12th anniversary of the RCP: Let’s break the ceilings of the past!

Opening speech given on the occasion of the 12th anniversary of the RCP

Comrades! We are gathered here tonight to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the Revolutionary Communist Party: 12 years of countercurrent struggle to build a true Marxist-Leninist-Maoist vanguard party, 12 years of struggle to make the cause of the world proletariat triumph, 12 years of revolutionary action to prepare for the outbreak of the People’s War here in Canada!

We are gathered here because we believe that despite the setbacks and backlashes, the struggle for communism must still live! And you are proof that it is alive and well! Tonight, in this room, there are the most determined activists in the country, authentic volunteers of socialist revolution! Tonight, the vanguard of the Canadian proletariat is gathered!

Our party is going through a period of reconstruction, and this is only possible thanks to your commitment. It is by working hard together every week to accomplish the tasks necessary to rebuild our movement that we ensure the continuity of the revolutionary experience in Canada. Without you, years would be lost, knowledge would be forgotten, and human lives would be crushed by capital without the hope of liberation.

Not long ago, we split up with people who turned out to be revolution gravediggers infiltrating our movement. We refused to leave our party in the hands of opportunists and relaunched it on a truly communist basis. We have lost some of our previous gains: activists, territory. But we have gained something of much greater value: the real experience of a line struggle, the experience of the political struggle that has emerged within Canadian Maoism. We must cherish this experience. Armed with the political clarifications that the struggle made possible, we are fervently rebuilding Canada’s revolutionary headquarters, multiplying initiatives against the bourgeoisie! We are constantly on the offensive and we try to innovate on all levels! We are forging ourselves in the political struggle. We take the blows, we resist attacks, we retaliate against the enemy. We are inflexible. We stand in solidarity with our Party, our strength for the revolution, and we will rebuild it from coast to coast!

A first phase of theoretical clarifications has been completed. We have regained control of our propaganda. We base our unity on a common and increasingly refined understanding of the four objective forms of revolutionary action. We emphasize the need to build a complete communist party, the development of Lenin’s centralized vanguard party that the preparation of the Protracted People’s War requires. We are offensively defending materialism against the new idealism of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals. We are breathing deeply into the stale air of post-modernism that too many activists breathe. We make no concessions to the anti-communist attacks that are everywhere!

However, the concrete struggle to turn our revolutionary theory into a material force has only just begun. Mobilizing the working class for socialist revolution is in our time a long-term task requiring great diligence and patience. We are methodically managing our movement towards the factories. Our field work in industrial zones is alive and well. We are the only ones to deploy ourselves there in order to germinate the struggle for power, the one that will truly free workers from the chains of exploitation.

We are increasingly attracting the hatred of petty-bourgeois activists and student forces because of our assumed defense of proletarian perspectives and the relentless ideological struggle we have begun. The attacks of our enemies have intensified and this is a good sign: it shows that we represent the rising current, the force that pulls the spontaneous movement forward, out of the swamp in which all anti-capitalist and far-left militants are wading.

The historical period in which we are living is a singular one: it presents its share of challenges and makes the deployment of a communist party difficult. We must convince that the fight is worth it. Certainly, the experience of our predecessors has paved the way. This experience is talking to us. We embrace it and grab it. But today, in this country, everything has to be put in place again. Fortunately, we are not advancing in the dark. We have taken up the common thread of our movement, the international communist movement. We are guided by science. We have the best combat arsenal available. The revolution, we can master it and become experts in it!

Comrades, we are engaged in a process that is well underway, stronger and more united than ever!

Comrades, we will intensify the struggle! And we’re going to climb the historic levels!

Comrades, together we will break the ceilings of the past!