ye
The extensive fraud in Guyana’s Dec. 15 vote which
returned the People’s National Congress of Prime Minis-
ter Forbes Burnham to power has been condemned
widely. The Central Executive Committee of the Com-
munist Party of Canada commented on the election in a

Jan. 6 press statement and its signifiicance for the libera-
tion struggle underway in Latin America:
* * te

The recently held election in Guyana was nothing but
a fraud from beginning to end.

The People’s Progressive Party and other democratic
forces strove to compel the PNC regime to agree to an
impartial Election Committee which would have the au-
thority to compile a new voters’ list and be in charge of
the election. The PPP also demanded that the overseas
eal vote be abolished. These demands were de-
nied. ene

An International Team of Observers headed by Lord

CPC CONDEMNS RIGGED VOTE

ction’ paves way to reaction

Avebury and including two Canadians strove by their
presence to ensure an honest election. The Burnham
government however took measures to restrict their
movements, even arresting Lord Avebury.

The outcome of the so-called free elections was thus
predetermined. A policy of oppression and exploitation,
of corruption, fraud, assassination led to a rigged elec-
tion and a “‘majority’’ government which does not repre-
sent the majority.

This fraudulent election cannot be separated from the
efforts of the reactionary forces of U.S. imperialism to
reverse the process of change shaping up in the Carib-
bean, whether in the people’s victories in Nicaragua and
Grenada or the liberation and democratic struggles in El
Salvador and Jamaica, and fasten multinational control
over that region.

Canada should speak up against this blatant steal per-
petrated on the Guyanese people. The Canadian

government should require that foreign nationals resid-
ing in Canada and desiring to participate in their native
country’s elections must return to do so. The working
class and democratic movement must extend the hand of
solidarity to the PPP which is working for the achieve-
ment of a national patriotic front government open to all
democratic and left forces.

To maintain its weakening position the Burnham
government may use violence against its opponents as in
fact it did during the election. Canadian democratic opin-
ion must help stay its hand. :

The Communist Party of Canada extends its hand of
solidarity to the PPP, its members and to all anti-
imperialist and democratic forces in Guyana. We are
sure the elections are not the end but the beginning of a
new stage of struggle whose outcome will be the defeat of
U.S. imperialism and its agents in Guyana as in the entire
Caribbean region.

were arrested New Year’s day at the Penta-
gon during a peace demonstration.
About 200 demonstrators had been circl-
ing the massive complex for the past week
- protesting U.S. nuclear weapons and the
threat of an atomic war. They say they are
members of the ‘‘Atlantic Life Communi-
ty’’ organization. :
; Some of the demonstrators had red dye
on their faces to simulate casualities in a
Ee auelear conflict...

to push their way through the protesters in
and out of the building.

-~ The Alexandria, Va., Magistrates Office
said about 30 persons had been arrested by

“early morning for ‘damaging government

_ property’’ or causing an obstructio

_ One demonstrator told a reporter.

> Generals, admirals and lower ranks had..

mn.
“There will be nuclear war by 1985 un- —
less the United States discards its bombs,”

PHOTO — TASS

On New Year’s Day we happened,
quite by chance, to hear the New Year
Messages of the Governor-General (a
Social Democrat), the Prime Minister. (a
Liberal) and the Premier of Ontario (a
Conservative). We mention this not to
examine in detail the contents of the var-
ious messages, but to comment on the
theme common to all.

* * *

The theme that ran like a thread
through the three messages was that
these spokesmen, without exception,
Presumed to speak on behalf of the
People as a whole. In other words, these
representatives of the state and govern-
Ment in their philosophical approach to
the serious economic, social and political
problems facing Canada and the world,
blamed the people as a whole for creating
these problems, and by this token shar-
ed responsibility for finding a way out
through common sacrifice of living and
Social standards.

But the people as a whole had nothing
to do with creating these problems. It
was the system we live under which
Created them. It did so under the direc-
tion of the ruling monopoly capitalists
whose policies, geared to the capitalist
principle of maximum profit, are upheld
by the government and state institutions
of our land.

* * *
Ever since Confederation was estab-

Marxism-Leninism in Today’s World

lished under the British North America
Act 113 years ago the destiny of Canada
has been in the hands of the Canadian
capitalist class. The governments, parli-
aments, legislatures and municipal coun-
cils have always been under the control
of the capitalists as a class. That, of

course, did not come about by chance. It -

arose out of the historical conditions that
existed when Canada came into being as
a self-governing colony within the British
Empire. :

The colonization of Canada by the
French and British empire builders of
those times coincided historically with
the rise of European capitalism. It was a
period when the chartered burghers of
the earliest towns were revolting against
the European feudal system. And it was
from these burgeses the first elements of
the bourgeoisie (capitalists) emerged.

The fathers of scientific socialism,

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, put it
this way in the Communist Manifesto
first published in 1848: ©

“The discovery of America, the
rounding of the Cape, opened up new
ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The

East-Indian and Chinese markets, the —

colonization of America, trade with the
colonies, the increase. in the means of
exchange and in commodities generally,

gave to commerce, to navigation, to in-

dustry, an impulse never before known,

and thereby, to the revolutionary ele-

ment in the tottering feudal society, a
rapid development.

‘‘Meantime the markets kept ever
growing, the-demand ever rising. Even

-manufacture (simple manufacture, A.D.)

no longer sufficed. Thereupon steam and
machinery revolutionized industrial pro-
duction. The place of manufacture was
taken by the giant, modern industry, the
place of the industrial middle class by
industrial millionaires, the leaders of
whole industrial armies, the modern
bourgeois (capitalist class, A.D.).””
* * *

These were the conditions under
which capitalism came to Canada. It
came with a mixture of feudal customs,
traditions and production relations. But
the main trend was the vigorous drive
toward capitalist production relations,
the creation of a Canadian capitalist class
and the establishment of the capitalist
economic, social and ideological system.
In short, capitalism was transplanted,
mainly from Great Britain, into Canada.

Imagine if you can the tremendous.

wealth the Canadian capitalists, as a
class, received as stolen goods, robbed
from the Indian people by the early
French and British colonizers. Without
cost, that class got a sub-continent fan-

_ Essence of class consciousness

tastically rich with its fertile valleys, its
virgin plains, forests, waterways, min-
eral and oil deposits. The burgeoning
Canadian capitalists got, also at little or
no cost, the labor, training,~ skills and
talents of workers from other lands
round the world to develop the rich and
varied resources of the new land, to build
the railroads, industries, cities and towns
of this new wide-spread country, to clear
the forests and break the land to turn the
prairies and valleys into the rich farm-
lands of today.

Imagine also if you can, the extremely
harsh conditions the early settlers and
immigrants labored under to develop and
build a modem capitalist state in this new
land. And for what purpose? To enrich
the new owners of the land — the ban-
kers, industrialists, the speculators and
developers — the buccaneers of finance
and industry.

* ok bo

The Canadian capitalists as a class in-
herited also from European capitalism an
ideology that declared it was the god-
given right of their class to rule over this
new land — that the capitalist class is the
only class fit to rule under all conditions
and in all situations. This concept is the
very essence of capitalist class
consciousness, and the basis upon which
the spokesmen of the capitalist class pre-
sume to speak for all the people.

N.B. More next week.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JAN. 16, 1981—Page 9

Ct