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Proposal for a New International
What Does the Communist Party of Canada have to Say?
By: Don Currie
Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Editor Focus on Socialism
February 15, 2010
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca
The proposal last November 2009 to organize a new international having the support of left‐
socialist revolutionary parties in Latin America, on the initiative of Hugo Chavez, is an
important development in the anti‐imperialist movement urgently in need of credible
communist analysis.
Socialist Project, a quasi‐trotskyist group, that also includes some well informed writers, as
usual is first out of the blocks with their commentary on this development. Where the term
“Fifth International” has come from is not clear. The still born Fourth International was a
trotskyist organization that since its inception in 1938 has fractured into a series of smaller
groups.
The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) leadership has once again been caught flat footed. To
my knowledge the CPC leadership has said nothing publicly about this development. If they
have good information about it, in their usual lofty manner, they keep it a secret. Supporters
of the CPC as usual are the last to know and left to try and figure out such matters as best
we can.
After the Soviet Union had defeated the Nazis in WW2 there followed a series of
International Meetings of Communist and Workers Parties usually convened together with
CPSU Congresses and its work was published in World Marxist Review as the main
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theoretical organ of that movement. The Communist Party of Canada played an important
role in that work.
Today things are different. The forces coming forward with the proposal for a “Fifth
International” are not Communist Parties but are left anti‐imperialist revolutionary parties
some of which are in power and proclaim socialism as their goal. These movements act in
solidarity with socialist Cuba and the Bolivarian revolutions in Venezuela and Bolivia and are
not overtly anti‐communist. Within this movement there are also some pronounced pseudo
leftist meddlers involved in the process in particular the usual claque of trotskyist and
anarchist groups who do nothing but spread confusion.
It is a grave mistake not to do so. I urge anyone who has a tittle of interest in the energy
issue and its centrality to the future of our country to go to the “news” section of
www.focusonsocialism.ca and catch up on what is happening on the energy file in our
country. It is not a pretty picture and demands our urgent collective response if we do, as
we proclaim we do, “love this country” and care about its future.
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There you will find all of the schemes of finance capital with the blessing of the Harper
Government to drain the energy life blood of our country to the USA and along with it the
jobs of millions of Canadians. At the same time go to the Publications section of
www.focusonsocialism.ca and find a letter from Tim Buck to Don Currie from 1967 where
Buck outlined in his exemplary visionary style what could be done if the natural resources of
the west and in particular its water and energy resources were developed in the interests of
Canada and its people. There you will find an example of what real Communist leadership
should be in our time and how to speak to workers about it.
These developments underline, once again, the extremely low level of theoretical work and
the weak ideological partisanship for the fundamental ideas of Marxism Leninism in Canada.
The responsibility for that situation lies with the present leadership of the CPC that has done
nothing to distinguish its specific position from that of the social radicals on a range of
crucial issues.
An article, "Organized Labour and the Politics of Class Struggle Today", appearing on the
home page of Focus On Socialism addressed to the CPC before its recent Convention,
discusses the urgency of engaging in polemics with all forms of social radicalism, pseudo
socialist theories and to formulate an economic program of unity for the mass movements
of the people. If you haven’t read it I would ask you to consider doing so and to forward any
comments to editor@focusonsocialism.ca.
Why is this important now? A case in point is the recent article appearing in Georgia Straight
by Derrick O’Keefe Co‐Chair of the Canadian Peace Alliance who with the best of intentions,
draws comparisons between the lawful actions of the Soviet Union in coming to the aid of
the people of Afghanistan in 1980 and the current surge of US‐NATO imperialist forces in the
present day unlawful aggression in Afghanistan. O’Keefe’s article has been widely
distributed to CPA members and affiliates. The item makes concessions to discredited cold
war comparisons between the Soviet Union and US imperialism.
CPS has responded to the CPA co‐chair assertions
I mention this because Derrick O’Keefe is a militant fighter for peace. He works with
communists in the peace movement. Here is the rub. Do we take issue with his concessions
to anti‐Sovietism and the discredited cold‐war “Two Super Power” theory behind which the
pseudo‐left of that period tried to span anti‐communism and anti‐imperialism, or do we let it
slip because it is a bit of a sticky wicket. Anti‐communism of yesteryear was pro‐imperialism
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and remains so today. How do we deal with it?
That is what the CPC leadership pointedly avoids
discussing.
The IMCWP is beginning to provide answers to the
problem of confronting the wrong positions of
social democracy and social radicals of all stripes.
The (IMCWP) has now completed 11 International meetings to develop a unified line and to
re‐establish the supremacy of the ideas of Marxism Leninism within the international
working class and people’s revolutionary movements. Great progress is being made on re‐
establishing the fundamentals of Leninism in the era of imperialism in particular how to
conduct the struggle for socialism in non‐revolutionary situations and unite all of the anti‐
imperialist forces.
There is no organized structure to the IMCWP movement except through the medium of
Solidnet. A more advanced organization structure may be under discussion. Undoubtedly it
will emerge at a certain conjuncture of both urgency and need and growing organizational
strength. There is no doubt in my mind that it will eventually happen.
The CPC cannot move forward, regardless of all of
the omnibus resolutions it produces, all of the
hosannas, if there is not a corresponding rise in the
level of its theoretical and ideological work and by
its independent effort begins to provide for the
advanced working class activists of the organized
labour, farmer, peace and democratic movements
of our country, relevant and timely communist analysis in the realm of the struggle of ideas.
We in CPS say without fear, that is not being done adequately and must be addressed and
urgently.
Comradely
Don Currie
Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
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