Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

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The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) (CPC-ML) is a Canadian federal political party whose platform is the promotion of socialism. Its historical orientation is Anti-Revisionist (or Stalinist) though it has become less doctrinaire in recent years and more populist.

The party is registered with Elections Canada as the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada. Elections Canada, the Canadian government agency that oversees elections and political parties, claimed that, in order to avoid confusion among voters, it could not allow registration of names that could cause confusion for voters with other parties. In this case, Elections Canada argues that allowing the party to use its preferred name could cause confusion with the Communist Party of Canada.

History and ideology

Hardial Bains founded the Internationalists at the University of British Columbia on March 13 1963. Bains had earlier been denied a membership in the Communist Party of Canada and had sided with the People's Republic of China in the emerging Sino-Soviet split. The Internationalists were initially a Maoist student group but, as a result of their growth, they declared themselves a formal political party on March 31 1970 and changed their name to the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist).

The party first ran candidates for the Canadian House of Commons during the 1974 federal election but has had to run them as candidates of the "Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada" after Elections Canada ruled that the party's preferred name was too close to that of the Communist Party of Canada. However, the party continues to call itself the CPC-ML outside of its federal electoral activities.

During the 1970s, the party made a practice of sending members into student newspapers on Canadian university campuses. Members would attempt to capture these papers and use them to promote CPC-ML ideas and policies -- including its support for the Albanian dictatorship -- under the slogans "Defend the Basic Interest of the Students!" and "Make the Rich Pay!". The party succeeded in capturing only one student newspaper, The Chevron, at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario. The take-over was led by Neil Docherty and Larry Hannant. After several years of intense disruption at the paper and on campus, students at Waterloo voted to disenfranchise The Chevron, which was then expelled from Canadian University Press, the student press cooperative in Canada, in December 1979. The Chevron ceased to be the student newspaper at the University of Waterloo and was replaced by The Imprint. CPC-ML attemped but failed to capture other student newspapers, including The Varsity at the University of Toronto.

Bains was leader of the CPC-ML until his death in 1997 and his personality was the driving force behind the CPC-ML. Its ideological trajectory followed his own from Maoism and support for the People's Republic of China against what it saw as the revisionist (or Khruschevite) Soviet Union. The party sided with Albania during the Sino-Albanian split that came two years after the death of Mao Zedong. CPC-ML reoriented itself as a Stalinist party holding up the theories of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania until the collapse of the Communist Albania in 1992.

During the 1980s, the CPC-ML adopted a slogan of, "We are our own models," and began to seek a new ideological approach. Because of differences in theory, the CPC and CPC-ML have routinely been at odds on many matters.

Current position

Today, the CPC-ML tends to be supportive of North Korea, although it does not promote Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong-il or Juche Thought in the manner that it promoted Hoxha and Mao in previous years. The CPC-ML has developed a more independent line since the collapse of the Soviet bloc prior to which it had a very stridently anti-revisionist position viewing the Soviet bloc as state capitalist and equivalent to the western bloc. Bains visited Cuba several times in the 1990s which led him (and the CPC-ML) to revise his earlier views of Cuba as revisionist. The CPC-ML has become strongly supportive of Cuba and the Cuban Revolution and now has close relations with the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa and prints the English language edition of the Cuban Communist Party's newspaper, Granma, for Canadian distribution.

On January 1, 1995, the party put forward a broad program of work for the current period, which it has named the Historic Initiative. This was further elaborated during its Seventh Congress.

Since 1997, the party's leader has been Bains' widow, Sandra L. Smith.

The CPC-ML is active in several trade unions, particularly the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the United Steelworkers of America whose important Stelco local (Local 1005) in Hamilton, Ontario is led by Rolf Gerstenberger, a party member. Local 1005 is one of several USWA locals at Stelco. USWA officials rely on other Stelco local officials to act as official spokespeople for the union in its dealings with the company and the courts, effectively isolating Gerstenberger. However, Gerstenberger has received support from Carolyn Egan, writing in Socialist Worker, the official propaganda organ of International Socialists, a Trotskyist group. Egan, a member of the IS central steering committee, is president of USWA Local 8300, based in Toronto, and of the Steelworkers Toronto Area Council, an ad hoc committee of Toronto area local activists. CPC-ML has also been active in the movement against the war in Iraq.

The party, if elected, would establish a Citizen's Committee for Democratic Renewal, or CCDR, that would nominate candidates for federal office. This would remove the process from the control of each political party's riding association, and establish what they see as a more equitable approach to the issue of democracy.

In recent years the party has become less doctrinaire, eschewing quotations from Mao, Stalin, Lenin or Hoxha in favour of what it calls "Contemporary Marxist-Leninist Thought". Its Eighth Party Congress will be held in 2005 with the theme, "Building a mass Communist Party".

The CPC-ML has a newsheet, The Marxist-Leninist Daily, a youth wing, the Communist Youth Union of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and also operates the "Workers Centre" which helps educate and organize trade unionists through discussion groups, and a magazine, Worker's Forum. The party often conducts broader political activity under the name "People's Front" and uses that name for the British Columbia provincial wing of the party. (see People's Front (British Columbia). In Ontario provincial elections, CPC-ML supporters have most recently run as Independent Renewal candidates.

Electoral activity

The party has run candidates in Canadian federal elections since 1972, with the number of candidates in any one election ranging from as few as 51 and as many as 177. Most of its candidates have run in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. It was most prominent in the 1979 federal election and 1980 federal election, running under the slogan "Make the rich pay".

Its slogan in the 2004 federal election was "Annexation no! Sovereignty yes!"

The party also nominated candidates in several by-elections:

1980: 1

1995: 2

1998: 1

See also

• Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) (in Manitoba)
• People's Front (British Columbia)
• Independent Renewal candidates, 2003 Ontario provincial election

External links

• The Marxist-Leninist Homepage (http://www.cpcml.ca/)
• Web site of International Socialists (http://www.socialist.ca)
• Web site of United Steelworkers (http://www.uswa.ca)

Federal Political Parties of Canada
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