/WOMEN, ACT FOR PEACE!

Fait]

—fquirements of the city are
eB ine 00 is subject to a $25.00 tax
) Ane

Un]

Co)

to raising the tax dollar,
Wherej ee

~ dar :
apply umber of people will

tek ‘657,873. This was to run all

s 196 ’pproached the Council in

WITT

=

The Women’s Commission of the Communist Party of Canada
has issued the following appeal:

Nixon’s escalation of the war in Indochina into Cambodia in-

(eases the awful threat of world war.
is genocidal war shocks the conscience of all mankind. We
have seen children burned and maimed beyond recognition, crip-
Pled for life. We have seen the bodies of innocent children and
_ “i€ir mothers sprawled dead along roadways in Vietnam after their
Mass murder. We have seen young men and women, shackled and
Wen to prison.
is is a war against mothers and their babies—a war against
4 whole people.
ur government, through the sale of arms, is an accomplice of
t e US. war of aggression against Indochina. We share in the res-
‘Ponsibility for stopping it. Silence makes us accomplices. All of
US must speak up now and act even more resolutely to end Can-

_ 4da’s criminal complicity.

he silent dead call upon us to speak for them.
© children whom we are rearing with love and hope, trust us

_ © protect them from such a dreadful fate. We raise our children

® ensure them a life full of sunny days—not death. The children
of the whole world are our children. We must return to the children
Ber torn countries the sunshine and happiness that is rightfully
Ts,
This dirty war affects our lives too—not only- morally, but also
OWers our standard of living: Rising costs—our inability to get
lead—are a direct result of this aggression against the peoples of
J€tnam and Cambodia. Unemployment is assuming crisis propor-
‘ons, many are compelled to go on social aid. Farmers have lost
Markets. War and war spending stands in the way of solving these
Problems
Hundreds of thousands have demonstrated on the streets of
United States and Canada against Nixon’s escalation. Letters and
Wites of protest are pouring in to the White House. Statesmen the
World over have spoken against the escalation. It is opposed by
Some of the elected representatives in our parliament. The opposi-
lon is growing, In United States, students have been killed, and
anada arrested and beaten, protesting against it.
.*he struggle for peace cannot be won without our fullest parti-
“pation. All of us must act and speak for peace—inside our homes,
the shopping ‘places, and on the job. We can swing the balance

yen, in our country, there is a mounting militant opposition to
_ War

i

__—Send a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau, asking him to speak
on opposition to the war, and to stop selling arms to the United
es,

Raise the issue in Home and School Clubs, Union Locals, in

_ church; and with our neighbors.

—Lobby the MPs and MLAs, send delegations to councils and

School boards, get other people to sign protests to the government.

_. Demonstrate.

_ Assist the Women’s International Democratic Federation, cam-
18n to build a children’s hospital in Vietnam. Help to send cloth-
8 and medicines to Vietnam.

_ THE UNITED STATES MUST GET OUT OF INDOCHINA NOW.

Press Hamilton Council

for anti-crisis steps

Bo AMILTON .— The mayor,
: a of Control and City Coun-
Of this city are urged by the
unist Party to take mea-
ae to deal with the financial
“"sis of the municipality.
Aa letter signed by the Party’s
non ety Donald A. Stewart
Nts out that, “although the

to. discuss taxation, the City
Commission of Finance stated
that “there was no indication of
a crisis in finances in our city”
and that “the city’s financial
picture: is viewed with respect
by all investment houses and
bankers in Ontario.”

“Whether or- not there is a
crisis in taxation in the city is
determined by one’s financial
position,” the letter points out.
“To the average homeowner who
‘is faced with $2.50 and up in-
crease in taxes monthly, and
who is already snowed under by
the heavy load of federal and
provincial taxes, there is a crisis.
To the boards of directors of big
industry who contribute a rela-
tively small amount of munici-
pal taxes, there might not ap-

: &shed to the bone, there is still

mil Increase in the residential
Ml rate to 5.8560 mills.

$4en,cverage home assessed at

tease per year, The average
Tease in taxes over the last
€ years has been almost 5 mills
T year. All indications are, that
eid some new form of tax
Y is devised, this trend will
‘tinue and also increase.

1g business is not paying its

fg pear to be acrisis. | a
as Share of the tax burden,” the “If there is no financial crisis,
ae Claims. “The only equit-. why the difficulty to raise money

for the Civic Square develop-
ment?” the letter asks. “Why is
urban renewal in such a hopeless
‘mess? Why is there not enough
money for proper sewage treat-

ae System of taxation should

jpased on the ability to pay.
re i

Proach sents a democratic ap-

Nn the greatest good to the

a delay in carrying out the East-
West freeway development?”

At the recently convened Pro-
vincial-Municipal Conference it
became quite clear that: munici-
palities could expect no help
from the Conservative govern-
ment at Queen’s Park. “Go to
the Liberal government in Otta-
wa if you want more money,”
was the answer.

of One company—the Steel Co.
Sogcanada — realized profits of
Tp:200,000 after taxes in 1968.
'S Was above new investment.

Sgqulton’s budget for 1969 was

City business.”
T. Stewart recalls that when

» Tequesting a conference

. Canadian

ment plants? Why is there such’

SLE EE TE TTA

TIM BUCK’S NEW BOOK

Lenin helped guide CP of Canada.

By DON CURRIE

Tim Buck adds a new dimen-
sion to our understanding of the
beginnings, founding and deve-
lopment of the Communist Party
in his new book, Lenin and
Canada, His Influence on Cana-
dian Political Life. (Progress
Books, 487 Adelaide, Toronto,
paper back $1.95, cloth $5.95.)

From the opening lines of his
book Tim Buck shows how the
struggle for the Communist
Party is inseparable from the
struggle for Leninism. “The
Great October Revolution, car-
ried through to victory by the
Bolshevik Party under Lenin’s
leadership, inspired the found-

ing of the Canadian Party. In the

long struggle which followed to
achieve for our party a Leninist
character, and in a number of
crucial periods since then, the
teachings of Lenin and the ex-
ample of the Bolshevik Party
have been always both the main
inspiration and the guiding light
for the members who fought for
Leninism.”

The theme that runs through
the whole book, vividly illus-
trated by example after example,
is the idea that it is not enough
for workers to want revolution
and even to fight for it—a revo-
lutionary. must fight to master
Marxism-Leninism. And the path

- to mastery is through the fight

for its purity, for its application,
against all forms of opportun-

. ism.

In the opening chapter Tim
Buck discusses the period lead-
ing up to the October, Revolu-
tion when the anarcho-syndica-
list activists appeared to be the
most revolutionary force in the
labor movement.
«,. the world-be Marxists were
not equipped with _ sufficient
knowledge of Marxist science to

be able to convince our fellow:

workers that syndicalism was
not the answer.” After the Oc-
tober Revolution had produced
a wave of militant struggle this
weakness was even more pain-
ful: . . . without the benefit of
Lenin’s guidance, Canadian
workers turned literally in all
directions and became the vic-
tims of the fact in Canada there
had never been a_ purposeful
fight for Marxism such as Lenin
had waged.”

This “purposeful fight for
Marxism such as Lenin had
waged” unfolded in Canada in
the struggle to found a party of
a new type—a Leninist Party.
The founding of the party in
June 1, 1921 and its broadly
based public form later on in
February. 1922 was the result of
the enthusiastic battle for Lenin-
ism as opposed to the “political
nihilism of syndicalism and the
sectarian sterility of the Social-
ist Party of Canada and the So-
cialist Labor Party.”

No sooner had the Communist
Party been founded and the
theoretical obstacles of anarcho-
syndicalism overcome than the
embryo of a new struggle—this
time against Trotskyism, began
to mature. The conditions for

‘the growth of Trotskyism arose

out of the failure of the fledgling
party to understand Lenin’s em-
phasis on the... “fact that the
vital element in the fight for the
party is the uninterrupted and
undeviating struggle to streng-
then and temper its revolution-
ary soul — Marxism-Leninism.”

In the beginning the struggle

against Trotskyism was uneven

with the Leninist forces in a
minority in the leadership and

the membership not fully aware
of the life and death nature of
the struggle.

The turning point in the strug-
gle against Trotskyism in Can-
ada came as a result of the 7th
Plenum of the Executive Com-
mittee of the Communist Inter-
national where the question of
whether socialism could be built
in the Soviet Union, surrounded
as it was by hostile imperialist
states, was fully debated. Trot-
sky, Zinoviev and Kamenevy all
converged upon the opportunist
position that socialism could not
be built first in a single country.
Stalin, carrying forward Lenin’s
arguments, held that it was not
only possible but it was the only
Marxist alternative and showed
how it could be done. Tim Buck
and Mathew Popovich attended
the meeting and took a stand
with the CPSU and the Leninist
forces in the international move-
ment.

Buck describes the feeling of —

exhiliration at reading for the
first time Lenin’s view of the
new world opened up by the
October Revolution. Lenin said,
“There are now two worlds: the
‘old world of capitalism, that is
in a state of confusion but which
will never surrender voluntarily,
and the rising new world which
is still weak, but which will
grow for it is invincible.” (Vol.
33, p. 150)

. Upon their return home Buck
and Popovich forced the debate
into the open and routed the
Trotskyites and _ their
spokesman Maurice Spector.

Shortly after this, on the eve
of the 1929 depression, Jack
McDonald, - general secretary,
led another opportunist sally
around the theory of “Ameri-
can exceptionalism.”

“Even as he adopted the pose
of leader of a campaign to eli-
minate all traces of Trotskyism
from the party, more and more
members recognized that he was
utilizing exposure of petty-
bourgeois revolutionism as a
smokescreen for his own propa-
ganda of American exceptional-
ism.” ‘

The claim by McDonald that
U.S. monopoly-capitalism was so
powerful that it could control
the contradictions in the econo-
my and overcome and prevent
economic crisis was rejected by
the membership. Lenin’s thesis
that, “The forms, the sequence,
the picture of particular crisis
changed, but crisis remained an
inevitable component of the
capitalist system . . .” was fully
endorsed, Shortly thereafter Mc-
Donald resigned from the lead-
ership.

In explaining the Spector-Mc-
Donald period in the party Buck
points out: ‘“McDonald’s practice
of counterposing his conception
of ‘party unity’ to what he
claimed was ‘futile hair-splitting
over questions of theory,’ car-
ried the day for years, because
those of us who were opposed
to both McDonald’s opportunism
and Spector’s crypto-Troskyism
had failed to grasp the essential
content, what Lenin described
as ‘the practical and political
value of irreconcilable theoreti-
cal polemics’.”

The last two chapters are de-
voted to the role of Leninism in
the Canadian Party in gaining
a deeper understanding of the
nature of the Canadian capital-
ist state and its development to
state-monopoly capitalism.

At the time many in the Com-
munist Party believed Canada to
be a semi-colony of Great Bri-

chief -

tain, which in turn was being
challenged by American capital
for domination and control of
Canada. Out of this simplistic
theory arose the idea that Bri-
tain and the U.S. were on a col-
lision course out of which a civil
war would develop in Canada
leading to revolution and social-
ism.

A critical study of Lenin’s
classic, Imperialism, the Highest
Stage of Capitalism” initiated by
a group of Canadian students
studying at the Lenin School —
Leslie Morris, John Weir and
Sam Carr — administered what
Buck calls ‘an ideological kick
in the pants” to the party. The
study showed that by concen-
trating on the struggle for. in-

dependence from Britain was.

diverting the attention of the
working class away from the
real enemy, the monopoly capi-
talists and the monopoly-capi-
talist state. ~

The last chapter reveals the
powerful insight given by Lenin
in his study of Imperialism
which enabled the Canadian
Communists to understand the
post-war realities and. the
changed policy of the Canadian
monopoly-bourgeoisie. The Can-
adian monopoly-bourgeoisie was
an imperialist power dominated
by U.S. imperialism. Within this
contradiction it enriched itself
by collaborating willingly in sell-
ing out resources and integrat-
ing the economy with U.S. im-
perialism in the belief that war
with the socialist countries was
inevitable. The bourgeois critics
of this policy, James Coyne and
Walter Gordon, were ineffectual
due to their failure to fight U.S.
imperialism. The right-wing-so-
cial democrats went along with
the post-war policy of U.S.-Can-
adian integration, the cold-war
anti-communist hysteria, and
were the main obstacle to win-
ning mass united support of the
working people around the slo-
gan advanced by the Commun-
ists to “Keep Canada Indepen-
dent.”

Today the Communist position
is dramatically vindicated by
the emergence within the social
democratic party, the NDP, of
a group of left social-democrats
who are advancing proposals
much like those first advanced
by the Communists: as early as
1947, . :

Of these new forces Tim Buck
writes, “There is not yet a for-
mal united front of Communists
and left’ social democrats in
Canada. Such a development
will correspond to a substantial-
ly higher level of labor political
action than is general at the
present time. But the line of

action advocated in the conven- -

tion (the last NDP convention)
and supported by a third of the
delegates is one of the streams

Of action for peace and for Can-

adian Independence which, with
patient but consistent work,
will converge in struggles for
immediate demands. In such
struggles more and more politi-
cal activists will recognize that
Marxism-Leninism is our sole
guide to victory.”

Tim Buck’s book Lenin and
Canada will be an inspiration to
the Communists and all students
of Marxism. It is a must reading
for the young people just enter-
ing on the road of revolutionary
struggle and who must quickly
fill the gap in their understand-
ing of the continuity of the
struggle for Leninism in Canada.
Tim Buck has given us such a
book, alive with ideas and les-
sons—a real Leninist work.

+ «po PACIFIC TRIBUNE+-FRIDAY, MAY 22,,1970-4Page 5