[Marxism] 'Canadian Bolsheviks' - a review

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Scanned from the latest issue of the UK journal,
Revolutionary History, Vol. 9, No. 2:

Ian Angus, Canadian Bolsheviks: The Early Years of the
Communist Party of Canada, Trafford Publishing, Victoria,
2004, pp339

THE appearance of a revised and updated edition provides a
welcome opportunity to draw Angus? work to the attention of
our readers. It would also be appropriate for us to record
our appreciation of and interest in the work led by the same
author as Director of the Socialist History Project in
Canada (see www. socialisthistory.ca).

The history of the communist movement in Canada is little
known. We have the story of Maurice Spector and his
overnight conversion (along with James P Cannon) to
Trotskyism, of course. But the only history of the Communist
Party of Canada (CPC) has been the tendentious writing of
the Stalinist Tim Buck. Buck?s Lenin and Canada can still be
stumbled upon by the unwary, in the seedier corners of
second-hand book dealers. Angus? first edition contained a
extensive demolition of Buck?s misrepresentations and
distortions. In the new edition, this material is organised
into appendices, which improves the narrative flow.

The origins of the CPC lay in the social democratic parties
and in the émigré groups (notably Ukrainians). In this
respect, Canada resembled the USA (see Cannon?s The First
Ten Years of American Communism), and the most important
struggle was to unify the forces. However, Canada was under
British imperialist rule, and this led to the vigorous
suppression of anti-war socialists during the First World
War. German, Jewish and East European émigrés were
particularly victimised.

The overthrow of the Tsar of Russia coincided with an
upsurge in industrial militancy (which grew out of severe
manpower shortages) to give a great boost to the movement.
Trotsky?s War and the International achieved huge sales
across Canada. The movement became polarised between social
democrats who favoured the Labour Party in Britain as their
model, and those who identified themselves with `the
Bolsheviki programme?. Many of the latter organised
themselves into the Socialist Party of North America (SPNA)
that launched a drive towards a united communist party.

The state was not to sit idle while the workers created a
revolutionary movement. In September and October 1918, all
the significant left organisations were banned. Fines and
imprisonment followed all across the country. Immigrants
were subjected to mass internment. Although the workers
counterattacked with strikes, demonstrations and petitions,
the movement was seriously impeded by this repression.

The ending of the war and the German revolution of 1919
triggered a revival, with widespread demands for an end to
wartime repression and the liberation of the prisoners and
internees. An underground Communist Party of Canada came
into existence, issuing revolutionary leaflets. Angus
provides a fascinating dissection of how this movement came
about, and the leading personalities involved.

Despite further waves of arrests, the communists drove roots
deep into the rich soil of the working class. There were
important mass strikes in several cities during 1919. The
defeat of these strikes posed the most central questions of
leadership and programme for the workers. The route to
unification was difficult, and it took until 1922. By then,
however, the communists had organised the majority of the
militant workers; Angus estimates it at 90 per cent of the
former membership of the SDP. The social democrats were
reduced to an ineffective rump. Deep entrists take note!

It is during this phase that the leading characters emerge
who dominate the rest of the story ? Spector, MacDonald and
Buck. Other very interesting figures are also sketched for
us, such as Florence Custance and Jack Kavanagh (who later
became General Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia
and subsequently a Trotskyist). MacDonald was born in
Falkirk, where he won his spurs as an industrial organiser.
Disappointingly, there is no mention of MacDonald in James D
Young?s new history of Falkirk.

It was Spector, MacDonald and Custance who attended the
Fourth Congress of the Comintern, and on their return they
completed the liquidation of the ?underground? CPC which had
been operating through the Workers Party of Canada. Thus in
1924, there emerged onto the political stage the unified,
open and legal CPC, when the WPC changed its name.

The communists applied their local version of Lenin?s tactic
of seeking to work with the Labour Party. The Canadian
Labour Party had been formed by an alliance of trade unions
in 1917. It was too amorphous to present problems of
programme to the communists, and they made successful moves
towards a working-class united front in municipal and
provincial elections. In 1923, they took a full and leading
part in the creation of a Labour Representation Political
Association, which brought them into contact with a wide
range of working-class organisations.

During this same period, the communists dug deep into the
trade unions. Angus gives us a detailed account of their
work, led by MacDonald, among the coal miners of Cape
Breton, Nova Scotia.

The party was less sure-footed through the major period of
decline in the labour movement during the mid-1920s through
to 1930. Following Lenin?s illness and death in 1923, the
traumatic change of line imposed by Stalin ? ?socialism in
one country?, ?social fascism?, etc ? the party remained
loyal, swallowing the defeats of the Chinese revolution and
the British general strike. They got themselves into
entertaining twists in relation to Canadian independence
moves, looking through Stalinist telescopes to seek out the
`progressive bourgeois?.

It was in early 1924 that Spector arrived in Moscow, having
observed the defeat of the German revolutionary movement in
1923. Witnessing the style and manner of the Russian
Communist Party against Trotsky and the Left Opposition, he
decided to do what he could to prevent this being echoed in
Canada. Buck attended the Fifth Comintern Congress and came
to the opposite decision. Initially, Spector held the
ground. The Canadian delegate Moriarty at the Comintern
Executive Committee in 1924 was the only one who refused to
condemn the Opposition. By 1927, Buck was able to drive the
Stalinist line through leadership meetings of the CPC,
leaving Spector isolated in his support for Trotsky, while
MacDonald concentrated on local matters of organisation.

It was downhill all the way from there. Buck conducted what
was in effect a purge of the party, and vigorously pursued
the Moscow line on every question. Membership declined
disastrously. Spector was expelled, MacDonald later
resigned. The small Trotskyist movement was never able to
win the influence that the CPC had achieved and thrown away.

The earlier parts of the book I found the more interesting
in that they dealt with the historically-specific Canadian
factors, and brought out the story of a surprisingly
successful communist party. The story of Stalinist erosion
of the communist parties has an international dreariness
about it.

Ian Angus? account is well supported by documentary sources
at every stage, and his overthrow of the official Buck
history is an important contribution to the theoretical
rearmament of the class in Canada and throughout the world.
We look forward to the eventual publication of his work in
progress on the history of the Trotskyists in Canada.

JJ Plant



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