The
attack on the Communist Party of Canada by David Camfield recently
published in Passage doesn't merit a response, but rather
necessitates one. That is to say, the arguments made in the piece
aren't good ones, but left unresponded to they may mislead young
radicals exactly in the manner that Camfield erroneously charges
against the Communist Party of Canada. In the piece, which is itself
a response to Kimball Cariou's exemplary article 'Canada Still Needsa Communist Party,' Camfield makes a number of charges. The most
prominent of these charges is the least compelling, and is in large
bold letters at the top of the page: "Since the 1950s, Canada's
Communist Party has lacked the size, and degree of influence on a
mass scale, needed to be a genuine party." What is one even to
do with this? What is this argument other than an incoherent
tautology? The Communist Party of Canada has lacked size and
influence, so therefore it ought not have size and influence? It
hasn't been sizable or influential, so its growing size and influence
ought to be checked? Nothing in the following paragraphs in any way
turns this frustrated lament into an actual argument. But beneath the
charge that the Communist Party of Canada cannot be a revolutionary
force in Canadian politics lies a more insidious and bitter argument,
that the Communist Party of Canada ought not be a revolutionary force
in Canadian politics.
The
real substance of David Camfield's argument is that he simply doesn't
want young people to fall under the sway of the Communist Party of
Canada. He portrays them in the manner of Socrates' accusers:
corrupting the youth. But the fact of the matter is that the
Communist Party of Canada is growing in size and influence not
because of the nefarious machinations of its elder members, but
rather because its positions are right and principled. This is what
Camfield is actually attacking, the taking and holding of principled
positions whatsoever, and that is precisely why young people are
gravitating towards them.
On
the front of Social Democracy, Jagmeet Singh is undeniably an
improvement over Thomas Mulcair, and does not deserve the racist
treatment he has received in the House of Commons. And yet, it is no
accident that while a majority of NDP MPs have denounced the Israeli
annexation of the West Bank, he and Randal Garrison have not. On
foreign policy most of all the NDP compromises with and reproduces
imperialist falsehoods and reaction. The Communist Party of Canada
does not do this, ever. At no point does the Communist Party of
Canada split the difference with those who champion and cheerlead for
Israeli apartheid, or the disastrous and bloody war in Yemen, or
reproduce the grotesque sinophobia being promoted by US Empire today.
On the foreign affairs front that is why young people are inspired by
the line of the Communist Party of Canada, it is not an aftereffect,
something smuggled in after the fact, it is rather the reason that
young people are turning to them. The same is true of domestic
politics and a resolute commitment to justice for working class
people and indigenous people.
Older
Social Democrats, or more broadly older Trotskyists, are allergic to
principle, to belief, to solidarity with global class struggle. So
long have they prefaced anything resembling socialist principle with
qualifiers and disclaimers of responsibility that all that remains
are the qualifier and disclaimers. And worse, they hold forth their
qualifications and disclaimers as a virtue in and of themselves. 'We
are the real left,' they claim, 'because we have for so long
denounced the left.' And that is all that remains, paranoiac
denunciations and pious idealism. That is what David Camfield's
argument amounts to 'don't fall under the sway of the Communist Party
of Canada, who have solidarity with Palestinians and Yemenis and
Chinese people, instead hold fast to doing nothing and believing in
nothing.'
Ultimately
the dispute has little to nothing to do with the Communist Party of
Canada itself, the institution and its personages. The fact that the
Communist Party of Canada expresses the principled anti-imperialist
positions domestically and internationally that it does merely
exposes those for whom those positions are anathema. That allergy,
that remove, that refusal to have unwavering and unequivocal love and
solidarity for working class and indigenous struggle against the
Canadian State and Capital at home, and unwavering and unequivocal
love and solidarity for actually existing socialist states and
minoritarian movements abroad, is what young people are rejecting and
moving away from. The fashionable nihilism of the geriatric and
deteriorating 'new left' is no longer fashionable, and they are
enraged. That is the substance of David Camfield's objection to the
Communist Party of Canada, that they believe too much, and are
encouraging younger people to believe too much.
Whether
one chooses to become involved with the Communist Party of Canada or
not - and I am neither a member nor do I speak for the Party - I
wholeheartedly encourage everyone, especially young working people,
young indigenous people and young marginalized people, to read and
study their program 'Canada's Future is Socialism!' adopted and
ratified at the 39th Central Convention of the Communist Party of
Canada. This document is
the gold standard of contemporary Socialism. Not only do critics like
David Camfield not offer a credible alternative to this program, they
lack the ability to. Their argument is, in effect, that it is wrong
and dangerous to so earnestly and unreservedly endorse such an
unvarnished socialist program. This argument is failing to gain
traction precisely because young people are exhausted with late
capitalism and are sick of exactly the kind of compromise and
complicity that saturates Camfield's critique.
Young
people are not being duped, misled, scammed, grifted, or anything
else left anti-communist allege. Young people, working people,
indigenous people and marginalized people are inspired and united by
rigorous critique and principle, and that is why its critics launch
such facile attacks against the Communist Party of Canada today.
No comments:
Post a Comment