The Canadian colony

 

“The CPC(ML): A Revisionist Organization of Agent Provocateurs” is a pamphlet published in 1978 by IN STRUGGLE! (yes, you´re supposed to spell it that way). It was later known as the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada IN STRUGGLE! (still with the exclamation mark at the end). Despite the peculiar name, the organization seems to have been a fairly main-line Marxist-Leninist group, if there is such a thing. In Struggle were independent-minded enough not to slavishly follow the “line” of any particular Communist regime. They supported Enver Hoxha´s Albania against post-Mao China, but never accepted Hoxha´s retrospective attacks on Mao Zedong. In Struggle even tried to unite various Marxist-Leninist groups in Canada, to no avail.

In the pamphlet, In Struggle take on a very different political animal: the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), a notorious and notoriously kooky outfit led by one Hardial Bains. The CPC(ML) were originally Maoists, then switched to supporting Albania. Despite their bad reputation on the Canadian left, the CPC(ML) managed to get the Albanian franchise and became officially recognized by the Party of Labor of Albania. The CPC(ML) still exist, but these days, they support Cuba and North Korea instead. I originally assumed that the CPC(ML) were mostly notorious for their tiresome rhetoric and personality cult of Bains, but if In Struggle´s pamphlet is something to go after, the real history is darker (but also very typical).

At least during the 1970´s, the CPC(ML) were an adventurist and extremely sectarian group of a kind that frequently pops up on the far left. They often physically attacked other leftists with baseball bats or bricks, attempted to take over leftist rallies and protest marches, invaded leftist or workers´ cafés to read bombastic declarations, and so on. Entryism was another tactic, for instance when Bains´ group pretended to form local branches of a competing Marxist-Leninist group. When the Bains group officially proclaimed itself a party, the CPC(ML) claimed that a highly respected Marxist-Leninist activist in Canada, Jack Scott, was their party chairman, when in reality Scott had denounced them as provocateurs! 

Bains was of Indian (Punjabi) descent, and successfully managed to infiltrate the East Indian community in Canada through various front groups. Or maybe not so successfully, since the CPC(ML)´s attempts to take over Sikh “temples” (really a kind of community organizations) sometimes ended in huge physical fights outside the meeting halls. Naturally, the Bainsites condemned all competing leftist groups (including In Struggle) as “police agents” and what not. In this pamphlet, In Struggle repays the favor by accusing the CPC(ML) of being literal fascists…

Like many other volatile groups of this kind, the CPC(ML) combined adventurism and bombastic sloganeering with positions far to the “right” of most leftists. A case in point is their Canadian nationalism. Bains claimed that Canada is a colony of the United States, and the Canadian revolution must therefore be “democratic” rather than socialist, uniting “all the people”, including anti-American capitalists. Indeed, one of Bains´ main objections to the Maoist “three worlds theory” was that it claimed that Canada was imperialist! He thus criticized the Communist Party of China *from the right*. 

This Canadian nationalist line created problems for Bains in Quebec, where he instead tried to promote Quebecois nationalism. In Struggle, which supported the right of Quebec to self-determination while arguing against actual independence, charges Bains with the crassest opportunism, since his weird party didn´t really fight for French language rights in the here and now (thereby adapting to Anglo-chauvinism), while calling for a bloc with Quebecois nationalists in the abstract. 

Not sure who might be interested in this material today, but there you go.