When the Communist International was organized in the years following World War I, a key principle was that only one party would be allowed to join from any one country. The advantages of this to the working class cause are obvious. In Canada the necessary unity was achieved in 1921 and has lasted since to this extent, that -- at least in English-speaking Canada -- usually only one party has by and large been recognized in the labour movement and most other sites of popular struggle as continuing the Communist political project. If the CPC s claims to that effect have certainly not gone unchallenged even in English-speaking Canada, elsewhere in the world Communist disunity has for decades now been still more undeniable. Many readers will be aware of how the two Communist Parties of India have been unable to reunite but still have for many years now managed to work together quite effectively in different states and also centrally. The story varies from country to country, but fragmentation at the national level is certainly a continuing obstacle to Communist unity internationally. Ideological differences, strategic and tactical differences, and even personal differences all play their part. Of course, the degree of international Communist unity achievable must depend, basically, on the possibilities for unity in the broader working-class and revolutionary movement world-wide. The Communist Party of Canada is not going to stop working and fighting for maximum Communist unity, as well as maximum unity on the left and in the labour and people's movements generally. But the road ahead is evidently not a short one.
This issue of The Spark! contains a short report on the politics of Syria (where there are two different Communist Parties) and excepts from the documents of the recent Party Congress in neighbouring Jordan (where there is only one). The last issue s editorial had to mention the damaging disunity which exists still among the Communists of Russia, and Russia along with the other former Soviet republics remains an area to which Communists all over the world have to continue looking with great concern. When, and through what process of struggle, will the working class again seize the reins of governmental power there?
And just when and how did the working class ever lose its grip on those reins of governmental power in the first place? Was it in 1991? 1985? 1956? or even earlier? Do we need to modify the Marxist concept that a ruling class never surrenders power voluntarily? The Marxist debate over just what happened in the Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe continues to rage internationally and also in the Communist Party of Canada, and the present issue of The Spark! contains two articles and a book review relevant to the issue: "The Rise of Gorbachev and the assault on the Economic Foundation of Socialism in the USSR" by Ziad Ghanem, "The Problem of 'the Socialist Market " by Emil Bjarnason, and Roger Perkins review of Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System by David Kotz with Fred Weir (former Moscow reporter for the Canadian Tribune). It is easy to see that these different writers don't all agree with one another. Would all of them, though, agree with the reference in Ghanem s article to "the lack of democratic traditions with the CPSU" (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)? There has to be some explanation for the relative passivity of the Soviet working class until very lately. But the extent to which habitual undemocratic methods of operation in the Soviet Union accounted for, or instead resulted from, the working class s passitivity still remains an extremely relevant theoretical issue. George McKnight's article on Canadian social democracy inevitably suggests a similar, though less momentous, question: to what extent is the relative passivity of the Canadian working class traceable to, and to what extent is it responsible for, the strength of social democracy in the working class movement here?
To Marxists, of course, the class question is what is primary, and the role of individual politicians is by comparison secondary in the long run. But when it comes to the overthrow of the USSR and what led up to that, it is impossible not to be curious as to just when Mikhail Gorbachev came to his present stated view that private ownership of the major means of production is preferable to social ownership. In the Monthly Review piece to which Perkins refers in his book review, the former Soviet economist Sanislav Menshikov writes, "When [Gorbachev] visited Holland a couple of years ago I heard him admit that he was thinking of destroying the system when he was not yet even a member of the Politburo".
On a happier note, for those who like anniversaries 1998 marks 110 years since Pierre Degeyter wrote the music to the communist anthem, "The Internationale", so that the verses composed the previous year by his French compatriot, the poet EugSne Pottier, could be sung. In response to a request received, this issue of The Spark! reprints both the original French words and the English version currently in use in our party. Since the Communist International was dissolved in 1943, we now sing, "The international working class will be the human race," in place of, "The Internationale will be the human race." (Socialists used to sing, "The international party," and anarcho-syndicalist Wobblies, "The international union," in place of "The Internationale.")
The other items in the present issue probably speak for themselves. Progressive Canadians should be interested in the Communist Party of Britain s attitude to the national question on that multi-national island made up of England, Scotland and Wales (leaving aside the six troubled counties of northeastern Ireland which Britain still occupies). The excerpts reprinted here from the documents of 1997 Congress of the Communist Party of China stand in sharp contrast, older readers will recall, to the enthusiasm they once expressed for getting to communism almost overnight. Now they speak of "at least a century" to firmly establish socialism and "many generations, a dozen or even several dozens" after that "to consolidate and develop the socialist system". But can humanity wait that long? Certainly we in Canada have no reason to be proud of our own success so far in rolling back capitalism here!
Without doubt, the achievement of socialism even in our part of the world would indeed have a positive effect on the overall pace of social progress elsewhere. But, like earlier revolutionaries, starting with Marx, we all may have been too impatient in the past, too prone to underestimate how long and arduous the historic struggle is going to have to be. We now know more about the pitfalls on the revolutionary path. And how to estimate Chinese developments in the light of this is something which we are currently trying to come to grips with. In this connection it is interesting to see how, despite their apparent disagreement about "the socialist market", both Ziad Ghanem and Emil Bjarnason want to stress the essentially "transitional" character (Bjarnason) of the social order of socialism, its existence "rife with internal contradictions" (Ghanem). One lesson which Canadians certainly can draw is that the need for social struggle will by no means be ended once the socialist expropriation of productive property is accomplished. We do face a fierce struggle, and a protracted one; but every future victory won ought to strengthen our ability to battle on further.
1. "A Ruling Class Destroys Its Own Regime", by Stanislav Menshikov, Monthly Review, Volume 49, No.5 ctober 1997), page 51.
