural intrusion into Canada had stunted Canada’s economic and cultural development. The relationship of Canada to its southern neighbour was that of a “hinterland” to a “metropolis”. Canada was, in effect, a neo-colony of the United States. This theory was taken up the by the majority of first wave Canadian anti-revisionists and they consequently applied a two-stage theory of revolution developed by the Comintern for colonial and semi-colonial countries and by Mao, in such works as New Democracy, to Canada.

The theory held that the first stage of the revolutionary process would be an anti-imperialist struggle that would unite a broad stratum of Canadian society, including non-comprador elements of the capitalist class, against U.S imperialism. Once the anti-

First Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1964-1970 5

imperialist struggle had been won, then the second stage of the struggle, this time for socialism could be launched. The PWM, CLM, and CPC (M-L) applied this as their guiding strategy. While PWM and CPC (M-L) saw the need for a vanguard party to lead these struggles, the CLM sought to build itself as a broad-based anti-imperialist movement, rather than a party. Again, in this period, only the CPL rejected the two stage theory of revolution for Canada.

The first wave of Canadian anti-revisionists hit their peak in the early 1970s and then stagnated or diminished in size before disappearing. Only the CPC (M-L) has survived to this day. The remaining pool of activists in English Canada that might have been potential recruits for anti-revisionism were not won to the neo-colony perspective. These wayward cadres would make up the bulk of the second wave of Canadian anti-revisionists.

Progressive Workers’ MovementThe Progressive Workers’ Movement (PWM) was formed in 1964 as a split from the Communist Party of Canada by members who supported China’s position against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. PWM was led by Jack Scott, a CP member since the 1930s and a BC/NWT labour organizer. Scott and other PWM members created the Canada-China Friendship Association–the first China friendship society in North America or Europe. Scott is the only Canadian anti-revisionist to have met Chairman Mao zedong.

The bulk of PWM’s membership was in Vancouver where it carried out most of its activities and published its monthly magazine Progressive Worker and the mimeographed B.C. Newsletter. During the mid-1960s, it tried to expand into Ontario and unite with other activists into a new Marxist-Leninist party, but this ended in failure. A similar attempt in the late-1960s would also prove unsuccessful. In the 1965 federal election, the PWM ran a candidate in the Vancouver East riding and got 275 votes. Other PWM members were active in the Vancouver District Labour Council.

The PWM held that the Canadian economy was dominated by U.S. imperialism and that the struggle of the working class should be directed at breaking the domination of the United States over the Canadian economy. In keeping with this position, a key PWM activity was promoting independent Canadian unions against the international unions in the Canadian Labour Congress. The PWM also held the position that Quebec, being a separate nation, would develop its own struggle for socialism and took a “hands-off” attitude towards recruiting members in Quebec.

The PWM dissolved in 1970. Some members went on to form a short-lived, progressive community newspaper named New Leaf. Scott and other members went on to form the Vancouver Study Group which later became the Red Star Collective (RSC). The RSC was active the Vancouver area during the 1970s and continued to hold the position that Canada was a neo-colony of the U.S. This brought it into conflict with the newer Marxist-Leninist groups which held that Canada was fully developed capitalist economy that had reached the stage of imperialism. Initially RSC willingly debated with these groups and participated in three National Conferences of Marxist-Leninists organized by In Struggle!. However, relations became strained as polemics became more intense and in 1978, the RSC announced that it was boycotting the fourth National Conference of Marxist-Leninists. The RSC also supported the “Theory of Three Worlds” and the new Chinese leadership that took control after Mao’s death. Scott, however, denounced the Chinese Communist Party during the 1980s as it became more reactionary.

During the 1970s, Scott was the author of a number of books on Canadian labour history. He died at age 90 in 2000.

First Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1964-1970 6

Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) traces its origins to the Internationalists, a progressive group founded at University of British Columbia in 1963. Among its founders was a microbiology student from India, Hardial Bains, who supported the Chinese Communist Party against the CPSU.

Bains would re-form the Internationalists as a Marxist-Leninist organization in 1968 after returning from a teaching position in Ireland where he had created Internationalist groups there and in the UK. The Internationalists renamed themselves the Canadian Student Movement and then the Canadian Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist). In 1970, the CCM (M-L) reconstituted itself as the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). Shortly afterwards, the allied Les Intellectuels et Ouvriers Patriotes du Quebec–Mouvement Communiste Quebecois (marxiste-leniniste) formed the Parti communiste du Québec (marxiste léniniste).

Internationalist groups in England and Ireland would go on to form the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) and Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist) respectively. A U.S group, the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) was formed in 1969. During the 1970s, the National Liberation Movement of Trinidad and Tobago (which later became the Communist Party of Trinidad and Tobago) was also created. Bains also formed the Hindustani Ghadar Party – Organization of Indian Marxist-Leninists Abroad which led to the formation of the Communist Ghadar Party of India in 1980. These organizations and parties often adopted slogans and campaigns from the Canadian party regardless of national conditions. This broke with the usual practice of anti-revisionist and Maoist groups which respected national autonomy.

The CPC (M-L) and its sister party in Quebec were the largest anti-revisionist grouping in Canada from 1969 to 1975, with activities in most cities and towns and would remain the largest group in English Canada. The party printed a large number of newspapers and journals; these would often exist for only a few issues before disappearing. However, Mass Line and People’s Canada Daily News were published on a regular basis. The PCQ (M-L) also published the weekly, Patriote Rouge. To attract cultural workers, in 1969 the CPC (M-L) launched the journal Literature & Ideology which covered art, literature, and culture from the perspective of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.

Like the Progressive Workers Movement, the CPC (M-L) defined Canada as a neo-colony of the United States and that the primary struggle of the Canadian working class was against U.S Imperialism. It wavered between calling for a two-stage revolution – with a “peoples’ democratic dictatorship” being established (along with “patriotic” capitalists) prior to moving to socialism – and calling for outright socialist revolution.

Because of the upsurge of left nationalism in Quebec, two separate parties were maintained until 1974 when the PCQ (M-L) was folded into the CPC (M-L). The Quebec party defined a twin struggle against “Anglo-Canadian

colonialism” and U.S. imperialism. During the October Crisis in 1970, a number of PCQ (M-L) members were arrested under the War Measures Act. In 1971, The PCQ (M-L) suffered significant split with a large chunk of its membership forming the

First Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1964-1970 7

short-lived Mouvement révolutionnaire ouvrier. Student members also split to form the Mouvement révolutionnaire des étudiants du Québec. At the same time, foreign student supporters at Montreal’s English-language universities split to form the Afro-Asian Latin American Peoples’ Solidarity Committee.

During the early seventies, both the CPC (M-L) and the PCQ (M-L) engaged in many violent confrontations with police which led to the arrests of many members (CPC (M-L) put the number of arrests between 1969-1974 at over 1,000). In the mid to later part of the seventies, confrontations with police dropped off significantly. However, both groups still engaged in violent attacks against left-wing competitors. Despite its extreme sectarianism, the CPC (ML) did manage to absorb the Partisan Organization in Vancouver and the New Morning Collective in Nova Scotia. Other groups and publications – such as Alive magazine in Guelph and On The Line in Kitchener-Waterloo – did briefly align themselves with CPC (M-L), but such collaboration was short-lived with splits from the party soon afterward. CPC (M-L) never maintained a consistent policy on trade union work, but members have been elected to union positions. Since 1972, the party has run candidates in federal elections under the name Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada. It has run more candidates than any other left groups (including the pro-Soviet CP) with the largest number in 1980, when it ran in 177 ridings.

The CPC (M-L) stood out among the Canadian left because of its slavish devotion to China and Mao Zedong – with slogans such as China’s path is our

path” and “China’s chairman is our chairman.” Its publications were seen by many to be a copy of the writing style of Peking Review. However, by 1976, CPC (M-L) began to support the criticisms of Chinese foreign policy and the “Theory of Three Worlds” made by the Party of Labour of Albania and, by 1977, declared that China had degenerated into revisionism and later, that Mao Zedong was not a Marxist-Leninist. Albania recognized CPC (M-L) as the vanguard party in Canada and delegations would make many visits to Albania prior to the collapse of the PLA. In 1978, the CPC (M-L) would hold a large international rally – popular with pro-Albania parties at the time – in Montreal that included a delegation from the PLA.

After the collapse of Party of Labour of Albania, CPC (M-L) declared that there were no more foreign models. It now supports Cuba, but without the same fervor with which it had supported China. It is still active in a number of unions and still runs candidates in federal elections.

The international groups that were allied with Bains and the CPC (M-L) diminished during the 1980s. The American group split with the CPC (M-L) in 1980 shortly before forming the Marxist-Leninist Party of the United States. The parties in Trinidad/Tobago and in Ireland dissolved in the 1980s and 2003 respectively. The British party – now renamed the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) – and the Communist Ghadar Party of India continue to exist and are still allied to CPC (ML)

Hardial Bains died in August 1997. The party is today

First Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1964-1970 8

led by his widow, Sandra Smith. It produces an on-line paper, The Marxist-Leninist Daily.

Canadian Party of LabourThe Canadian Party of Labour (CPL) was formed in 1969 and was active mostly in Southern Ontario, but also in British Columbia and Quebec. CPL was inspired by the politics of the Progressive Labor Party in the US and adopted many of its political campaigns to Canada. This included initiating Students for Democratic Society in Canada. This version of SDS was based on the Workers-Student Alliance concept advanced by Progressive Labor after the 1969 split within SDS in the US. CPL also organized anti-racism campaigns through the International Committee against Racism.

CPL was also active in numerous unions, including in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the United Steelworkers. A CPL member was elected president of the Steelworkers local at the Inglis appliance plant in Toronto. The main workplace demand of CPL was “ thirty hours work for forty hours pay.”

The CPL supported the position of the Progressive Labor Party that “all nationalism is reactionary.” This made it an anomaly in the Canadian anti-revisionist left during the early seventies, as it was the only group that rejected the “dependency” theories popular in Canada and Quebec at the time.

CPL published the monthly paper Canadian Worker and L’Ouvrier. Canadian Worker went to a twice-monthly basis in the early 1970s. In 1974, the English-language paper was renamed The Worker and both the English- and French-language versions were later published as weeklies. In the mid-seventies CPL also published Greek, Italian and Portuguese supplements to the paper.

Like Progressive Labor, the CPL initially supported China, but denounced it at the same time that PL did. In 1978, the CPL broke with PL over the issue of Quebec and became a strident supporter of Quebec nationalism and national liberation struggles and groups in other countries, including Khomeini’s Iran and the Provisional IRA. It also declared support for Albania’s critique of China and Mao while PL refused to recognize the Albanian as a authentic Marxist-Leninist party.

After years of diminishing membership and influence, the CPL dissolved in 1984.

Canadian Liberation MovementThe Canadian Liberation Movement was founded by members of the “Canadians for the National Liberation Front” who wanted to build a broad-based anti-imperialist movement as a precursor to a new communist party. The group was centred in Ontario, although it also had a branch in British Columbia. It published the monthly newspaper New Canada and maintained a successful publishing house, NC Press. NC Press was a major distributor of periodicals from China and published its own titles such as a translation of Léandre Bergeron’s The History of Quebec, a

Patriot’s Handbook and poetry by award-winning poet (and CLM member), Milton Acorn.

The CLM was the most ardent supporter of the “Canada as neo-colony” position. Following this position, the CLM argued for a two-stage revolution

First Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1964-1970 9

with the first stage being a national liberation struggle against U.S imperialism in a front that would also include patriotic capitalists. The second stage would be a socialist revolution. While CLM never declared itself as a Marxist-Leninst group, it was open in its support of China and maintained a semi-secret group called the Marxist-Leninist Caucus. This group often determined policy for the group bypassing the regular membership. Most of its work was centred on two campaigns: an 85 percent quota for Canadian teaching staff in universities, and Canadian unions for Canadian workers. Later it initiated a “Yankee Go Home” campaign.

The CLM was also active in a struggle against lead poisoning by the Canada Metal plant in East Toronto

and attempted to form the Canadian Workers Union (CWU) as an alternative to existing unions. The CWU did manage to get certified at a golf course near Hamilton and NC Press.

The membership of the organization rebelled against the CLM’s leadership and the Marxist-Leninist Caucus in 1975. Members accused the leadership of being abusive and un-democratic. The leadership was expelled and the CLM dissolved in early 1976. The former leadership of CLM attempted to recreate New Canada on an openly communist basis. However, this never got off the ground. NC Press continued into the 1980s as an independent commercial publishing house.

Second Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1971-1983The second wave of Canadian anti-revisionism was larger than the first and originated in Quebec where it spread to the rest of Canada. Like the first wave, it was rooted in support for Communist Party of China and its struggle against modern revisionism.

Two events determined the development of the Quebec left in the early 1970s. The first was the October Crisis of 1970. The repression by the Canadian state and the defeat of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) forced the left to re-evaluate its strategy. Many followed the lead of FLQ spokesperson, Pierre Vallières, who argued that activists should abandon the immediate struggle for socialism and instead work for independence from within the mainstream Parti Québécois (PQ). The struggle for socialism could begin after independence was achieved. This dispute split the progressive movement into those who supported the Vallières’ position and those who focused more on changing the basic economic structures of society.

The second was the Common Front strike of 1972 that saw 250,000 workers walk off their jobs to support the jailed leaders of the three main union federations. This was the largest mass labour action in Canada since the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. The strike saw workers take over radio stations and at least two towns before it was over. This development created a “workerist” trend in the Quebec left exemplified by the formation of the comites d’action politique (CAPs) in Montreal. Other supporters of this trend included the Agence de presse libre du Quebec, Librairie progressiste, and the magazine Mobilisation. They supported the policy of entering factories and other workplaces to build a militant union movement. Another group that emerged during this period was the Mouvement révolutionnaire des étudiants du Québec (MREQ), which was active in Quebec universities and CEGEPS (community colleges) including the English language universities in Montreal. It published the bilingual newspaper The Partisan and operated a bookstore (Librairie Ho Chi Minh). It was the first group to put forward the necessity of rebuilding a communist party in Canada. Although more to the left than the workerists, it also supported the trend of sending activists into the workplace

In 1972, a former FLQ member, Charles Gagnon, along with other a few other activists, released the document Pour la partie prolétairian. This polemic attacked both the “independence first” strategy promoted by Pierre Vallières and the workerist strategy promoted by the CAPS. It argued that the immediate task of activists was to build an ideological

Second Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1971-1983 10

and political alternative to capitalism in the form of a revolutionary party that would win the workers to socialism. This document would form the basis of the group, In Struggle!, one of the leading second wave anti-revisionist organizations.

Soon after the publication of Pour la partie prolétairian, members of the CAPS and allied organizations began to develop more openly Marxist-Leninist political positions and a number of small groups spun out of the disintegrating CAPS, such as the Cercle Communiste marxiste-leniniste, Groupe d’action socialiste, and Mobilisation (groupe communiste marxiste-léniniste).

In the autumn of 1975, two of these groups – the Cellue militante ouvriere and the Cellule ouvriere revolutionnaire – joined with the MREQ to form the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist) (CCL (M-L) (known hereafter as the League), the other leading group in the second wave of Canadian anti-revisionism.

In English Canada, those Marxist-Leninists who were not attracted to any of the pre-existing organizations such as CPC (M-L), CPL, or CLM worked in broad-based left groups and newspapers such as the East Coast Socialist Movement in Nova Scotia or the Western Voice newspaper in Vancouver. Others worked in workers support networks such as the Right to Strike Committee in Toronto. Still others were in isolated study groups. This changed with the launching of the publication Canadian Revolution in 1975. This magazine was published by members of the Toronto Communist Group, Workers Unity, and future members of the Bolshevik Union as an open form for Marxists-Leninists. It not only translated and published documents from the Quebec organizations but also provided a means for isolated groups in a geographically huge country such as Canada to make contact with one another.

However, it was In Struggle! and the League that were the most developed groups with organizational structures, a regular press and developed positions that would define the second wave of Canadian anti-revisionists.

The second wave differed from their first wave predecessors in that the majority saw Canada as a developed capitalist country that had reached the stage of imperialism. Although U.S. imperialism did play an important part in the Canadian economy, these anti-revisionists argued that the Canadian capitalist class

acted in its own interests and was not a puppet of the U.S. Further, this capitalist class was active in the exploitation of the Third World. For these groups and individuals, the struggle in Canada was a struggle for socialism – not for national independence.

The second issue that also separated this wave of anti-revisionists from the first was the issue of Quebec. Although the initiative for the second wave came from Quebec and they viewed Quebec as an oppressed nation, these anti-revisionists rejected the view that it was in a colonial relationship with Canada. Flowing from this, they also rejected the concept of separate organizations for Canada and Quebec and instead argued for building a single organization or party within the Canadian state. This was reflected in both In Struggle! and The Forge (newspaper of the CCL (M-L)) which carried identical articles in both their French and English editions.

At first, both In Struggle! and the League had a fairly harmonious relationship and even worked together on a number of campaigns, but relations deteriorated over a number of issues.

The first was how to unite the still dispersed Marxist-Leninist forces across Canada. In Struggle! argued that because the movement was still young and underdeveloped, it should be broadly defined so as to allow for debate and the delineation of political positions. In Struggle! proposed that four conferences be held to foster that debate. The first would be about Marxist-Leninist unity, the second on the nature of the Canadian state, the third on the international situation, and the fourth on the revolutionary program. It also offered to open the pages of its theoretical journal, Proletarian Unity, to smaller groups to publish their material.

The League on the other hand defined the movement much more narrowly and held that since In Struggle! and itself were the largest organizations, debate should be between these two organizations with smaller

Second Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1971-1983 11

groups participating from floor. So, while In Struggle! was willing to allow the Red Star Collective – which held the Canada as neo-colony position – to participate in the conference process as a Marxist-Leninist group, the League did not consider it part of the movement. Although the League participated in the first conference, it announced that it was boycotting the subsequent ones.

The League’s position would prove more realistic as smaller groups began to dissolve into either of the two organizations. By the end of 1977, 90% of the small groups had ceased to exist. There were hold-outs such as Red Star Collective, and the Bolshevik Union (among others). The Bolshevik Union held that the process of small groups merging into the two larger groups (which it dubbed the “two superpowers”) was premature. Instead, they argued, these groups should remain independent and develop their political positions more. They also questioned the “pre-party organization,” a concept they said was imported from the U.S. On the other hand, the Red Star Collective (along with the Halifax Study Group) believed that objective conditions did not yet require the formation of a vanguard party. The League declared itself the Workers’ Communist Party (WCP) in 1979.

Both In Struggle! and the League were real forces on the Quebec left. In Montreal, meetings organized by In Struggle! usually had an attendance of 1,500 or more, while the League/WCP could top 2,000 and at one point even reached 3,000 people. Both had 16-page weekly newspapers that were published in two languages and both also had bilingual theoretical journals. However, these groups, although they had branches in most major Canadian cities, never really grew in English Canada – although the League had a base in Toronto and In Struggle! in Vancouver.

The differences between the two organizations continued to deepen to the point in late 1977 that the League declared that In Struggle! had degenerated into revisionism. In Struggle!, for its part, said that the League had a sectarian attitude toward the Marxist-Leninist movement and was never really interested in struggling for unity.

The final dividing line between the two organizations would be the Chinese policies following Mao’s death; and the “Theory of Three Worlds.” In Struggle! always had a “left” interpretation of the Three Worlds Theory that separated the foreign policy of China from support for revolutionary movements around the

world. The League maintained a more rigid interpretation, going so far as to call for greater Canadian participation in NATO to counter the threat of Soviet imperialism and the influence of US imperialism. After the death of Mao and the arrest of the “Gang of Four”, the League enthusiastically supported the new regime in Peking. In Struggle! was however more guarded about events in China until late 1978 when they denounced the Chinese Communist Party.

By the 1980s, both In Struggle! and the League began to enter a period of crisis. The first group to fall was In Struggle! A combination of trying to reorient to a less dismissive attitude toward progressive movements, the crisis in the world-wide Marxist-Leninist movement, and the demands of women, gays and lesbians, and workers members soon drove it into crisis. At its fourth congress in 1982, In Struggle! calmly voted to dissolve.

The WCP crowed at the dissolution of In Struggle!, but by 1983, it saw its own members question its rigid internal regime and political direction. Unlike In Struggle! whose crisis lasted over a period of almost a year, the WCP dissolved within months. By mid-1983, two organizations that could, combined, bring over 4,000 people to their meetings, had ceased to exist. The crisis in the worldwide Marxist-Leninist movement also claimed the life of smaller groups. By the mid-1980s, these groups, such as the Red Star Collective and Bolshevik Union had also disappeared. In this way, the anti-revisionist trend in Canadian communism came to an end.

The Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada, In Struggle!The origin of In Struggle! can be traced to the polemic For the Proletarian Party written in 1972 by ex-Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) activist Charles Gagnon. This document attacked two popular positions within the Quebec left at that time. The first was put forward by his former FLQ comrade, Pierre Vallières, that activists should join the Parti Québécois to win independence first and then struggle for socialism later. The second was the strategy of activists entering the workplace and promoting militant trade-unionism. This tendency was represented by the Comités d’action politique active in Montreal. For the Proletarian Party argued that the main task was to build a revolutionary party and win

Second Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1971-1983 12

the working class to socialism.

In 1972, the newspaper, En Lutte! began publishing to advance the concepts laid out in For the Proletarian Party. The Équipe de journal (newspaper team) that published the newspaper maintained it as an independent journal until 1974 when its supporters consolidated into a Marxist-Leninist group with the publication of Create the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Struggle for the Party at its first congress. In response to its publication, five groups in Quebec dissolved to join In Struggle!

Create the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Struggle for the Party stated the necessity of forming a Canada-wide communist party. Accordingly, In Struggle! began publishing an English-language digest of its newspaper and in 1976 began to publish the newspaper in both French and English on a bi-weekly basis. Later in the year, it launched a bilingual theoretical journal, Proletarian Unity.

By autumn of 1976, the Toronto Communist Group merged with In Struggle! And in early 1977, groups in Halifax, Regina, and Vancouver would also join. It would also expand to other cities.

In Struggle! developed campaigns against the wage control act in the late 1970s and the struggle for democratic rights. However, it did not have a policy toward union work (although members were active in a number of unions). Most activity was geared to recruiting contacts into its readers’ circles to study the newspaper.

After the death of Mao and the arrest of the Gang of Four, In Struggle! maintained silence on the changes in China until 1977 when it came out against the Three-Worlds theory and generally supported the criticisms of it by the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA). In Struggle! would also denounce the Chinese leadership –however, it never supported the PLA’s

attacks against Mao himself.

After the adoption of a programme at its third congress in 1978, In Struggle! renamed itself the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada, In Struggle! It also called for unification of the Marxist Leninist movement around a new communist international that would be based on a communist programme rather than the practice of following the line of “father parties” such as the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labor of Albania.

Toward this end, In Struggle! launched the magazine International Forum in 1980 as an open forum for debate between anti-revisionist groups that were opposed to the developments in China. However, it had little success as political positions were rapidly hardening between those organizations that supported the PLA and those that still supported Mao. During this time In Struggle! became critical of nationalism which in its opinion, had infected the Marxist Leninist movement for too long.

During this time, the organization began to adopt a more open attitude toward working with movements and groups that they had previously dismissed as reformist and vowed to be less sectarian than in the past. It also decided to embark on a study of socialism.

However, by 1981, the organization began to fracture with some members questioning the validity of Marxism-Leninism. Others in the organization – such as women, gays and lesbians, and workers – began to criticize a structure dominated by male intellectuals and professionals. Soon the paper became a free for all with different factions debating back and forth. This continued until In Struggle!’s fourth congress in May, 1982 when it voted to dissolve itself. Some factions tried to continue afterwards, but they

Second Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1971-1983 13

disappeared soon after.

In Struggle!’s “Conferences of Canadian Marxist-Leninists”The Conferences of Canadian Marxist-Leninists were four national meetings organized by In Struggle!. The conferences developed out of In Struggle!’s position that because the Canadian ML movement was underdeveloped; it was necessary to give the widest expression to all viewpoints on critical issues. IS! planned four national conferences that would also be supplemented with regional conferences.

The first national conference was held on September, 1976, on the “unity of communists”. Over 1200 people participated with 14 groups giving presentations. The Canadian Communist League (M-L) participated in the conference but denounced it as an opportunist exercise that dodged issues of political line. The CCL (ML) also held that some other participating groups – such as the Bolshevik Union – were counter revolutionary and did not belong at the conference. The CCL (ML) subsequently announced that it would be boycotting future IS! national conferences. A regional conference on the issue of communist unity was also held in Toronto, Ontario.

Despite the League’s boycott, IS! organized a second conference in April, 1977 on the “path of the Canadian Revolution”. The conference included eight groups with over 1500 people attending. The reduced number of participating organizations was due to the fact that a number of the groups that had attended the first conference subsequently joined either IS! or the CCL(ML).

The third conference on the “international situation” was held in September, 1977. Debate at this conference centred on the “Theory of Three Worlds” that had been recently criticized by the Party of Labour of Albania. This time, over 1,000 people attended with five groups giving presentations (along with anti-imperialist groups from Africa, Haiti, Iran, Philippines as well as the Third World Peoples Anti-Imperialist Committee). A regional conference on the international situation was also held in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The fourth conference on the “tasks of communists” was held in February, 1978. While 1200 people attended, it was a much diminished event inasmuch as the majority of smaller ML groups had already joined either the CCL (ML) or IS!, At the conference itself, only IS! made a presentation. The prior debates between IS! and the Red Star Collective had become antagonistic to the point that the RSC had announced that it was boycotting the fourth conference. The Bolshevik Union, on the other hand, was no longer considered by IS! to be part of the movement – and BU members were ejected from the conference by mid-morning.

The Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist)/Workers’ Communist PartyThe Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist) – and later the Workers’ Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) – was the largest of all the anti-revisionist organizations with a membership of over 1,000 at its height. The League was formed through the merger of three Montreal-area groups in the autumn of 1975. The largest group was the Mouvement révolutionnaire des étudiants du Québec which had been active at university campuses and CEGEPS (community colleges) after its split from the Parti communiste du Québec (marxiste léniniste) in 1971. The two other groups were the Cellue militante ouvriere and the Cellule ouvriere revolutionnaire. These groups came out of the comites d’action politique (CAPs) that were active in the working class neighbourhoods and workplaces in the Montreal area.

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The League also held that Canada was part of the imperialist camp. It also supported the position that while Quebec was an oppressed nation, the goal should be to build a Canada-wide party. It published a bi-weekly paper in both French and English named The Forge which later became weekly. It also published a theoretical journal named October.

The League held that the groups that came out of the CAPS such as Cercle Communiste marxiste-leniniste, Groupe d’action socialiste, and Mobilisation (groupe communiste marxiste-léniniste) were right-opportunist and the members could only develop as communists under the leadership of the League. This strategy proved to be remarkably successful as these groups agreed and dissolved themselves into the League. The recruitment of most of the groups from the early-1970s workerist trend made the League the largest group in Quebec. When Workers Unity, a Marxist-Leninist collective in Toronto, joined the League and it started expanding across Canada – although the majority of its membership would remain based in Quebec.

The League was very active in union movement – especially the Confederation of National Trade Unions in Quebec where it could mobilize up to 300 delegates (out of over 1,000) at CNTU conventions. In other parts of Canada, the League was active in the Canadian Auto Workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees. During this period, the League was

its largest with public meetings in Montreal with over 3,000 people attending. Their contingents in demonstrations in that city could number over 2,000 people.

In the spring of 1979, the Canadian Communist League renamed itself the Workers’ Communist Party (WCP). The WCP, like its predecessor, supported the new regime in China after Mao’s death and was a strident supporter of the Three-Worlds Theory. China reciprocated by officially recognizing the WCP and the leadership of the party met with Hua Guofeng and toured Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea just prior to the Vietnamese invasion. During this period, the WCP also developed close ties with like-minded parties such as the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in the U.S. and the Workers’ Communist Party of Norway.

By late 1982, the WCP entered a period of crisis. Many began to question the direction that China was taking. Members also discovered that the majority composition of the Political Bureau was English speaking while the vast majority of the membership was French speaking. More controversy came to the fore as members complained about the rigid internal structure that was overseen by a security group that acted as an internal police. In the last issue of The Forge, the disintegrating WCP officially apologized to a couple who had been held prisoner by this group in their apartment for 14 hours while it searched for internal documents. Although some members wanted to form a broader based organization, the majority voted to dissolve the party.

The most prominent former member of the WCP is Gilles Duceppe who was the leader of the pro-independence Bloc Québécois which holds a number of seats in the Canadian Parliament. He resigned the position after the 2011 election.

Second Wave Anti-Revisionism, 1971-1983 15

Canadian RevolutionCanadian Revolution was a magazine founded by members of the Toronto Communist Group, Workers Unity, and individuals who would later go on to form the Bolshevik Union. The magazine was intended as an open forum for Marxist-Leninists to debate issues related to communist theory and practice. Although only six issues were published (from spring 1975 into early 1976) Canadian Revolution managed to connect often isolated groups across Canada with one other. However, disputes between the Bolshevik Tendency (the initial name of the Bolshevik Union) and the other groups on the magazine over its direction soon disrupted further publishing. Moreover, both the Toronto Communist Group and Workers Unity were soon to merge with the expanding Quebec groups – In Struggle! and the Canadian Communist League.

The Bolshevik UnionThe Bolshevik Union was originally formed as the Bolshevik Tendency by a group working with the magazine Canadian Revolution. The group held the position that the Canada’s native peoples were an oppressed nation and that Canada’s north is an internal colony. After the group split from Canadian Revolution, it started publishing its own magazine named Lines of Demarcation.

Although the Bolshevik Union initially supported In Struggle!, it soon denounced both In Struggle! and the

Canadian Communist League (M-L) for being right-opportunist and economist. Instead, the Bolshevik Union argued that the smaller anti-revisionist groups and collectives across the country should maintain their independence in order to sharpen the ideological struggle and not merge with the larger groups. It also questioned the concept of a “pre-party organization” which was felt to be a concept imported from the United States. The Bolshevik Union managed to recruit a group of In Struggle! members and sympathizers in Montreal and began publishing the monthly bilingual magazine, Proletarian Revolution.

The BU supported the Party of Labour’s criticism of the Three-Worlds Theory and socialist Albania until the PLA recognized the CPC (M-L) as the vanguard party in Canada. After that, it claimed that there had been no socialist camp since the death of Stalin. Thereafter, the BU started working closely with the Bolshevik League in the United States and a journal, Correspondances Internationales, that was published by African Marxist-Leninists in Paris. It disbanded sometime in the mid-1980s.

Red Star CollectiveThe Red Star Collective (RSC), a Vancouver area Marxist-Leninist group in the 1970’s, developed out of the Vancouver Study Group (VSG) which was active

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from 1972 to 1976. For much of this period the VSG was the only group in Vancouver which sought to base its analyses in Marxism-Leninism. Founders and leading members of the VSC included former members of the Progressive Workers Movement.

The RSC, like its predecessors, believed that Canada was not an imperialist country but rather an economic colony of the United States. However, it did not support the two-stage theory of an anti-imperialist revolution followed by socialism that the Progressive Workers Movement had put forward in the 1960’s. The RSC position was a minority one within the Marxist-Leninist movement during the 1970’s. However, some smaller groups such as the Halifax Study Group had similar positions. The RSC considered the Three Worlds Theory, developed by Mao, to be the correct approach to analyzing the international situation.

The RSC disagreed with the larger anti-revisionist groups like In Struggle! and the CCL (ML) on the priority of party building. While these two organizations saw the building of a vanguard party as the primary task of Canadian communists, the RSC held that the objective conditions did not yet exist for the creation of a vanguard party. The RSC saw the primary task as being to create these objective conditions (by strengthening the class consciousness, knowledge and organization of the working class and its allies). To this end, the RSC was active in labour, anti-imperialist and anti-racist movements as well as in conducting study groups and publishing various pamphlets.

The RSC willingly debated with other second wave anti-revisionist groups and worked in common campaigns with them and with other progressive organizations. The RSC participated in various conferences including some of those organized by In Struggle! Jack Scott – an RSC member and long-time activist – personally addressed the first IS! conference.

Like other second wave anti-revisionist groups, the RSC dissolved during the 1980s.

Halifax Study GroupThe Halifax Study Group had its origins in the East Coast Socialist Movement – a left group that supported workers’ struggles (such as the Nova Scotia fisherman’s strike in the early 1970’s) and published the newspaper, East Coast Worker. Two groups that identified with Marxism-Leninism emerged from the East Coast Socialist Movement (ECSM) when it dissolved in 1972. One group eventually became the Halifax Communist Group (which later joined In Struggle!). The other group became the Halifax Study Group (HSG).

The HSG was initially formed to work with the journal, Canadian Revolution, but as the Toronto groups joined the larger Marxist-Leninist formations and the Canadian Revolution project was abandoned, the HSG turned its attention to the analysis and critique of the new left in general, the major Canadian M-L groups in particular, and the connections it made between the two. The HSG’s New Infantilism pamphlet – which had begun as an analysis of the politics of the ECSM – was revised to take aim at what it saw as the ultra-leftism and “phoney Marxism” of In Struggle! and the Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist). The HSG continued as a study group but dissolved in the early 1980s. The New Infantilism was its only publication.

Alive MagazineAlive began in as a generally left-wing Guelph, Ontario high school literary magazine in Nov.-Dec. 1969, inspired by a teacher, Edward

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Pickersgill, who continued to play a leading role in the magazine until 1978. For a number of years, it continued in this pre-anti-revisionist mode. By the early-1970s, however, Alive was clearly aligned with the anti-revisionist movement, publishing a variety of revolutionary poems, short stories, literary criticism and cultural news, “in the tradition of Norman Bethune and Lu Xun.” For a brief period in the mid-1970s, Alive merged with the Communist Party of Canada (M-L)’s cultural journal Literature & Ideology, only to break with it shortly thereafter. Peak circulation of Alive in the mid-1970s was approximately 6,000 – with 5,000 copies per issue being sold on the streets and campuses in southern Ontario and another 1,000 by mail to paid subscribers. Alive closely followed the political-cultural line of the Communist Party of China in its poetry, short stories, and editorials – during the late 1970s, for example, it had a regular news column entitled: “Soviet Union: Greatest Threat for World War”. Alive ceased publication in 1980.

Western Voice

Western Voice was founded in 1973 by staff members of the Vancouver “alternative” newspaper, Grape. The newspaper’s masthead described Western Voice as a “Newspaper of Working Class Struggle” and it

covered labour and social struggles across Canada with an emphasis on British Columbia. While many in the Western Voice Collective (WVC) were sympathetic to Marxism-Leninism, this was not reflected in the paper which focused more on broad-based labour support and solidarity rather than putting forward a revolutionary political line. The trend of publishing progressive papers with no discernable revolutionary line by activists who identified with Marxism-Leninism was repeated across Canada during the early 1970s. Other examples include Mobilisation, published by Libraire Progressiste in Montreal, and Ottawa Worker and New Foundations in Ontario. These activists were either not attracted to the existing M-L organizations, such as the CPC (ML) or the CPL, or else believed that conditions were not yet right for the creation of a Marxist-Leninist party. However, with the publication of Canadian Revolution and the expansion of the Quebec M-L groups, many began to re-evaluate these positions. The Western Voice Collective, in the last two issues of the publication, began a process of self-criticisms and a public orientation to Marxism-Leninism. Not only did it publish its own material but also included translated material from the M-L groups in Quebec. The WVC eventually dissolved Western Voice and most of its members went on to join In Struggle! Others similar publications, such as Mobilisation, became affiliated with the CCL, while others simply ceased publishing.

The Organization of Communist Workers (Marxist-Leninist)The OCW (ML) began in Guelph, Ontario as the Guelph Worker’s Committee. The latter described itself in a letter to Canadian Revolution as a small‥ group of workers studying Marxism-Leninism”. The GWC later renamed itself as the Organization of Communist Workers (Marxist-Leninist).

For a brief period of time, the OCW (ML) was allied with a U.S.-based collective, the Communist Workers Group (Marxist-Leninist), based in Kasas City, Missouri. The two groups issued a joint statement on the situation in China after the defeat of the “Gang of Four.”

The OCW (ML) seems to have disbanded not long after the publication the “Movement for the Party.”

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