Re: [A-List] Fw: 2006 federal election: An Assessment from the Communist Party

[grok@xxxxxxxxx]

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> Stephen Harper and his right-wing party managed to
> fashion gains at the polls on Jan. 23 mostly at the
> expense of the Liberals, winning 124 (of 3080 seats
> in Parliament.

I didn't realize there were so many seats in this country's
parliament. Must be the patronage angle. Ain't nearly enuff
baksheesh being doled out fast enuff, eh?
;>


> Even though the Tories fell far short of the outright
> victory they had sought, there should be no
> underestimation of the harm that could result under
> a Harper minority government. The challenge now
> for the labour, peace, equity and social justice
> movements will be to strengthen mass
> extra-parliamentary resistance to prevent the Tories
> from implementing their reactionary agenda, and to
> bring down the government at the earliest opportunity.

Here's two reasons I've come to very much dislike the
Communist Party of Canada:

* They continue to tail bourgeois thinking and practice in
all ways -- thus doing their damnedest to demoralize the
revolutionary Left, in favor of the social-democratic
"option". But stalinist parties do this the world over, of
course. Here, the *very Central Committee* of the Party
cannot distinguish that it is no longer acceptable to call
these people "Tories". *They aren't Tories*. They're
*neocons*. Big difference. Funnily enuff, it's a hallmark of
the _liberal/soc-dem_ mindset that this distinction isn't
even on the radar for them either...

* The CCCP went defunct 15 years ago -- yet the CPC is still
pushing 'peaceful coexistence'. Which wasn't even acceptable
for a communist party to push even 50 years ago, let alone
when we need a revolution now. Badly. Utter reformist
rubbish.



> The Harper Tories will have to manoeuvre carefully
> to avoid a political show-down that could bring
> about an early defeat in a non-confidence vote, but
> this does not mean they will abandon their
> right-wing program.

This should be everyone's new goal: Expose these bastards
for what they truly are -- and bring this government down
ASAP. It took the Trudeau Liberal Opposition only 8 months
to turf out the Joe Clark "Tory" (note to CPC CC: that's
REAL Tory) regime. This new lot is a lot meaner and nastier.
But that just means we can *enjoy* hurting them (as they
will certainly enjoy hurting all of us any chance they get).



> Harper's pledge to effectively scuttle plans for
> a universal, publicly financed childcare program
> (replaced by a taxable allowance of $100 per
> month), and lingering Tory threats to reopen
> Parliamentary debate on reproductive rights,
> same-sex marriage and other social and equality
> issues are deeply disturbing, especially for
> women. There will be even fewer women MPs
> in the new House to defend women's rights and
> interests, a stinging indictment of the current
> electoral system, and another argument in
> favour of some form of proportional
> representation, under which the participation
> and election of women would surely increase.

If BOTH Leftists and liberals can't whip up a united front
against this agenda in record time, they'll be shown to be
simply incompetent and unfit to lead. But then, I think the
Left IS incompetent to lead. So I'm not holding my breath.
It's up to the masses to lead this thing. Not the "leaders".
And life is full of surprises.



> The Tories can also inflict great damage in such
> areas as government infrastructure, judicial and
> Senate appointments, and on "state security",
> foreign and defence policy issues, which require
> neither federal-provincial nor Parliamentary
> approval.

There's no difference between any of the bourgeois parties
- -- including the NDP -- on any of this. The police state
continues expanding and metastasisizing in the sure
knowledge that they no one THEY are accountable to need
worry or bother about getting elected, or being called to
account -- or any of that democracy garbage.



> Jack Layton and the NDP come out of this election
> with some gains in popular vote, and a 29-seat
> caucus, a gain of 10 seats. These advances have
> raised expectations in the labour and social
> movements that the NDP is better situated within
> Parliament to fight the expected onslaught from
> the Harper Tories. But there is growing concern
> about whether the NDP leadership is prepared to
> play such a combative role, given its opportunist
> shift during the campaign on a number of key
> issues: its rather feeble opposition to the
> proliferation of private health clinics - the
> material basis for the transformation to
> two-tiered healthcare; its promise to freeze
> rather than increase taxes on corporations and
> the wealthy; its support of the chauvinist
> Clarity Act, the main aim of which is to deny
> Quebec's right to self-determination; and its
> pandering to the right  populist campaign to
> "get tough" on gun violence and youth crime.

The NDP IS with the enemy -- and the CPC tails them always.
Class analysis takes NO part in north american politix --
even inside the CPC for the most part, apparently. With a
class analysis, it would be very clear that all of us must
stand 100% and fundamentally against the bourgeois order.
Completely. The NDP not only will NEVER do that -- they
endlessly foster illusions in the possibility of reconciling
irreconcilable differences. That's their JOB: to divert the
working-class from the road of class struggle.

Ditch the NDP -- and all those who tail them down the garden
path of class-collaboration and defeat. THAT's the right
thing to do, and has been from the very formation of this
petit-bourgeois business-unionist workers' party. We need a
REAL workers' party; but all the world's stalinist parties
have demonstrated a ZILLION times -- both before and after
the "Fall of Communism" -- that they are unfit to be called
a workers' party. So we must look elsewhere.



> The Greens gained some votes in this election,
> but the lack of proportional representation again
> kept them out of Parliament.

Another irrelevant petit-bourgeois party. The longer they
exist, the more this becomes apparent. All over the world.
But I'm sure the CPC at least knows that, as do most of the
people reading this. Not that a united front movement won't
have "Greens" or NDP rank-n-file in it.  t just won't bend
to the NDP's or Green's delusional class-collaborationist
worldview, and defang and declaw itself to please the
imperial masters in the name of some pathetic and
wholly-irrelevant "respectability".



> The Communist Party's own electoral campaign
> registered a modest improvement in the average
> vote among our 21 candidates, despite the
> highly polarized character of the election and
> the backward, undemocratic first-past-the-post
> electoral system.

Why talk like reformists? Communists shouldn't be trying to
fix the cretinous bourgeois parliamentary system: they
should be aiming for worker's power and only using the
bourgeois parliament to stump for workers' attention, and to
organize them *outside* the parliament, and to 'protect the
rear' of workers' rights against legalistic assaults in the
chambers, for as long as that is required by political
circumstances.

I'm sure the CPC has all sorts of excuses over why they
fetishize the bourgeois parliamentary system; but the fact
that this is a WRONG focus remains, and is SOLID.



> The campaign raised the visibility of the Party
> through increased coverage in the media, at
> all-candidates meetings, and on thousands of
> doorsteps. It is particularly significant that our
> party website received almost 100,000 visits
> (more than 4.2 million hits) during the
> campaign. Many more working and
> progressive-minded people, especially youth,
> are interested and attracted to our policies and
> socialist perspective.

And hopefully they'll continue to develop intellectually
beyond reformism and help found a new mass party.



> The overall political situation coming out of this
> election will be marked by a great deal of
> volatility, with significant dangers from the Right.
> The labour and people's movements will be
> challenged more than ever to mobilize outside of
> Parliament to oppose right-wing efforts to gut
> Medicare, education, pensions an other social
> programs and services, to attack labour and
> democratic rights, and to align Canada even more
> closely with U.S. imperialism. The first
> opportunity to hit the streets against this agenda
> comes on March 18, when anti-war
> demonstrations take place in many Canadian cities
> and towns as part of a global day of peace action.

More symbolic protest. Feel good stuff. "Peace" action...
Yeah... Sure.
But at least the CPC covers their Left flank here. For the
liberal-Left. Not fooling some of us, however. Proof's in
the pudding: the CPC does not lead. It follows.



> The Communist Party and its members will be
> called upon to redouble our efforts to build the
> broadest possible resistance to the
> Tory/corporate agenda, to blunt and defeat its
> offensive, and send the Tories packing.

I do not think the Communist Party of Canada [sic] will ever
be leading the United Front parade to socialist victory.
The rest of us will look elsewhere for working-class
leadership. I don't want to be saying all this -- but the
interests of workers come first, don't they? They must be
told that the CPC is a decaying stalinoid deadend.


- -- grok.



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