12th anniversary of the Revolutionary Communist Party
Political gathering on January 28 with a view to 8 March and May Day 2019
January 28th will mark the 12th anniversary of the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP). On this occasion, the Party will hold a major political gathering to which are invited all its supporters and all those who wish to join the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the power of the Canadian bourgeoisie and put an end to capitalism. The event will be held at Maison Norman Bethune in Montreal. On this occasion, the Party will present an assessment of the last year of struggle and the progress made in rebuilding the proletarian revolutionary camp in Canada. The gathering will also – and above all – serve to politically prepare the activists of our movement for the important battles to come in the coming months.
Last year, on the occasion of our Party’s 11th anniversary, we launched a major campaign around May Day 2019 under the slogan “Let us fight for socialism and our demands”. This offensive aimed to deploy an intense propaganda and agitation effort towards the proletarian masses in general and the working class in particular, in order to propagate the idea that socialism – as a transition to communism – is the only way to respond to all the just demands of the people and that the struggle to establish it still constitutes, in our time, the driving force for social development. The campaign was to gather forces and form a strong group of revolutionary workers to take powerful action against the Canadian bourgeoisie on May 1st, 2019 to politically commemorate the centenary of the heroic Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. This is the last phase of this long campaign that we are about to embark on with vigour and determination after our Party’s anniversary. This sequence of struggle will be marked by the Revolutionary March 8 demonstration for International Working Women’s Day in Montreal and will culminate, as planned, with a powerful demonstration on May 1st in Golden Square Mile, the Montreal financial centre of the Canadian imperialist bourgeoisie. We call on all workers who will be able to do so to converge on these two demonstrations – particularly on May 1st – to express in action their desire to bring about a new world, free from capitalist exploitation. In order to take part in the preparations for these events and to be part of our forces organised in the street, be present at our political gathering on 28 January!
A year full of revolutionary initiatives
Many significant events have taken place since the start of our long-term campaign around May Day 2019. Over the past year, we have continued to rebuild our Party by increasing political initiatives against the bourgeoisie and by continuing to lead our relentless fight against opportunism in the Canadian Maoist movement.
First, we set up and began to develop our new propaganda body, ISKRA, a new electronic newspaper named after Lenin and the Bolsheviks who, at the beginning of the last century, launched a major propaganda initiative, under the slogan of merging scientific socialism and the workers movement, in order to win the victory against the supporters of economism – the right-wing movement that at the time was gangrening the social democratic movement in Russia. The Bolsheviks effectively won this propaganda victory thanks to Lenin’s ISKRA. We intend to pay tribute to them by winning the victory against the right-wing conceptions that today undermine the contemporary revolutionary movement in Canada and in other imperialist countries, as was happening at the beginning of the last century in Europe. One year after its creation, ISKRA is still in its early stages of development. It is up to us to ensure that the newspaper continues to grow and be shaped by the class struggle. Communist supporters and partisans, revolutionary workers, proletarians in struggle: send your letters to the ISKRA editorial board!
Our propaganda offensive was also marked by the publication, in July, of the 10th issue of our theoretical journal Arsenal. In this issue – the first to come out since our split with the opportunists of the Canadian Maoist movement in 2017 – we have developed the fundamental notions of objective forms of revolutionary action as well as of complete communist party, in addition to deepening our criticism of the right-wing conceptions defended by the clique at the head of the false PCR-RCP, notably those contained in Arsenal Number 9, a revisionist document that our Party has openly and definitively rejected. Thus, we continued the controversy, we continued to fight the bourgeois line within our movement and we continued to confront its defenders and propagators. Let them take it for granted: we will continue to do so until they are completely and definitively crushed!
On March 8, for the first time since the founding of our Party, we organized and led a fully autonomous demonstration for International Working Women’s Day. Nearly 100 people, including many immigrant workers and proletarians, answered the call and took to the streets of downtown Montreal waving the red flag under our revolutionary watchwords. The practical direction of the event was carried out by an operating group composed of women. Thus, on March 8, we recalled with our slogans, our speeches, our flags and our red banners, the proletarian, communist origin of this day for too long stolen by the bourgeoisie. We reaffirmed in the action that working class women form an indispensable component of the proletarian movement, that they must play a leading role and be at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle.
On May 1st, a major clash took place in Montreal’s bourgeoisie’s financial district – the area we call the Golden Square Mile, which we storm every year on International Workers’ Day. This was the first time since 2015 (the year we established the tradition of attacking the Golden Square Mile on May Day) that the demonstration in the city centre was organized and led entirely by our Party, against the backdrop of petty-bourgeois “anti-capitalist” forces that rejected the prospect of a combative, unified and class-struggle demonstration. In itself, this fact testifies to a progress and constitutes a victory for the revolutionary movement: it testifies to the growing capacity of our Party to mobilize on its own foundations, while at the same time revealing more clearly than ever the abandonment of the working class and forms of proletarian struggle by the rest of the far-left. Nearly 200 demonstrators defied the impressive police deployment commanded by the bourgeoisie and took to the streets, at the call of our Party. The demonstration ended with a brief, but harsh charge against riot police who blocked the passage of the contingent, showing once again that Maoist revolutionaries, unlike opportunists and reformists, are not content to chat and are willing to pay with their person to advance the class struggle. The extent of the repression that the bourgeoisie has deployed this year testifies to its fear of seeing a demonstration organized by communists gain in intensity and power every year. It is clear that the existence of these events disrupts the bourgeois order and constitutes a fact of great importance in the class struggle in the country.
Last August, we launched an intense campaign to boycott bourgeois elections in Quebec. Thousands of posters were posted, thousands of newspapers and leaflets were distributed, election materials were sabotaged, public unrest took place (banner deployments, small demonstrations in proletarian and industrial neighbourhoods), events bringing together bourgeois candidates were disrupted, public conferences on the meaning of the boycott were given in Montreal and Quebec City and a visibility campaign was held in Trois-Rivières. In total, our forces deployed in about ten cities across the province to spread the slogan of boycotting elections and fighting for workers’ power. The campaign culminated in a demonstration in downtown Montreal, during which an election sign fire was lit in the middle of the street, attracting the attention of our class enemies. As we said in the speech at the beginning of the October 1st demonstration: what we have achieved is an active, militant, open and propagandist boycott!
Another sequence of major battles is on the horizon
On March 8, we will organize, for the second consecutive year, a revolutionary demonstration in downtown Montreal to mark International Working Women’s Day. This year, we will give this day a strong internationalist character, bringing to the fore the unity of the workers, peasants and all women of the people who are courageously taking part, in all countries of the world, in the fight against exploitation and imperialist oppression. Our slogan will be: “All over the world, exploited women stand up and fight!” In the weeks following our Party’s anniversary, our mobilization and agitation efforts will be directed in particular towards the female proletariat – to factories with a high concentration of female workers, to health and childcare workers, to retail and restaurant workers, to housewives, to welfare recipients, in short, wherever women suffering capitalist exploitation are found. We will challenge all the women of the proletariat who wish to fight for a better society and lead them, alongside their class brothers, in the general struggle against Capital – the same struggle in which their fighting sisters take part who, all over the world, face the reaction to bring down the old world. We aim to organize a large contingent of women to lead the March 8 demonstration. We therefore call on all workers, proletarians, progressive students and activists who wish to join the struggle and participate in the preparations for the demonstration to come to our political gathering on January 28!
On May 1st, we will, for the fifth year in a row, force the bourgeoisie to defend its Montreal economic centre by training the masses to storm it and target capitalist interests. This year, as mentioned above, we will use International Workers’ Day to commemorate politically, that is, with powerful action against the exploiting class, the centenary of the heroic Winnipeg strike of 1919, one of the most historic battles to advance the consciousness and organization of the working class in Canada. We will make a powerful demonstration of forces in order to positively challenge the working masses of the country and drag them into the struggle against the ruling class. We call on workers, proletarians in industry, commerce and services as well as activists wishing to join the people’s camp to come in large numbers to our political gathering on January 28 to participate in the preparation of the May 1 demonstration. Join forces with the revolutionary movement led by the PCR!
Let us culminate our campaign for socialism and our demands! Forward to May 1st, 2019 and the political commemoration of the glorious Winnipeg strike of 1919! Let us continue to make progress in the reconstruction of the revolution camp! Long live the Revolutionary Communist Party!