Marxist Winter School #2: 100 years since the founding of the Canadian Communist Party - Lessons for today

[Music] Welcome to Fight Back Radio, the Marxist voice of Labor and Youth in Canada, and the best source for revolutionary analysis of current events, perspectives, and theory. 100 years ago, the Communist Party of Canada, the Canadian section of Lenin's Communist International, was officially founded. The history of the party, and especially the early days, is full of lessons for revolutionary Marxists today. In this presentation, Alex Grant, editor of Fight Back, discusses those lessons. [Music] Hi everybody. Welcome to this session on the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of Canada. Now, this is a history with some amazing lessons for us. But it's a hidden history that some of you may have done union political education courses, or university working class history courses. And a standing feature of those courses is the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. There is an exhibit in the Canadian Museum of History in Gatina. It's done in collaboration with the Canadian Labour Congress. It's about the Winnipeg General Strike. And it's got one of the trunchens there that was used to beat up the workers. But in all these reformist histories, what is the outcome of the defeat of the Winnipeg General Strike? The outcome of the defeat of the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919 was the founding of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in 1932. That was the four runner of the new Democratic Party Canada's Labour Party. It's a 13-year gap where nothing important to apparently happen. And in fact, that 13-year gap was filled with amazing history of the founding of the Communist Party. It's also a hidden history by the Stalinists, the current Communist Party of Canada. Because they don't like talking about the 1920s, because the founders of the Communist Party of Canada, Maurice Bechtur, Jack MacDonald, all were expelled by the Stunness and went onto found trotskyism in Canada. So this is a hidden forgotten history. And a history we are very proud of and will reclaim those lessons. Now, I'm basing a lot of this lead off on this book by Ian Angus. It's a fantastic book, very well researched. We've got it in our bookstore, I recommend everybody get it. And you can get all the details behind this. A hundred years ago in May, the Communist Party of Canada was founded in a barn in Guelph. Yeah, Fred Farley's barn. There were 22 delegates. It was illegal, so they had an armed guard on the roof. They dug a pit and had a guy with a shovel ready to throw the minutes in and hide it in case they were raided. There was one farting cow and one police spy. So they had a pig there as well. And it was only a one day congress. And they elected a trade union leader, Jack MacDonald, the chair. And 21-year-old Jewish U of T student was elected the editor of the paper. And the Communist Party of Canada, when it was food, but when it was organized, it was the first Pan-Canadian workers party. United about 3,000 members, 90% of all active socialists. And its future was entirely open. So how did we get to Fred Farley's farm? So the Communist Party brought together various strains of the Canadian left. In the West was the Socialist Party of Canada. In the East was the Social Democratic Party of Canada. And there were two sort of constituencies in the SDP. There were the trade unionists. And there was also the language federations of Finns and Ukrainians and Jews that had autonomous bodies within the SDP. There were also the Caders of the Socialist Party of North America, which was really a small sect. So I'll start talking about the Socialist Party of Canada and the West. Now this was what was known as an "impossibleist" party. There were quite ultra-left. They didn't believe in reforms. No reforms, only revolution. Their political activity was mostly either lectures preaching the benefits of socialism. Or competing in elections. They regarded trade union activity as mere commodity struggles. And politics seemed to be purely separate from trade union work. Despite this, as it's irony, that the leadership of the Socialist Party was taken over by trade unionists in 1912. Such fantastic class fighters as Jack Kavanaugh and the Labour Marta, Ginger Goodwin. And they actually won the leadership of the BC Federation of Labour. And many BC unions like the Mineworkers Union, Low Calls and the Woodworkers unions. Now, even more sectarian was the Socialist Party of North America. They had only 100 members or so. And they were committed to wage war against all other parties, whether allegedly Labour or a vowardly capitalist, that with regards to the trade unions, they do not fritter our forces in guerrilla warfare with the capitalist class. That actually during the Toronto General Strike that was led by Jack McDonald in 1919, their leaflet began, "We do not oppose your strike." Really rousing stuff. And you see people like this today. They come to your meetings and go, "You betray, you betray." But it doesn't get very far. Now, on the other side, you had the Social Democratic Party of Canada in the east. Now, this was far more heterogeneous than the Socialist Party in the west. You had both revolutionary Marxists and reformists. And so the reformist wing looked to the British Labour Party as a model, and you had the radical trade unionists around Jack McDonald. There was also the language federations I spoke about before. Yeah, the Finns, Ukrainians, the Jews. And they were far to the left. But they were divorced from the majority anglophone culture in Canada. But they were far to the left because they were more in touch with the bush-fick ideas of the home country. Now, notable by its absence is a Kebacquah wing of the Communist Party. That the Communist Party was very weak amongst the Kebacquah. And because of that, unfortunately, I'm not really going to talk about French communism during this lead-off. Really, their main base in Quebec was amongst anglophone Jews in Montreal. And it was obviously a real weakness, but we can discuss that separately. Now, that's the state of the Canadian Left prior to the First World War. But the war itself cut across the Leftward development. There's a huge wave of patriotism. The youth were sent to the front. The unions really suffered. The union membership went down by 18%. The Socialist Party lost the leadership of the BC Federation of Labour. The Trader and Labour Congress, the main Confederation of Trade Unions, supported the war, said we must support British Civilization. Internationally, you had the betrayal of Social Democracy. The French, Social Democrats, the German Social Democrats, they all supported their own bourgeois. It's a huge historic betrayal, and that was the death of the Second International. But to their credit, the Canadian Socialist Organisations actually opposed the war. The Socialist Party of Canada immediately issued a leaflet declaring this an imperialist war. And the Social Democratic Party took a bit more time. They had a month's delay before they came out with a statement. Don't forget, they're split between a revolutionary Marxist-wing and a reformist-wing. And a month later, they produced a statement which was essentially copied from the Socialist Party but slightly watered down in spots. Maurice Specter was a student at U of T at the time. And he was the editor of the Varsity, the student newspaper. It still is the student newspaper. And he wrote an anti-war editorial. And I was a huge scandal. He was fired as editor. He almost expelled as a student. But the Canadian Socialists managed to hold an anti-imperialist position. Although the right wing of the Social Democratic Party fell into pacifism and some sections became pro-war. Cutting across the patriotic wave was the world historic event of the Russian Revolution. This was a revolutionary bolt, an electrifying bolt for the revolutionaries at the time. And enthused large sectors of the working class and the left. It's impossible to overestimate the impact of the Russian Revolution. But the revolution itself was not understood by the Russians. left. The organisations at the time only saw the end of the story. They didn't see how the Bolsheviks actually got there. And there was almost nothing written in English. I think it wasn't until 1920 or 1921 that John Reed's 10 days that shook the world was released. The only thing in English was Trotsky's The Bolsheviki and World Peace. And that wasn't even really about the revolution, but everybody wanted to join the Bolsheviks and the party of Lenin and Trotsky. Actually, some people even thought Lenin and Trotsky was one man. The first to respond was the Socialist Party of North America. In 1919 they tried to found a Communist Party with some anarchists and some part of the immigrant left. But this was very rapidly illegalized. They were all arrested and imprisoned. This just shows how democratic Canada is. But it was really at a board of start and it wasn't really a genuine Communist Party. But the Russian Revolution caused a wave of enthusiasm amongst the working class. There were revolutionary movements internationally encouraged by the Russian Revolution and the Socialist Party gained in the West and gained the majority support of the workers in the West of Canada. Now, there was the Trade and Labor Congress Convention in 1919 and the revolutionaries from the Socialist Party brought delegates from the Western unions. But they were defeated by the right wing in the east of the country. The east had been slower to catch up with the revolutionary developments. So the Western trade unionists resolved to have a conference to discuss how they can win the majority in the TLC. Now, the TLC was the Canadian arm of the AFL, the American Federation of Labor. It's equivalent to today's Canadian labor congress. So the Western left organized the Western labor conference in Calgary in March of 1919 with a stated aim of organizing against the TLC right. But this conference had an incredibly revolutionary flavour. They passed a series of very left resolutions, troops out of Russia, support for a proletarian dictatorship, a whole series of general strike threats. But they got a bit carried away and they forgot why they were there in the first place. Instead of resolving to fight the TLC right, they decided to split from the TLC and they found it the one big union. This shows they really didn't have any understanding of how the Bolsheviks had come to power. Incredibly revolutionary, but one thinking things through. Now, two months after the Western Labor Conference in Calgary, you had a wave of general strikes in the west of Canada. All the way from Vancouver to Winnipeg, a series of radical strikes, which were very clearly an expression of the radicalisation sparked off by the Russian Revolution. And all positions of capitalism in Canada. But the socialist party comrades who led these strikes didn't understand what they were actually doing. And this came to its most extreme high in Winnipeg. Now, we've had discussions on the Winnipeg General Strike before, so I don't really have time to go into it in great detail. We've written articles about the Winnipeg General Strike. But the calling of an all-out General Strike is not the same as just a normal economic strike. A normal economic strike is the workers do without wages, the boss does without profits, whoever can last the longest wins. And the stated aims of the Winnipeg General Strike were purely economic in terms of union recognition, better wages, better conditions. Even though the socialist party of Canada was incredibly influential with many leaders who are members of the party, they didn't think this was a revolution. They thought that this was an economic strike. And they thought, well, if a small strike doesn't help you get your aims, just organise a bigger strike, organise a general strike. But they didn't realise once you organise an all-out General Strike, it's actually a revolution. The capitalist no longer runs society and the workers are forced to provide essential services. The Winnipeg Strike Committee became extended to 300 people and was known as the James Street Soviet. It was so revolutionary, even the Winnipeg Police came over to the strike. So the state fired the police and organised teams of thugs. And the socialist leaders of the strike kept saying, no, no, no, it's just economic. It's not a revolution. Even though it functionally in the west of Canada, there was a revolutionary situation. So the state organised a provocation and then attacked the strikers, killed two, and it was a miserable defeat. But defeated armies learn well. What was needed in the Western Labour revolt was a revolutionary party. None of this division between politics and economics. What was needed was a party of a new type. What was needed was a Bolshevik party. And really, you can't blame the leaders of the socialist party of Canada because really only he only Lenin understood this question. Trotsky, prior to 1917, Trotsky didn't understand it. Rosa Luxembourg didn't understand it. James Connelly didn't understand it. He was probably the most influential Marxist amongst these revolutionaries about the need to build a party of a new type, a party that unites both the political struggle and the economic struggle. That is the memory of the working class learning from the victories and the defeats that unites all sectors of the struggle. The political struggle, the fight for democratic rights, the economic struggle, and the struggle to liberate the people from oppression to conduct illegal work, if necessary, and legal work when possible. A party organised under democratic centralism. And actually, democratic centralism is absolutely nothing to do with Stalinism, nothing to do with bureaucratic centralism. It's the democracy of a strike. It's the full freedom of discussion up to the vote and then unity and action. It's absolutely vital to stop elected representatives becoming corrupted. The long, long history of socialists getting one of their own elected into office or in a trade union position, only to have them corrupted by the bourgeois and the state. So, democratic centralism makes sure that elected representatives are under control of the rank and file. Yeah, think about this for Andrea Casio Cortez, who's a member of the democratic socialist of America, which he capitulates to the Nancy Pelosi and the democratic right wing with no control from the DSA rank and file. So that's what democratic centralism really means, democratic discussion, but united action. Yeah. Also, a new party of a new type that understood strategy and tactics. The supporters of bourgeoisism were desperately ultra left. Yeah, all they saw was, you know, the end result of a seizing power and, you know, intractable opposition to all other tendencies. Absolutely no idea of all of the alliances and maneuvering that the Bolsheviks took to actually get to 1917. Lenin told his supporters in 1917, when there were a minority, to patiently explain, no premature splits, that you must work in the mass organizations. And this came to a head at the third Congress of the Communist International. Yeah, this was after the revolutionary wave of 1919 was defeated internationally and is largely defeated because of the ultra left childishness of the supporters of communism. And one of the main ideas amongst the ultra left was the formation of red unions. You split the revolutionaries away from the reformist unions. Lenin and Trotsky came into that Congress of the common turn, proudly declaring they were the right wing against the ultra left. And actually starting that Congress, Lenin and Trotsky were the minority, but they patiently explained and they patiently won over the delegates. Now, there was no Stalinist compulsion, there was no threat of expulsions, nothing like that, but just a patient explanation and they won people over. They came very clear from these discussions that the one big union was a big mistake. That actually didn't stop the defeat in Winnipeg. And splitting away the revolutionaries from the main unions merely serves to isolate the revolutionaries. And it leaves the backward workers under control of the right wing. Now, fantastic book that came out of these discussions was Lenin's left-wing communism and infantile disorder. And there's a fantastic quote from this book about whether revolutionary should work in reactionary trade unions. I'm going to read out quite a large paragraph. It is precisely this absurd theory that communists must not work in reactionary trade unions that brings out, with the greatest clarity, how frivolous is the attitude of the left communists towards the question of influencing the masses. And to what abuses they go in their vociferations about the masses. If you want to help the masses and to win the sympathy and support of the masses, and you must not fear difficulties, you must not fear pimprix, chicainery, insults and persecution on the part of the leaders who, being opportunists and social showrunners, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police. But must imperatively work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of every sacrifice of overcoming the greatest obstacles in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently, precisely in those institutions, societies and associations, even the most ultra-reactionary in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found. And the trade unions and workers cooperatives are precisely organizations where the masses are to be found. Lenin didn't mess around. The other important idea that came out of the third Congress of the Common Turn was the United Front. The idea that especially in defensive struggles, that the Communist must unite with socialist anarchists, other working class tendencies. Now, this isn't to erase the Communists. The idea is that all of the parts of a United Front keep their own banner and the right to criticize each other. But they unite around a common struggle, either defense of the workers or fight fascism or such action. And of course, you can't guarantee that the Socialist leaders would come along with a United Front. But if the Communist's Proposal United Front, then if the Socialists say yes, then the movement is strengthened. And if the Communist proposes it in a non-sectarian manner and it's still rejected, well, then the Socialist leaders are discredited. And it allows the Communist to win amongst the Socialist Rank and File. And this was a hard one fight that Lenin Trotsky managed to win the leadership of the Communist International. So, they won over the leadership of the various sections of the Common Turn to this idea. And this just shows the democratic traditions of the Common Turn radically different from the Stalinist traditions in the 30s and later. Let's bring us back to Canada. So, we had the defeat of the Winnipeg General Strike. But in Ontario, Jack McDonald led the Toronto General Strike in 1919. There's a pre-revolutionary conditions in the West, but they weren't quite there in the East of Canada. And the Toronto General Strike was betrayed by the right wing. And the split between the left and the right of the Social Democratic Party was coming to a head. A very young Maurice Specter was elected to the executive of the Social Democratic Party. And the right wing split away to form Labor parties like the British Labor Party. Basically, a liquidationist position. So, Jack McDonald ends up in the leadership of the SDP. And he takes the radical trade unionists and the language federations to found the Communist Party. The CP was founded May 23rd, 1921, with 90% of the SDP and 100% of the Socialist Party in North America. But the question of the Socialist Party of Canada in the West was still unresolved. They had two informal delegates at the founding congress, but they weren't officially represented. And a discussion period inside the Socialist Party was opened up. But the academic impossibleists were opposed to joining the Communist Party for various sectarian and reformist reasons. And they just wanted a talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and not act. This is much like you see the academic marxians of today that just talk and talk and talk and absolutely no action, armchair revolutionaries. So this was getting ridiculous and there was no hope of this moving to the decision. So Jack Kavanaugh, the former president of the BC Federation of Labor, leads the pro-communist wing out of the Socialist Party. And 90% of the membership joins him. And the Socialist Party is dead by 1925. So, this is a fantastic development. You've got all of the Socialists across Canada united in one organisation. And learning through struggle, learning through the experience of the communist international on the Bolsheviks. And really this party was the embryo to prepare for victory. With thousands of members, leadership of several very important unions, miners, woodworkers, still workers, etc. And also an important point about how does a mass communist party come about? This wasn't just one small sects getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Like actually the ultra pure Socialist Party of North America, they played an important ideological role, but they were really disconnected from the mass of the working class. So the mass forces of the communist party of Canada were formed by mass splits from the existing organisations, existing organisations that had learnt from the mass experience of the Russian Revolution. However, they were perfect Bolsheviks from day one. There was still a lot of ultra left ideas. For example, for the first two or three years of their existence, they held it as a principle that they must be in a legal party. Like if you're not a legal, you're not revolutionary. Sometimes you get these kind of larpers on the internet who think, "Oh, I'm so revolutionary, I'm so illegal. Let's talk about arms struggle." What the reality is is that a lot of the state repression had abated and there was no barrier for them to being a legal party. But it took them a number of years to get over this illegalism with the patient explanation of Lenin and Trotsky and the communist international. No Stalinist commandism, patient explanation. After the defeat of 1919, there was a boss's offensive. And a game's as offensive, the United Front policy was absolutely vital. And communist party members were involved in a series of defensive struggles. One of the best examples is amongst the Cape Breton coal miners in Nova Scotia. The bosses tried to implement a one-third wage reduction. Now, the right wing were leading the union, right wing supported by the AFL bureaucracy in America. This was the vicious anti-communist bureaucracy under the tradition of Sam Gompers. And the right wing leadership of the Cape Breton miners just wanted to capitulate against this attack. And the miners and the militant activists rebelled against this. And they all joined the communist party on mass as like 100 or 1000 people. And there was new elections for the leadership of the union. And the communist won an landslide. And so in opposition to the cuts, the union proposed an all-out strike. That removing the maintenance workers from the mines, and if you remove the maintenance, the mines flood. And this was denounced by the American AFL bureaucracy. And the Canadian state mobilized 1200 troops to put down the strike. The expectation was that the miners would attack the troops and there would be a bloodbath. But under communist leadership, absolute discipline. No fights, give no excuses to the armed forces of the state. That 5,000 workers and the whole working class marched silently past the police and the army. But there's an old saying, "Beyonets can't cut coal." And the mines began flooding. And this forced management to meet with the union. And the union under communist leadership got a partial victory. It's huge enthusiasm, the workers who then voted to affiliate to the red international of labour unions, the common-turns labour federation. And this was, they didn't disaffiliate from the AFL. But the AFL bureaucracy took this as an opportunity to attack the local and try and dissolve the local. They said, "You leave the red international or we'll expel you from the AFL." Again, a less intelligent leadership would have just taken an ultra-left position and said, "Screw you, we're going to fight the bureaucracy." And let the bureaucracy destroy the local. But instead, they took a strategic withdrawal. And to look, we don't need to affiliate to the red international, but we denounce the bureaucratic leadership. And so everybody's know who's responsibility it is. Now the following year, there was a, in 1923, there was a steel strike in Nova Scotia. And again, the state mobilized the military and the police. And there was an atrocity where they attacked peaceful churchgoers on their way home from church on a Sunday. Women and children were killed in an attempt to terrorize the steel workers back to work. The call went out from the steel workers for sympathy strikes, to get the troops out of Nova Scotia. And all the mines were struck without maintenance. But management had help from the AFL bureaucracy. The AFL bureaucracy demanded an end to the sympathy strikes. You know, there's a sanctity of a contract you can't go- go on strike while there's a contract. And the Communist Mine workers said, look, we're gonna compromise with you over a question of affiliation, but this is a political strike against state murder. And American Union leader can't tell us what to do when we're fighting the Canadian state. So the bureaucracy actually dissolved disbanded the local. In the middle of a political strike, the old leaders were reappointed, the ones that were rejected by their angst, called off the solidarity strikes, isolated the steel workers were defeated. There's a total betrayal. Again, in these situations, you could imagine the pressure to just say split from the AFL, we'll form our own union. I said that one big union tried to do some rating to try and sort of get in this opportunity. And arguably the communists could have split. And many of the workers would have followed them. But this would have isolated the Nova Scotia miners from the miners and the rest of the country and the movement generally. The intelligent patient leadership. A year later, the union all put up to new elections. Now, the old communist leaders of the local were banned from running again. Again, in the face of bureaucratic provocation, the comrades were a patient. So they ran other comrades. And there was another communist landslide in the local leadership. Whereas, you know, with a less intelligent leadership, you were a smash the local would have been demoralizing to feed. And there was a wave of struggle in Cape Breton amongst the miners in the '20s, which this victory, or this way to resist defeat, played an important role in. Intelligent, united leadership, learning about the long wave of the struggle. That's what Bolshevism is. OK. Now we have to look at things internationally. The workers had one power in the Soviet Union. But unfortunately, only 10% of the Russian population were working class. The overwhelming majority was peasantry. And there was massive illiteracy in the Soviet Union. And you had-- and the young workers state had to rely upon old, zirist bureaucrats and experts to keep things running. And now, this was OK in the first period of the revolution, because the workers were active in telling the bureaucrats what to do. But after four years of World War, and then another four years of Civil War, the workers were just too damn tired. They were either dead tired, or many of them were dead in the Civil War. And this allowed a bureaucratic strata to develop in the Soviet Union. Lenin proposed an alliance with Trotsky against this growing bureaucracy. And Lenin spoke about instead of the communist directing the bureaucrats, it's actually the bureaucrats directing the communists. This is seen in Lenin's final letters that were suppressed by the Stalinists. And workers' democracy was being-- and Bolshevik democracy was being erased in the young workers state. The bureaucracy developed this idea of socialism in one country, because they just wanted peace with none of this talk about world revolution. And they started the myth of Trotskyism. So the communist international progressively started coming under control of a Stalinist faction. Now, an important event in this bureaucratization was the defeat of the German Revolution. And Maurice Specter was actually-- he was sent to Germany as a revolutionary journalist during the 1923 revolution. And the failed policies of Stalin and Zanoviev led to the defeat of the 23 revolution. The German Communist Party failed to seize the moment and being defeated, were crushed, missed the opportunity, they were crushed. And because of bureaucratic prestige, the common turn couldn't recognize the mistakes in Germany. And Trotsky wrote his lessons of October in 1924 to bring out the lessons of the failure in Germany. And Maurice Specter was there on the ground, and he saw this all for himself. And in the mid-20s, there was a rightward shift in the common turn, the new economic policy, which promoted a layer of rich peasants, Kulaks. And there was a anti-Trotsky campaign as Trotsky represented the anti-bureaucratic faction fighting for workers' democracy. Now, it's wrong to say that the Communist Party of Canada were fully formed Trotskyists right from the start. They went along with most of the changes of the line and sort of the rightward shift. But they absolutely refused to participate in the anti-Trotsky denunciation campaign. And they continued to promote Trotsky's writings in 1925 and 1926. Jack McDonald, the chair of the party, supports a sort of neutrality on the international polemic. So like, well, we don't really understand the issues. We're going to stay out of it, do our own thing. Now, by an accident in history, Tim Buck was the delegate to the 1927 common turn Congress. Now, I haven't mentioned Tim Buck up to this point. Because to be honest, he paid a secondary role up to this point. He was one of the supporter of Jack McDonald, as in the radical trade unionists in the social democratic party. But he wasn't important enough to be a delegate to the well-fug Congress. And he was the main trade union organizer. But the 1927 Congress of the common turn was the Congress that expelled the left opposition and expelled Trotsky. And Tim Buck-- and there was the vault to expel. And Tim Buck didn't communicate back to Canada to ask the opinion of the other comrades. He just follows the Stalinist line and vaults for expulsion. And then when he gets back to Canada, he puts forward a resolution to endorse the actions of the common turn and announce Trotsky to support socialism in one country. Now, McDonald thinks this is all a diversion. He just wants to build the party in Canada. It's actually a bit of a narrow perspective. You know, it's an old Trotsky quote. You may not care about war or politics, but war and politics care about you. But McDonald follows the line of least resistance and vaults to expel Trotsky. But specter votes no and resigns as editor of the paper. But McDonald convinces him to come back. So I'm like, no, no, something international will sort this out in Canada. And the decision of the executive is presented as unanimous. Now, following year, the 1928, six Congress of the common turn. Now, specter is the delegate from Canada. And James Cannon is the delegate from the United States. And at this time, Trotsky is an exile in Alma Atta in the far reaches of the Soviet Union. He was forced there by the Stalinists. But he's still technically part of the outgoing executive of the Communist International. And any member of the executive is a right to issue a statement. So Trotsky issues his critique of the draft program of the Communist International. Criticizes, you know, Socialism One country. Criticizes support for Shanghai's Shack and the Comin Tan that ruined the Chinese revolution. Criticizes support of the Anglo-Russian committee that destroyed the British General Strike. And the general right wing policy and the rise of the net men, the Kulaks. Now, this document confirms a lot of the amorphous criticisms that Canada and specter had had. And they blow off the Congress and they just go off and read Trotsky. And they resolve to fight for, to defend Trotsky's ideas when they return to Canada and the USA. So instead of a democratic discussion when they get back, the minute their views become clear, they're immediately expelled. Actually, after Canada's expelled, the Stalinist break into his house and steal his documents, pure gangsterism. But from 1929 to 1931, there's a process of Stalinization of the Communist Party of Canada. Now, McDonald, Jack McDonald just desperately tries to hold the unity of the Canadian organization together and keep the international conflict out of Canada, whereas Tim Buck styles himself as Canada's Stalin. And there's increasingly contradictory directions from Moscow. That, and the line just keeps on changing. There's like all of these semisorts. At one period, it's opposition to Canadian nationalism and other period, it's support of Canadian nationalism. And then opposition again to Canadian nationalism. And if you aren't quick enough in following the change in line, then you're expelled. The tradition of discussion is increasingly destroyed in the party. And there's these humiliating self-crit sessions. Absolutely nothing to do with democratic centralism and learning from a debate. And those who are too slow to adapt to a new line, have to get up and basically debase themselves. With totally meaningless, that language. I have to criticize myself because I overemphasize the external factors and emphasize the internal factors. And the biggest crime of all is to blame Moscow for contradictory directions. You know, anybody who said, well, I was just doing what you guys told me to do a few months ago. It's like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't say that. You demand. mindless submission to the new line, whatever it is, and however contradictory it was to the old line. And from the relatively right wing position when Stalin was aligned with Bucharren's right opposition, you then had the purging of the Bucharren right wing and the sum assault to the ultra left third period position. Absolute opposition to any United France. And all of the other tendencies were fascist. And the socialist were the worst fascists, the social fascists. In fact, in some situations internationally, the Communist united with fascists to break up socialist meetings. And the third period was supposed to be the imminent coming of revolution, totally divorced from the realities of the struggle on the ground and totally isolated the communists. And in the face of this weakness, the Canadian state ramped up its oppression against communists and against political protests by the working class. They used section 98, which was a law passed after the Winter Pegg General's strike that illegalized calling for revolution. This law was widely unpopular in society and could be defeated, but the under the third period, the Canadian communists rejected any alliances. And they started a series of adventures called Conquest of the Streets. So they started a series of demonstrations at Queen's Park, the legislature in Toronto. And this was in August of 1929. And it was, and they were totally opposed to doing it with any other tendency in the late movement. And they were asking to be smashed. Actually, in the first one, Jack with Donald didn't want to speak and the police came in and smashed the demo. But two weeks later, they organized another protest, a smaller protest, and they forced Jack Donald to speak, and he was viciously beaten by the cops. Actually, the reformist Labour MP, J.S. Woodworth, offered solidarity with the Stalinists. Actually, it's wrong to call them Stalinists at this point, as the comm isn't fully consolidated yet. But instead of accepting the solidarity, they call them a fascist. And he was responsible for the beatings they were getting in their adventures. But actually, there have been numerous votes to repeal section 98. But the undemocratic Canadian Senate refused to sign it into law. It just shows that a united front approach could have smashed the illegalisation of the communists. And as part of the third period, you also had a radical change of trade union policy. Instead of this stay-in-fight united front approach, you now had the support for splitting away and forming red unions. The state's aim was to smash the AFL unions. And an organised strikes no matter what the concrete situation on the ground were. And any communist union leader said, "Look, this is crazy," or they were purged. There was a specific example in the needle trades in 1930. The international ladies garment workers union, did a union drive in Toronto, dress makers, you know, so very labour intensive, a large constituent of the Jewish working class involved in this. Now previously, the communists would have supported such a drive, participated in it, and had friendly criticism for any weaknesses of the bureaucracy. But now it was an utter denunciation of this union drive. And they actually planned to scab on the drive. The communists supporting needle workers organised their own strike a month before the plan strike of the main union. But as it was a minority strike, it went down to failure. And then when the main strike happened a month later, they scabbed that. And so it was also a failure. So madness of sectarianism leads to the total isolation of the communists. And the defeat of the workers. And the results of the ultra-left third period were totally disastrous. In 1929, the membership of the Communist Party was 2876. And in 1931, the membership had reduced by more than half, 1386. Actually, of the 1929 membership, 75% were either expelled or dropped out in a two-year period. In 1928, the Party elected an executive committee of seven comrades. Four years later, in 1932, only Tim Buck remains. Jack McDonald is maneuvered out of his leadership position in 1929. And there's a crisis in the language groups who don't accept this dictatorial control from Tim Buck. Thinking revolutionaries taught in the tradition of the United Front couldn't just have blind obedience and follow the third period madness. So but the Stalinist bureaucracy demanded total obedience, no matter how contradictory the line may be. Lenin in a different period said, "Look, if you want obedience, you'll get obedient fools." So increasingly isolated in the party facing expulsions, McDonald himself is expelled in 1931. This point, you could say, the Communist Party of Canada is dead. And actually, in 1933, Trotsky declares the Communist International dead. After the failed third period policies and the failure to organize a United Front lead to the victory of Hitler in Germany. But there's no turmoil within the Communist International. Everybody just obediently follows the line. This just goes to show there's absolutely nothing in common between Bolshevism and Stalinism. That the Stalinists and the bureaucracy could only come to power by purging the actual founders of the Communist movement. Luckily in Canada, Tim Buck did not have state power. But in the Soviet Union, there was a murderous purge of the old Bolsheviks. Actually, the delegate to the 1927 Congress that expelled Trotsky, the majority of them died in Stalin's prisons. Let alone the revolutionaries from 1917 or 1923. There is a river of blood separating Bolshevism from Stalinism. What we got to learn from this? The Communist Party of Canada was a fantastic party in its foundation. It had a capable leadership. It had a leadership that had learned to struggle. It overcame its ultra-leftism with the education from the Communist International. It developed some incredible individuals. Spector was a very good theoretician. It wrote a very good article on the Great Depression, the economic base of the Great Depression. These leaders went on to found the Fourth International in Canada. Jack McDonald joins the Fourth International when he's expelled. Jack Kavanaugh in British Columbia goes to be a key comrade of the Australian section of the Fourth International. But these were very difficult times for the young forces of Trotskyism in the 1930s. It's a very difficult transition for comrades like Spector and McDonald to go from leading thousands to having a small group of dozens. So it was difficult for Canadian Trotskyism to take off. But the ultra-left binge of the Communist Party had left a political vacuum. And the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation filled that vacuum. An entire union locals in Sudbury left the Communist Party and joined the CCF. There's this false idea that reformism is somehow natural to the working class. But the reality is that the reformists could not get their act together in Canada. And the Communist Party was the only Pan-Canadian Workers Party. The only reason the reformists were able to get a base is precisely because the ultra-left stupidity of the Stalinists. If the Communist Party had maintained its correct tactics of the United Front, as shown in Nova Scotia, they would have been in a commanding position in the revolutionary struggles of the 1930s. But they were totally weakened by this ultra-leftism. And then after the third period, ultra-leftism led to the victory of Hitler, they did another summer soul to popular frontism and support for liberals. If they stayed on the right line, they could have led those key struggles of the late 30s. And Canada could have been in a pre-revolutionary situation. So we have to learn the lessons of the Communist Party. And the tradition and the lessons of the founding of the Communist Party of Canada are here in this meeting. The CPC was able to educate incredible thinkers and writers like Maurice Spectre. Incredible workers leaders like Jack McDonald. And we need to do that and we need to unite it with a healthy international. And today, that healthy international is the international Marxist tendency. That brings the lessons from all of the struggles internationally. They all are actions stronger than we would be as individuals. And we are in a new epoch with amazing revolutionary possibilities. And we're growing everywhere across the world. You can see this fantastic event here with over a thousand people registered. We're retying that knot of history. So join us to build a new Communist Party of Canada, new mass revolutionary parties, and a mass Marxist international. Thank you. [Music] Thank you for listening to Fight Back Radio. Fight Back is a revolutionary organization fighting for the socialist transformation of society. We are the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency. We actively seek to educate workers and youth in the genuine ideas of Marxism, in order to fight back against capitalist attacks and austerity, and bring and end capitalism. However, we won't be able to do this on our own. So if you agree with us, get involved. We can be found online at Marxist.ca, on Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok, at Canada Marxists, on Instagram, at Socialist Fight Back, and on YouTube, as Fight Back La Repost. For International News and Analysis, check out "Indefense of Marxism" at Marxist.com. The music in this episode was General Strike by Soul Jazz Orchestra. They can be found at SoulJazzOrchistra.com.