SC Welcomes New Readers!

Comrades and sympathizers of the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste wrapped up a seven-week subscription drive on October 8, exceeding our quota of 365 points by 21 percent. This represents 163 subscriptions to Spartacist Canada, 98 to Workers Vanguard, biweekly newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S., and another 84 to other publications of the International Communist League. A notable increase in subscriptions in Quebec, in particular to Le Bolchévik , newspaper of our comrades of the Ligue trotskyste de France, is thanks to the efforts of our Montreal organizing committee.

A Marxist working-class newspaper, SC seeks to highlight and apply the lessons of authentic Trotskyism, including through sharp polemics against the kind of class-collaborationist illusions pushed, crudely or subtly, by our opponents on the left. Our articles address the struggles of workers and the oppressed and our interventions into these struggles. This activity is essential to our purpose: to cohere the nucleus of a revolutionary vanguard party of the kind that V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks forged to lead the working class to power in the Russian Revolution of October 1917.

SC blasts the carefully cultivated bourgeois lies that saturate the media, education and entertainment under capitalism. In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rulers have retailed the myth that “communism is dead” and that no alternative is possible to the brutal social order of the profit system.

Bourgeois propaganda takes its toll, but the struggle for communism continues. Our comrades kicked off this year’s campaign at the late August Peoples’ Social Forum in Ottawa, where we sold 44 subscriptions to workers and students from many parts of Canada. With the relentless capitalist attacks on working people, a layer of participants were clearly seeking a road forward and many expressed anger at Tom Mulcair’s NDP and its increasingly rightist politics. But we also encountered lots of illusions in the vague “unite to fight the right” rhetoric that dominates the Canadian left, especially after nearly a decade of Tory rule in Ottawa.

This program is pushed by the welter of NGOs, union bureaucrats and reformist left groups involved in the Social Forum. Among the latter is the Fightback group, a pro-NDP outfit notorious for its efforts to persuade radical-minded youth that the capitalist cops are “workers in uniform.” The cynical opportunism of these servile recruiters for the pro-capitalist NDP is summed up by their hallmark slogan “NDP to Power on a Socialist Program.” As one Social Forum attendee who stopped by our literature table noted in disgust, they might as well be saying “Goldman Sachs to Power on a Socialist Program.” Our tables also featured material exposing how the Social Forum movement has long been sponsored and funded by capitalist governments, banks, corporations and foundations (see “Social Forum Con Game: He Who Pays the Piper…,” SC No. 146, Fall 2005).

Two years after the massive wave of militant student strikes, Quebec is again in political ferment. Our comrades sold many subscriptions at Montreal-area campuses, and especially at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). The failed attempt by some UQAM student bureaucrats to censor our Marxist opposition to bourgeois feminism actually helped to spark interest in our press (see page 5). Toronto and Montreal comrades also organized a joint trip to sell at campuses in Ottawa and Gatineau. The Montreal campaign concluded on October 9 when comrades joined a picket line of striking UQAM workers and carried placards raising the calls “Picket Lines = Don’t Cross!” and “For Worker/Student/Teacher Unity Against UQAM Administration!”

In Toronto as elsewhere, our literature displays prominently featured our opposition to U.S. imperialism and its Canadian junior partner. Our call for defense of the Palestinian people against Zionist terror drew wide sympathy at several campuses. However, our equally forthright opposition to U.S. and Canadian imperialism in the bombing campaign against the Islamic reactionaries of ISIS in Iraq and Syria was more controversial. Not a few double takes were likewise provoked by our placards denouncing Washington and Ottawa’s support for the fascist-infested Ukrainian government. Toronto comrades organized regional trips to Hamilton and Peterborough, and we exceeded our quotas at the University of Toronto campuses. A highlight of the Toronto campaign was a September 27 forum on the struggle against imperialism, which drew some 40 people.

B.C. comrades kicked off the campaign at the Vancouver Labour Day event, which came in the third month of a province-wide teachers strike. Our placard “B.C. Port Truckers Showed the Way: Labour’s Got to Play Hardball to Win!” found resonance among workers hammered by the ongoing employers’ offensive. At both Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo and the University of Victoria, our placards and displays highlighted our stance toward the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state. Trotskyists call for the unconditional military defense of China against imperialism and for proletarian political revolution to oust the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy. As they have for many years, comrades from the SL/U.S. wrapped up their Pacific Northwest regional tour in Vancouver, where they assisted our work and joined us at our public forum, “From World War I to Today: 100 Years of Imperialist Barbarism.”

Hats off to all the comrades for their hard work, and congratulations to this year’s top seller, Tynan (Toronto), and to runners-up Gabriel (Montreal) and Adam (Vancouver). We welcome our new readers and returning subscribers and look forward to receiving your letters and comments.