Reform and Class Struggle

Although reformist and social democrat,
Communists in Venezuela support Nicolas Maduro

By Sam Hammond

This piece was written by Sam Hammond, former Labour secretary of the Communist Party of Canada in 2016. Although some examples are dated (for example, references are made to the Harper Tories) or very specific to Ontario Labour movement, they are still useful in understanding the relation between reform and revolution from a concrete perspective. A lot of the references to business unionism also apply to the student movement and are, as such, a good starting point for a reflexion on how to strengthen the student movement on the basis of unity, militancy and struggle. 
Communists are generally the most determined fighters for reforms, because they know only an organized and combative working class can ever push beyond reforms. Liberals and many social democrats want to “balance” things.

Organisation, politics and theory

By Adrien Welsh 

Can one be a good organiser without understanding theoretical elements of Marxism-Leninism, and vice-versa? This is an interesting question that touches different topics. In other words, the question refers to consider what is a political cadre or, to use more contemporary words, a political organiser in the way we, communists, understand it and this, no matter what their responsibility is.

Can we organise a club without knowing the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism? Can we be a good unionist, a good student leader without having read What is to be done or any other classic? Or, to the opposite, can we have read all classics without having recruited one person to the organisation and identify as a « cadre »? Can we identify as a « communist theorist » without having distributed one leaflet only once? Or can we be a revolutionary simply because of vibrant speeches without being so vibrant when it comes to send an e-mail or to achieve administrative tasks?

Why remain a communist?

By Peter Miller 

We often are asked what made us become communists, but I think the more interesting question we should ask is why we remain communists? Becoming a communist is not as hard as remaining one, and the latter question is more critical to our struggle against imperialism and for socialism.

I joined the Young Communist League of Canada as a left social democrat involved in campaigns for free education. I realized that the Young Communist League on my campus was the most organized, and I wanted to become a member to have more support in my work in the student movement. As often expressed by fellow activists, the communists work the hardest in the union movement, and this is true in the student movement as well.

The Dialectical Progression of History

Kurt Biray

History is accumulative. Our history is the most pivotal determinant of our future.  In other words, what happens now is directly interconnected to what will occur in the near and long-term future. The rhetorical concepts of “fate” and “destiny” are simply non-existent in a world that is governed by the principles of science. This applies to the natural sciences but also characterizes the social sciences as the dynamics of political and economic systems throughout the globe are highly dependent on history itself. 

History is integral for understanding our increasingly intricate society. It lays the foundation for explaining certain trends and events that we witness throughout our lives and therefore, can be fully utilized to predict and shape our own future and the future of our planet. When speaking of sociological disturbances and distributions of wealth or even modern-day political and economic systems, history plays an essential role in explaining humanity's societal and economic development and progress.

YCL-LJC launches convention discussion with Toronto meeting

The Young Communist League of Canada launched its 26th Central Convention discussion with  special series of workshops held in Toronto this past month. The meeting marked the public release of the main political report and call to the YCL-LJC Convention, which is rallying behind the slogan "with unity and militancy, the youth will strengthen the fightback!" and was attended by activists from across southern Ontario and Quebec.

Rebel Youth magazine recently sat down with Johan Boyden,  General Secretary of the YCL-LJC, to talk about the YCL's convention.

So when and where is the convention taking place?

It is at the University of Toronto in three months from now, May 23-25th, and is expected to bring together delegates from across the country and especially Quebec and Ontario. Non-members are welcome to come and check it out, and you can read the documents on our website and the Rebel Youth blog.

More: Read the documents here

Your documents say the convention comes together at an important time for youth. Isn't this just another tired phrase of the left?

Not at all! What we are saying in the documents is that there is a lot at stake for young people and need for a more active, visible and coordinated fight back of youth.  With the economic crisis and the growing threat of war, we won't stay in the same place. Either our future is ripped from the current generation by the capitalists and we are thrust further -- much further than our parents -- into poverty, debt, insecurity, an increasingly dangerous world of imperialist war, and ecological catastrophe.  Or we push back.

Part 4 of 4: Canada -- a country of many nations

Taken from Canada's Future is Socialism, The programme of the CPC.

In this excerpt:

• National minorities;
• Immigrant and migrant communities, immigration;
• Problems with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
• For a new constitution;
• The struggle for socialism and the national question

National Minorities

Within each nation, there are national minorities whose national homeland is within the borders of another nation within Canada.

Francophone minorities living in English-speaking Canada, Anglophone minorities living in Quebec, and Aboriginal peoples and Acadians living away from their national homes are all national minorities with the right to educate their children and receive state supported services in their own languages, wherever numbers warrant.

Immigrant and migrant communities, immigration

With the exception of the Aboriginal peoples, Canada is a country of immigrants, old and new. Comprised of hundreds of diverse ethnic groups, who will eventually merge with French-speaking Quebec or English-speaking Canada, these ethnic groups have the right to preserve their language and heritage and to pass it on to succeeding generations through state-supported language and cultural programs, and through state-supported cultural and community activities.

The Communist Party recognizes that this two-sided process of merging and preserving language, culture and heritage, is of long duration, influencing and enriching Canadian culture as a whole.

Part 3 of 4: Canada -- a country of many nations

Taken from Canada's Future is Socialism, The programme of the CPC.

In this excerpt:

• The Metis nation;
• Aboriginal peoples;
• The policy of genocide;
• Acute poverty and oppression;
• For immediate achievement of national rights

The Metis nation

The Metis nation emerged in the period of merchant capitalism in the 18th century based on the fur trade and was mainly situated along the rivers flowing into Hudson Bay. The assertion of national rights by the Metis in the rebellions of 1869-70 and 1885 was brutally crushed by the dominant English-speaking ruling class, who were backed by the expansionary industrial capitalism of Ontario and Quebec.

Nevertheless, the resistance of the Metis led to the establishment of the province of Manitoba and helped keep alive the spirit of resistance against all national privileges in Canada today.

Aboriginal peoples

The Aboriginal peoples had been in Canada for thousands of years when the first white settlers arrived. Prior to European settlement, the social organization of many Aboriginal communities was progressing – depending on the development of the productive capacities of each community – from smaller, dispersed and relatively isolated tribes into more complex, organized and technologically advanced societies.

Part 2 of 4: Canada -- a country of many nations

Taken from Canada's Future is Socialism, The programme of the CPC.

The 2012 Quebec Student Strike

In this excerpt:

• Quebec's status as a nation;
• The way forward;
• Flaws of the BNA act continued;
• The Acadian people

Quebec's status as a nation

The sharpest expression of the constitutional crisis relates to Quebec’s national status and the failure of the Canadian state to recognize Quebec’s right to national self-determination, up to and including secession.

This non-recognition of Quebec’s rights is itself an expression of the historic national oppression of Quebec – its political, economic and social oppression – since the British conquest of New France in 1763.

This national oppression has in turn aroused national indignation among the Quebec people, and spawned bourgeois and petty-bourgeois-led nationalist and separatist movements there.

Part 1 of 4: Canada -- a country of many nations

Taken from Canada's Future is Socialism, The programme of the CPC.

The Big Daddy's of confederation

In this excerpt:

• A definition of a nation;
• A proposal for a new constitution 

A definition of a nation

Canada includes small and large nations, each of which is an historically-constituted community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and national consciousness manifested in a common culture.

Nations come into existence and pass out of existence, by forcible and peaceful historical processes, or a combination of both. It is a dynamic process in which, in each case, the path of development into nationhood is specific and different.

As a result, the struggle for a democratic solution to the national question requires an understanding and respect for these objective differences.

Amongst the smaller nations in Canada are groups of Aboriginal peoples who are exercising their right to sovereignty with the demand for autonomy and self-government. Amongst these are the Northern Cree in Quebec, and the newly created territory of Nunavut, the Nisga’a on the west coast, and others. The Acadians in the Maritimes also constitute a smaller nation in Canada. The two largest nations are English-speaking Canada and Quebec.

Motion as the Mode of Existence of Matter

By Vassily Krapivin
What is Dialectical Materialism

A knowledge of the universal forms of the existence of matter is of great importance for a scientific understanding of the world, and motion is one of these major forms. "There is nothing in the world but matter in motion,” Lenin wrote.

Any objects we look at atoms, molecules, living organisms, the surface of the Earth, planets, stars, galaxies, and so on are in a state of constant motion and change. So, motion is universal.

"Motion is the made of existence of matter... there is no matter without motion, nor could there ever have been,” Engels wrote.

But the universality of motion and change in the world does not rule out elements of rest. In the course of any motion and change, the moving, changing object also has some stability, retaining some of its properties over a certain period of time. So motion is inseparable from rest and stability. But rest has a temporary, relative nature.

Cooperatives: A Cure for Capitalism?

The Mondragon is the one of the largest worker-owned
cooperatives in the capitalist world, located in the Basque region
of Spain and has been a source of anti-capitalist inspiration

By Zoltan Zigedy,
Marxism Leninism Today

Co-ops -- cooperative economic enterprises -- have been embraced by significant groups of people at different times and places. Their attraction precedes the heyday of industrial capitalism by offering a means to consolidate small producers and take advantage of economies of scale, shared risk, and common gain.

At the advent of the industrial era, cooperatives were one of many competing solutions offered to ameliorate the plight of the emerging proletariat. Social engineers like Robert Owen experimented with cooperative enterprises and communities.

In the era of mass socialist parties and socialist construction, cooperatives were considered as intermediate steps to make the transition from feudal agrarian production towards socialist relations of production.

Under the capitalist mode of production, co-ops have filled both employment and consumption niches deferred by large scale capitalist production. Economic activities offering insufficient profitability or growth have become targets for cooperative enterprise.

Historical Materialism - who were Marx and Engels trying to influence in writing The German ideology?

A cartoon by Friedrich Engels of ragging party times
at the Hippel Cafe in Berlin, home of the Young Hegelians

In 1845 a young Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, age 27 and 25 respectively, sat down to write one of their first joint works in what would prove to be the beginning of a life-long effort of collaboration. The two radicals were unable to find a publisher for their work, which would remain unprinted until the early 1930s; since then it has been understood as an important polemic against materialist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach which further deepened the method of historical materialism.

In writing The German Ideology, the young Marx and Engels no doubt believed (and, would later say) they were completing a work addressing an entire contemporary debate which was captivating a generation of German philosophy students. These thinkers, whose spirit had been inflamed by the jargon of Hegel’s dialectics, were struggling to turn from the nebulous world of the Spirit, to the world of everyday life with its political problems.

For those young Hegelians, Feuerbach therefore provided a sort of bridge; his theories presented a kind of intellectual passage-way built partly of older French Enlightenment thinking (which saw man as a product of nature, not disembodied Spirit) and retaining some of Hegel’s dialectics. It is not God who creates man, Feuerbach essentially wrote, but man who creates God.

Re-thinking Buy Nothing Day

Fred Vorhees,
Special to Rebel Youth

Who said individualist uncoordinated consumer boycotts don't work? I just heard Buy Nothing Day was a great success. Hooray, the revolution has arrived!

In case you haven't heard, Buy Nothing Day is an international day of protest against consumerism held on Black Friday, usually at the end of November.  According to Wikipedia, "Buy Nothing Day was founded in Vancouver by artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by Adbusters magazine [...] as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption."

It strikes me that there is a weird parallel between Buy Nothing Day and the ideology of Neoliberals.  Now there's a wild idea. But consider the following.

Four facts about Solidarity Forever you might not know

Special Feature
Rebel Youth Magazine


It is billed as the greatest English-language labour anthem ever, perhaps second only to the Internationale. It has been translated into multiple languages and sung around the world. If you have been on strike, you've probably heard it, or sung it. Few rallies, large or small, in English-speaking Canada take place without it; and it is also common in Québec. Labour union meetings in Canada, the US and Australia sometimes end with it. The best and the worst labour and progressive choirs, folk singers, and raging grannies can all belt it out by heart.

The name of the song is Solidarity Forever -- but what do you really know about it?

Old school, new school, revolution

A classic text about the role and purpose of Young Communist Leagues is Lenin's The Tasks of the Youth Leagues (1920). This excerpt, which will be part of a series from this pamphlet presented here, talks about a number of themes: the difference between simply negating the old capitalist society and building a new, socialist society which develops and improves from past human knowledge; the idea of theory and practice and its necessary interconnection; and what is Marxism? Headings are by Rebel Youth.

Rift between books and life

One of the greatest evils and misfortunes left to us by the old, capitalist society is the complete rift between books and practical life; we have had books explaining everything in the best possible manner, yet in most cases these books contained the most pernicious and hypocritical lies, a false description of capitalist society.

Marx on Minimum Wages and Workers

As we suppose that no change whatever has taken place either in the productive powers of labour, or in the amount of capital and labour employed, or in the value of the money wherein the values of products are estimated, but only a change in the rate of wages, how could that rise of wages affect the prices of commodities?

Only by affecting the actual proportion between the demand for, and the supply of these commodities.

It is perfectly true that, considered as a whole, the working class spends, and must spend, its income upon necessaries. A general rise in the rate of wages would, therefore, produce a rise in the demand for, and consequently in the market prices of necessaries. The capitalists who produce these necessaries would be compensated for the risen wages by the rising market prices of their commodities.

But how with the other capitalists who do not produce necessaries? And you must not fancy them a small body. If you consider that two-thirds of the national produce are consumed by one-fifth of the population — a member of the House of Commons stated it recently to be but one-seventh of the population — you will understand what an immense proportion of the national produce must be produced in the shape of luxuries, or be exchanged for luxuries, and what an immense amount of the necessaries themselves must be wasted upon flunkeys, horses, cats, and so forth, a waste we know from experience to become always much limited with the rising prices of necessaries.

Well, what would be the position of those capitalists who do not produce necessaries?

For the fall in the rate of profit, consequent upon the general rise of wages, they could not compensate themselves by a rise in the price of their commodities, because the demand for those commodities would not have increased. Their income would have decreased, and from this decreased income they would have to pay more for the same amount of higher-priced necessaries.

But this would not be all.

As their income had diminished they would have less to spend upon luxuries, and therefore their mutual demand for their respective commodities would diminish. Consequent upon this diminished demand the prices of their commodities would fall. In these branches of industry, therefore, the rate of profit would fall, not only in simple proportion to the general rise in the rate of wages, but in the compound ratio of the general rise of wages, the rise in the prices of necessaries, and the fall in the prices of luxuries.

What would be the consequence of this difference in the rates of profit for capitals employed in the different branches of industry?

Why, the consequence that generally obtains whenever, from whatever reason, the average rate of profit comes to differ in different spheres of production. Capital and labour would be transferred from the less remunerative to the more remunerative branches; and this process of transfer would go on until the supply in the one department of industry would have risen proportionately to the increased demand, and would have sunk in the other departments according to the decreased demand.

This change effected, the general rate of profit would again be equalized in the different branches.

As the whole derangement originally arose from a mere change in the proportion of the demand for, and supply of, different commodities, the cause ceasing, the effect would cease, and PRICES would return to their former level and equilibrium. Instead of being limited to some branches of industry, the fall in the rate of profit consequent upon the rise of wages would have become general.

According to our supposition, there would have taken place no change in the productive powers of labour, nor in the aggregate amount of production, but that given amount of production would have changed its form. A greater part of the produce would exist in the shape of necessaries, a lesser part in the shape of luxuries, or what comes to the same, a lesser part would be exchanged for foreign luxuries, and be consumed in its original form, or, what again comes to the same, a greater part of the native produce would be exchanged for foreign necessaries instead of for luxuries.

The general rise in the rate of wages would, therefore, after a temporary disturbance of market prices, only result in a general fall of the rate of profit without any permanent change in the prices of commodities.

If I am told that in the previous argument I assume the whole surplus wages to be spent upon necessaries, I answer that I have made the supposition most advantageous to the opinion of Citizen Weston.

If the surplus wages were spent upon articles formerly not entering into the consumption of the working men, the real increase of their purchasing power would need no proof. Being, however, only derived from an advance of wages, that increase of their purchasing power must exactly correspond to the decrease of the purchasing power of the capitalists.

The aggregate demand for commodities would, therefore, not increase, but the constituent parts of that demand would change.

The increasing demand on the one side would be counterbalanced by the decreasing demand on the other side. Thus the aggregate demand remaining stationary, no change whatever could take place in the market prices of commodities.

You arrive, therefore, at this dilemma: Either the surplus wages are equally spent upon all articles of consumption — then the expansion of demand on the part of the working class must be compensated by the contraction of demand on the part of the capitalist class — or the surplus wages are only spent upon some articles whose market prices will temporarily rise.

The consequent rise in the rate of profit in some, and the consequent fall in the rate of profit in other branches of industry will produce a change in the distribution of capital and labour, going on until the supply is brought up to the increased demand in the one department of industry, and brought down to the diminished demand in the other departments of industry.

On the one supposition there will occur no change in the prices of commodities. On the other supposition, after some fluctuations of market prices, the exchangeable values of commodities will subside to the former level. On both suppositions the general rise in the rate of wages will ultimately result in nothing else but a general fall in the rate of profit.

To stir up your powers of imagination Citizen Weston requested you to think of the difficulties which a general rise of English agricultural wages from nine shillings to eighteen shillings would produce. Think, he exclaimed, of the immense rise in the demand for necessaries, and the consequent fearful rise in their prices!

Now, all of you know that the average wages of the American agricultural labourer amount to more than double that of the English agricultural labourer, although the prices of agricultural produce are lower in the United States than in the United Kingdom, although the general relations of capital and labour obtain in the United States the same as in England, and although the annual amount of production is much smaller in the United States than in England.

Why, then, does our friend ring this alarm bell?

Simply to shift the real question before us. A sudden rise of wages from nine shillings to eighteen shillings would be a sudden rise to the amount of 100 percent. Now, we are not at all discussing the question whether the general rate of wages in England could be suddenly increased by 100 percent.

We have nothing at all to do with the magnitude of the rise, which in every practical instance must depend on, and be suited to, given circumstances. We have only to inquire how a general rise in the rate of wages, even if restricted to one percent, will act.

Passage from Value, Price and Profit (1865)

Force and the struggle for a socialist Canada

This article is part of an seven-part series of short quotes Rebel Youth is issuing about class struggle, revolution, civil-war, and parliamentary democracy. See also: Lenin on elections; the Communist Party of Canada on a counter-offensive against capitalism; Engels on voting and street fighting; Lenin on Democracy and Class struggle; Communist and Worker's parties on the struggle for socialism; and Lenin on tactics and guerilla war; the Communist Party of Canada on force, and a peaceful transition to socialism.

A democratic, anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist alliance will have as its objective the democratic restructuring of Canadian society so that the interests of the majority of Canadians come first, and the stranglehold of finance capital on every aspect of life is broken. It will seek to advance the working people’s interests through all available avenues of struggle, based on massive and united extra-parliamentary action.

The alliance will strive to score electoral advances, and the winning of power by a people’s government dedicated to carrying out sweeping measures to democratize society and transform economic relations in the interests of the working class and the Canadian people as a whole.

Such a breakthrough will be difficult to accomplish given the sophisticated means at the disposal of the ruling class to manipulate public opinion, discourage political activism and otherwise influence the outcome of bourgeois elections. A crucial task for the alliance will be to defend and expand democracy and to fight against corporate and governmental attacks on the electoral process.

A democratic, anti-monopoly government, based on a parliamentary majority, and acting in concert with the united and militant extra-parliamentary movements of the people, would signal a qualitative shift in the balance of class forces in Canadian society, and open the door to the revolutionary transformation to socialism. It would involve the people in a truly meaningful way.

The people’s government would be committed to a program of action geared to serve people before profit. That program would arise in the course of the social, economic and political struggles of the working class and its democratic allies, and be subject to the widest discussion and approval among all of the forces of the alliance.

Communists will struggle to win support for the most advanced program of political, economic and social transformation possible in line with the changing conditions. The program must aim: (1) to confront and restrict the power of finance capital (both foreign and domestic), and to extend public ownership of key sectors of the economy; (2) to redistribute wealth and raise the living standards and conditions of life for the vast majority of the people; and (3) to introduce sweeping democratic reforms to enhance popular control and administration of the Canadian state at all levels of government. (...)

Although such measures would not constitute socialism, the victory of a people’s government devoted to carrying out such a broad program would mark a significant step in the struggle for fundamental change and socialist transformation.

To succeed, a people’s government would require the full and conscious mobilization of the working class and its allies outside Parliament. With each meaningful reform enacted, with each democratic measure secured, with each encroachment on the power and privilege of capital, the ruling class and its imperialist international partners would stiffen their resistance by all means at their disposal. But, at the same time, such measures can help to galvanize the masses, and promote working class actions in support of the people’s government.

This would be a period of intensified class struggle on all fronts – political, economic and ideological.

The successful implementation of the people’s program, and the pace with which it is carried out will depend on the unity and militancy of the working class and its revolutionary vanguard, and on the enduring unity of the entire democratic, anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist alliance. Prevailing regional and international conditions will also affect the pace of social transformations.

Throughout this process there will be social and political mobilization of the working class and people’s forces to support and implement the program of the people’s government – through electoral and workplace struggles, street demonstrations and other actions. At the same time, the threatened ruling class will attempt to shake the confidence and unity of the people’s forces and to frustrate their ability to carry out the people’s program.

To preserve its class privileges and re-establish its supremacy, the capitalist class will be inclined to resort to economic blackmail and sabotage, subversion from within those sections of the state apparatus it still influences and controls, political violence and terrorism, and even open rebellion and foreign intervention. The people’s government, with the full support of the working class, will be fully within its rights to counter any such anti-democratic and illegal assaults on people’s power

From Chapter 6 of the Programme of the Communist Party of Canada

Tactics, guerilla war and the struggle for socialism

This article is part of an seven-part series of short quotes Rebel Youth is issuing about class struggle, revolution, civil-war, and parliamentary democracy. See also: Lenin on elections; the Communist Party of Canada on a counter-offensive against capitalism; Engels on voting and street fighting; Lenin on Democracy and Class struggle; Communist and Worker's parties on the struggle for socialism; and Lenin on tactics and guerilla war; the Communist Party of Canada on force, and a peaceful transition to socialism.


Let us begin from the beginning. What are the fundamental demands which every Marxist should make of an examination of the question of forms of struggle? In the first place, Marxism differs from all primitive forms of socialism by not binding the movement to any one particular form of struggle. It recognises the most varied forms of struggle; and it does not “concoct” them, but only generalises, organises, gives conscious expression to those forms of struggle of the revolutionary classes which arise of themselves in the course of the movement. Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class-consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied methods of defence and attack. Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any form of struggle. Under no circumstances does Marxism confine itself to the forms of struggle possible and in existence at the given moment only, recognising as it does that new forms of struggle, unknown to the participants of the given period, inevitably arise as the given social situation, changes. In this respect Marxism learns, if we may   so express it, from mass practice, and makes no claim what ever to teach the masses forms of struggle invented by “systematisers” in the seclusion of their studies. We know—said Kautsky, for instance, when examining the forms of social revolution—that the coming crisis will introduce new forms of struggle that we are now unable to foresee.

In the second place, Marxism demands an absolutely historical examination of the question of the forms of struggle. To treat this question apart from the concrete historical situation betrays a failure to understand the rudiments of dialectical materialism. At different stages of economic evolution, depending on differences in political, national-cultural, living and other conditions, different forms of struggle come to the fore and become the principal forms of struggle; and in connection with this, the secondary, auxiliary forms of struggle undergo change in their turn. To attempt to answer yes or no to the question whether any particular means of struggle should be used, without making a detailed examination of the concrete situation of the given movement at the given stage of its development, means completely to abandon the Marxist position.

Lenin, Guerilla warfare (1906)

The peaceful struggle for socialism

This article is part of an seven-part series of short quotes Rebel Youth is issuing about class struggle, revolution, civil-war, and parliamentary democracy. See also: Lenin on elections; the Communist Party of Canada on a counter-offensive against capitalism; Engels on voting and street fighting; Lenin on Democracy and Class struggle; Communist and Worker's parties on the struggle for socialism; and Lenin on tactics and guerilla war; theCommunist Party of Canada on force, and a peaceful transition to socialism.

From November 14-16, 1957, representatives of 12 Communist and Workers Parties of Socialist countries, came together in Moscow for the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, and adopted a declaration, from which is taken this excerpt about the struggle for socialism. Among the endorsers were the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The text below is one section of the full statement.

The forms of the transition of socialism may vary for different countries. The working class and its vanguard—the Marxist-Leninist party—seek to achieve the Socialist revolution by peaceful means. This would accord with the interests of the working class and the people as a whole as well as with the national interests of the country.

Today in a number of capitalist countries the working class headed by its vanguard has the opportunity, given a united working-class and popular front or other workable forms of agreement and political cooperation between the different parties and public organizations, to unite a majority of the people, to win state power without civil war and ensure the transfer of the basic means of production to the hands of the people. It has this opportunity while relying on the majority of the people and decisively rebuffing the opportunist elements incapable of relinquishing the policy of compromise with the capitalists and landlords. The working class then, can defeat the reactionary, anti-popular forces, secure a firm majority in parliament, transform parliament from an instrument serving the class interests of the bourgeoisie into an instrument serving the working people, launch a non-parliamentary mass struggle, smash the resistance of the reactionary forces and create the necessary conditions for peaceful realization of the socialist revolution.

All this will be possible only by broad and ceaseless development of the class struggle of the workers, peasant masses and the urban middle strata against big monopoly capital, against reaction, for profound social reforms, for peace and socialism.

In the event of the ruling classes resorting to violence against people, the possibility of non-peaceful transition to socialism should be borne in mind. Leninism teaches, and experience confirms, that the ruling classes never relinquish power voluntarily. In this case the degree of bitterness and the forms of the class struggle will depend not so much on the proletariat as on the resistance put up by the reactionary circles to the will of the overwhelming majority of the people, on these circles using force at one or another stage of the struggle for socialism.

The possibility of one or another way to socialism depends on the concrete conditions in each country. In the struggle for better conditions for the working people, for preservation and extension of democratic rights, winning and maintaining national independence and peace among nations, and also in the struggle for winning power and building socialism, the Communist Parties seek cooperation with the Socialist parties. Although the Right-Wing Socialist Party leaders are doing their best to hamper this cooperation, there are increasing opportunities for cooperation between the Communists and Socialists on many issues. The ideological differences between the Communist and the Socialist parties should not keep them from establishing unity of action on the many pressing issues that confront the working-class movement.

Declaration of the Twelve Communist and Workers Parties, Meeting in Moscow, USSR, Nov. 14-16, 1957

Force and the peaceful transistion to a socialist Canada

This article is part of an seven-part series of short quotes Rebel Youth is issuing about class struggle, revolution, civil-war, and parliamentary democracy. See also: Lenin on elections; the Communist Party of Canada on a counter-offensive against capitalism; Engels on voting and street fighting; Lenin on Democracy and Class struggle; Communist and Worker's parties on the struggle for socialism; and Lenin on tactics and guerilla war; theCommunist Party of Canada on force, and a peaceful transition to socialism.

Ample historical evidence testifies to the fact that reactionary capitalist forces will not give up their power and privilege voluntarily. They will try to halt the democratic process. The danger will inevitably arise of capitalist violence against the socialist state and the expressed will of the majority of the people. This cannot be overlooked except at severe cost. The working class and its allies, when they achieve socialist power, will be justified in using the power and authority of the state to protect the democratic will of the majority against the minority, who will strive to restore their lost positions. The nature of the laws and measures enacted to protect working class power will depend on the amount of resistance that the reactionary capitalist elements offer to socialist law and order.

The peaceful transition to socialism, which is desirable, depends not only on the wishes of the people but on the relationship of forces at the time. The maximum unity and single-minded purpose of the people, the united participation of the widest masses of the working class in political struggle and the forging of unity with the small producers (farmers, fishers and artisans) and with the middle strata of the population will be crucial to withstand and paralyze capitalist violence and political reaction. The working class must be ready to use all forms of struggle to combat capital’s inevitable resistance to social progress.

For the first time in Canada’s history, however, the majority of the people will rule the country and establish a genuine democracy. The dictatorship of capital over labour – the rule of the minority over the majority – will be abolished and replaced by a socialist democracy in which political power will reside with the working class and its allies. For the first time, the interests of the Canadian people will be the prime determinant of our economic, political and cultural life.

Irrespective of the form it will take, the socialist state, from the point of view of its class essence, will represent working class rule. Marx referred to this as “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” In practical terms, state power will be exercised by the great majority of the Canadian population – over the former capitalist minority.

From Chapter 7 of the Programme of the Communist Party of Canada