SC Welcomes Our New Readers

To widen the reach of our press, the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste holds a subscription drive each fall, making a special push to distribute our newspapers on the campuses, at union events and in cities where we have no ongoing presence. This campaign also provides an opportunity to get a sense of the political mood among youth and workers.

Once again this year, comrades’ hard work meant that we exceeded our target of 365 sub points, ending up with a total of 382.5. (Another 14.5 points were sold by Spartacist League/U.S. members who assisted our work in Montreal and Vancouver.) Comrades sold 175 subscriptions to Spartacist Canada, 87 to the SL/U.S. newspaper Workers Vanguard, 32 to Le Bolchévik (newspaper of the Ligue trotskyste de France) and 16 to other publications of sections of the International Communist League. Congratulations to comrade Yuri in Toronto for selling the most subs.

Comrades generally found campus sales harder this year, especially at the more elite English Canadian universities. In contrast, sales at union events were somewhat easier, at least in Ontario where we sold 39 points at the Toronto and Hamilton Labour Day marches. The capitalists’ war on labour continues unabated, from attacks on the closed shop and the seniority system to moves to ban strikes in the federal public sector. What is needed, in the words of one of our Labour Day placards, is to “Defend the unions through class struggle!”

The chief obstacle to such a perspective is the union misleadership which, together with the NDP social democrats, pushes the lie that workers have common “national interests” with the Canadian capitalists. This was shown vividly in a protest organized in Toronto by the new Unifor union in conjunction with its founding convention on Labour Day weekend. Thousands of union members were mobilized to demand that the American telecommunications company Verizon be blocked from setting up in Canada—a position identical to that pushed by the big Canadian telecom corporations, who want to protect their markets. Such nationalism is poison to labour’s struggles, serving to tie the workers to their “own” exploiters while setting them against their class brothers and sisters abroad.

Other signs at our Labour Day tables highlighted broader issues facing the working class. Our call to oppose a U.S. military strike against Syria, which then appeared imminent, drew particular attention. Conversely, a placard denouncing Anglo chauvinism and advocating independence for Quebec was met with hostility from some more backward workers.

Comrades in Vancouver reported that our calls for labour to defend Native rights attracted students both on local campuses and during a two-day trip to universities on Vancouver Island, where 18 points were sold. We were also able to sell subscriptions to participants in a thousands-strong Native “reconciliation” march in Vancouver on September 22, despite pouring rain. Signs and literature on China drew students to our tables at the University of British Columbia and elsewhere. Comrades from the SL/U.S. Bay Area local wrapped up a regional trip to Washington state by coming north to help out in Vancouver, continuing a tradition of many years standing.

The Toronto local did particularly well on regional work, selling 15 points to students at the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto, 30 at Trent University in Peterborough and 53 on a trip to Ottawa. Comrades who set up literature tables at the University of Ottawa reported selling several subs to students of Latin American, African and Arab origin, some of whom approached us after reading our placard, “Down with the racist ‘war on terror’! Down with anti-Muslim bigotry!”

Most subscriptions to Le Bolchévik were sold in Montreal, where our new organizing committee—reinforced by comrades from Toronto and New York—staged a two-day blitz of local campuses. Unlike in 2012, when our sub drive came right after a militant student strike, this year we encountered a mood of demoralization among many young activists. One Cégep de Vieux-Montréal student complained bitterly that students had fought for six months only to end up with a Parti Québécois government that was “even worse” than the former Liberal regime. Our signs denouncing the PQ’s “Charter of Quebec Values” were polarizing: while some youth tried to defend this xenophobic legislation, many, including students of North African origin as well as native Québécois, strongly agreed with our stand (see article, page 4).

In the course of the subscription drive, we held public forums in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver under the title “Karl Marx Was Right—Capitalist Barbarism and the Fight for Revolutionary Leadership.” Among those who came out to the well-attended Montreal forum (held in French) was a leader of Alternative Socialiste, local affiliate of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), who defended his group’s call to build “broad” parties like the nationalist-populist Québec Solidaire and the new Workers and Socialist Party in South Africa.

During a lively discussion period, our comrades counterposed the fight for vanguard workers parties modeled on Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks, who led the workers of Russia to power in October 1917. We also took out the CWI for its craven, anti-Marxist view that police are “workers in uniform” rather than a core component of the repressive capitalist state, and for its support to the imperialist-backed counterrevolutionary forces that destroyed the Soviet Union, a bureaucratically degenerated workers state, in 1991-92. While the CWI has its peculiarities, such positions are common among the reformist left in both Quebec and English Canada. They are flatly counterposed to the fight for socialism.

Our Marxist press seeks to apply the program and theory of scientific socialism to political events and to class and other social struggles. We aim to promote the understanding that workers revolution is the only road to a world free of exploitation and oppression. We invite new and returning readers to let us know what you think, to attend our classes and other events, and to get involved in the activities of the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste.