Letters/Commentary

The following contribution concerns
some of the major issues facing the Com-
munist Party as it approaches its 28th con-

the party in Manitoba.
By FRANK GOLDSPINK

The draft resolution, The Communist
Party and a New Decade, presents a per-
spective or set of notions for stimulating
debate on the goals of renewal or transfor-

the key principles on which we must act to
achieve those goals.

Without falling into the trap of either
breast-beating or self- flagellation, the res-
olution makes it clear that our new expres-
sions of principle must stem from our solid
comprehension — from a Canadian view-
point — of past distortions, mistakes and
theoretical shortcomings.

The resolution also expresses the con-
fidence we, the party and members, should

qualitative change which test the limits of
this first stage of renewal. There must be a
determination to overcome any tendency
of settling for a “new face” on “old think-
ing.”

We must face squarely the fact that
those characteristics of our’s which need
transforming or shedding are a product of
our current (collective) composition.

Ibelieve that the main outcome of party

vention in October. The author is leader of

mation, and the new expressions needed of

have in ourselves to achieve the type of

Commentary

building over the short and medium terms
must be a changed composition to guaran-
tee that subsequent stages of renewal take
place.

The contradiction we grapple with in
this case, and try to turn the advantage of
the revolutionary movement, is that we
who are part of the problems are also 100
per cent responsible for deciding and
launching the first steps of the solutions.

While we can’t and won’t give up this
responsibility and challenge, there is a gen-
uine commitment that forces now outside
the party will have some role and influence
right from the beginning.

We are undertaking change to further
the cause of all socialist and people’s
movements activists — against the neo-
conservative assault and capitalism, and
for people’s power and a vision of a soc-
ialist Canada — and to further that cause
without prejudice. Paragraph 63 of the
draft resolution states: “Those socialists
who embrace our immediate goal of trans-
forming our party into a new party of soc-
ialism in Canada are welcome to join in
this project, and we will take all necessary

steps to facilitate their meaningful inclu-
sion in the life of the party.”

We’re aiming to eliminate features
which encourage negative “vanguardist”
practices. At the same time, we want to
beat the rap that our valued contributions
to the fightback and the cause of socialism
are only the work of individual Commu-
nists. Of course, the system’s propaganda
machine promotes both views in its efforts
to isolate us, but they are also generated
and practised in the party.

Because of our small size, to influence
masses of people, we rely heavily on the
“filter” of the immediate, larger circle of
non-party activists and socialists. Left
unity is the lynch pin, but it seems to me
we have created obstacles for ourselves.

We refer often to the concept that there
should be no “wall” between the Com-
munist Party and the people’s movements,
labour and the New Democratic Party. But
in my experience there are combined ten-
dencies to guard both against the party
being “diluted” by social democratic or
reformist tendencies and against non-party
people being contaminated by too-close-a-
public connection to the Communist Party

We must change composition of CP

and its apparent “front groups” and limit-
ing their working contact with the party to
our activists as individuals.

Part of the results are, on one hand, a
narrowly-presented profile of the party
collective, and on the other, weaknesses of
collectivity and accountability between the
party and individual members.

A whole range of non-party activists is
intimidated or put off by the seeming
demands and rigidity of the first, while
often at the same time feeling they “get
what they need” in the way of valued
ideological and tactical development from
individuals.

Although neither of these combined
tendencies can be ignored, the most serious
difficulties lie with the first, which stifles
initiative and creativity. By paying closest
attention to this, we will begin to take steps
which correct both imbalances.

The draft resolution emphasizes the
necessity that the key principles are
focused ona bare bones package so that we
can concentrate our energies in the renewal
process. We should focus on how to ex-
press and judge ourselves on fullest dem-
ocracy, diversity of views and decentral-
ization — which mean new considerations
for unity in action, collectivity, account-
ability and criticism and self-criticism —
and on the concepts of people’s power,
national rights and internationalism.

Bey

es

+ Letters

~ Smith violated AG standards

To date Bill Vander Zalm has refused to
apologize to the people of B.C. for the ac-
tions of his disgraced former Attorney
General, Bud Smith.

Why can’t the premier admit Bud Smith
was wrong to meddle in the prosecution of
his friend and Socred colleague Bill Reid?
Does the premier not appreciate the unique
role of the Attomey General — a role that
requires him to be independent and impar-
tial? Does Premier Vander Zalm not believe
that our judicial system must be free of
political interference?

Rather than criticize Smith, the premier
chose to focus on the way the tapes were
released and their consequential effect on

Smith’s family. In so doing, Vander Zale:
conveniently ignores two facts. First, con-
trary to his assertions, the tapes were turned
over to the RCMP. In fact, I contacted the
deputy attorney general before rising in the
legislature. Second, the premier ignores the
fact that New Democrats did not release any
of the tapes dealing with Smith’s apparent
involvement with a reporter. That material
was released by an unidentified source
through the media.

Worse still, Vander Zalm fails to recog-
nize that all MLAs have a duty to report any
wrongdoing by the Attorney General to the
legislature. The laws of Parliament demand
that an Attorney General not tamper with the

administration of Ailstibe. I can understand
why the premier would prefer not to hear of
a wrongdoing by one of his ministers, but
surely the public should be informed of such
improprieties.

Bud Smith not only violated the ethical
standards we demand of our Attorney Gen-
eral, he did something much worse by vio-
lating the public’s trust in an impartial judi-
cial system. It’s high time the premier
publicly stated that such actions are unac-
ceptable, and demonstrated for once that he
is able to distinguish between right from
wrong.

Moe Sihota, MLA
Esquimalt-Port Renfrew

What’s so wrong with Marxism-Leninism?

Fred Wilson asserts that Marxism-
Leninism has no relevance to Canada ("CP
opens debate on political identity," Tribune,
July 2) but no where does he explain why
this is so, or what he would prefer.

Instead, he makes three points, none of
which deals with the theory itself, or with
Canada.

The first “proof” is that the term evolved
during the Stalin period (chronologically it
would hardly have been otherwise), so it is
necessarily wrong. This is like the pigs in
Animal Farm, Stalinist to the core, mind-
lessly chanting “Stalin bad, Gorbachev (or
whoever) good.”

The second “proof” is that not all -the

specific expectations of earlier communists
have been realized. So what? No one ex-
pects a biologist or physicist to reject science
if new evidence refutes a particular hypo-
thesis.

All revolutions tend to be over-confident.
The French expected a new rational man
after 1789. Their successors don’t now reject
liberalism or capitalism.

Wilson’s third point is of course Eastern
Europe, but which of the events there were
caused by errors of Marx or Lenin.

I find it unacceptable that Wilson endor-
ses the “many (other) Marxist critiques” to
that of the party he represents. These: criti-
ques, whether anarchist, Maoist, Trotskyist,

or whatever, have been around as long as the
comrade.

There is a tendency, exemplified by Boris
Yeltsin, to attack Stalin in order to then
attack Lenin, and then Marx himself. Al-
though the “dictatorship of the proletariat”
was, as he says, Marx’s formulation, Wilson
finds it unacceptable because of Stalin’s use
of the phrase.

But we’re not living in the USSR. This
isn’t 1930.

So please explain why we in Canada now
need to reject Marxism-Leninism.

Jeremy Agar,
Toronto

End so-called
‘oil crisis’

Mulroney’s cabinet is so eager to
please its American masters they
committed Canada to the naval block-
ade of Iraq without waiting for UN
sanction. Future prospects are a bitter
ground war against a country that
fields a peacetime army of one million
men, or supporting an alliance that
uses nuclear weapons,

Taking the world’s irreplaceable
endowment of fossil fuels built up by
natural processes over 400 million
years and blithely using them all up in
a matter of a few centuries never did
make any sense. Accelerating the car-
bon cycle in this way will destabilize
the planetary climatic system which
strikes at the heart of global political
stability: the food supplies. A civiliza-
tion which continues to base its tre-
mendous expansion on diminishing
supplies of an energy source like this
is absolutely set on course for disaster.

Canadians will be dying to defend
the ability of Western civilization to
use oil to commit suicide.

In Canada we should devote the
kind of effort the Americans will find
themselves involved with if they
decide on a ground war with Iraq, on
finding a way to a new system of
relationships that requires dramatical-
ly fewer resources to sustain us. This
is necessary now for the survival of
the human race.

David Lewis
Crescent Valley, B.C.

Pacific Tribune, August 27, 1990 « 5