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.

Big Corporations Win the French Presidential Elections

Adrien Welsh

On April 23rd, the French people were called to chose two out of the eleven candidates running for the Presidential elections who would make their way to the second round and aspire to be the next tenant of the Élysée palace.

In France, the first round for Presidential elections has never been a moment of great suspense. For decades, the two main political parties, the Socialists (PS) and the right (Les républicains and, formerly, the UMP or RPR) usually get to the second round with a comfortable margin. Polling institutions have an easy job in predicting who the two aspiring presidents will be. However, this year, until the last minute, four candidates  were polling at around 20% in the first round, namely Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen, François Fillion and Emmanuel Macron.

A road-block to action?

Murry Dobbin is a long-time social activist, journalist and supporter of the New Democratic Party.  He has been associated with groups like the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Rabble.ca, and the Council of Canadians, which are to the left of today's NDP. Here he comments about a recent NDP day of action which shows even long-time supporters are upset with their party's rejection of extra-parliamentary action. We reprint a short part of Dobbin's commentary for that reason, which is also discussed by the Young Communist League in its 26th Convention Documents.

On Feb. 22, in the aftermath of a "boring" budget, Thomas Mulcair's NDP undertook a National Day of Action -- a welcome idea that's been long in coming and has the potential over time to be a political game changer...

And yet the potential in this first experiment of engaging Canadians between elections seems to have been squandered by the focus of the day of action. How is it possible that the NDP would finally understand the importance of this kind of citizen engagement and at the same time completely abandon any substantive ideas with which to start a conversation? The whole day of action is one huge political contradiction -- engaging citizens but only after you have redefined them as consumers.