A ete

Continued from page 5
structured. We cannot afford to leave any
stone unturned in our quest to decipher the
meaning of these events, if they are to serve
as a prelude to the reinvigoration of our
own socialist movement.

Socialists should no longer accept refer-
ences to Marx, Lenin or Gorbachev as suf-
ficient “proof” of anything substantive.
Only if their insights provide genuine clarifi-
cation of the tasks ahead do they merit our
adherence, and this must be proven anew
with regards to each practical question. Of
course, neither does this mean rejecting
their positions or their general outlook out
of hand. It simply means that we must re-
establish for ourselves what we mean when
we talk about Marxism, Leninism or what-
ever.

In this regard, it seems to me that Hewi-
son remains within the traditional approach
of the CPC, one that I would call dogmatic.
Two examples from his article should help
clarify what I mean.

First, in relation to socialist pluralism, he
argues that what took place in Eastern
Europe shows “that a departure from Len-
in’s thesis, on the indissoluble link between
the struggle for democracy being crucial
before, during, and after the revolution, has
taken place.” This is very much in the style
of argument that “‘if Lenin said it it must be
trues”

But more important still is that it implies
that there is nothing wrong with Lenin’s
approach to the struggle for democracy.
Now while it is impossible to debate this
question fully in a short article, I would
argue that there is ample evidence to suggest
that it is precisely on this question that some
of Lenin’s shortcomings are most evident.
Did he not argue repeatedly that the strug-
gle for democracy must be subordinated to
the struggle for socialism? How are we to
understand this in relation to the socialist
pluralism which Hewison now embraces?

Did Lenin not also totally reject parlia-
mentary democracy as merely a sham, to be
replaced by an entirely new form of demo-
cracy? I think a strong case can be made

that this attitude seriously underestimates
the extent to which the working class and
other popular forces have legitimately
struggled to infuse these institutions with
elements of democratic functioning that a
socialist society would want to preserve. We
must also be prepared to ask ourselves
whether the degeneration of the Soviets in
the USSR and elsewhere into bureaucratic
rubber stamps is not related in some impor-
tant ways to Lenin’s initial approaches to
democracy.

The second example concerns the func-
tioning of communist parties. Hewison
states: “Thus we need to conclude that the
organizational principles of the communist
party are not an impediment to the organi-
zation of the working class, and the
achievement and maintenance of socialism,
but the distorted and corrupt application of
those principles most certainly are.” The
gravity of the situation faced by Communist
parties across Eastern Europe suggests to
me that it may be some of the principles
themselves and not just their application
which need to be re-examined.

Hewison refers to Stalinist bureaucratiza-
tion as the origin of these “distortions.”
However, wasn’t the codification of the
rules of democratic centralism by Stalin
himself in 1924 the very basis of the organi-
zational structure of the Third International
parties, including the CPC? Never, to my
knowledge, has the CPC undertaken a re-
examination of these principles in order to
determine to what extent they may have

6 « Pacific Tribune, January 22, 1990

been contaminated by Stalinism. (1 would
be only too happy to be proven wrong on
this point, but let me add that the official
history of the CPC does not even mention
Stalin in this regard, let alone criticize him.)
So we are left wondering what to do with all

the “principles” enunciated at that point
such as the interdiction of factions, the abso-
lute subordination of lower bodies to higher
bodies and of the entire party to the central
committee. References to the “‘true’’, ‘““Len-
inist” principles of democratic centralism
cannot suffice.

Another equally important dimension to
this problem is raised by Hewison when he
addresses the question of criticism of frater-
nal parties by the CPC. He acknowledges
that there may have been a problem in the
CPC’s practice in this area and that, in prin-
ciple, when the future of international
socialism is at stake it is correct “to speak up
in a principled, objective and comradely
way.” But this hardly seems to me to do
justice to the scope of the problem of “tail-
ism” in the history of all Third International
CPs, and in particular the Canadian section.

A more comprehensive approach to this
question would seem to me to imply both a
reconsideration of the application of the
principle of the autonomy of each national

party as well as an historical examination of
the impact of this subordination of the CPC
to Moscow on the adoption of various con-
crete positions. A number spring to mind,
including, the “‘class vs class” orientation
following the sixth congress of the Interna-
tional in 1928, the shifts in attitude towards
the nature of World War II depending on
whether or not the USSR was actively
involved in the fighting, the denunciation of
Stalin in 1956 and the Soviet suppression of
the Hungarian uprising that year, or the
Prague Spring of 1968 and its invasion of
Afghanistan. There are also ideological atti-
tudes and debates which were carried over
from the Soviet Union to the international
arena, including the denunciation of
Trotsky, Tito and Mao, to name but three,
which would certainly merit re-evaluation.

The CP and the
Canadian Left

A period of rapid upheaval offers both
the anguish of uncerta nty and the potential
of renewal. Hewison recognizes that need to
respond to the shattering of illusions and
‘he consequent piercing of “smugness” in

other ways that with guilt and defensive-
ness. One could take some comfort, I sup-
pose, in the fact that the mistakes
committed here in Canada were part of a
larger picture of mistakes and deceptions
carried out throughout the socialist world
for over half a century. But this, of course,
simply begs the question, as Hewison says,
of “why did nearly 100 million communists
world-wide engage in the same self-
hypnosis for so long?”

There are not going to be any easy
answers to this question. To realize the
potential for renewal, a collective and colla-
borative effort by many people, inside and
outside the CPC, will be necessary. It will
have to be carried out in an atmosphere of
honest criticism and self-criticism, com-
pletely devoid of any pretensions to possess-
ing the truth or a superior method of
attaining it.

I fear that in his summary of the strengths
and weaknesses of his party, Hewison still
seems to be locked into traditional CPC
approaches. On the one hand he continues
to refer to the “law of development of Marx-
ist parties” which strongly implies that
existence of an absolute, universal truth in
this domain waiting to be applied relatively
unproblematically to our particular situa-

tion, and to which presumably he still ES

access.

Then at the same time that he stresses he
need for “a major overhaul” of the image of
socialism and the strategies for attaining it
(independently, he adds, of the situation in
Eastern Europe — a statement which, I
would note, tends to minimize the signifi-
cance of these events), he claims that the
CPC, to all intents and purposes, is the
party in the best position to lead this pro-
cess. Some of his remarks have the ring of
an attempt to rally the troops rather than a
serious examination of what conditions are
most likely to stimulate a genuine socialist
renewal in this country.

Shedding all traces of “past smugness”
would seem to me to imply accepting the
possibility that the CPC may not play the
leading role in the process of resuscitating
Canadian socialism, openly admitting it,
and being prepared to engage in a frank
exchange with a wide variety of people on
the left in order to come to grips with the
history of the CPC itself. Your history is not
yours alone. The evaluation of the extent
that the CPC has influenced Canadian
politics, and in particular that of the left,
should not be undertaken by the CPC in
isolation, but as part of a broader process of
debate and discussion designed to incorpo-
rate the lessons of all those interested in
fighting for fundamental social change in
this country.

Recent events strongly suggest that the
ideological disputes which so long charac-
terized our movement may not have been as
significant as they once seemed. It is high
time that a left which has been ravaged by
division among “Maoists,” “revisionists,”
“Trotskyists,” ‘“‘opportunists” or “Stali-
nists” undertake a common, critical
assessment of this entire heritage.

One way in which the Communist Party
could play a leading role would be to initiate
just such a process. Given the state of disor-
ganization of the rest of the left, the national
scope that could be provided to such an
initiative by the CPC could be decisive to its
chances for success. The barriers which
keep us at arms length are waiting to be
demolished, and could be torn asunder
provided that a true spirit of equality and
openness was there to do the job.

Howie Chodos,
Toronto