La Vie Réelle in English

NEW YORK IN BAGHDAD

2012-01-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

We will remember!

vol. 5, no. 2, January 13th, 2012

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Please let us listen to this poignant song of the Australian-born pop singer Tina ARENA, Je m'appelle Baghdad:

This article is dedicated to those marvelous US comrades from Los Angeles, Détroit, St.Paul’s, Washington D.C., New York… who fought during all their lives for peace, progress and socialism in United States of America and elsewhere around the world. We always refer to them as the “old comrades”. It is not to stigmatize them due to their venerable age, rather than a commitment to follow their footsteps. We love them and they inspire us. Their spirit is already part of our traditions and, actually, the leitmotiv of our daily struggles; in a way or in another, they set up the landmarks of the Occupy Wall Street movement all over North America. Thank you so much comrades! (Photo Internet: OWS in Montréal-Canada, "Is it a revolt?! No, Majesty, it is a revolution, - 1789)

So, there will be presidential elections in USA, in 2012. We could vote for the Republicans: a comeback to the Reagan’s years, Bush’s years; tantamount to new wars, to more unemployment and a deeper crisis, while the wealth of the nation (“the money”) will go further in the pockets of the well-to-do. It is not acceptable. Would we support the fringe group called the “Tea Party”? This is the “people’s” variant longing for drastic setbacks in all the progressive values adopted by the US people since WWII. We cannot live with that. By the way, to dwell about the Rightists (Republicans and Tea Party), there is a joke that goes like that: “Do you know that since his retreat from Presidency, George W. Bush became half-crazy?” Answer: “Oh yes, he feels better…”

What’s left then? Well, let the Democratic Party knows that we are mad at them and that they MUST fulfill their 2008 promises. We don’t expect more, but we don’t expect less; and we will take the street… Basically, the next “step” could be in the streets. We guess that President Obama is smart enough to understand our voices. So, here is another joke; President Barack Obama was asked: “About your intelligence, is it the fruit of a seasoned experience or… in-born?” Answer: “Yes!”

Meanwhile, it is alleged that the Far Right is looking for foreign spies. Already, they keep an eye on the Cuban Five who have been in jail for 13 years on unqualified accusations as spying USA military facilities. It has not even been asserted, including by prominent US military members of the General Staff. But the FBI is supposedly on the lead, since they discovered that some Communist Party members are aware of a very dangerous trend within the US society: CUBISM. It seems that it is “a style of art characterized by the abstraction of natural forms into fragmented geometric shapes!!!” Is it contagious?
(Reproduction Internet: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Pablo Picasso dans sa période cubiste)

So many people around the world would be relieved if President Obama releases them. He has actually all the power to do that, including convincing backward elements of US population that we are now living in the XXIst century.

Nathalie CARDONE sings us a very inspiring song (Hasta Siempre) about the relations between Cuba and USA, two nations who committed themselves in people’s revolutions against imperialism:

http://youtu.be/PEj7jnR--Dg

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/

-30-

STALIN AND HIS ERA

2012-01-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

vol. 5, no. 1, January 3rd, 2012

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

“The Khrushchev School of Falsification:”

“The fiftieth anniversary of Nikita s. Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech, delivered on February 25, 1956, elicited predictable comment. An article in the London (UK) Telegraph called it ‘the 20th century’s most influential speech'. (Furr, Grover, Khrushchev Lied, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering - Ohio, 2011, p. 2)

So, I suspected that today, in the light of the many documents from formerly secret Soviet archives now available, serious research might discoverer that even more of Khrushchev’s ‘revelations’ about Stalin were false. In fact, I made a far different discovery. Not one specific statement of ‘revelation’ that Khrushchev made about either Stalin or Beria turned out to be true. The entire ‘Secret Speech’ is made up of fabrications. (Ibidem, p. 3)

The most influential speech of the 20th century – if not of all time – a complete fraud? The notion was too monstrous. Who would want to come to grips with the revision of Soviet, Comintern, and even world history that the logic of such a conclusion would demand? It would be infinitely easier for everyone to believe that I had ‘cooked the books,’ shaded the truth – that I was falsifying things, just as I was accusing Khrushchev of doing. Then my work could be safely ignored, and the problem would ‘go away.’ Especially since I am known to have sympathy towards the world wide communist movement of which Stalin was the recognized leader. When a researcher comes to conclusions that suspiciously appear to support his own preconceived ideas, it is only prudent to suspect him of some lack of objectivity, if not worse.” (Ibidem, p. 4)

“In December 1922, in a letter to the Party Congress, Vladimir Il’ich wrote: ‘After taking over the position of Secretary General, Comrade Stalin accumulated in his hands immeasurable power and I am not certain whether he will be always able to use this power with the required care.’

He also said:

“Stalin is excessively rude, and this defect, which can be freely tolerated in our midst and in contacts among us Communists, becomes a defect which cannot be tolerated in one holding the position of the Secretary General. Because of this, I propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position and by which another man would be selected for it, a man who, above all, would differ from Stalin in only one quality, namely greater tolerance, greater loyalty, greater kindness and more considerate attitude toward the comrades, a less capricious temper, etc.” (Ibidem, pp. 237-238)

On December 19, 1927, Stalin declared to the CC Plenum:

“Comrades! For three years I have been asking the CC to free me from the obligations of General Secretary of the CC. Each time the Plenum has refused me. I admit that until recently conditions did exist such that the Party had need of me in this post as a person more or less severe, one who acted as a certain kind of antidote to the dangers posed by the Opposition. I admit that this necessity existed, despite comrade Lenin’s well-known letter, to keep me at the post of General Secretary. But those conditions exist no longer. They have vanished, since the Opposition is now smashed. It seems that the Opposition has never before suffered such a defeat since they have not only been smashed, but have been expelled from the Party. It follows that now no bases exist any longer that could be considered correct when the Plenum refused to honor my request and free me of the duties of General Secretary. Meanwhile you have comrade Lenin’s directive which we are obliged to consider and which, in my opinion, it is necessary to put into effect. I admit that the Party was compelled to disregard this directive until recently, compelled by well-known conditions of inter-Party development. But I repeat that these conditions have now vanished and it is time, in my view to take comrade Lenin’s directive to the leadership. Therefore I request the Plenum to free me of the post of General Secretary of the CC. I assure you, comrades that the Party can only gain from doing this.” (Ibidem, p. 251)

A few years before, the young workers and peasants Republic had witnessed the Socialist Revolution.

“If I were asked what was the greatest, the most memorable moment of my life, I would answer without any hesitation: it was when Soviet power was proclaimed.
Nothing could compare to the pride and joy that filled us as we heard pronounced from the tribune of the Second Congress of Soviets at Smolny the simple and impressive words of the historic resolution: “All power has passed to the Soviets of Workers’ Soldiers and Peasants Deputies!’
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was unforgettable at that moment! It was amazing and unforgettable, this inspired concentration of Vladimir Ilyich as he stood on the platform of the presidium of the first Soviet legislative assembly as the Bolsheviks, in the first few hours after taking power, began socialist construction, the construction of a new world.” (Kollontaï, Alexandra, Lenin at Smolny, Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1984)

During World War 2, soldiers of the Red Army when they had the opportunity, used to meet, especially to celebrate New Year, and would toast to Stalin:

“La première santé, selon la coutume des hommes soviétiques, fut portée au camarade Staline; on lui souhaita une santé florissante dans l’année nouvelle et une longue vie. Puis on but à la victoire…” (Polévoï, Boris, Nous autres Soviétiques, Un rêve réalisé, Édition électronique réalisée par Vincent Gouysse à partir de l'ouvrage publié en 1949 aux Éditions en langues étrangères de Moscou, p. 152)

Soviet people were then defending their motherland and the achievements of the socialist revolution against Nazi Germany.
(Photo Internet: April 1945, the Red Army in Berlin; complete victory over Nazi Germany which costed 20 millions Soviet lives)

“In 1917 the chain of the imperialist world front proved to be weaker in Russia than in the other countries. It was there that the chain broke and provided an outlet for the proletarian revolution. Why? Because in Russia a great popular revolution was unfolding and at is head marched the revolutionary proletariat, which had such an important ally as the vast mass of the peasantry, which was oppressed and exploited by the landlords. Because of the revolution there was opposed by such a hideous representative of imperialism as tsarism, which lacked all moral prestige and was deservedly hated by the whole population. The chain proved to be weaker in Russia, although Russia was less developed in a capitalist sense that, say, France or Germany, Britain or America.” (Stalin, J.V., The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, p. 27)

History teaches us that we must base ourselves on concrete facts. We cannot write it according to the tastes and fashions of the day. Yes, Joseph Stalin is not popular among the populations of the Western World. For most of these people he is a barbarian butcher. Such is not the appreciation for the older generations of the Russian people who benefited from the realizations of the Soviet power. This explains why –and television coverage shows it – the peoples of former Soviet Union are not ashamed to demonstrate with banners proclaiming their faith in Stalin.

Meanwhile, workers around the world are invited to join Communist parties, even if they don’t acknowledge the contribution of Stalin for world peace and advancements in the area of culture, economy and social progress in general.
Soviet people realized even the differences in the economic regime after the death of Joseph Stalin; such is also the case for the friends of Soviet Union in Europe, for instance by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE):

“… we regard, as mistaken the political choice, that held sway after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU,-Ed) and especially after 1965, regarding utilization of mechanisms and laws of the market for correction of mistakes and overcoming of shortcomings in the central planning (e.g. enterprise profits, establishment of enterprises’ self-management, etc.)”
(Papariga, Aleka, The importance of the critical assessment of the socialist construction in the 20th century for the strengthening of the labor movement and for an effective counter-attack, International Communist Review, # 2, Athens, 2010-2011, p. 30)

Please enjoy Charles Aznavour, Vechnaya Lioubov: http://youtu.be/Sy4t3DIRT2U

La Vie Réelle in English: http://wwwlavienglish.blogspot.com/

-30-

."EUROCOMMUNISM", A BRAND OF OPPORTUNISM

2011-11-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

vol. 4, no. 6, November 12th, 2011

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://wwwlavienglish.blogspot.com/

“… Between Marx and Engels on the one hand, and Lenin, on the other, there lies a whole period of domination of opportunism… This was the period of the relatively peaceful development of capitalism, the pre-war period, so to speak, when the catastrophic contradictions of imperialism had not yet became so glaringly evident, when workers’ economic

(Photo KKE: Greek people recalling their "no" to fascist Italy and current "no" to EU diktates)

strikes and trade unions were developing more or less ‘normally,’ when election campaigns and parliamentary groups yielded ‘dizzying’ successes, when legal forms of struggle were lauded to the skies, and when it was thought that capitalism would be ‘killed’ by legal means – in short, when the parties of the Second International were living in clover and had no inclination to think seriously about revolution, about the dictatorship of the proletariat, about the revolutionary education of the masses.

Instead of an integral revolutionary theory, there were contradictory theoretical postulates and fragments of theory, which were divorced from the actual revolutionary struggle of the masses and had been turned into threadbare dogmas. For the sake of appearances, Marx’s theory was mentioned, of course, but only to rob it of its living, revolutionary spirit. (J.V. Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, p. 1975, pp. 11-12).

However, the Leninist theory or revolution proved that:

“the front of capital will be pierced where the chain of imperialism is weakest, for the proletarian revolution is the result of the breaking of the chain of the world imperialist front at its weakest link; and it may turn out that the country which has started the revolution, which has made a breach in the front of capital, is less developed in a capitalist sense than other, more developed, countries, which have, however, remained within the framework of capitalism.” (Ibidem, pp. 26-27)

After WW 2,

“ The confrontation between imperialism and the socialist camp was the genuine expression of class struggle at international scale. (Raul Martinez Turrero, From “Eurocommunism” to present opportunism), International Communist Review, Issue # 2, September 2011, p. 83)

The imperialist ideological think-tanks assisted and widely circulated Eurocommunist conceptions that they contemptuously called “orthodox” or “pro-Soviet”. Eurocommunism, represented mainly by the parties of Italy, France and Spain, is named after the capitalist news agencies, who with this name, referred to organizations that shared the defense of a number of points of view:

-Opposition to the existence of an organized international communist movement, defending the thesis of so-called “polycentrism” in face of the experience of the Communist International (Komintern) and the Information Office of the Communist and Workers' Parties (Kominform).

-The replacement of the category of “proletarian internationalism”, which they identified with the unconditional defense of the Soviet Union and the political line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and with that of “internationalist solidarity” or “new internationalism”.

-The constant and open criticism to the USSR and the socialist countries from the standpoint of human rights and individual freedoms in their bourgeois concept.

- The revision and destruction of the “party of a new type” coined by Lenin, denying in one degree or another the revolutionary tasks of the communist party at the same time, denying also the revolutionary principles in what refers to organization and functioning.

Eurocommunism affected communist and workers' parties from different positions, some of them in power and, like other opportunistic currents throughout history, Eurocommunism had a clear international orientation, despite having as a thesis being a phenomenon attending to the national particularities and conditions. In this regard, Enrico Berlinguer, former General Secretary of PCI (Italian Communist Party, - Ed), said:

‘We obviously are not those who forged this term, but the very fact that it circulates so widely shows how the countries of Western Europe deeply aspire to see the affirmation and progress of new type solutions in the transformation of society in a socialist sense.’

The then General Secretary of the PCE (Communist Party of Spain, -Ed), Santiago Carrillo, added:

“... There is no such a thing as Eurocommunism, since some non-European communist parties, as the Japanese Communist Party, cannot be included under that label”.

Despite the inconsistencies and falsifications that have characterized the life of Carrillo, who months after denying the existence of “Eurocommunism”, published a book entitled "Eurocommunism and State"; he was right on one thing: the phenomenon was not limited to Western Europe. (Ibidem, p. 84)

But today in 2011, many years later, more and more European communist parties hold different views (based on the legacy of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin), such as the KKE (Communist Party of Greece, -Ed), whose General Secretary of its Central Committee, Aleka Papariga, made the following bold statement to the media, in connection with the deep confrontation between Labour and Capital in Greece:

“We must not waste even a day. Before the government even regroups, before it takes its first steps, it must find the people opposed to it. There are specific immediate problems e.g. for the heavy taxes to be abolished, immediate problems which are related to taxation, the ‘solidarity’ tax, school committees which have no money, student accommodation which will close tomorrow, there is no money for the universities, nowhere, to fund them.
(Photo WFTU: PAME Demonstration in Athens/Greece, October 2011)

Consequently, the problems are immediate and there must be struggles everywhere. Immediate and at the same time, of course, intensified demands to lead to the great people’s counterattack, because everything is fiscal. Do you know what fiscal means? It means cessation of funding for education, health, everything.”

The Greek working class and its allies don’t give an inch.

At its VI National Congress, 28-30 October 2011 (in Rimini), the Party of the Italian Communists (PdCI) adopted a document “for the reconstruction of the Communist Party”, where it stresses that:

“In the European context the experience of recent years has demolished the argument that in this part of the world a Communist revolutionary force, rejecting any reference to social-democracy and being compliant one, is inevitably destined to decline and marginalization. It shows, instead, that the opposite thesis is true, that the political-ideological party profile should always be accompanied with its ability in social setting, primarily in the workplaces and among young people. It is what AKEL of Cyprus, Greek KKE and Portuguese CP results show us, despite their differences; in recent years, they were able to reach some of the best election results throughout their history, that are also the product of their presence in society...” (p. 31)

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/

-30-

IMPERIALISM, RUTHLESS AND VIOLENT

2011-09-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Not to mention the sitution in Libya

vol. 4, no. 5, September 26th, 2011

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/ /

The Communist Party of Ireland, through its newspaper Socialist Voice, says it best:
“With the collapse of profits, US capitalism turned to the tried and true method of intensified exploitation. Millions were cast off from their jobs, leaving the same work to be done by far fewer employees. Consequently, over the last two years labour productivity soared at unprecedented rates. With little game-changing investment in labour-saving technologies, this amounted to equally unprecedented exploitation: sweated labour. A weakened and compliant labour movement gave little resistance.”
"[On the other hand] …many realtors expressed concerns that after being laid off, the Shipyard workers would face foreclosure. Without access to the good jobs at Avondale, people who would have bought homes would instead be forced to take lower-paying jobs, cutting off access to homeownership. There is also the possibility of foreclosure for many of the workers at Avondale who would lose their middle-class income, and possibly the ability to pay off their mortgage…” This is expressed by the national union, (American Federation of Labour/Congress of Industrial Organizations, AFL-CIO), though a rather petty-bourgeois concern than a decisive issue for the working class who now demand jobs’ creation and expect President Obama to put this on his real agenda.
(Photo Internet: US Auto Workers on the assembly line).

Accordingly to Gyula Thürner, General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party:

“We are facing a deep crisis that capitalism will not be able to solve; revolution as an option cannot be excluded. For the communist leader, two mistakes of some communist parties remain, e.g. to negate the experience of socialist countries, and to speak in a superficial manner about Stalin and the [worker’s] dictatorship; they consequently adopt revisionist policies, abandon or negate internationalism, limiting their objectives to their own nation. […] The Hungarian communist leader explains also that fascism is a tool in the hands of capitalist forces. […] If the crisis is aggravating and the communist movement is progressing, then Capital will resort to fascism.”

Soviet Union cannot play temporarily a decisive role in supporting the working class around the world and promoting rights and social progress for the labour movement as reported in the latest issue of International Communist Review (Herwig Lerouge, Parti du Travail de Belgique):
“… Le mouvement syndical belge/The Belgian Trade-Union Movement, no. 5, May 25, 1936, saluted the accession of the USSR to the International Labour Conference of 1931. It considered that “to succeed in voting a convention aimed at introducing the 40-hour working week in all countries, Russia could constitute a very favourable factor. Social legislation in its entirety, its very concept, was influenced at international level by the presence of the USSR and its social legislation.

Right up to the eighties, West-German trade-union leaders, among them the almost legendary president of IG-Metall, Otto Brenner, knew from experience that ‘during negotiations with the bosses, an invisible but perceptible partner was always present at the table, the socialist GDR (German Democratic Republic-East Germany). (http://www.prignitzer.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/artikeldetail/article/111/der-anfang-vom-ende-der-ddr.html)

The Western European bourgeoisie is today more prolix:

“In the Netherlands, the NRC-Handelblad published the following revealing headline on the occasion of the adoption, in the nineties, of a much more restrictive law on sickness and disability: “With Stalin alive, or possibly, Brezhnev, our new legislation would not have been adopted”.

Herwig Lerouge ends his article by stating that: “The twentieth century will have been the century of the dress-rehearsal for the world socialist revolution.”

Very often Communist Parties, such as the Communist Party of Canada refer as to mistakes the course of events that took place in Soviet Union, which undermined socialism from within. Mikhail V. Popov, Professor of Economics and Law in capitalist Russia wrote in the International Communist Review an insight about “reforms” that took place in USSR:

“After the XX and XXII Congresses of the Communist Party of Soviet Union –the turning points which ensured the domination of opportunism and the revisionism in the politics and economics of the USSR – the economic reforms of 1965 replaced the principle of working for society to satisfy the needs of all its members by the principle of reaching maximum profit by certain enterprises. Thereby the economic basis of socialism started to be corroded and undermined. In many respects all this is the reason why the scale of active resistance to the liquidation of the workers’ power was so inadequate.” We deal with sheer betrayal! (Photo Internet: Call of the Communist Party of Greece to European Workers, in 2010).

Finally, here is how Joseph Stalin considered the situation before the Great October 1917 Revolution:

“The new period is one of open class collisions, of revolutionary action by the proletariat, of proletarian revolution, a period when forces are being directly mustered for the overthrow of imperialism and the seizure of power by the proletariat. […] Hence the necessity for a new party, a militant party, a revolutionary party, one bold enough to lead the proletarians in the struggle for power, sufficiently experienced to find its bearings amidst the complex conditions of a revolutionary situation, and sufficiently flexible to steer clear of all submerged rocks in the path to its goal. Without such a party it is useless even to think of overthrowing imperialism, of achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, p. 95).

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/

-30-

HOLLYWOOD IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

2011-08-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

vol. 4, no. 4, September 1st, 2011

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Don’t miss the latest show! Let’s have first a look at the scenario: the story of a US President in quest for an agreement that will allow his administration to spend more money; well, to increase the debt ceiling. According to the mass media, he needs the support of members of both factions of the Congress, Republicans and Democrats. At first glance, it could give the impression that they are enemies, are they?

“One of America’s strengths immediately following the war (WW2, Ed.) was a degree of domestic consensus surrounding foreign policy. There might have been fierce differences between Republicans and Democrats, but politics usually ended at the water’s edge; professionals, whether in the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, or the CIA, were expected to make decisions based on facts and sound judgment, not ideology or electioneering.” (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, 2008, p. 338).
(Photo Internet: President Barack Obama at the US Congress, 2010)

Would the plot of this play have been different nowadays? Mr. Obama delivered a statement on July 29, 2011 and said: “What’s clear now is that any solution to avoid default must be bipartisan. […] And today I urge Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to find common ground on a plan that can get support –that can get support from both parties in the House – a plan that I can sign by Tuesday (August 2nd, 2011, Ed.). Now, keep in mind, this is not a situation where the two parties are miles apart.” (BREAKING: President Obama’s Statement on Debt Negotiations, The White House, Washington, 2011).

He added for US citizens’ purpose: “… let your members of Congress know. Make a phone call. Send an email. Tweet.” (Idem). (The White House can be reached at: info@messages.whitehouse.gov)

What was the answer of the organized labor movement? At the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a 9 million strong trade-union, the leadership, without questioning the US government spending – for instance the military budget- walked in the President’s footsteps and invited its members and asked them: “Can you write polite but firm messages on some or all of these Facebook pages (for example Sen. Scott Brown, Ed.), asking for key Republican senators to pass a clean increase in the debt ceiling so America doesn’t default on its debts?” (ref.; http://www.aflcio.org/)

The U.S. CEOs and representatives of Big Capital can just applaud to this initiative. Let’s recall that war on Afghanistan costs $ 450 billion so far and the recent war on Libya swallows $ 1 billion, even though that the so-called “rebels” were practically in total rout, if it wouldnot have been the support of NATO.

One can understand that US workers need a new type of trade-union movement: a movement for peace, a movement for real jobs'creation. That’s what the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) is all about. Born after WW2 in Paris (France), this 80 million members union is now based in Athens (Greece). They just hold their last Congress in April 2011. They want to deepen their relations with workers of USA and Canada; it won’t replace the AFL-CIO, but give a new impetus to US working people in their struggles on one hand and also reinforce the movement abroad in the fight against US monopolies and multinationals; in a nutshell, the battle against US imperialism. (Photo Internet: Spanish-speaking trade-unionists with George Mavrikos, second from the right, General Secretary of the World Federation of Trade-Unions, WFTU)

A lack of leadership in the labor movement

The Communist Party USA made a fair appreciation of some aspects of the arrangement, “the budget cuts reportedly included in the deal appear to be, thankfully, heavily weighted towards cuts in the military as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ‘draw down’. This is a sign that the economic crisis has finally helped force a long overdue retrenchment in the U.S. global military profile”. However, their People’s World electronic newsletter wrongly concludes: “It is no doubt true that a Democratic president and Senate prevented a much worse outcome than the current deal. Many have criticized the president for being too soft and weak in negotiations with the Republicans. I (John Case, Ed.), had nearly 20 years’ experience in the labor movement which proved me it’s hard to judge from the outside what is really possible, and what is not, in such bargaining. The balance of forces is hard to evaluate if you are not at the table. Maybe the president gave too much; maybe this is the best outcome possible to avert disaster for now.” (http://peoplesworld.org/debt-ceiling-disaster-postponed-but-not-for-long/ )

The cherry over this opportunist “coating” is the political stand of the General Secretary of the CP USA, Sam Webb: “The president boxed himself into a corner, not because he is a bad negotiator, but because he and his aides made the calculus on the heels of the 2010 elections that his appeal to independent voters, and thus his reelection, depend on his credentials as a ‘responsible fiscal manager’. […] Paul Krugman reminds us that President Roosevelt pursued this course of action in 1937 to disastrous results. Let’s hope that president Obama fares better.” (http://www.peoplesworld.org/debt-deal-is-bad-for-america/) .

Now, what does that mean?! It is in fact the rubber stamp of the US “communists” on capitalist policies. And there is no question of struggling for socialism in USA, of ending ruinous and unfair wars abroad. The Webb and Co.’s so-called communists are not ready to give people- in USA and abroad-, a “break”. Of course, opposition is growing among the rank-and-file members and they are better and better organized; in New York City, they publish a paper bulletin, Ideological Fightback, which talks to the workers and calls for a new leadership in the US communist movement.

On the other hand, AFL-CIO’s general board and executive council members met with President Obama urging him to focus on jobs for the remainder of this first term. “The president, on national television, shifted discussions away from the debt ceiling deal and declared that the priorities for Congress are passage of measures that will stimulate the sputtering economy, including extending the payroll tax suspensions for workers, beefing up benefits for the unemployed and investing in infrastructure projects. […] The recession, which began during presidency of George Bush, saw the economy shrink at an annual rate of 8 percent in the last three months of 2008, just before Obama was sworn in. It shrunk by another 7 percent during his first three months in office.” (http://www.peoplesworld.org/labor-leaders-at-white-house-press-obama-on-jobs/).

At Jobs with Justice’s national conference that took place Aug. 5-7 in Washington, D.C. “workers, students, religious leaders, community activists and many others planned strategies to build a powerful movement of working people to defeat the corporate agenda.” (http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/08/01/join-jobs-with-justices-national-conference-and-fight-back-against-corporate-agenda/).

"When Republican House leaders forced a shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration -FAA, last week (2011-08-05, Ed.), they not only forced the layoff of 4,000 FAA workers, they also put at risk nearly 90,000 construction jobs at airports around the country. […] Republicans blocked temporary funding in an effort to overturn a new rule making union elections among rail and airline workers more democratic.” (http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/07/25/republican-faa-shutdown-costs-4000-jobs-threatens-90000).

Meanwhile, “the unemployment rate for young workers between ages 16 to 24 has skyrocketed as millions of young people have lost jobs and school enrollment has steadily increased over the past decade. The jobless rate nearly doubled among young workers to a peak of 19 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 and has remained high, averaging 17.4 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with 6.7 percent for older workers and 9.1 percent for all workers.” (http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/08/01/jobs-crisis-hits-young-workers-hard/print/).

The New York City daily Metro newspaper reported on August 3rd, 2011, a story about veterans going from deployed to unemployed. “Abbas Malik guarded the Green Zone in Iraq, but he can’t get hired as a mall security guard in Staten Island (New York City, Ed.). […] Like Malik, 13 percent of the 17,000 New York City war veterans are now unemployed. That’s higher than the national unemployment rate of 9 percent. […] Malik is considering returning to war just to pay the bills.”

Communists must address the issue and raise the level of political consciousness. Founders of modern communism once said: “We must not make too many concessions to gain popularity; we shall not underestimate the intellect and level of culture of our workers. […] If the working class is not organized well enough to wage a campaign against the collective power, e.g. the ruling classes’ political power, we must, anyway, lead it through continuous agitation against the political attitude of the ruling classes, an attitude hostile to us.” (Marx-Engels, Critique des programmes de Gotha et d’Erfurt, Éditions sociales, Paris, 1966, pp. 92-93, 119).

“American efficiency, on the other hand, is an antidote to ‘revolutionary’ Manilovism and fantastic scheme concocting (we searched the meaning in several textbooks, but we could not find the exact definition; obviously, ”manilovism” is not a compliment, Ed.). American efficiency is that indomitable force which neither knows nor recognizes obstacles, which with its business-like perseverance brushes aside all obstacles; which continues at a task once started until it is finished, even if it is a minor task; and without which serious constructive work is inconceivable. But American efficiency has every chance of degenerating into narrow and unprincipled practicalism if it is not combined with Russian revolutionary sweep.” (Joseph Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, pp. 111-112). (Photo Internet: The Yalta Conference during WW2, when Soviet Union, USA, Great Britain and France were Allied against Nazi Germany)

Anyhow, the American workers will never remain isolated from the rest of the world. Already, we spoke about the orientation of the WFTU. But we cannot cast away the efforts of many communists around the world (France, Greece, Canada, and USA…) who are on the road to rebuild the Communist International (Comintern), which is the association of communist parties worldwide, to support the struggle of the working class movement to replace capitalism with socialism. Probably several US workers will nod and say: “I’ll drink to that!” Yes, it deserves an honest beer…

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/

-30-

WORKERS AND YOUTH EVENTS

2011-02-13T04:54:00.000-08:00

vol. 4, no. 3, February 15-28, 2011

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Many thousand young people took part in the political events in Tunisia and Egypt. They said loudly, some died even chanting it: no more! They cannot live like that anymore. Ever more. all around the world youth is restless. They protest in their own way against social injustice, poverty and lack of opportunities; while workers create wealth every minute. Wherever they live, the young people –it seems- want to rediscover the foundations of their national culture and identity, true human feelings, trampled down by the US so-called main stream culture. They enjoy real love stories…

On December 20, 1901, Lenin underscored that “a fortnight ago we observed the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first social-revolutionary demonstration in Russia. [The communists proposed that the] slogan must be: political freedom; and the demand to be put forward by the entire people to be the convocation of the people’s representatives. […] Public unrest is growing everywhere, and more and more imperative becomes the necessity to unify it into one single current directed against the autocracy, which everywhere sows tyranny, oppression, and violence.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1961, volume 5, pages 322-325).

“Why does our society (especially the middle classes, Ed.) not support the students at least in the way the workers have already supported them? After all, the higher educational institutions are attended not by the proletarians’ sons and brothers, and yet the workers in Kiev, Kharkov, and Ekaterinoslav have already openly declared their sympathy with the protesters, despite [the] threats to use armed force against demonstrators.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, volume 6, pages 79-85).

The famous German playwrigth, Bertolt Brecht, enunciated many years later some evidences in one of his plays about modernity and progress: “… the old days are over and this is a new time. For the last hundred years mankind has seemed to be expecting something. Our cities are cramped, and so are men’s minds. Superstition and the plague. But now the word is ‘that’s how things are, but they won’t stay like that’. Because everything is in motion, my friend. […] Each day something fresh is discovered. Men of a hundred, even, are getting the young people to bawl the latest example into their ear. There have been a lot of discoveries, but there is still plenty to be found out. So future generations should have enough to do.” (Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo, Methuen Drama, London, 1994, pp. 6-7).
(Photo Internet: German writer and dramatist, Bertolt Brecht)

Québec young generations make great strides in the realm of politics, including teen-agers, who pondered on the above-mentioned events, especially about the uprising in Egypt. Why did it happen? Is it true that they were governed by a dictator? Some television reports from this country let understood that “protesters” were using horses and camels to make their way through along side with the people; who were supposedly acting against Western countries journalists. It was not true, accordingly to Associated Press: those “horsemen» were Mubarak’s regime paid agents to intimidate the masses and the news reporters. (Mubarak has been in power in Egypt since over 30 years, “appointed” by the US authorities, Ed.).

About television

The well-known Italian movie-maker, Roberto Rossellini, talking about television, said that “...we must recall that for great modern currents of thought, expressed, each in its own language, from Christianity to Islam, from Socrates to Karl Marx, the objective, -and the only one- is to help mature human thought. All those trends of thought have a common source. They trust mankind (p. 199). […] Television can bring the ‘direct vision’ of things, men and history to millions and millions of human beings. History teaches us that social changes –that we are condemned to, doomed to live better while evolving towards a richer world-, superseding new ways of thinking. However, these ways of thinking evolve only when one may recapitulate what he knows. To reach this goal, knowledge must be accessible to everybody; everything must be ready to all, and up-graded on a regular basis.
(Photo: the vocational and general college Vieux-Montréal).

In a nutshell, we must make knowledge an even more democratic reality.” (Roberto Rossellini, Un esprit libre ne doit rien apprendre en esclave, Fayard, Paris, 1977, pp. 199-200).

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com

-30-

WORKERS NEED REVOLUTIONARY METHODS

2011-01-26T19:59:00.000-08:00

vol. 4, no. 2, February 1-14, 2011

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

On January 25th 2011, US President Barack Obama “… called for unity with Republicans, while delivering his speech on the State of the Union […] setting the foundations for the second part of his mandate and the race for his re-election in 2012”. He stressed the need for enterprises tax cutbacks, a lesser role for the government and the need for collaboration of both Republican and Democratic parties in Congress, accordingly to Montréal Métro newspaper, on January 26th.

In Montréal, the message is clear and generally well accepted especially by colored people who still savour the presidential election of an Afro-American citizen to this responsibility; paving the way for Hispanic people, women and non-White people in general.
(Illustration Internet: workers' revolt at Haymarket, USA).

The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), through the voice of its President, Richard Trumka, said in relation with Obama’s proposal for collaboration between Republicans and Democrats, “… we will join the President as partners to help build bipartisan support for a sustained and strategic investment in America’s future”.

He added: “We believe the President is heading in the right direction – but as he outlined tonight, the yardstick must be the health of the middle class and the American economy”. (NOW BLOG, 2011-01-27). Let’s recall that unemployment is currently in the two digits in USA. However, US workers are not urged to action by their union leaders.

“… Where and by whom has it ever been proved that the parliamentary form of struggle is the principle form of struggle of the proletariat (working class, Ed.)? Does not the history of the revolutionary movement show that the parliamentary struggle is only a school for, and an auxiliary in, organizing the extra-parliamentary struggle of the proletariat, that under capitalism the fundamental problems of the working-class movement are solved by force, by the direct struggle of the proletarian masses, their general strike, their uprising? […] Who suggested that the method of the political general strike be substituted for the parliamentary struggle? Where and when have the supporters of the political general strike sought to substitute extra-parliamentary forms of struggle for parliamentary forms?” (Joseph Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, p. 15).

These matters are going to be discussed at the 16th Congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), 80 million members. In fact, US workers should remember their own traditions and history; those years, the years of the Congress of Industrial Organizations were moments of great struggles for a better living, peace and progress in general. Let’s recall the struggles for civil liberties. The US working class can find, within its own history "handbook", what revolutionary methods mean.

As for the International Trade Union Congress, it will take place in Athens (Greece), April 6th-10th, 2011. There will be a delegation from USA and Canada. They will dwell upon common fields of interests with hundreds of more than 120 countries; for instance exchange of information and the need for international solidarity, especially between US and Canadian workers.

Should we not recall that at the beginning of the communist movement, North-American revolutionaries were members of the same American communist parties; then the Communist party of Canada was created in 1921?

As the leader of the first socialist Revolution -that took place in Russia-, Vladimir Lenin, pointed out: “The American people have a revolutionary tradition which has been adopted by the best representatives of the American proletariat, who have repeatedly expressed their complete solidarity with us Bolsheviks. That tradition is the war of liberation against the British (the real Tea Party, Ed.) in the eighteenth century and the Civil War in the nineteenth century."
(Photo: Winnipeg General Strike in Canada, in 1919).

"In some respects, if we only take into consideration the ‘destruction’ of some branches of industry and of the national economy, America in 1870 was behind 1860. But what a pedant, what an idiot would anyone be to deny on these grounds the immense, world-historic, progressive and revolutionary significance of the American Civil War of 1863-65!” (V.I. Lenin, Letter to American Workers, Progress Publisher, Moscow, vol. 28, 1965, pp. 62-75).

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com

-30-

QUÉBEC SOLIDAIRE WILL MEET SOON

2011-01-08T21:07:00.000-08:00

vol. 4, no. 1, January 2011

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

The 6th Congress of Québec solidaire will take place in Montréal, March 25-26-27, 2011. Up to now, discussions will center on Economy, Environment and Labour; delegates will deal as well with tactical agreements foreseeing the coming Québec Elections.

Obviously, there is no room for debates on the place of Québec in the Canadian confederation; the party being –mistakenly- “sovereignist”, e.g. separatist. Most of the voters, choosing this solution to the national problem, will probably prefer the most experienced party on this issue: the Parti Québécois (PQ). While, the overwhelming majority of French Canadians workers are standing for: defense of French language and Québec culture with the control over economy.

As for tactical agreements, it would certainly be erroneous to get along with Parti québécois. It seems that for the Left, the enemy would be the Jean Charest Liberal Party (PLQ). The trade union movement, to mention the Confederation of National Trade Union (CNTU) and the Centre of Québec Trade Unions (CSQ) have decided to attack the government labeled as the Right. Nothing is less sure in the eyes of millions of French-Canadians keen to maintain economical stability; that is in practice the purchasing power, to counter-balance soaring prices: energy, transport, food…
(Photo Michel Faust: MNA Amir Khadir - Québec solidaire and La Vie Réelle Editor Daniel Paquet)

The Economy

The Guardian, published by the Communist Party of Australia (October 13, 2010), explained that “US military spending, direct and indirect, consumes anything from 38 to 50 percent of tax revenues. It has been growing at a rate of around nine percent per annum annually since 2000.”
Already some trade-unionists proposed a return to social-democracy for the Province of Québec, not to underscore the wish of the CNTU.

To the Communist Party of Greece (KKE): “The bourgeois forces which defend capitalism claim that the crisis was caused by “management” policies, the lack of control over the financial system, the overspending of the bourgeois state, the lack of transparency in the exercise of economic policies. The forces of social democracy (our italics, Ed.) and opportunism operate within this ‘administrative’ logic and limit their criticism to neo-liberalism, seeking the solution through the development of the system itself, the regulation of the market. They foster illusions concerning capitalism ‘with a human face’ in order to deceive the workers.”

The sad evidence is the statement of the US trade-union movement after the November 2010 elections in USA, while they back completely, without any criticisms, the Barack Obama Democratic Party: “The two biggest spending groups behind the barrage of attack ads and mailings against Democrats were both founded by Rove and former George W. Bush White House insider Ed Gillespie –American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS. Combined reports NBC, they spent $38 million.” (AFL-CIO NOW BLOG, 2011-01-09).

Tactical Agreements

It is worthy to remind what Karl Marx wrote about similar accords (between petty-bourgeois party – Parti québécois, and worker’s party, Québec solidaire): “The relation of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything by which they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests. […] Far from desiring to transform the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarians, the democratic petty bourgeoisie strive for a change in social conditions by means of which the existing society will be made as tolerable and comfortable as possible for them.” (Marx-Engels, Collected Works, vol.10, International Publishers, New York, p. 280).

As for the ‘national question’, e.g. the relations between the French Canadians and the English-speaking Canadians, everything is possible, including a new and lasting unity on the basis of political equality and an independent voice for the working people of Québec on issues such as the economic development, energy, immigration… The workers are surely ready for this. Canadians are facing a strong enemy: US imperialism, considering Canada as a source of natural resources (forest, mines, water, oil sands, electricity…) for their industries.

The author of these lines have an experience of over 35 years in the Canadian communist movement and can confirm that amongst workers and progressive youth, this matter of unity, solidarity and respect has always be defended by English-speaking members; it is not a surprise that today some comrades, in British Columbia for instance, send their children to total immersion schooling in French language. The Young Communist League of Canada also attaches a very large importance to the bi-national character of our so vast and beautiful country; the record of the Communists is clear and honest and they should raise it at the coming Québec solidaire Congress.
(Photo Internet: Tim Buck, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Canada, 1929-1962, a staunch fighter for French-Canadians rights).

Naturally, Canadian political parties shall build relations with this young but promising party, Québec solidaire, -of the working people- on an equal footing, a nation to nation relationship. By the way, such an effort has been made in the 1970s between the Québec National Association of Students (ANEQ) and the National Union of Students (NUS)-English-speaking Canada and… it just worked out.

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

Pour la KOMINTERN now!: http://pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com/

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/

Marxism-Leninism Today (USA): http://mltoday.com/

-30-

BEST WISHES FOR THE YEAR 2011

2010-12-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

La Vie Réelle in English, already three years old, extends its best greetings to its 250 readers from Europe, Australia, People’s Republic of China, English-speaking Canada, Cuba, Québec and United States.

It salutes the 10th anniversary of the French La Vie Réelle and the new Pour la KOMINTERN now!

We want to welcome our new friends: Marxism-Leninism Today (USA), U.S. Friends of the Soviet People (New York), The Regina Peace Council, Canadians for Peace and Socialism, the Union des étudiants communistes de France, the Pôle de Renaissance Communiste en France, Northstar Compass, l’Humanité in English (Paris), the Québec solidaire party and the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU).

La Vie Réelle in English congratulates the Communist Party of Canada for its 90th Founding Anniversary (1921-2011) which will be a landmark for workers in English-speaking Canada and Québec. The bulletin will support the CPC in the coming federal elections.

La Vie Réelle in English will attend the April 6th-9th 2011's 16th Congress of the WORLD FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS in Athens (Greece), which will orient the work of the federation representing 80 million workers in over 130 countries.
(Photo: Christmas Tree at the Centre l’Échelon in Montréal, the work of the union steward Lise Brochu)

To all of you, La Vie Réelle in English wishes: Peace, Progress and Socialism!

comment: danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

ONE MORE STEP TO THE LEFT

2010-11-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

The Canadian youth will benefit from it

vol. 3, no. 12, December 2010

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

You will find at the end the link to L'Humanité in English, a selection of articles published in the communist daily newspaper L'Humanité, in Paris (France).

There would not be something more stupid than this writer not recognizing that he makes a real mistake. There is a petition circulating in Québec demanding the step-down of Liberal Premier Jean Charest for not considering the need of a public inquiry into financial contributions to political parties and contracts given to private corporations for governments’ public services in return.

The Québec Federation of Labour (500 000 members) presses also the government to do so. It is also an about-face for the current Editor. The critics against this people’s demand were first published in Pour la KOMMITERN now!

The communists must not allow themselves to stay behind the mood of the population. In English-speaking Canada, the newspaper of the Communist party, People’s Voice report: the Calgary citizens are facing the rampage of neo-Nazis; in Vancouver, people are opposed to closing schools and defend altogether the public education in British Columbia. Still in Western Canada, the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour will be mobilizing to defeat the reactionary policies of the provincial government. In Manitoba, the Communist Party has a candidate in the Winnipeg North federal by-election, an important riding in the history of the Communist party since the 1919 General Strike.

(Photo Internet: Winnipeg- Western Canada, General Strike in 1919).

In Ontario, US Steel locked out the 900 workers and 9000 retirees (in Hamilton), but the working people remember the historic 1946 strike which helped bring the Rand Formula and the closed shop to Canada.

In Québec, the workers are feeling for a change. They tried the Parti québécois for a very long period. They did the same thing with the Liberal Party. They gave its chance to the Action démocratique du Québec that was propelled to the rank of official opposition. Now they have David facing Goliath. David is Amir Khadir, the sole representative of the party Québec solidaire, one out of 125 deputies in the National Assembly. But the overall impression: he is de facto the main workers' opposition to the government. He is really full of energy and it is encouraging for the working people.

Most likely, there will be inroads in the island of Montréal in the coming elections. The communists take part to the development of Québec solidaire as individual members. La Vie Réelle will contribute through its friends, who speak several languages, to outreach the immigrants living in the Québec metropolis. While there are 7, 8 million inhabitants in Québec, half of them live in this city.

The French-Canadian working class is well-educated, disciplined, experienced and self-confident. The workers are no more afraid of scams and bogies.

The proof: Amir Khadir as a Left-oriented Québec solidaire deputy seating with the communist La Vie Réelle Editor during a meeting with journalists.

(Photo: From left to right, Cécile Deschamps, guest; Québec solidaire deputy, Amir Khadir and Daniel Paquet, La Vie Réelle in English Editor).

In Québec, almost everybody is looking towards the future, which is no more dreadful and worrying.

Canada today, United States will follow on…

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

Pour la KOMINTERN now!, http://pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com

Marxism-Leninism Today (USA): http://MLToday.com

-30-

ALEA JACTA EST

2010-11-13T02:31:00.000-08:00

THE WORKING CLASS IS CONDEMNED TO LIBERTY, SAYS HISTORY

vol. 3, no. 11, November 16-30, 2010

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

You will find at the end the link to L'Humanité in English, a selection of articles from the daily communist newspaper published in Paris (France).

« For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night… (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Penguin Books, Toronto, 1969, p. 37).

Workers in general are seduced by Nature, People and Beauty. They stand for world peace and progress. It’s probably why Québec Colleges students are so fond of the french poet, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), a prolific one in its early youth. He lived through the Commune de Paris, in 1871. He had opinions : here is Le dormeur du val, The Valley Sleeper,

« Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu,
Dort ; il est étendu dans l’herbe, sous la nue,
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.
[…]
Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine ;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine,
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit. »

A young soldier, mouth opened, head naked,
Nape bathing in the fresh blue watercress,
Sleeps ; he is lying in the grass, under the skies,
Pale in this green bed where Light rains.
[…]
Perfumes do not move his nostril ;
He sleeps within the sun, the hand over his chest, Quiet. He has two red holes on his right side.
(Image Internet: La Commune de Paris, le premier état des ouvriers au monde, en 1871).

Wars are a source of « big money » for multinationals, such as former US vice-president Dick Cheneys’ Haliburton Corp. Those international mnopolies are always looking for new sources of profits. Now, they channel their efforts through « friendly » governments against the working people « in order to make those attacks on workers’rights in public administration (Education, Social Security and Health, Ed.). European governments are trying to convince the public that civil servants are a privileged stratum and the main culprit for the state’s deficit.

[…] So, they increase job insecurity, they increase the minimum age for retirement, they devaluate pensions, they reduce the purchasing power of workers, they lower or freeze salaries ; they destroy career oppportunities, they cut paid holiday and Christmas bonuses… » (Reflects, World Federation of Trade Unions, Athens, October 2010, #2, p. 7).
(World Federation of Trade Unions Logo. The 16th Congress will take place in Athens, April 6-9, 2011).

But, as states character Galileo in one of Brecht’s play : « As a young man in Siena I watched a group of building workers argue for five minutes, then abandon a thousand-year old method of shifting granite blocks in favour of a new and more efficient arrangement of ropes. [Further, he affirms that] everyone declares : right, that’s what it says in the books, but let’s have a look for ourselves. That most solemn truths are being familiarly nudged ; what was never doubted before is doubted now. » (idem, p. 7), Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo, Methuen Student Edition, Toronto, 1988, p. 7).

« A human race which shambles around in a pearly haze of superstition and old saws, too ignorant to develop its own powers, will never be able to develop these powers of nature which you people are revealing to it. To what end are you working ? Presumably for the principle that sciences sole aim must be to lighten te burden of human existence… » (p. 108).

Petty bourgeoisie and society

But we cannot take the human race as one entity set in the stone. We live in a class-divided society. In Québec, the most important class in number and influence is the petty bourgeoisie. Here is what Marx’s comrade, Engels, wrote in 1849 : « It is not unlikely that the petty bourgeoisie, if left to its own devices, would have gone outside the legal framework of lawful, peaceful and virtuous struggle and taken up the musket and the paving-stone in place of the so-called weapons of the spirit. The history of all political movements since 1830 in Germany, as in France and England, shows that this class is invariably full of bluster and loud protestations, at times even extreme as far as talking goes, as long as it perceives no danger ; faint-hearted, continues and calculating as soon as the slightest danger approaches ; aghast, alarmed and wavering as soon as the movement it provoked is seized upon and taken up seriously by other classes, treacherous to the whole movement for the sake of its petty bourgeois existence as soon as there is any questions of a struggle with weapons in hand – and in the end, as a result of its indecisiveness, more often than not cheated and ill-treated as soon as the reactionary side has achieved victory. » (Marx-Engels, Collected Works, Volume 10. International Publishers, New York, 1978, p. 150).

When they wrote The Communist Manifesto the year before (1848), they included a chapter on the Petty Bourgeois socialism : « In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie and even renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. » (Marx-Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Washington Square Press, New York, 1977, pp. 99-100).
(Photo Internet: Karl Marx)

Consequently, they developed their own school of socialism. « This school of socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labor, the concentration of capital and land in a few hands, over-production and crisis, it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty-bourgeois and farmer, the misery of proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.

In its positive aims however, this form of socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations and the old society or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionay and Utopian. » (ibidem, pp. 100-101).

The October Revolution and the petty bourgeoisie

(Photo Internet: Lénine haranguant les révolutionnaires en Russie).
Once the Communists took the power in Russia, during the 1917 October Revolution, they had, in the words of Lenin, to face the sitution where : « It was not the State Capitalism which was opposed to socialism but petty bourgeoisie and private capitalism that were struggling, side by side, against State Capitalism and socialism. Petty bourgeoisie opposed itself to State intervention, inventory and control, either from State capitalism or State socialism . » (Lénine, Œuvres, tome 27, Éditions sociales, Paris, 1980. P. 351).

Soviet leaders soon concluded that this experience had to be shared with comrades and friends abroad. The US marxist, James Connolly, underlined in one of his essay, Stalin on Socialist Construction : « Internationalist responsibility also included educating comrades abroad in the basics of Marxism-Leninism and elevating their level of understanding : Stalin remarks on the inadequate level of Marxist development of the majority of the Communist parties abroad’. Compared with the ‘inadequate’ level of Marxist development during Stalin’s time, the level of development at the present time, when revisionism predominates in many Communist parties, appears positively abysmal, » (pp. 8-9).

But, as said the famous french communist poet, Paul Éluard (1895-1952), in support of the Stalin government and the Resistance against Hitler and Nazi Germany :
« Et par le pouvoir d’un mot
Je recommence ma vie
Je suis né pour te connaître
Pour te nommer

Liberté. »

« And with the power of one word
I start my life all over again
I was born to know you
To name you

Liberty. »

(Photo Internet: la Résistance française, des femmes et des hommes).

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

Pour la KOMINTERN now!, http://pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com/

L'Humanité in English: http://www.humaniteinenglish.com

THERE IS HOPE FOR A FUTURE

2010-10-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

vol. 3. no. 10, November 1-15, 2010

Si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

You will find below the link to l'Humanité in English, a selection of articles from the daily communist newspaper published in Paris (France).

Guess what, we will start with bad news and end up with optimism and hope for a future!

“A paternalistic concern for ‘what’s going to happen to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq’ without the U.S. occupying their countries shows how far imperialist assumptions have infected sections of the US peace movement. [...] On the other hand, the U.S. Peace Council, affiliated with the World Peace Council -the largest peace movement on earth-, distributed at a peace meeting in Washington (October 3rd , 2010) a statement that says grosso modo: ‘We must foreground the demand for an immediate unconditional end to the U.S. occupation wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. The trillions of dollars devoted to war industry profits feed more than 1,000 extraterritorial U.S. military bases around the world as well as U.S. and U.S.-backed occupation and wars against Palestine, Colombia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Somalia and Yemen, threats to Iran and Democratic Korea, and the deployment of Special Operations forces in a total of about 75 countries...”

The US Marxist writer, James Connolly, wrote that “Stalin, interestingly, [believed] that ‘it is possible that in a definite conjuncture of circumstances,’ the fight for peace’ will develop here or there’ into a fight for socialism. [...] ‘a movement for the overthrow of capitalism.’ In any case, the peace movement’s anti-militarism opposes the war industry, ‘the “business” best adapted to the extraction of the maximum profit’. The peace movement therefore, even without Marxist-Leninist leadership, objectively tends to undermine modern monopoly capitalism – as long as the peace movement [...] consistently and vigorously objects to imperialist aggression.” (J.V. Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (1952).
(Photo Internet: Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union).

The CPUSA’s electronic bulletin People’s World reported (October 27th, 2010), in relation to the so-called US hawks, pervading the USA in the 1980s, “right-wing extremists and the most reactionary sections of monopoly and financial capital ganged up against the working class, racially oppressed, women, youth, seniors, and other social groups”, the core of the peace movement then and now.

Those were the years of Ronald Reagan era; People’s World goes on: “The wealth of the top income tiers ballooned, while income for the lower tiers either stagnated or plummeted”.

In 2008, President Obama was elected; democratic-minded people and movements backed him. It was the victory of a “loose coalition of diverse forces”. Speaking of two visions about the power at White House, the journal says: “which vision will come out on top and when that will happen is not clear”.

One thing is sure: the CPUSA’s leadership does not intend to fight on its own to advance new policies for the working class.

USA is a typical capitalist country

As stated in the New York City Metro, “since resigning as speaker of the House 11 years ago, Newt Gingrich, the most powerful Republican, has officially been a private citizen...” Speaking about US history, he hammers out: “Following World War II, the left in America romanticized about many ideas put forth by Moscow, and turned a blind eye to the fact that Stalin has already slaughtered millions of his own people and was now subjugating much of Eastern Europe. Just four years later, the Soviets detonated a nuclear weapon...”

Of course, he is lying and exaggerating. Everybody knows that USA was the first power to use the atomic bomb, against Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the WWII, while Japan was already on the verge to capitulate without it. In describing Stalin, Gingrich uses the old Nazi clichés.
(Photo Internet: Newt Gingrich is using the classical clichés of the Nazi regime about Soviet Union; here is "maybe" his favourite mentor on the far right, Adolf Hitler, accompanied by Joseph Goebbels on the left).

In fact, he is more concerned with the well-being of the U.S. well-to-do. He pursues: “Republican candidates must continue to explain their plans for [cutting taxes] and reforming government”.

In February or March 2011, we will know if he runs for President in 2012.

The electronic journal Change.org informed us that a rally was organized in Washington, DC at the end of October whose “aim is to show the country that when it comes to politics and civic discourse, the majority of Americans are interested in sane, calm discussion rather than shrill, angry shouting.”

On the other hand, the Fed declared the same day that the authorities will inquiry in the manner that mortgage societies expelled from their homes, people unable to face financial obligations. This is no joke; so many people just don’t find a job. “The national unemployment rate remained unchanged for September, at 9.6%, according to figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on October 8, 2010. Approximately 14.8 million workers are without jobs as the economy continues slow growth.”

In terms of money, those are the charts (in June 30, 2009) in thousands of dollars for total deposits: a) Bank of America, 817,989,321; b) JP Morgan Chase Bank, 618,124,000; c) Wachovia Bank, 394, 189,004; d) Wells Fargo Bank, 325,417,000; e) Citibank, 265,947,879. And the list is long and impressive.

Now, we could overview the situation of General Motors. The New York Times (October 26th, 2010) recalls that: “For most of the 20th century [it] was the biggest company in the most important industry in the world.” During the bankruptcy process, “the [US] federal government holds nearly 61 percent of the new company, with the Canadian government, a health care trust for the United Auto Workers union and bondholders owning the balance. [...] In April 2010, G.M. repaid its government loan, as sign things could be turning around. Soon afterward, it said it earned $865 million in the first quarter, its first profit since 2007, with revenue up 40 percent, to $31.5 billion, and a positive cash flow of $1 billion. In June, GM increased output at most of its American operations. Sustaining this progress, G.M. said in August that it earned $1.3 billion in the second quarter, its strongest financial performance since 2004.”

For the CPUSA’s current leaders, the workers may reckon on the Obama Democratic Party. But the New York City Metro reported, always at the end of October, that “Democratic Senate candidate and current West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin has said he didn’t fully understand the bill (on Health Care, Ed.) at time of passing. Stammering out a hasty retreat, Manchin explained his concerns: ‘Knowing the existence as far as how reaching it had been, as far as – and onerous- I would have [voted against it], he said’”.

The last word belongs to People’s World: “French workers angry about pensions and more”. The author notes that labour and left activists’ protest in France goes beyond the issue of pension reform. In fact, “polls show that if the election were held today the left would win”.

There are two conclusions here: first, the CPUSA should not be afraid to stress that the labour and left activist are united in the“Intersyndicale”

(All-Unions Movement) that gathers major unions, including the communist-led General Confederation of Labour (CGT). The unions are supported by political parties and movements such as the French Communist Party and the Pôle de Renaissance communiste en France (Communist Renewal in France).
(Photo PCF: October 2010 Demonstration in Paris, France).

The other lesson: the CPUSA must come back on the forefront of the US workers’ battles for jobs, decent housing and racial equality between Black and White workers; and this is the basic starting point for the working class movement in USA; a country as capitalist as anywhere else in the world.

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English

Pour la KOMINTERN now!: http://pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com

-30-

SOVIET UNION WAS BORN IN OCTOBER 1917

2010-10-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

vol. 3, no. 9, October 16-31, 2010

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

You will find below the link to l'Humanité in English, a selection of articles from the daily communist paper published in Paris (France).

In 1850, Frederick Engels, the close friend to Karl Marx wrote: “Modern large-scale industry can only exist provided it expands incessantly, continually conquers new markets”. (K. Marx/F. Engels, Collected Works, vol. 10, International Publishers, New York, 1978, p. 295). In our today's world, we face financial corporations, such as the Canadian banks (BMO, TD, etc.) who cannot satisfy their quench for profits. In their case, sky is the limit. Any people opposed to their ever-lasting domination of new territories and populations become an enemy;
recently mass media criticized the Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez for that purpose. Of course, Cuba remains a target. To avoid opponents at home, they urge Stephen Harper to repel democratic rights, especially those claimed by the young generation; we saw it in Toronto at the G-20 meeting, last summer, when the police brutalized and arrested over 900 youngsters. For some, it was their first contact with political "freedoms" in Canada.

At the outcome of these demonstrations, taking into account the agenda of the Conservative party of Canada, La Vie Réelle in English called upon the democrats, especially the working people to support a centrist government to promote what we already knew about Canada at a better time, when the working class was stronger, better organized, led by progressive and communists. We don’t live anymore in this “lost” paradise. The dire reality is that Stephen Harper wants to transform the “cool guy attitude” of Canada into a reactionary one, maybe with the fist of a police state; basically, the dream of a state where tycoons of all sorts, -big industrialists and large corporations- would be free to do what they want into a Canada, further divided by the national question.
(Photo PCF/Bagneux: Demonstration in Paris, against the reforms of the French government against the pension plan. The police did not intervene against the young protesters, Fall 2010).

This is nowadays easier for the Right to aggress the youth since the Communist party of Canada is still recovering from inner disputes, factions’ fights and reformism. At an earlier period, the Party could have reckon on international solidarity; what the communists call “proletarian internationalism”, especially based on the support of socialists countries. The biggest rampart was then the Soviet Union, cherished by most of the conscious workers the world over.

Soviet Union

In 2007, on behalf of the Communist party of Ireland, Herman Glaser-Baur, told that after the October Revolution in Russia, in 1917, “this new situation led to conditions under which the working class in the capitalist countries was able to successfully fight for rights previously unknown. All aspects of the ‘social system’ of today such as a national health system, public education, a fixed retirement age, culture for the working class, etc. were first realised in the socialist state and the capitalists and their governments had to make concessions to the struggle of the working class.”

He made the point that “many Communist parties were founded and the 3rd International established (1919). “The Communist party of Canada was founded in 1921 in Guelph, in the vicinity of Toronto (Ontario).

Let's recall also that during WW2, the Red Army defeated the Werhmacht at Stalingrad. As said the German communist leader, Ernst Thälmann: “Stalin is going to break Hitler’s neck”.

To be honest, La Vie Réelle in English does not pretend to defend political crimes, but on the other hand, it is correct and needed that History assesses some facts, concrete facts, like the contribution of Joseph Stalin in the victory over Nazism in 1945 and the rapid economical development of Soviet Union, the growth of the purchasing power of the citizens and the real amelioration of their well-being.
(Photo Internet: Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin)

Who could say, everywhere in the world, that under powerful pressures such as the ones imposed upon the Soviet government, practically always in a state of exception and emergency, - since its inception-, no errors and unfortunately... crimes would not be made. Actually, the data of the Western scientists on this period are wrong according to the National Archives of Soviet Union opened now for all to see. In spite the continuous flow of propaganda against Stalin since the 1930s, practically only bourgeois and petty-bourgeois are scared by his leadership and determination. On the other hand, it was reported in 2008, that 300 000 homeless people were “living” in Poland, while the Czechs had to struggle against US military bases to be installed on their territory. This year the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People marked the 93rd Anniversary of Great October Revolution. At that time, 177 million people were living in Soviet Union and this number reached 360 millions in the 1980s; the official and open counter-revolution occurred by those years.

Today, new organizations are born to promote understanding between peoples, notably between Canada, USA and USSR, gathered in a Friendship Society. The Chairman, Michael Lucas explained: “We function as an united front organization to help unify, consolidate and coordinate the anti-imperialist forces of the world with the ongoing world movement to restore the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Our aim is international cooperation in building socialism and solidarity with all anti-imperialist forces struggling against imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism.”

In Fall 2011, an international conference will take place in Beograd (Serbia) to reassess the situation in the former Soviet Union by participants from all around the world, including Canada. As the French say goes: "tant qu'il y a de la vie, il y a de l'espoir..."

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English

Pour la KOMINTERN now!: http://pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com

KOMINTERN: PART TWO

2010-09-29T17:09:00.001-07:00

vol. 3, no. 8, October 1-15, 2010

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

You will find below the link to L'Humanité in English, a selection of articles from the daily communist paper published in Paris (France).

WE ALL CAN DO SOMETHING

Everybody should read Northstar Compass. It is the magazine of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People. Yes, Soviet people; and it is published, especially now in the years 2000. Recently, there was a striking document written by the Socialist Party of Bangladesh.

Their first stand: “the conduction of powerful political struggle who will be able to bring back the confidence of common people towards revolution, people and Marxism-Leninism, and will be able to fulfill the aspirations of mass emancipation of millions of martyrs”. This last word is too strong, mind you; let’s see how it is even more relevant today!
(Photo General Consulate of Cuba in Montréal: the future of their homeland and abroad, the young pioneers)

They deal with the need “to fight out individualism”; they stress too that “we are still in the era of imperialism described by Lenin”, providing examples: “in Britain, industry, health and service sector which developed on government’s initiatives were privatized, which means that British government commenced privatization. In the United States there is no such scope of privatization since even military sector in U.S. was also under corporate capital”. They point out that the “bourgeois” media want the workers to swallow all these setbacks, like gullible children and even... demand more. They don’t refer only to rich nations. For instance, they affirm that “the annual income of only one corporate organization like General Motors exceeds the total income level of a country like Bangladesh”.

These same rich countries contribute to the development of their agriculture. “The total amount of subsidy equalize more than the defence expenditure of many countries.” But they react promptly to any opposition. “They attempted to destroy Cuba, the source of anti-imperialist struggle of Latin America; there is ceaseless attempt from U.S. to assassinate Fidel even.”

As they say, “this has brought into light the acute depression prevailing in the society.”
Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice, the masterpiece of Shakespeare, would be more than at ease with this statement: capitalism, “side by side increased the periphery of usury”; and “loan driven economy was created”.

We are living in a planned economy of unemployment, poverty and competition; the so-called “market economy”, or the “bubble economy”. But, “all these phenomena demonstrate the vulnerability of imperialist-capitalist economy”.

The plain truth? In USA alone, “70 million people are living below poverty level; 13, 7 million in the month of April of 2009” became unemployed.
(Photo: McDonald's, the fast-food empire of low-waged young workers)

The answer

Edward A. Drummond, a US communist writer, in a recent writing, confesses sadly that: “Prompt Press, a printing press that has traditionally printed the Party’s newspaper and pamphlets, is on its way out. The Party (Communist Party USA, Ed.) Archives were given away for free four years ago to a wealthy private university. There has been no Party candidacy for any public office in perhaps 15 years. There are no bookstores. There are few or no pamphlets.

There are no mass public meetings –even by today’s modest definition of “mass”- and no attempt to organize them. There is no mass distribution of the Party paper. There is no industrial concentration policy.” Drummond adds up that: “Moreover, in tailing Obama, the CPUSA is ignoring its own 2005 Program, which states: ‘U.S. capitalism is presently in the monopoly capitalist, imperialist stage of development, and in the transnational monopoly phase of that stage. Once the most reactionary ultra-right transnationals, who dominate political life today, receive a major defeat, it will be both necessary and possible to take on the transnationals as a whole; it will be possible to move on to the anti-monopoly stage of struggle.”

The Cuban Five

On the other hand, you have the courageous Cuban Five – jailed in USA- and actually serving heavy sentences on false charges, fighting with determination the indifference and silence surrounding them in North America. Antonio Guerrero, -one of them -, poet and close friend wrote to us saying: “Finally, on May 3rd, I was transferred from the penitentiary to a medium-security prison. The travel was short. [...] The change is great. [...] Another big impression has been the almost total absence of that tension that exists in penitentiary life. I can see that prisoners here are more quiet and polite, and the noise is low. Of course, it is still a prison, but everybody tries to avoid any incident and to maintain a good conduct.” The Five have been scattered in different prisons practically from Day One and ever since more than 11 years after.

Antonio’s poetry calls upon us: “So much encouragement, faithful friend! You give me your faith and your song to answer each enemy blow.”

They have friends all around the world, be it in Canada, in Lebanon, in Spain or in France to name just a few. President Obama must free them and restore their dignity; he has the power to do so.

In February 2010, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, The Guardian, published a letter to Obama which states: “ Each year the majority of UN member states has supported Cuba against the blockade and each year the vote has increased in Cuba’s favour, clearly indicating that public opinion is growing worldwide for an end to your genocidal policy. “ It was signed by the president of the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society, Joan Coxsedge.

Towards a new Komintern?

In April 2010, The New Worker, weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain, underlined in its editorial: “The real answer for workers is to fight back and to do this effectively we must join together, recognize that the ruling class is our enemy and fight in the short term to keep the Tories out. And then to force Labour to deliver better policies for the working class so that we can live decent, relaxed and enjoyable lives. But in the long-term we must fight together to get rid of the whole rotten capitalist system and replace it with socialism.”

This is not an impossible dream. Already in 1935, 18 years after the Russian revolution, the great American singer, Paul Roberson, went to Soviet Union. The Daily Worker, at that time, collected his impressions and words: “He has deliberately and for a long time been laying plans and preparing to move to the U.S.S.R. as the most suitable center for the important work of artistic innovation which he has in mind, and because he had decided on the basis of much evidence that it is a place where a man may do such work with greatest freedom and facility. He said in his interview that he is more than satisfied that the Soviet Union is just such a place.”

In the meanwhile, we may follow the people’s and workers struggles, for instance in Greece; we don’t know the outcome yet, we may conclude with the Socialist Party of Bangladesh: “Communist parties of different countries in the world, at sub-regional, regional and international level should conduct regular criticism-self criticism to eliminate the differences in opinion by ideological struggle and to develop monolithic communist international.” Komintern is the contraction of two words: Communist and International. The communists from the People’s Republic of Bangladesh share this viewpoint with many communists around the world. The Communist Party of Greece notes that we need “to speed up the processes of forming and shaping a communist pole, a distinct, in other words, presence of communist and workers parties, of communist forces that actively work in the direction of a united revolutionary strategy of the international communist movement”. It is now a must, many US and Canadian communists fight for it.
(Photo SolidNet: demonstration organized by the militant trade-union movement PAME in Greece, 2010)

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English

Pour la Komintern now!: http://pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com/

JOSEPH STALIN

2010-09-12T08:03:00.000-07:00

vol. 3, no. 7, September 16-30, 2010

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

You will find below the link to l'Humanité in English, a selection of the daily communist newspaper published in Paris.

BEHIND BLUE EYES

« And no one knows what it’s like to be hated, to be fated. » This is a line from the wonderful song of the famous British rock band The Who. When we think about Joseph Stalin, we can’t help but humming these lyrics.

Since many Canadians still have an almost uncontrollable fear of Stalin, we must dwell on his era and discuss the issue. Yet digging in my working years in the construction industry in Québec, I do not remember hearing real criticism of the Stalin period in the USSR, in the day–to-day speech of the construction workers. Most of the time, we just ignored what was going on in Soviet Union. It was in the 1970s.

(Photo Le Marxiste-Léniniste: Berlin, 1945 - The Red Army's Victory over the Nazi regime in Europe, along side with the Allied Forces).

Later on, at the university campus in Québec City, his name was mentioned regularly, especially during the endless disputes between Maoists and Trotskyists. The Communist Party of Canada, that I joined, said that it was true : Stalin was directly responsible for many crimes. Strange attitude but "credible"; was it not usually accepted, said everywhere, and obvious for all?! This denunciation was followed by the promise that no such a thing would ever exist with socialism in Canada. We then became advocates of anti-Stalinism in the progressive grassroots organizations, attracting many people keen on struggling with the Communists.

However, stays in the USSR brought questions. The main one was for the author of these lines: why Moscow does look like an abandoned construction site? We were still in the 1970s. The overall impression of the Soviet capital, casting sight to all the cranes and infrastructure without animation, was that they had taken a vacation ... in the 1950s and that they never came back to work after.

Moreover, the Young Communist League of Canada visitors have rubbed shoulders with some Soviet officials - rather petty bourgeois- who envied goods and clothing of travelers from the West without understanding the ins and outs of the class struggle at the international level; especially the policies of Big capital towards workers in capitalist countries, to avoid that they switch on the socialist camp (since the defeat of socialism in the USSR, capitalists rush to take them back -e.g. Greece). Also the ground was set up by opponents of Stalin to plunge the economy into the doldrums, putting aside plans for economic development in USSR to the benefit of some kind of socialist market economy, that never really worked. Recent researchs of communist parties economists, including the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), highlighted it.

Joseph Stalin scared many "intellectuals" in the West and in socialist countries (they have contributed to defame him after Khrushchev's famous report -the bible - to the XXth Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR). In fact, why have they hurried up to hide it after ... (?) Denunciation without trial, that's weird! What would you say, if the whole thing had been framed to stop the development of soviet socialism and its influence amidst toiling people around the world?

(Photo Internet: Moscow, a neighbourhood, that kept its look from the time of Joseph Stalin).

However, this socialist country had quickly joined the levels of development of capitalist countries, including the United States. The book "Socialism Betrayed" (from US Communists Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny), published in USA by International Publishers, confirms this success.

Stalin’s economic, political and social achievements were a testimony of its commitment to the Soviet people. By the way, Stalin vowed unconditional love for the Russian people, while he himself was "immigrant" in Moscow, was he not Georgian? A bit like the Communist leader Tim Buck, who - even though he was British- , has dedicated his life to improving the living conditions of the English Canadian and Québec workers, while mapping the road for the Communist Party of Canada, in its struggle for socialism.

Still today, many immigrants, including the Club of Friends of KKE in Montréal, have linked their fate to the emancipation of the working class in Canada and have every desire to see particularly the youth, to enjoy a great future in our society. But first thing first, let’s be optimistic. We can foresee the future with joy and happiness.

Finally, it is no wonder that everywhere - and now, at the international level, the Communists themselves study the history of their movement and write it honestly. The "historians"and other bourgeois and petty-bourgeois "ideologists" don't have as their main orientation to fight against poverty, unemployment and misery. They can not match the progress for workers with social and political truth. After all, they will not bite the hand that feeds them ... Their snack, they earn it while inventing cock-and-bull stories about: communism, Soviet Union and Stalin.

(Photo Internet: Joseph Stalin).

Further they are never happy about anything. So we don’t have time to lose with them.
____________________________________

NOTA BENE: Daniel Paquet has first studied Law at Laval University in Québec City and at the Québec University in Montréal (UQAM). He was particularly interested in criminal law. Later, he turned to Communications, where he graduated "with honours" in 1996 in journalism, always at UQAM. In 1979, he studied at the Higher School of communist parties cadres, under the direction of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Interested in the case of Joseph Stalin, he wanted to throw a new light on this great historical figure in order to understand the real legacy of the Bolshevik leader. He took contact with the Friends of USSR in the United States; and Michael Lucas and Dr. Adélard Paquin, publishers of Northstar Compass, specialized magazine on USSR (available in English in Toronto and in French in Montréal).
He is a member of the Communist Party of Canada and contributes to the establishment of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in Canada.

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English

Pour la Komintern now!: http://pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com/

-30-

STALEMATE OR PROGRESS

2010-08-24T19:59:00.000-07:00

Where is President Obama?

vol. 3, no. 6, September 1-15, 2010, $ 1.00

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

FOREWORD: You will find at the bottom the link to the daily communist selection published by l'Humanité in English, in Paris.

Sadness, did you say? Oh, rather deep sorrow! The US communist newspaper disappeared in January 2010, sunk by its editorial board. They shut the public voice of the Communist Party USA, the People’s Weekly World (PWW).

Who will now, like the British communist newspaper, The New Worker, reveals that: “It is appropriate to recall that it was Bush’s corrupt administration that boosted and fostered the development of offshore oil rigs – no matter how risky they were- to increase local oil production without observing the proper safety measures, in return for bribes and economic favours?”

(ref.: May 2010).

The CP USA electronic newsletter People’s World , which replaced the PWW, praises President Obama to the skies. For instance, a few months ago, when he “tackles immigration reform”, it says: “The president, like the Statue of Liberty and Lazarus’ poem, appeals to the best of America”. Is that true? At any rate, it causes confusion.

What’s next? Already in the 1990s, one of the US leaders, Dan Margolis barred the sending to Montréal of the PWW, not “to mingle with Canadian affairs”; nowadays, he acts as a modern Mandarin, kicking out party members who do not abide by His Grace.

Astonishingly enough the 29th Convention in New York (May 2010), hammers out: “Finally, as for the role of communists, our mission is not to ‘steer the ship of state’. That task is the responsibility of a broader left coalition and the broadest possible section of the people.” Concretely, they could have tried to set up such a coalition to free the Cuban Five, detainees in USA on mere allegations since 11 years, but they did not.

(Photo-Gen.Consulate in Montréal: those "dangerous" Cubans supporting the Cuban Five, detainees in US jails).

The writer Edward A. Drummond, in The Crisis of the CPUSA Part 2, shows that “above all, the greatest problem is the demoralization and political disorientation”... in the membership and “the CP USA suffers from growing international isolation”.

Nevertheless, their People’s World reported in June 2010, that: “Opening the U.S. Social Forum in this city (Detroit, Ed.), hit hard by the economic crisis, 20 000 from around the nation marched [...] calling for jobs, economic and social justice and equality.” At the same time, the leadership of the CP USA is tailing Obama, its Democratic Party and the direction of the AFL-CIO. They don’t live up to the fine traditions of the internationalist CP USA past chairman, Gus Hall.

(Photo-Internet: CP USA past Chairman, Gus Hall. Well-known and appreciated leader in the world communist movement).

The tone here is angry. How would you react, when a clique of right-wing opportunists is wrecking this beautiful US fighter’s party, vanguard of working people’s rights: Black and White, English and Spanish speaking, and much more?

Drummond declares: “Project the Party’s own advanced demands for anti-monopoly democracy and for socialism. Fight for leadership of people’s movements, including trade unions.” He also states that “… for the overwhelming majority of Americans of color, the burden of special oppression and class oppression remain a material reality, as the Black unemployment rates double the white unemployment rate (true for decades now) illustrate”. 30 millions unemployed people languish and the Party leadership has not taken a single step toward responding to the crisis in its own name.

The international scene

Altogether, it is very difficult to distinguish the policies of Obama from those of Bush in external affairs, to start with. In January 2010, the Communist Party of Bolivia expressed its concern and exposed the situation as such: “While Venezuela sent one plane with medication, doctors and rescuers just 30 minutes after the catastrophe (in Haiti, Ed.) and immediately followed by Cuba, the USA sent 10 000 soldiers. What had the appearance to be humanitarian help, “rapid and efficient”, was for observers an attempt for occupation of a “failed State”.

At the end of June 2010, the US Congress responding to a demand of President Obama granted $ 33 more billions to the war in Afghanistan; 30 000 more troopers will be dispatched there. It seems that there is no way out. Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, kept on asking the Canadian government to pursue its mission in Afghanistan. In July 2010, Métro reported that Richard Fadden, the “boss” of CSIS (Canadian secret services, Ed.) regretted to have said that: “there is a foreign interference in provincial politics”.

This is probably pretty mild in comparison to the constant interventions of the US government in Canadian affairs; but nobody raised the point so far. Anyhow, if the Canadian people maintain its pressure, the Canadian troops should leave on July 1st 2011 and return to Canada. (But watch out the pro-US Harper government that would like to make a deal with the Liberal opposition to go just over it).

Now, as a growing number of US rank-and-file communists puts it: “If anyone is tempted to walk away in disgust, resist the temptation. Real revolutionaries don’t quit. Walking away only makes the victory of the Party-wreckers easier. There is not an infinite amount of time to right this starboard-listing ship. Every comrade is needed in this struggle.”

(Photo-Internet: The CP USA used to present candidates to the presidential elections. Here Gus Hall for President and Jarvis Tyner for Vice-President).

So, Canadian communists got in touch with some US comrades; they talk together. “Interference!” will shout Webb and his bunch… No! In North America, we need action and solidarity. Obama puts us to sleep. Let’s wake up workers’ America!

L'Humanité in English

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

-30-

UNITED, WE SHALL WIN

2010-05-24T15:49:00.001-07:00

vol. 3, no. 5, June 2010, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

NOTA BENE: Many thanks to Tim Pelzer (Vancouver), tpelzer@shaw.ca, who edited this article. You will find at the bottom, the link to the daily communist selection published by l'Humanité in English, in Paris.

_______________________

A LETTER TO MY COMRADES,

I have just come back from Paris, France where progressive people I met - a few members of the French Communist Party (FCP); one elected leader of the French Communist Renewal Movement (FCRM); and some activists of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) - paid attention to a friendly report on the situation in Québec and English speaking Canada. They knew that living in Canada does not mean that you are enjoying a full democracy.

They recognize that most of the gains in living standards over the decades are the fruit of difficult union struggles. Such is the reality in France.

(Photo: Activists of the Pôle de Renaissance Communiste en France at the Eiffel Tower, in solidarity with the Cuban Five).

For a strong and democratic communist party

Because the FCP has lost members and influence among the working class over the last few decades, French Communists are conducting an intensive debate about the decline of their Party.

The whole picture is that of a house under renovation. It’s “renovators” have either broken with the dictatorship of the proletariat, democratic centralism or are undecided about the role of Stalin and the like. These never-ending debates have resulted in some temporarily leaving the party. It is also obvious that some have deliberately used the debates to weaken the party.

The Pôle of Communist Renewal in France (PRCF), led by philosopher Georges Gastaud and former Young Communist League leader Daniel Antonini, are standing at the head of the movement to change the party. In a recent call to French Communists, the Pôle stated: “When the FCP was Marxist-Leninist and focused on its links with the working class, the goal of changing society was at the core of struggles, social gains were on the agenda and the Capital had to be cautious. Since the FCP has repudiated its fundamentals and dropped national independence in order to please the pro-Maastricht socialist party, not only has the Party’s influence collapsed but our working class and nation are trod upon by ‘European construction’, liberties are trampled down, and the extreme right has a free space to lure the most desperate part of the working people. The PRCF calls on all comrades (from outside and inside, ed.) to build a communist convergence for action on a truly communist basis.”

The PRCF stresses too that: “without renouncing to its own organization, independent of the Socialist Party and PCF, the PRCF calls for immediate action”.

The PRCF is an active organization that enjoys support across France, especially in the industrial region of the North (Nord-Pas de Calais). It carries out discussions with some PCF leaders and Communist parties around the world. It does not want to transform itself into a party but is working to change the Communist Party of France into a fighting organization. Every month the organization carries out a solidarity action. This month the PRCF organized an event to support the Cuban Five near the Eiffel Tower which attracted the attention of many tourists and French. The PRCF is close to the traditions and current policies of the Communist Party of Canada. The Pôle is not a member of the French communist party but attracts members of the PCF; as for the official leadership of the PCF, they prefer to ignore the Pôle while there is little media coverage of their activities. They "disturb" the overall political picture of France.

However, even with the decline, the Communist movement is still strong: the PCF claims 40,000 party members and 12,000 YCL members. In France you are either a FCP member, a former member, a friend, or party ally. The PCF has elected Deputies in the National Assembly and City Councils across the country. The party's daily newspaper L'Humanité and weekly magazine l'Humanité-Dimanche are available at every newstand and enjoy a broad readership. (Photo: Communist Assistant-Mayor Uychart in one of a Paris Borough, taking part to the 2010 May Day Demonstration in Paris).

On the other hand, the PRCF also believes that support for young people and their struggles is an important goal.

Be it in Canada or in France, solidarity spells the same way

There is room for hope. Let’s put some muscle in our struggle and solidarity with the French working class. They are supporting the Greek workers and demanding the Cuban Five’s liberation.

As for the contribution French communists have made, lets remember that they fought against the Nazi occupation during WWII; they contributed to the modernization of their country and the well-being of the working class through the Conseil National de la Résistance (National Resistance Committee); they are able to overcome new challenges, including building a genuine socialist society. That is the real charming perfume of Paris...

(Photo: Militants of the General Confederation of Labour-CGT, the largest trade-union center in France, in support to the Greek workers and retired people, in Paris).

L'Humanité in English

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

THE DAM HAS BROKEN

2010-03-24T22:31:00.000-07:00

FRENCH-CANADIANS WOKE UP WITH SPRING

vol. 3, no. 4, APRIL 2010, $ 1.00

Foreword: many thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca, who not only edits this column, but teaches English language to this author. Please note that at the bottom you will find the link to an English selection of the french daily communist newspaper L'Humanité, published in Paris.

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Since the electoral defeat of the politically buoyant Parti Québécois (PQ) government, reactionary circles in Québec have placed their hopes on Jean Charest centrist Liberal Party to block left wing efforts to move Québec on to the road of social progress. It did work at the beginning. Now, after declining living standards for working families and constant increases in prices for goods and services such as electricity, Liberals are declining rapidly in popularity.

Neither did they halt public demands for political change in the status of Québec within Canadian confederation: the right to self-determination up and including separation if people choose.

Ironically, any proposal made as well to the PQ leadership and several of its militant members, even independence, does not seem acceptable to them, as long as they don’t lose their grip on the Québec society. It raises an important question. What is their secret agenda? Democracy, côté jardin, is it not madame Pauline Marois?*

(Photo: Arrival of demonstrators to the Montréal March).

Recently, the right –that did not put all its eggs in the same basket- received support from former PQ Premier Lucien Bouchard, who called for a hike in University tuitions for Québec students, according to the Montréal daily La Presse on February 24. Bouchard spoke on behalf of a group of “experts” at a press conference.

Two weeks later, the newspaper Métro reported that University students protested when Education Minister Michelle Courchesne, “hesitated’ about “how she would use the 35 M$ given as a supplement to Québec by Ottawa in the framework of the Canadian Program of Student Bursaries”. While students want to use this federal money to ameliorate the bursary’s system, the minister is not too clear yet. The Montréal Regional Coalition of Students, organized demonstrations and other actions, supported by the Montréal University Student Federation. Québec Young Communist League took part in the protests, according to provincial leader Marianne Breton-Fontaine in a phone interview with La Vie Réelle.

(Photo: several French-Canadian workers protest regularly against the constitutional status quo, denying their right to self-determination).

To force the provincial government to protect public services and negotiate in good faith with its 475 000 State employees, the trade union movement, people’s associations and Québec solidaire party organized a big demonstration in Montréal on March 20th, that drew over 75 000 workers (even construction workers attended). “Québec people want to preserve gains of the past, which they struggled for with sacrifices: such as access to quality public services”, according to a QS statement. The Party’s representative in the National Assembly, Amir Khadir, affirmed a few days beforehand that, “Banks, mining corporations, the ultra-wealthy must share the load”. Communist party of Québec members (PCQ) appeared at the demonstration with a new issue of their newspaper Clarté. The PCQ was well received and collected enough donations to pay half of the paper’s print run; it attracted many people, especially the locked-out employees of the daily newspaper Journal de Montréal.

The Research Institute in Contemporary Economy (l’Institut de recherche en économie contemporaine) charged that the government “must tax the wealthiest rather than raise the tariffs and allow the private sector to administer services”. They stressed that the “tax system must be revised and the contribution of the well-to-do and business should be increased.” Institute Director Robert Laplante questioned government spending billions of dollars in military expenditures while there are cutbacks in the health sector and increases in education fees.

Something noteworthy: Communists or would-be communists are more visible than ever even. Among them, the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) is the only progressive political party that has branches all over Canada and enjoys relations with Communist and worker’s parties across the world (including France and the USA). Today, there is a new generation of political and social activists ready to show that there must be “a life with a future for the youth”.

(Photo Marianne Breton-Fontaine: Québec communists denouncing IMF, WTO and WB during the demonstration).

* Pauline Marois leads the PQ. Severity is an euphemism when you deal with her leadership within her party and during her interventions in the National Assembly.

L'Humanité in English

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

THIS CANADA

2010-02-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

vol. 3, no. 3, MARCH 2010, $ 1.00

Foreword: many thanks to Tim Pelzer who edited this article, tpelzer@shaw.ca, please note that at the bottom you will find the link to an English selection of the french daily communist newspaper L'Humanité.

Si vous voulez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

So many French-Canadians love Canada. In 1973 when I was 16 years old, I left Québec City on a beautiful July morning with two friends, Didier and Vincent, on a cycling trip to Toronto. We were proud and “endowed” with a mission: to convince English speaking Canadians that Québec should leave Canada. We were also intent on collecting further evidence proving that English speaking Canadians were out to destroy our nation and assimilate us into the melting pot of cultures. Didn’t we learn in secondary school that we could suffer from this disaster?

(Photo: always ready to move around to learn and share knowledge)

Once we arrived in Ontario, English speakers made us feel like kings. They treated us like famous athletes, offering free food and accommodation. They listened to us patiently when we spoke our broken English, making us feel like honoured guests.

People smiled at us and greeted us in a friendly manner. What an eye opening disappointment! What were we going to report to our friends back home about our journey to the “enemy’s kingdom”. In fact, we had nothing to complain... Besides, our parents were involved in the organization Expérience de vie internationale, (International Life Experience) to promote cultural exchanges with young people from USA. Now we were going to meet Québec’s real foes. Instead, these young people, especially those from New York taught us many interesting topics and introduced us to the music of Cat Stevens. It also happened - and we should not mention it too loudly- that we fell in love with the young beauties of our neighbouring country and learn to kiss for the first time.

Here again, we suffered a major setback in our endeavour to justify why Québec should separate from English speaking Canada.

The following year I went to Newfoundland. Instead of finding big mean English barbarians, I received a warm welcome. The people there were keen to know what Québec City looked like. They invited us to visit their houses, a wedding ceremony and an evening dance.

After a turbulent time in French speaking high school that led to my expulsion, my parents sent me to an English speaking high school, St.Patrick’s in Québec City to complete grade 12. During my year there I had a conflict with the “established gang”. One hot summer evening while savouring a beer in the Battlefields Federal Park, I met them by accident. We chatted and I told them that my presence in their High School had not been my choice and that I had been kicked out of French speaking school. They offered me a beer. Cheers they said happily. I became part of the gang.

In 1975, Québec students were engaged in a tight struggle with the government over the loan and bursary issue. Campus student organizations across the province were about to hold a meeting to create the National Association of Students (ANEQ). Speaking English, the Bishop University’s student delegation –consisting of three young women- invited me to be their translator at the upcoming meeting. A few months later I was elected to the national union’s Executive Council. I also joined the Young Communist League (YCL) of Canada. This was a turning point in my life. I agreed with the Communist party’s position on the place of Québec within confederation and its two-nation solution. I proposed this approach to the ANEQ and they adopted this position. At that time the union had 110,000 members and was very influential in Québec. The separatist Parti québécois members within the ANEQ were not happy.

(Photo: The Parti québécois members ultimately brought the cemetary peace within the Québec student movement in the 1980s)

ANEQ opened the horizons of Québec students after it invited the Prague based International Union of Students (IUS) to visit them in Québec City. The Association was also involved in the preparations for the World Youth and Students Festival that was going to take place in Habana, Cuba in the summer of 1978. The ANEQ spearheaded efforts to establish links with students in Ontario. Our motto was: Let’s get rid of this old story of two solitudes! We were young and wanted to create a new Canada. It was before the first separatist referendum in Québec. All over Canada, young communists were working for a new, modern and dynamic country.

But PQ members launched a counter attack and took over the ANEQ. At the 1978 ANEQ Convention, they elected their candidates to the executive, except for one position: information secretary which I occupied until my demotion. The PQ could not find anybody else to take the position. It was the beginning of the end for the YCL in Québec which lost most of its influence within the organization.

The YCL still exists but is in the process of rebuilding. By the way, All-Canada YCL general secretary Johan Boyden is going to marry Québec YCL leader Marianne Breton-Fontaine and they are expecting their first child in June 2010.

I spoke about my friends and me who in the early 1970s were trying to discover something that in reality did not exist. Contrary to what nationalists were and today are still claiming the French speaking nation of Québec is not facing the threat of disappearing. My childhood friend, Vincent Giguère, is now an international leader in the field of nuclear receptors, -a class of DNA-binding proteins that regulate the expression of genes-. He works very hard. In October 2009, McGill University proudly announced that this researcher has been elected as Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada, “in recognition of [his] outstanding scientific achievement”. Vincent is not a communist, but he is certainly a democrat like his family. He studied cloning in Great Britain in the 1980s. I could have spoken about medical doctor François Desbiens, or Michel Forget, who works closely with the leadership of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN).

They all have been in a way or another involved in the student movement during the 1970s and helped foster understanding between French and English speaking students. The movement is certainly not dead.

I can say that they believe in democracy. They paved the way for their children to preserve what the past generations achieved. They are part of the new generation of French-Canadians who are open to other people and not intimidated by immigrants who want to learn the French language and enjoy Québec’s lively culture – i.e. jazz, music and comedy festivals and the like during the summer period.

(Photo: some delicatessen from Lebanon and Pakistan)

Modestly, many French Canadians would like other Canadians to know that in Québec, French Canadians are not all alike and that the future belongs to the working class and the progressive intellectuals and artists.

Vive le Canada populaire!

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English

-30-

OPEN LETTER TO LICIA CORBELLA

2010-01-23T21:28:00.001-08:00

vol. 3, no. 2, February 2010, $ 1.00

si vous désirez lire en français: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

FOREWORD: Thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca who edited this letter.
__________________________

CALGARY HERALD (NEWSPAPER)

Dear colleague,

I recently had a glance at the Montréal Gazette. Your article "What if Quebecers got their wish and the oilsands closed?" caught my attention. I must admit that you have a humorous way of thinking and quick wits. However, I have to recognize that I was not aware about the topic and never realized that in Québec there was a desire to shut down the Alberta oilsands. Just recently I heard Gilles Duceppe affirming that it should be done.

(Photo Josette Thibault: Daniel Paquet, Editor La Vie Réelle in English)

I visited Calgary in 1977 -a beautiful city, by the way- so dreamy with the sight of the Rockies on its western horizons. The purpose was the annual convention of the National Union of Students (of English speaking Canada) - NUS which invited our Québec National Association of Students (ANEQ) to discuss on vital issues such as youth unemployment. First, NUS recognized the right of the French Canadian nation of Québec to self-determination up and including secession if the people choose; they also confirmed that ANEQ is an organization on an equal footing with NUS. This is what we expected to reshape Canada, to reinforce its unity.

I knew then that even the Parti québécois (PQ) members in our union, who were in the majority, would have to accept this gesture of solidarity, friendship and openness. It was one year after the election of the PQ in Québec and three years before the first referendum, in 1980.

I wanted to mention it to underline that in Québec, there is a battle of interests. This is what we call the class struggle. The PQ and its political ally the Bloc québécois represent nationalist petite bourgeoisie interests in Québec. These economic forces want Québec independence to control the State and expand their market share and profits within and without Québec.

The vast majority of the working people here do not support independence. In fact, many French Canadian workers are employed throughout Canada, including Alberta. The new party Québec solidaire is more inclined to defend the people's interests than the PQ and the Bloc, even though they also advocate Québec independence.

The only political party that is coherent on these matters (self-determination and oilsands) is the Communist Party which I doubt yo would support. Big business promotes their point of view through the mass media and encourages conflict and division between workers in English speaking Canada and Québec. I guess that you understand my point of view that there cannot be unity and prosperity in Canada without working class unity and economic independence, especially in regards to large US corporations such as the oil industry.

Rather than trying to describe fully what the essence of French Canadian pride is, I would like to invite you to Montréal, where I live, so you can get to know Québec and people better, including the arts and architecture, to name just a few areas where we have contributed to the general development of the Canadian culture. Your readers would love it.

I think that you will agree with me that we have, as journalists, the responsability to demonstrate to the Canadian people that they have much more in common that we can think.

I am confident that the future is not bad for Canada. I hope one day I will be able to write as well as you do in English. I hope that I will have the opportunity to prolong this conversation in the future.

Thank you sincerely!

Daniel Paquet

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

L'Humanité in English

- 30 -

THE 36TH CENTRAL CONVENTION IN TORONTO

2009-12-31T19:29:00.000-08:00

JUST BEFORE, A LITTLE TALK ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT

vol. 3, no. 1, January 2010, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

FOREWORD: Many thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca who edited this article. Don't forget the link below to L'Humanité in English, selection of the daily communist newspaper published in Paris.

But why did they organize it so far away? After all, Copenhagen is not a suburb of Montréal. In November, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared in Singapore in relation with this meeting: “Everybody is looking for a convenient agreement that will not impose upon us a burden too heavy, that is the reason why negotiations are so difficult”. The conservative newspaper The Gazette chose to write in December that “oil and gas producers comprised the largest industry lobbying group from January through August 2009 with 24 companies and associations represented in Ottawa, according to the registry. These include all the major oil companies.” One of the lobbyists was Ken Boessenkooll, “a campaign adviser and a senior policy adviser to Harper when he was leader of the opposition.” Maybe it smells of oil, but it does not smell good at any rate... (Photo SolidNet: Anti-imperialist demonstration in Athens, 2009)

The French communist philosopher, Georges Gastaud, wrote recently on the topic and said: “If any “cut” ecological movement takes us away from anti-capitalistic class struggle, a responsible ecological and comprehensive implication carries us, on the contrary, to get involved now and not before another century in a new society free from capitalist depredations and class, without havoc by a handful of irresponsible elements looking for profits. We need a society supporting revolution in the world of science, of political power and relations of properties. We must collectivize for the benefit of everybody, knowledge and human products. In a nutshell, we call for a communist society.”

Sadly enough, the Chinese Communist Party delegation at the last International Meeting of Communist and Workers ‘Parties in New Delhi, India, concluded that: “no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new higher relation of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society”. Thus “capitalism will remain more powerful than socialism for a certain period to come...” During the same meeting, the Vietnam delegation affirmed that their next convention will “map out the socio-economic development strategy for the next 10 years (2011-2020) with the targets of becoming a modern-industrial country by 2020 and strongly progressing to socialism in which people are wealthy; country is strong; society is equal, democratic and civilized.”

THE CANADIAN CONVENTION

From February 5th to 7th, delegates from all parts of Canada will gather in Toronto to attend the Central Convention of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). As a backdrop, we can mention the struggles of the employees and journalists of Le journal de Montréal who are still locked out after almost one year. In November, elected Québec Solidaire member Amir Khadir introduced a motion in the Quebec National Assembly inviting both parties to negotiate so that “the rights of the workers be respected...” It was adopted unanimously. In October, Khadir, declared to Le Devoir, in relation with the situation in the construction industry, that, “I believe seriously enough that the Liberal Party of Québec could be sullied...” in an eventual public inquiry in this area.

(Photo SolidNet: Demonstration in Paraguay in support of democracy, 2009)

In October, Le Devoir reported that some Québec farmers were dissatisfied with their organization the Union of Farm Growers (Union des producteurs agricoles-UPA), established in 1972. The discontented members were not clear about whether they wanted to leave the UPA, only stating that “they want something else”.

During the CPC convention, discussions will take place on the role of the Party in relation with the people’s struggles. Another question being discussed is the Marxist concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Rebel Youth editor (magazine of the Young Communist League of Canada), Stephen Von Sychowski wrote: “When we talk about what people think of that particular theoretical aspect of Marxism-Leninism we are dealing with a relatively small segment of the people who are the more educated [...]. The reality is that most of people’s knowledge of revolutionary theory is based on anti-communist propaganda and a few tidbits of often questionable historical information.” (Discussion Bulletin, November 4th, 2009, no.2, p. 6).
La Vie Réelle in English shares the CPC´s point of view that the working class of Canada will have to exercise political power and defend any revolutionary measures once they win power. The political party of the workers will also have to raise the question of the toiling people in all regions. For instance before New Year 2010, AbitibiBowater, a US-based multinationals shuts down its operations in Beaupré and Clermont, near Québec City, dismissing hundreds of employees. The company also closed plants in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Alabama, according to Quebec City´s daily Le Soleil.

Speaking of Québec, the Communist Party shall reiterate its position for a new Canada where the two founding nations, Québec and English speaking Canada, will be equal and united, and Québec will enjoy the right to secession. It is the right moment since the Parti québécois (PQ) is trying again to mobilize the population to separate from Canada, taking advantage of anti-English sentiment caused by dissatisfaction with the federal conservative government.

(Photo SolidNet: Demonstration in Italy for the freedom of information, in 2009)

L'Humanité in English

-30-

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010!

2009-12-15T19:27:00.000-08:00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

On the occasion of the New Year 2010, La Vie Réelle in English wishes to all its readers Peace, Progress and Prosperity.

We wish you as well Health and Wellbeing.

We hope in a new Canada, a land of democracy and freedom for all, where French-Canadians and English-speaking Canadians will live in equality, with the right of Québec to self-determination as a nation, up and including secession if this is the will of the people; alongside with the rights of the First Nations and the immigrant communities.

We extend warm salutations to the Communist Party of Canada which will hold its 36th Central Convention in Toronto (Ontario), not so far away from Guelph where it was founded in 1921 by a group of some 20 people that garner rapidly the support of thousands of workers in our country for the right to a decent housing, job and more generally a Life with a Future, a socialist Canada.
(Photo: Daniel Paquet, editor; with a group of young french communists in Paris, Spring 2009)

We extend fraternal greetings to the International Communist Review published in Athens (Greece) by a collective of theoretical communist journals from all around the world, including Debate Abierto from the Communist party of Venezuela, in our hemisphere.

Finally, we salute the Canadian delegation to the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver and wish them successes in the coming competitions.

Montréal, December 2009

- 30 -

FRENCH-CANADIANS AND IMMIGRANTS

2009-11-23T21:58:00.000-08:00

THE GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT

vol. 2, no.10, December 2009, $ 1.00
si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

FOREWORD: Many thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca who edited this article. Don't forget the link below to L'Humanité in English, selection of the daily communist newspaper published in Paris.
___________________________________

Daniel Paquet*

Who knows? Maybe the book recently published by former Québec Premier Jacques Parizeau is going to crash.

At the moment the Parti Québécois (PQ) is trying by any means to kindle the light of separatism. The left leaning party Québec solidaire is also expecting to attract the nationalist vote, especially youth who reject the PQ’s conservative orientation. Actually, it looks like a child’s game of musical chairs: the music plays and when it stops, you better find a chair; otherwise you will be expelled from the game.

The PQ is the official opposition party in the National Assembly and plays on the federal government’s failure to recognize Québec’s French Canadian nation. Of course, the Stephen Harper conservative party recognized Québec as nation. But, in practice, it is like affirming officially and strongly that Toronto is in Ontario!

PQ leaders take profit from the French Canadian people’s dissatisfaction with the status quo. They believe that – especially in some parts of Montréal- you have to speak English in commercial outlets and restaurants now. This is partly true. But it is not a deliberate campaign by small business owners as they don’t feel that they are going to increase their customer base by recruiting more French speaking personnel. Nevertheless, French Canadians, especially the young, feel hurt by this. Their reaction is understandable, though exaggerated.
(Photo: once attended the catholic churches are now deserted by the French-Canadians)

The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) speaks the language of wisdom and democracy. They advocate recognizing the right of the French Canadian to self-determination up and including secession from Canada. They oppose, naturally, discrimination against French Canadians in La Belle Province wherever they work and live. Of course, they don’t believe immigrants and English Canadians should be forced to speak French but instead encouraged to learn and use the language.

It is obvious that in the future, the French Canadians will have to learn English, but it must not be mandatory. They must be encouraged to do it gradually without loosing the French language. Anyhow, today it is common for immigrant children to speak French and English as well as their parent’s language (Spanish, Arabic or Urdu).

In the past, the Communists associated themselves regularly with the PQ members on various issues, like peace campaigns, solidarity with the Chilean people or the defence of Cuba. Many PQ members are progressive, but they are fiercely obtuse on the national question. It is almost a psychological barrier. PQ members are active in people’s associations, unions and movements and they outnumber communist Party members in these movements. During elections they win easily. One must not make mistakes: the PQ is not like the New Democratic Party, a socialist party or a social-democrat party. Instead it is a coalition party with a left wing.
(Photo: big canadian companies benefit from the absence of a mass communist party in Canada)

However, the CPC has influence in the trade-unions. One of the Party’s mistakes during the 1990s was to recruit former nationalists to its ranks, nearly destroying the Party. The revolutionary “pessimism” was caused by the Soviet Union’s disappearance added to the Party’s near downfall. The communist movement in Québec overcame this mistake and is ready to form alliances with the PQ members but on an equal footing. Furthermore, the centrist Liberal Party led by Jean Charest adopts policies that are fair for the people, even though the PQ waits like a vulture to diminish the Liberals in the public eye.

Finally, the PQ has no newspaper in Québec like for instance the French Communist Party daily newspaper l’Humanité. Our readers should know that many journalists from the written and electronic press have attended courses at Montréal’s Québec University under the direction of the late professor Pierre Bourgault, former leader of the nationalist Rassemblement pour l’Indépendance Nationale (Rally for the National Independence –RIN). Bourgault liked to ridicule Greek, Italian and Jews, while he was smoking his eternal Gitanes at his classroom’s entrance. Of course, he could not ignore the progressive and dynamic role played by representatives of theses communities in the development of the communist movement in Montréal.
(Photo SolidNet: communist meeting in Greece)

The French Canadians workers realize now that you can deal about bread and butter and still ask for a Québec traditional product. Finally, one should be aware that communists are developing the embryo of a mass organization in Montréal’s eastend. One day, the French CBC anchorman, at an electoral soirée will announce that “if the trend keeps on going, the next government will be formed by the communist party…”

L'Humanité in English
______________

* (Daniel Paquet studied Communications at Montréal’s Québec University from 1993 to 1996, where he graduated in journalism with honours)

- 30 -

ABOUT TRUTH AND VICTORY

2009-11-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

vol. 2, no. 9, November 2009, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

FOREWORD: Many thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca who edited this article. Don't forget the link below to L'Humanité in English, selection of the daily communist newspaper published in Paris.
______________________________

It’s all started with the last column that I wrote. My dear friend and editor, Tim, said to me: “Sometimes you can be overly abstract and theoretical to the point that I have trouble understanding what you are saying […] if I have trouble understanding what you are saying, I am sure that your readers will have the same problem.”

I read over the whole article. Tim is right. But why publish a newsletter in English if one cannot express himself properly? The reason is very basic: I am totally devoted to the Québec people and I want English speaking Canadians - and others - to know that we are not a bunch of angry, restless separatists, waiting for the next referendum to drag us out of Canada. Naturally, since this column is read by intellectuals and journalists, I did not want to give them the impression that La Vie Réelle in English was a simple read that could be labelled as a cheap piece of French Canadian communist writing. (Photo: a typical French-Canadian homestead in Québec City)

But Tim, very generously, added: “You can express yourself well in English. I know this because of our wonderful email conversations. Write as if you are writing your readers an email. Write in simple prose that is easy to grasp. This is important if you want to appeal to working class readers.” Not only was I touched, but it brought two things to mind: first that we have to persuade people in Québec that it is important to learn English and second it is important to learn the history of English speaking Canada. Even communists around the world have adopted English in their communications. For instance, SolidNet, the Communist and Worker's Parties central communication's bureau in Athens, Greece distributes documents and bulletins in Spanish, Italian, Russian, Portuguese and English. Few documents are in French. I believe that when the French communist party becomes more involved in world solidarity movements there will be more French publications. At the moment, even Québec communists use English to communicate with central party headquarters in Toronto.

Of course, main documents are translated from English to French. Those living in Vancouver, Halifax or Hamilton should know that there is a lively, flourishing French speaking culture in Québec. We have prominent and talented singers like Robert Charlesbois (Ordinaire) as well as new ones like Lynda Thalie (Une femme amoureuse), an immigrant from the Arab world. Well, the point is that we don’t eat pea soup, cretons and pâté chinois like in the past. We have changed. We go for sushi, couscous and souvlaki now. And there are even some who believe that God does not oppose French Canadians joining the communist party. C’est la vie… (Photo : a Montréal-born new Québécoise, Nile)

Even in the labour movement there are changes. For instance the Québec Centre of Trade Unions, formerly the Québec Teacher's Union, decided at its last convention in June 2009 to get involved in politics “so that we live in the type of society that we want to build”. We increased our solidarity with workers from other parts of the world. For instance, the Québec Federation of Labour (500 000 members) opposes the Free Trade Agreement that the Canadian government signed with Colombia because of the systematic violations of human rights in that country. The Union Centre invites its “member unions and regional councils to put pressure on conservative and liberal MPs…” And, the Confederation of National Trade Unions (300 000 members) will enlarge its support policy for striking workers. Recently, union members working at Le Journal de Québec decided to “give 1% of their salaries to the union representing 253 workers at Le Journal de Montréal”, who have been on lock-out for over 8 months.

Karl Marx in the article published under the title of Communism and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, concluded that: “ We are firmly convinced that the real danger lies not in practical attempts, but in the theoretical elaboration of communist ideas, for practical attempts, even mass attempts, can be answered by cannon as soon as they become dangerous, whereas ideas, which have conquered our intellect and taken possession of our minds, ideas to which reason has fettered our conscience, are chains from which one cannot free oneself without a broken heart…” (Collected Works, Vol. 1, International Publishers, New York, 1985, pp. 220-221)

As readers know, there is an older bulletin named La Vie Réelle (just in french). One of its readers wrote not long ago: “A very good issue. One reads it and can make up one’s own opinion. Articles are never aggressive, I appreciate it.” (Photo: a renovated catholic church in Québec City)

L'Humanité in English

- 30 -

I LOVE THE SOVIET UNION

2009-09-27T18:00:00.001-07:00

vol. 2, no. 8, October 2009, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

FOREWORD: Many thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca who edited this article. Don't forget the link below to L'Humanité in English, selection of the daily communist newspaper published in Paris.

______________________________

In one of his tragedy: King Lear; Shakespeare wrote beautiful verses, witnessing the feeling of one daughter for his father. Goneril says to King Lear:

“Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter;
Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e’er lov’d, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor and speech unable.
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.”

(Photo: Father and daughter, - Hervé and Peggy- at the 2009 May Day Demonstration in Paris)

These words express deeply my true feelings for the French Canadian working people, my people. These people, like others on earth deserves the best created by the brain and hands of the toiling people. As the saying goes in French: “il n‘y a rien de trop beau pour la classe ouvrière” (there is no such a too beautiful thing for the working class). But besides my own “family”, I felt deeply in love with former Soviet Union.

When I was a kid in Québec City, my grandfather once told me that we should build a monument to the Red Army. Later I learned about the heroic Red army soldiers that defeated the Nazi invaders in Stalingrad. Enemy at the Gates is a splendid US made movie that portrays this powerful Red Army victory. By the way, my grand-father perused the books forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church, notably those written by authors such as Léon Tolstoï.

In 1972, my father Donat embarked on a journey to Moscow to see the historic ice hockey tournament between Canada and USSR. When he returned, the parish priest, Mr. Giguère came and asked him a few questions, especially about the Soviet people’s commitment and belief in God. My father convincingly told the priest that apparently the people believe in something that was greater than them personally. It was the recognition of ordinary citizens, working hard to match the standards of well-being in countries like Canada with exception that everyone would share the benefits.

The following year, my mother visited the Soviet Union. She has fond memories of her stay in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital city, which to this day she recounts vividly.

The Party School

A few years later, in 1979, after I had joined the Communist party of Canada, I was invited to study in the Soviet Union. Initially, I thought that it was not a good idea, preferring to live with my girlfriend in Montréal. But she convinced me to go and for the next seven months, I studied at Moscow’s Institute of Social Studies. It was a renowned school, run by the Communist party. Sometimes a Central Committee member, comrade Zagladine, would visit the school to see if everything was working fine.

We had the cream of the cream of professors and directors at the Institute, also known as the Party School. The Principal was the former Soviet ambassador to France. Our philosophy teacher had been the Soviet ambassador to Unesco in Paris and the others were all either former delegates or diplomats in Canada, Africa and other parts of the world.

But what professors! Sad, because I was not receiving letters from my girlfriend, one of them gave me a few tips to encourage her to write me. Another one, the journalism instructor, helped me plan my week ends, suggesting places I should visit.

Speaking of visits, like ordinary Soviet citizen, I had the opportunity to go to the circus (the old and the new ones), operas, theatres, concerts and movie theatres.

I also had my share of frustrations. I wanted since the beginning of my adventure to learn if people were happy with the socialist system. But, how to do it without speaking Russian? My standard of living in Moscow was lower than in Montréal.

My readers will ask: did you free while studying in Moscow? I will repeat it many times, I felt free to study, read and express myself. I was happy in Moscow, spring was beautiful and the summer, a real treat…

When the rightwing counter-revolution started, everybody saluted the changes, thinking that they were moving in a real progress toward a Western style “democracy”. In the 1990s, I met some Russian trade-unionists on a tour in Montréal; one of them, a middle-aged woman stared at me sadly and repeated: “what did we do? What did we do?” The Soviets lost all the benefits they enjoyed under socialism such as full employment, job security and a wide range of social benefits, she explained.

Now, many former Soviet citizens who immigrated abroad for a better standard of living after the crisis, such as my friend Nikolaï – a welder who works in Montréal’s industrial belt- realize that life was better under socialism.

Nonetheless, the former Soviet Union still has friends and supporters around the world.

My only criticism of the former Soviet Union is that the Communist Party ended the class struggle within the society too early. And speaking of freedom, I will conclude with those words from Karl Marx: “It is not a question whether freedom of the press ought to exist, for it always exists. The question is whether freedom of the press is a privilege of particular individuals or whether it is a privilege of the human mind. The question is whether a right of one side ought to be a wrong for the other side.” (Collected Works, Volume 1, International Publishers, New York, 1976. p. 155).

L'Humanité in English

- 30 -

DON'T WORRY, THEY STUDY

2009-08-27T08:55:00.001-07:00

vol. 2, no. 7, September 2009, $1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

NOTA BENE: Tim Pelzer, t.pelzer@shaw.ca, edited this bulletin. You will find at the bottom the link with l'Humanité in English, a selection of the french daily communist newspaper published in Paris.

And I judge, when I am happy
As a young student
That when the sky is darkest
The dawn is near.
(Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five)

Yes, eventually the students will study to know if a better world is possible. Right now, however, everything seems rather quiet, at least on the surface, in the times past turbulent province of Québec. One of the last demonstrations that took place was at the end of March in the streets of Montréal. According to the newspaper Métro, “hundreds of students, union activists and community organizers took to the streets in downtown Montréal, under the leadership of the Student’s Association, to show their opposition to private sector in public facilities”.

In Mid-April, The Gazette reported that “students at Université du Québec à Montréal will join the faculty in a “silent” march this morning to show continued support for a strike by professors that threatens to extend their winter semester by several weeks”. (Photo: karate course in Paris)

But -- there is a but-- Québec students have not built permanent and strong alliances with English speaking students in other provinces. Such unity could change the face of the Canadian politics. As Young Communist League General Secretary Johan Boyden puts it in the June issue of the People’s Voice: “Student activists have a choice: slide towards advocacy, or fuel up a militant Canada-wide campaign, with allies like labour, people’s forces, and parents –for ultimately our demand is raising living standards of the people as a whole.”

Last May, the half million strong Quebec Federation of Labour called upon the Québec students to participate in May Day events in the province along with the workers and community organizers. For many years, the student movement, such as the former Quebec National Association of Students, had a tradition of encouraging student involvement in May Day activities. After all, would they not be the future working class?

At the 55th Canadian Federation of Students' Convention (CFS) in May, as reported by the People’s Voice, delegates decided that “funding for aboriginal post-secondary education will be a top priority of the [CFS] together with campaigns to combat sky rocketing tuition fees in the upcoming 2009-2010 semester…” The article stressed that a special guest to the meeting came from the United States Student Association. What a beautiful idea!

The People’s Weekly World in June reports that: “The U.S. has already spent over $ 170 billion on the Afghan war to date; tens of billions more are included in the supplemental appropriation, and analysts say total costs could ultimately exceed the recent bailout of Wall St.” The Congressional progressive Caucus has called on President Obama to spend this money instead on education, health care and other social programs.
(Photo: a course of information technology at an union centre in Paris)

A new trend in Québec has emerged apparently. In the past, trade unions never officially supported a political party, at least openly, except the QFL for the socialist NDP previously. Now the province’s Central trade Union, which represents thousands of members working in the education system, decided at their June convention to urge members “to vote for candidates who could defend policies of the organization”.

__________________________________

CUBA IN OUR HEARTS

Finally, in May, La Vie Réelle in English received a letter from Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five where he announced that: “Every month new friends write to us from the most distant corners of our planet, expressing their love to our people and its Revolution and their support demanding our freedom […] The International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five has launched an extraordinary campaign to send postcards to President Barack Obama […] If you would like to learn more about this campaign and other important activities for our cause, visit http://www.thecuban5.org/cuban5.org/ .If you want to order postcards, you can write to: info@thecuban5.org .”

(Photo: Demonstration in favour of the Five in the USA)

A few years ago, Antonio also wrote, while incarcerated in USA:

Suddenly one day they lock you up
With nights that only serve silence.
They make you feel sad, betrayed,
Strange, failed, absent.
They take you to a dark and cold place
Where everything is inalienably alien,
Rooms inhabited by hate
In which the air is indifferent.
But you know that one day the kisses will return,
The light will be covered with a sweet effluvium,
The doors will be shut with hips
And the heat will spread its mouth over you being
Pledging to you eternal spring.
Against love of the good, none can succeed.

(Antonio Guerrero, Poemas confidenciales, Letras Cubanas, 29/08/04, p. 16)

L'Humanité in English

- 30 -

- 30 -

THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY

2009-05-28T04:48:00.001-07:00

vol. 2, no. 6, June 2009, $ 1.00

Some young french communists and Daniel Paquet

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

NOTA BENE: Tim Pelzer, t.pelzer@shaw.ca edited the bulletin. You will find at the end the link to L'Humanité in English, a selection of the french daily communist newspaper published in Paris. With this issue, we start to publish pictures.

Paris--“With communism waning and Western values suspect, Confucius is making a comeback.” This is the title of an article just published in the European edition of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune. It is part of the vicious campaign against the French communist party (PCF). The author of this article, Daniel A. Bell, never tells us what are those Confucian values, except to say that they will eventually replace Marxism.

Today it is fashionable to criticize the PCF, from outside or inside the party. Sometimes, the attacks are rooted in the party’s setbacks in recent years, especially in the elections. True, the 200,000 strong party has lost part of its audience. Many intellectuals and petit bourgeois elements have joined the band wagon.

But one must take into account the amelioration of living standards. If you still think that the average Frenchman is wearing his eternal beret with a baguette under his arm, ready to go bowling, you are in the wrong country. Young people here, influenced by the US mass media, are adopting the North-American way of life.

However, working class people I met on various occasions during May Day in Paris demonstrated that the social forces for transformation of the country are still active. More than 1,600,000 people demonstrated in the streets against government policies that favour big business. During a trip I made to a municipality to meet the Communist Mayor, Catherine Margaté, I met five Young Communist League members collecting money to finance their trip to Cuba this summer. They were enthused to hear that Canadian and US Communists are fighting to free the Cuban 5, including my friend Antonio Guerrero.

The economic crisis is visible in this country of Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Jules Vallès. Unemployment, AIDS and poverty are a growing problem.

One should not be surprised that progressive elements gathered to form the Front de gauche (the Left Front), with the Gauche Unitaire (ex-trotskyst), Parti de la gauche (former socialist party members), the French communist party and some other movements. The leading figure in Ile de France Region, including Paris, is Patrick Le Hyaric, Director of the communist daily newspaper L’Humanité. This Front, that they are building, could become a permanent feature of French political life after the European elections of June 7th. While the PCF is a member of the Left Front, the party’s membership rejected the idea that the party should be dissolved to be replaced by a nebulous organization within this Front.

The Left Front closely resembles Vancouver’s municipal Committee of Progressive Electors and Québec Solidaire, which consist of diverse political forces.

French communists are still divided on such issues as the role of Stalin in the construction of Soviet Union. In private talks, many will tell you that they feel deeply for the people of the former Soviet Union who have suffered immensely since the return to Capitalism.

On the other hand, few are knowledgeable of other communist party’s policies or programs. For instance, there is a general ignorance about the Communist Party of Canada’s contribution to the national question in relation with French Canadian in Québec, or other topic such as NATO. But there is a willingness to learn, especially among youth. The French Young Communist League is eager to meet young Canadian Communists at an upcoming international meeting of solidarity with Cuban youth this summer. French communists also favour building new links with other communist Parties and organizing joint actions.

While some Canadians and Americans think that the PCF has drifted to the right, they should realize that in France, some people believe that the same thing has happened in North America. They believe that the CPC and CPUSA have withdrawn and become sects. Regular exchanges and discussions are vital to avoid such misunderstandings

Finally, the PCF is very dynamic and its members are involved in various solidarity movements with Algeria, Martinique and Viet Nam. Party members play an important role in French society, especially in the trade union movement. The widely read Communist daily L’Humanité, has English, Russian and Spanish editions. The party even manages to publish the glossy magazine L’Humanité Dimanche.

France is a developed country, wealthy and comparable to Canada and the USA. Like in Canada, the right wing tries to divide workers and the Left. In France, the right strives to weaken and undermine the 200,000 strong PCF and 15,000 strong YCL. As Madeleine and Jean-Jacques, both activist of the party, declared with passion and determination, after a sharp debate during a picnic: “We will never abandon our party, mark our word on it!”

L'Humanité in English

- 30 -

ENEMY AT THE DOORS

2009-05-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

vol. 2, no. 5, May 2009

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

NOTA BENE: Special thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca, for his precious help in editing this newsletter. Furthermore, dear readers, you will find at the end the link to L'Humanité in English which will allow you to read a selection of this french daily newspaper published in Paris.

According to Moldavia’s Central Electoral Commission, the Communist Party led by president Vladimir Voronine won the legislative elections with almost 50% of the vote, reported Associated Press on April 7th. This election took place in one of the 15 former republics of the late Soviet Union. However some refused to accept the election results and demonstrations followed.

Agence France-Presse reported on April 12th that “a large number of those who demonstrated in Chisinau (i.e. the capital city) were activists from the main opposition parties which did not win the elections. The young people, pretty much involved in the first days of the protest were very few […] The Commission approved on Saturday the final results giving 60 of the 101 seats in Parliament to the Communists […] Social difficulties in Moldavia, the poorest European country with a quarter of its population working in Europe or Russia and the lack of work opportunities for youth appear to be the main catalyst of the troubles.”

“Thousands of demonstrators gathered Saturday in Tbilissi for the third consecutive day to protest and call for Georgian president Mikheïl Saakachvili’s resignation […] His detractors, which include many former supporters, accuse Saakachvili of persecuting opponents, silencing the media and not doing enough to reduce poverty.”

As discussed at the Strasbourg meeting in April, western imperialist organizations would like to include Moldavia and Georgia in their efforts to isolate Russia as well as eliminate communist influence in each of these republics. In the case of Moldavia, there is a trend to push it towards the European Union while NATO would be more than delighted to capture Georgia.

At the same time in France, l’Humanité reports, in regards to the situation in the Middle-East, that “the surge in anti-Semitic hate crimes observed in January 2009 is a fact, but it does not mean that “anti-Semitism is back”. It has a specific circumstantial cause: the war in Gaza.” The newspaper explains that “those more hostile to Israel’s policies are often the less anti-Semitic.” It goes further in saying that both communities in France, Jewish and Muslim, should “work together to fight against prejudices and bigotry [and] the inalienable right of these two peoples to have their own land and sovereign State.” Forum Palestine testifies that at the end of January 2009, in Paris alone « 25 000 people (according to the organizers) took the street shouting “Stop the massacres. Sanctions against Israel”, “Gaza, we all stand with you” and “Israel is a murderer”.

What about the future?

Writer William Blum in his Anti-Empire Report, (April 2009) reports that in 1994, Mark Brzezinski (son of Zbigniew), a Fulbright Scholar teaching in Warsaw, wrote: “I asked my students to define democracy. Expecting a discussion on individual liberties and authentically elected institutions, I was surprised to hear my students respond that to them, democracy means a government [with the] obligation to maintain a certain standard of living and to provide health care, education and housing for all. In other words, socialism.”

It is not without irony that we observe that, even Barack Obama has fallen into the anti-communist trap. Let’s bear in mind that before the Organization of the American State’s Summit in April, he said, as mentioned by l’Agence France Presse, that the US would only normalize relations with the Cuban government if it frees all political prisoners and allows Cubans to freely express themselves, travel and attend church. “The U.S. administration has said that Mr. Obama was going to Trinidad and Tobago with the intention to rally the leaders to pressure Cuba.” But not a word about the Cuban 5, including Antonio Guerrero who corresponds with La Vie Réelle on a regular basis. Guerrero has rotted in prison on false charges for the last 10 years, in the United States.

However, this does not mean that all of Barack Obama’s policies are wrong. The People’s Weekly World reports that: “Obama’s budget allocates $ 115 billion next year in federal aid to education, nearly three times more than ex-President George W. Bush’s budget. For health care reform fund, Obama allocates $ 634 billion, and for alternative energy and green jobs, $ 150 billion.”

To conclude, I would like to remind readers what the third president of the USA, Thomas Jefferson once said: “I believe that banks are more dangerous to our liberties than whole armies ready to fight.” This was said in 1802.

L'Humanité in English

- 30 -

2009-05-14T20:02:00.001-07:00

THE PRESIDENT AND THE WORLD

2009-03-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

vol. 2, no. 4, April 2009, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

THE PRESIDENT AND THE WORLD

President of the United States of America since January 2009, Barack Obama was born in 1961. He graduated from Columbia University and the Harvard Law Faculty and then was later elected as a Senator from Illinois State, an office he held until November 2008. Recently, he visited Canada.

In 2006, he published his book The Audacity of Hope, advancing his thoughts on reclaiming the American dream. His writings have made the New York Time’s Bestsellers book list. One can understand the curiosity of this author to find this book in Montreal's east end, in the middle of this overwhelmingly French speaking city. The book is in English. (First Vintage Books Edition, Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, July 2008).

In his book, he reflects on decisions taken by past presidents, including Ronald Reagan. “Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, and loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of a common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster. And the more his critics carped, the more those critics played into the role he’d written for them –a band of out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, blame-America-first, politically correct elites.” (p. 39). Considering the necessity to levy huge amounts of money to remain in politics, Obama, notes that Democrats adopt policies keeping them not too far from the center. For instance, he named Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who “believes in the virtues of capitalism.” (p. 47). He also wrote that “as difficult as the work may seem, I believe we have an obligation to engage in efforts to bring about peace in the Middle East, not only for the benefit of the people of the region, but for the safety and security of our own children as well.” (p. 381).

The whole book is interesting. It is an expose of an honest man, optimistic and ready to comply with necessities. But he is probably a little bit too enthusiastic. For instance, he writes: “Sixty years later, we can see the results of this massive postwar undertaking: a successful outcome to the Cold War, an avoidance of nuclear catastrophe, the effective end of conflict between the world’s great military powers, and an era of unprecedented economic growth at home and abroad.” (p. 337).

We all know today the deep crisis facing the USA and the world… Of course, the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union is not the cause of this recession. The People’s Republic of China is apparently adopting policies that will push the country through this difficult period without loosing too much of its financial capacities.

Mr. Obama is however very lucid on the foreign policies of previous US governments when he sadly recognizes that: “The Cold War techniques of secrecy, snooping, and misinformation, used against foreign governments and foreign populations, became tools of domestic politics, a means to harass critics, build support for questionable policies, or cover up blunders. The very ideals that we had promised to export overseas were being betrayed at home.” (p. 339).

He provides other examples of misguided foreign policy: “Occasionally, U.S. covert operations would engineer the removal of democratically elected leaders in countries like Iran –with seismic repercussions that haunt us to this day.” (p. 338). He goes further in affirming that “…the CIA, the “military-industrial complex,” and international institutions like the World Bank were all manifestations of American arrogance, jingoism, racism, capitalism and imperialism.” Those words could have been pronounced by a communist. For Obama, they were the wrong tools to fight against “godless communism”!

The President also rejects criticism of large corporations, stating: “I couldn’t be persuaded that U.S. multinationals and international terms of trade were single-handedly responsible for poverty around the world…” (p. 341).

The United States of America and the future

“[…] so long as a handful of rogue states are willing to attack other sovereign nations, as Saddam attacked Kuwait in 1991- there will be times when we must again play the role of the world’s reluctant sheriff. This will not change –nor should it.” (p. 362).

He adds: “Indeed, given the depletion of our forces after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will probably need a somewhat higher budget in the immediate future just to restore readiness and replace equipment.” (pp. 362-363). And, obviously, China is seen as a challenge for the USA. Barack Obama, declares as well, that America values play a determinant role in the world arena. “The United States won the Cold War not simply because it outgunned the Soviet Union but because American values held sway in the court of international public opinion, which included those who lived within communist regimes.” He does not mention that North America did not suffer materially from WWII, and that the reconstruction of Europe gave a tremendous boost to its economy, just speaking in economic terms.

Many people condemn George W. Bush for his preemptive war doctrine. Let us say it bluntly: it was generally condemned. So, what does the President means when he writes: “we can and we should carry out preemptive strikes against [nation, group or individual] wherever we can?” (p. 365). He also stresses the importance of protecting US interests in the world, through military power “–interests in maintaining access to key energy sources, keeping financial markets stable…” (p. 366). In this sense, it is difficult to see a difference between Obama and previous administrations.

Finally, the book expresses the general idea that the world must adapt to the western world’s “language” and “popular culture”. Frankly speaking, it is audacious to impose US mass culture and threaten other cultures and languages. Is it not a democratic conquest for the whole world to be able to reflect on reclaiming the planetary dream?

In conclusion, the book deals also with values, the constitution, politics, opportunity, faith, race and family. It should interest everybody living as good neighbourhoods of the United States and wanting to understand the politics of the ruling elite of that country. After all, Obama could be in office for the next 8 years. The book demonstrates that Obama is neither reactionary nor conservative but that his whole life has been moulded by traditional US institutions that are difficult to break free from. This maybe harsh, but it is a friendly comment!

- 30 -

___________________________________________________________________

Many thanks to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca, for editing this bulletin in english.

http://humaniteinenglish.com/

L'Humanité in English

THE POLITICS OF CAPITALISM: DEADLOCK

2009-02-23T11:45:00.001-08:00

vol. 2, no. 3, March 2009, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS to Tim Pelzer, tpelzer@shaw.ca, for his precious help in correcting this bulletin from a somehow written in english draft copy into a presentable publication. Tim, living in Vancouver (Canada), is also correspondent for People's Voice and People's Weekly World (USA).

How come more and more analysts turn to socialist ideas? “As Engels wrote, Marx told him on more than one occasion later that it was his study of the law on thefts of wood and of the condition of the Mosel peasant that prompted him to turn from pure politics to the study of economic relations and, thus, to socialism"(Collected Works, Karl Marx-Frederick Engels, volume 1, International Publishers, New York, 1976, Preface, p. XXX).

In Canada, the coalition opposed itself to the Conservatives until they introduced their new budget in January 2009. As the Communist party declared: “The Liberals under their new leader Michael Ignatieff have decided to support the budget, hoping to regain their position as the ‘favoured party’ of big capital. This decision finishes the Liberal-NDP coalition which millions of working people had hoped would defeat the most reactionary, pro-business, militaristic, sell-out government in Canadian history.”

The Québec Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) criticized the new budget in the January 29th issue of Webdo Info because it does not include: a “change of direction towards a green economy, greater access to unemployment insurance; income protection for aging workers, fair equalisations’ payments for Québec; pay equity for women and free collective bargaining rights for public servants.”

The situation is even more critical when one looks at a recent study done by researchers at the University of Montréal revealing that 14 per cent of Canadian children live in chronic poverty. “Childhood poverty has been linked to more hospitalization and illness […] Other studies have shown consequences of childhood poverty in adults, who are also more at risk for chronic ills, from diabetes, to cardiovascular disease and dementia,” according to the study, reported in The Gazette of January 20th 2009.

Nevertheless, The Gazette concluded in an editorial at the beginning of December 2008 that “the proper way to choose a government for Canada is at the ballot box, not by cabal and closed-door deal. Yes we’re all tired of elections, and yes Harper brought this on himself.” The pro-big business Conservatives supported by the Montréal newspaper wanted to remain in office.

By January, the editorial board of this publication also started to temper public expectations after the election of Barack Obama. “Certainly, Obama’s accomplishments will not live up to the most optimistic of the expectations that are so sky-high in this country, and around the world.”

In contrast, the CSN’s Métro Montreal Central Council magazine Unité observed that “the election of Barack Obama to the American presidency […] shows that the power for changes is rooted in the strength of ideas supported by progressive people and the actions they take to enlarge the number of those who are soon going to believe in them.”

Crisis or no crisis

At the same time, The Gazette wrote that Bloc Québecois leader Gilles Duceppe and Parti Québecois leader Pauline Marois met and affirmed that, “despite a period of economic turmoil in which Quebecers are mostly concerned about bread-and-butter issues, cranking up the sovereignty machine now makes sense because they can show how much better off Quebec would be in a recession if it was not part of Canada…”

However, French Canadians are not gullible so much so as they think. At the same time, Gilles Duceppe had started a war of words with English speaking Canada. The majority of French Canadians do not stand for the separation from Canada. Quebec is a diverse province where opposites live together: rich people, workers, English speakers, and so on. Gilles Duceppe, who claimed in the past to be Marxist, should read what Lenin said: “We could not be, I think, more explicit: Marxists borrowed surely from Marx methods without which it is impossible to understand social relations: thus, their appreciation of these relations is not based on abstract schemes and other absurdities, but on the strict conformity with the reality.” (Works, Volume 1, Editions sociales, Paris, p. 211).

The 5 of Cuba

La Vie Réelle in English receives regularly news from Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, one of the 5 of Cuba jailed in the USA under the alleged accusations of spying. Antonio is a poet. His poetry moves his readers and soothes our hearts and souls. In his letter of January 19, 2009, he claimed: “Let us sow peace for all times for all parts of the Earth, for the rivers and the seas for all love that join us. Let us come together to make a better world, pregnant with light… like the spring.” He added: “On behalf of the 5, I wish you, your family and friends peace, love and happiness today and forever.”

“Invitacion a la paz

A todos: ninos, hombres y mujeres
A lo ancho y a lo largo del planeta
Hago una invitacion, un grand llamado :
Por igual repartamos las riquezas!

To all men, women and children
Throughout the whole of the world
I make an invitation, a heartfelt call:
Let us share the wealth equally!”

As he underlined, “it is nice to hear that my poems touched you deeply. It means they are useful. They can give hope, joy and peace and, of course, love.”

Hoping to hear from you soon, Antonio!

- 30 -

DIANA AND FRANK

2009-01-13T07:29:00.000-08:00

vol. 2, no. 2, February 2009, $1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

It may sound indecent to talk about something like love between a young Lebanese woman and an elderly Jewish man. But it is not something gross. It is in fact the virtual -in time- common passion by two human beings for understanding and peace as an upshot of deep and mutual respect.

I have known the young woman – Diana- in a coffee shop where she was acting as a supervisor and waitress for a well-known restaurant, outlet of a Canadian chain store. It was in the 2000s. She was keen and very curious to learn restlessly about just everything: the world; on one hand, the Middle East in general, on her motherland in particular; on the other hand, Venezuela (especially on Chavez that she heard of) and finally Cuba. We became acquainted and gradually I spoke to her with the words of a dear and passed away communist comrade whose name was Frank. He is this old man.

Frank came to Canada in 1921 from Poland. He was a garment worker and proud of it. He dedicated his life up to the last moment, sick and with a crippling age (I knew him in his 80s), to the cause of the working class of Canada and of Québec. Though he never learned French language, - the ups and downs of a hectic life of struggles hindered him to do so -, he was always amongst the firsts to attend meetings in Montréal of the communist party to support the right of Québec to self-determination up and including secession.

Once, he came to the bookstore of the communist party downtown of Montréal, looking for a car driver to help him in his weekly “run” to sale communist literature –from Poland, New York, Israel and Soviet Union- in the Jewish neighbourhoods of the metropolis. The author of these lines volunteered with his poor knowledge of the Jewish reality, himself born and educated in Québec City amidst a total French-Canadian society.

Prior to the beginning of this new adventure, Frank would lead: “turn right, turn left, go straight, stop here or there, etc.” After a few weeks, everything ran smoothly. Frank happily and smiling would call his partner: “good horse, you’re a good horse!”

One fine morning, he inquired: “what do you do, sonny, on Saturday evenings, before coming here on Sunday mornings?” - I have a couple or more of honest beer. I chuckled.
- Do you eat then?
- No, I’m not that hungry.
The Sunday soon after, he invited me to his house. His wife was there and she invited me right away to the kitchen: “So you’re Frank’s friend… Now, let’s eat." I ate more than enough and I called for “surrender”.
- Don’t be stingy, eat more, you’re young, young men must eat if they want to get stronger. Try this struddle, I made it especially for you.”

Frank poked his nose in the kitchen: “Yo, she made everything for you; you know old folks like us don’t eat much."

And for the week-ends to come, I started to enjoy typical Jewish goodies. I was no more hungerik and durshtik.

Diana

At least 25 years later, Diana was in her twenties, I sat at her place of work, with a pain in the stomach. She came to the table: “you don’t order anything today, Daniel?” - Oh no, ask my friends, as for me, I don’t feel too well." After a short while, she brought me herbal tea: “it’s mint, it is good for the stomach. It is on the house.”

But most of the time, since I was in a good shape, I told her when she was free what Frank taught me about Israel and Zionism: “you see it is poison, an ideology of domination whose aim is to destroy the Arabic people of Palestine. We must support this people in its struggle for a State in Palestine, in the Gaza Strip and the West Banks with the beautiful city of East Jerusalem as the capital. Naturally the dispossessed must be repaid. You see at least 10 millions Palestinians live abroad, almost five to six times more than those actually living in the territories.”

Furthermore, the State of Israel cannot speak on behalf of the whole of the Jewish people. It never spoke on behalf of Frank Goldman. Frank’s engagement was to the working people of Québec. One of the last days that I saw him; although he was very sick, he put his back over the sink in the kitchen and raised his body; he looked at me and declared: “you get this Daniel, the French-Canadian workers are a very good people, too good perhaps, but untidy. The day that they will act like one fist and better organized, they will conquer heaven, mark my words. ”

As for one, Karl Marx said in his time: “The working classes will have learned by experience that no lasting benefit whatever can be obtained for them by others, but that they must obtain it themselves by conquering, first of all, political power.” (Collected Works, Volume 10, International Publishers, New York, 1978, p. 275).

Frank Goldman, eyes open to the whole world is no more; Diana, blossoming, of different descendants, can bring this message to the young Arabs of the Middle East: “there in Canada, a middle-age French-Canadian communist told me about an old Jewish worker who cherished peace and loved all people until his last breath.” And he was not alone; in January 2009 only, many thousands from all corners of the world, Canada included, protested against the war the leadership of the Hebrew State wages against the people of Palestine living in Gaza; by the way 80 percent of its inhabitants are already refugees despoiled of territories during previous conquests conducted against them by the same Zionist invaders…

- 30 -

THE FUTURE IS MADE OF MARBLE

2008-12-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

vol. 2, no. 1, January 2009, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Aristotle’s idealism as a standpoint for living in society

In an early Treatise, Difference between the democritean and epicurean philosophy of nature, Karl Marx, wrote: “The objective history of philosophy in Greece seems to come to an end with Aristotle […] Thus it would not have been surprising if Greek philosophy, after having reached its zenith in Aristotle, should then have withered. But the death of the hero resembles the setting of the sun, not the bursting of an inflated frog.” (Collected Works, vol. 1, International Publishers, New York, 1975, p.34-35).

The Politics stands amongst Aristotle’s best known works. Hence, he affirmed: “And yet Socrates says that, thanks to education, there will be no need for a large number of regulations such as those governing the warden ship of the city and the market…” (p.118). He recognizes that society lives, altogether and whenever in the Antiquity, divided in social classes, “a farming class and a defensive fighting class, while out of the fighters a third group is formed which deliberates and is in sovereign charge of the state.” (p.121). Of course, Aristotle could not foresee comprehensively the future of the society, its economy and concurrently the development of capitalism, thus the industrial revolution and the birth of the working class. Naturally, he does not enlarge his analysis of democracy in relation with this new class. Furthermore, he criticizes the political evolution by stating that possession in general (land, slaves, coins…) influences the application of different Greek State-Cities’ constitutions, while some became “over-democratic; for it ceased to be possible to appoint to office only persons from the specified property-classes.” (p.128).

On this issue, especially with the lack of democracy in today’s world and beyond twenty centuries later, Lenin pointed out that: “To break the resistance of these [actually ruling] classes, there is only one mean: find out in the society itself that surround us, [the forces] to be educated and organized for the struggle, – and starting from their social status- capable to sweep the old and create the new.” (Oeuvres choisies, Editions du Progrès, Moscou, 1980, (p.20). He had in mind the working class.

In his book, the Greek philosopher spoke of the ideal constitution of a state. (The Politics, Penguin Books, London, 1981). Here, he already laid bare the somehow modern efforts of political parties to have a detailed approach onto all problems of society, overtaking eventual difficulties beforehand, regardless of whatever may occurred in society’s life. Friedrich Engels, in this train of thinking in 1891, analyzed reluctantly – for lack of time- the program of the German social-democrats, known as the Erfurt program, under the pressure of revolutionary leaders of the socialist movement confronted to opportunism and eager to defend the very principles of the communists of those days.

In Québec, both nationalist social-democratic parties, one being the traditionalist centre Parti québécois and the other the recent left Québec solidaire, amply elaborated their program respectively. However, the working people expect generally simpler and more concrete measures. Russian communists understood it, at the wake of the October revolution, when the Bolsheviks claimed that they will solve the dire problems of peace, land and bread. That is the basic commitment that Lenin took in 1917. As for the agrarian reforms, the communists borrowed the manifesto of a “social-democratic” party (Narodnaya Volya) and applied it.

Now, to the friend of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Aristotle’s “chief merit is the return to dialectics as a supreme form of thinking. Greeks philosophers of this era were all inborn dialecticians. With the most encyclopaedically knowledge, by comparison to all of them, Aristotle had already and more deeply studied the most essential forms of dialectical thought.” (Anti-Dühring, Éditions sociales, Paris, 1950, p. 52).

While reading The Capital, the masterpiece of Karl Marx, one may note that Aristotle left imprints in the economic works of the father of the communist movement. On the other hand and generally speaking, in Québec, the university professors are very often akin to the great Greek thinker and teacher; however, and in a narrow-minded spirit, they oppose him and his philosophical idealism to materialist representatives of the Left, such as Karl Marx and Lenin or the former general secretaries of the Communist party of Canada, Tim Buck and William Kashtan. The Roman Catholic Church amongst others has not excluded the thought of Aristotle from the Bible’s teachings and the statements of the Vatican, especially in regard with moral and social values, notably in the education of the workers.

Commenting history and the emergence of the Church, the French philosopher Voltaire, stressed that the death of Jésus-Christ had a lot to do with the one of Socrates, whom we dealt with upper hand: “The Greek philosopher died of the hatred of the sophists, priests and the leaders of the people: the Christian lawmaker succumbed of the scribes’ hatred, of Pharisees and priests. Socrates could have avoided death, but he did not want: Jésus-Christ the same.” Both forgave. (Oeuvres philosophiques, Classiques Larousse, Paris. p. 75).

The economic crisis

The current capitalist crisis was foreseeable, being even inherent in a system of happy few. The Communist party of Canada expressed it in its program, especially for a modern and democratic constitution based on workers rights and their full participation in the political process of society. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels rightly described the capitalist world as: “Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the subterranean world which he has called up by his spells.” (The Communist Manifesto, Washington Square Press, New York, 1977, p. 66-67).

Since the late 1990s, communist and workers’ parties meet yearly to discuss the world situation and prepare the ground for cooperation and solidarity. In 2008, the conference took place in Sao Paolo, in Brazil. Previously, such meetings took place originally in the “cradle of democracy”, Athens (Greece). Aristotle would have appreciated highly such meetings. The Canadian communist newspaper People’s Voice reported that the appointed group to prepare the conference dwelt earlier on “the growing instability of the capitalism system, which results in sharper exploitation of workers.” Over 80 parties were present on Nov. 21-23, at the special invitation of the Communist party of Brazil that “was one of the original forces in the broad coalition which eventually won the election of Workers’ Party candidate Lula da Silva as President in 2002.” He is still in power…

- 30 -

LAND,LAND, CAPTAIN; IT IS THE NEW WORLD

2008-11-24T16:38:00.000-08:00

vol. 1, no. 5, December 2008, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Barack Obama has been elected. As would say the late Soviet writer Maxim Gorky in The Reader: “In order to have the right to speak to the people, you must have in your heart either a great hatred of their shortcomings or a great love for them in their sufferings; if there are no such feelings in your heart, be modest enough to think again before you say anything…”

The peoples of the world expect this “great love”. Of course, a solution to the various economic problems and the current crisis of capitalism – for instance- would be more than welcome, but a lessening of the tensions inherited from the war onto “terrorism” should take place right now. Naturally, alternative political forces must emerge, such as the communists who propose just and lasting peace, with real security for all nations.

In a recent interview to The Hollywood Reporter, and reprinted in the Marxist People’s Weekly World, the famous actor Kirk Douglas, answers a few questions in relation with the communists:
“At that time [during the Cold War], our danger was Sen. McCarthy. We were in danger of losing our freedom. We are living in a free country. Democracy thrives because people can say what they think. I don’t believe that there was a danger posed by communists or radical thinkers. […] We are not very popular around the world. They think we’re arrogant. I maintain that a powerful country like ours should show that we are capable of humility. The best way to do that is to make a formal apology for slavery.”

A letter from Colorado

As promised in an earlier issue La Vie Réelle in English reproduces here part of a letter sent to us by one of the Five of Cuba, also incarcerated separately in the USA after a hasty trial, occurred ten years ago. Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, who wrote it, is held at the Florence Penitentiary in Colorado State on the false accusation of spying, while he and four other young men were conducting an inquiry amongst the Cuban community of Florida, to prevent any other terrorist attack against their island:

“Oct. 19. 2008

Dear Daniel Paquet,
From August 10th the prison has been in “lock down”. On September 26th we were allowed out of our cells, but only inside of the housing unit. It is part of an “Emergency Plan”. It is not clear when normal operation will resume […] I want and need to finish [my work] before I could be transfer to Miami for a re-sentence.”
Here is a poem written by Antonio on January 1st 2000:

“I am a man
They say I am a spy
I am a simple man
Dedicate in his life
To serve and to create

They say I am a spy
I am a modest man
Who does not pretend to live
Better than the rest

They say I am a spy
I am a discreet man
Who has not secret
Who has not evil

They say I am a spy
I am a friendly man
Who has no enemies
Only true friends

They say I am a spy
I am a man, a good father
Who teaches his children
Love and goodness

They say I am a spy
I am a man, a good son
Who constantly cares
For the maternal home

They say I am a spy
I am an emotional man
Romantic, loyal
Occasional poet

They say I am a spy
I am a man without fear
Sure of myself
Tranquil in his walk

They say I am a spy
I am a man without wars
Guerrero (warrior) by name
But full of peace

They say I am a spy
I am an innocent man
Valiant prisoner
Who they wish to judge.

We stay firm and optimistic. A big embrace from the 5.”

Peace

As reported in The Gazette of October 26th, the mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, made a stop in Canada, “where he and Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay planted a Sakura tree [and the first said that Canada promoting the nuke ban] would make it a star around the world.”

Elections in Québec on December the 8th 2008

Really, we cannot speak about a campaign that aroused passions. Most likely, the result will be business as usual. The Action démocratique du Québec, a right wing political party, is probably leaving the apron for ever. We will not be too many to mourn it. The Parti québécois (petite bourgeoisie par excellence) avoided the catastrophe, putting temporarily aside its separatist program. Québec solidaire did not benefit from the support of the organized labour movement in spite of the party support for workers rights; some trade unionists even helped the Parti québécois shamelessly. The Liberals remained on the left-centre lane. At the moment of printing this newsletter, everything indicates that they are going to regain political power, eventually in a majority government.

MAY 2009 BE A YEAR OF PEACE, PROGRESS AND SOLIDARITY!

KARL MARX AND THE MASS-MEDIA

2008-10-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

vol. 1, no. 4, November 2008, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Foreword

Still a minority government for the Conservative party: 144 out of the 308 seats. Same policies? It could be, but it is not so sure. The opposition is over the rim of the House of Commons in Ottawa. Already in the French-Canadian province of Québec, during the race, the people marched in the streets to denounce the Tories: for the cutbacks in Arts and against the Young Offenders Act’s amendments, for instance. In Québec, the Bloc québécois, the nationalist party, won 50 of the 75 precincts. The leader of this party, Gilles Duceppe, declared to The Gazette (on October 10th) that: “I think people were waiting to see what he [Stephen Harper] is proposing [and they] said we don’t want that kind of leader because we don’t want those policies.” Gilles Duceppe has been previously one of the leaders of the Confederation of National Trade Union which endorsed the Bloc along side with the Québec Federation of Labour, 800 000 members altogether.

The candidate of the social-democratic party, the New Democratic Party, Thomas Mulcair, was re-elected in Montréal; interestingly, the Conservative party did not elect any member in the island of Montréal, the largest city of the province of Québec and its industrial heartland. The population of Québec is 7, 7 millions people while the population of Montréal is around 3 millions. Canada: 33 millions.
As for the Liberal Party, they will go in a convention in Spring 2009 to choose a new leader, according to the rumours circulating, before going to press; after all, they lost 25 seats and considerable support amidst the population. The Communist party presented four candidates in Montréal with over 3 600 votes in the 24 ridings where they presented members all over Canada.

Take your pen

Right or wrong, the socialist countries have been all accused to deprive their citizens of the right to free expression and the freedom of press. Let us see what Karl Marx had in mind when he was writing about the press, having been himself a journalist for some German newspapers such as the Rheinische Zeitung. His articles ignited strong criticism by the pundits of this time.

“What makes the press the most powerful lever for promoting culture and the intellectual education of the people is precisely the fact that it transforms the material struggle into an ideological struggle, the struggle of flesh and blood into a struggle of minds, the struggle of need, desire, empiricism into a struggle of theory, of reason, of form.” (K. Marx, Collected Works, International Publishers, New York, Volume 1, p. 292).

The first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, wrote in 1905, twelve years before the October Revolution, that: “it is indisputable that the literature cannot be equated to mechanical egalitarianism, at a levelling, at a domination of majority over minority. In this area, certainly, one must guarantee a larger space to personal initiative, thought and imagination, form and content.” (V. Lénine, Oeuvres choisies, Les Editions du Progrès, URSS, p. 157-158)

Since La Vie Réelle in English has been created for English-speaking readers, it was decided to refer to The Gazette, (being the only daily published in Montréal), bearing in mind that we display the Marxist outlook in Québec. On August 25th, a member of the above newspaper team at the Olympic Games in Beijing, Dave Stubbs, wrote: “Of course, this grand country will always have its historic Great Wall, China’s challenge now is to move forward, and the Olympics it has just masterfully staged is an ideal springboard to its future.” It is a sound approach. Evaluating the closing ceremony and the performance of the People’s Republic of China, another journalist of The Gazette , Aileen McCabe, said: “When it came time to hand off to London, the host of the 2012 Games, the Brits didn’t even try to compete. Instead, they drove a red double-decker bus onto the field and simply gave the crowd something to cheer about: soccer great, David Beckham.”

The day after, the editorial of their newspaper hammers out: “Now the Games are over, the athletes have dispersed, and Tibet is still as before, China still censors, human rights seem farther away that ever. So much for the impact of international sport on society.” Our head is nodding: Is the editorialist more informed than us? Is he prejudiced? Do we have the right to take our distances from such a point of view? What is the expectation of this “disappointed” editorialist? Do the Chinese people deserve a chance?

The other media

In 1972, was published in Montréal the French translation of a book written by Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media. He stated then that “as an international service, Voice of America was coarse and could not be compared to the refinement of BBC or Radio-Moscow…” In August 2008, the Editor of Radio France International (RFI), Richard Labévière, was dismissed after the interview he made with President of Syria, Bachar el Assad. Mr. Labévière is not recognized as being unilaterally pro-Israeli. This decision encroaches upon plurality in journalism, the freedom of expression, and Human Rights in France, the country of “la philosophie des Lumières”.

In the past, the Canadian workers and progressive intellectuals had access to different newspapers published by democrats close to the working class, such as: The Canadian Tribune, The Pacific Tribune and Combat (in Québec). Their circulation was by thousands, through mail or militant hand-to-hand distribution at plant gates, schools or any other event taking place in Canada gathering the workers and their families. As would have concluded Sophocles in Ancient Age, in relation with the death of his hero Ajax: “Ignorant men don’t know what good they hold in their hands until they’ve flung it away.” The disappearance of these champions for world peace, progress and democracy is the consequence of the internal crisis inside of the Communist party in Canada. Today, a new generation is replacing these papers: People’s Voice and Clarté and they reckon on the workers to make it through.

Nowadays, the communist mass media play a more decisive role than in the past, for instance confronted to the hurricanes in Cuba: “The television, radio and printed press are assuming a great responsibility in exercising their informative tasks "[reported People’s Voice in September 2008]. In this country, the Union of journalists issued a news release congratulating its members for their work in these very difficult conditions (source: AIN, September 11th , 2008).

On the other hand, a group of US citizens, working with professionals and students of the Sonoma State University of California, studied the role of media of information in today’s world, created the Project Censored 2009 and concluded that the “modern censure is the subtle, constant and sophisticated manipulation of the reality in our mass media.” Argenpress informed its Spanish-speaking readers about those mass-media (working in the Western world) in September.

Sometimes, as La Presse Canadienne revealed, the intervention is more direct. At the end of September, an Afghan freelance journalist, Javed Yazamy, was released from a US jail in Kandahar since he was no more considered as a threat by the US authorities. Canadian Forces were aware of his detention that lasted 11 months. The journalist affirmed that the whole affair depends upon them.

Finally, the mass media: press, television, radio, Internet interest the communists who nurtured a weakness for the movie industry. Speaking to Lounatcharski, the first commissar to education, Lenin mentioned to him that “in regard with all form of arts, film making is the most important for us”, especially to touch the most ignorant sections of the population.

- 30 -

WE DESERVE A DEMOCRATIC CANADA

2008-10-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

MESDAMES, MESSIEURS,

VOICI LE PREMIER MINISTRE DU CANADA!

MESDAMES, MESSIEURS,

VOICI M. STÉPHANE DION!

********************************************************

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

LET’S WELCOME THE PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

LET’S WELCOME MR. STÉPHANE DION!

- 30 -

OBAMA MUST BE ELECTED

2008-09-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

vol. 1, no. 3, October 2008, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Foreword

To open a new chapter: the Canadians will vote this October 14th. La Vie Réelle in English encourages its readers to vote for the New Democratic Party. This invitation has been done so far in the French issue previously. If you speak French, we encourage you to read the article under the title of Un gouvernement minoritaire. Canada needs a shift onto a people’s agenda like in the USA.

November the 4th

Already in an editorial, published in People’s Weekly World this summer, the communists of the USA recognized that one may disagree with some aspects of Barack Obama’s foreign policy, while encouraging important points, such as: “ending the war in Iraq, shifting to multilateral diplomatic measures and re-engaging the international community in a unified and necessary struggle against real problems of terrorism (which have been fuelled by the Bush-McCain policies).” However, the political battle will continue after the eventual election of Obama.

In his speech –a striking credo- Obama, unveiled his viewpoint about world and domestic events when he spoke in Berlin on July 24th: “if we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.” The would-be president seems to ignore all what communism is about; and his allocution denounces without nuances – maybe - the attitude of the then Soviet government. Let’s hope that it will be possible to dialogue and exchange on what animates the communists: their faith in a better world, love and compassion for the needy and strive for the beauty of life.

On the other hand, Obama, in his declaration, mentioned rapidly the “voters” in Zimbabwe. Bush, still in power, was rather drastic on this issue, along side with the G8 nations – including Canada- and expressed, according to the Montréal daily The Gazette, “grave concern” about this country, vowing to impose financial restrictions on President Robert Mugabe and his officials. Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe’s UN mission, as reported in the British daily The Morning Star, said a few days later that the nation is “not at war with itself and poses no threat to its neighbours or any other country.” Sanctions would only be a “support of Britain’s colonial crusade against Zimbabwe.” Their letter indicated that “some isolated and localised cases of violence have indeed occurred in Zimbabwe” since the Spring elections, but accused the Movement for a Democratic Change (MDC), the opposition party, of “premeditation, planning, stage management and exaggeration of this violence, with British and American encouragement and collusion, as part of a grand strategy aimed at inviting foreign intervention in Zimbabwe.”

This is the kind of policy that democratic-minded people do not expect to see in the future. The overwhelming majority of the US population stands by him when Obama reaffirms that within 16 months of his presidency the US troops would leave Iraq. The daily Métro issued in Montréal, quoted him, reminding that: “John McCain and George W. Bush both said that if Iraq, as a sovereign government, would decide that it is the time for us to start to withdraw our troops, they should respect the wish of this sovereign government.”

Canada, the USA and the world

In many cases, the Congress has not been able to reinforce democracy in the country. The People’s Weekly World in an editorial of mid-July points out that: “it’s unfortunate that Congress has been unable to compel the current administration to begin to end the occupation. The ball will be in the court of the next administration and Congress to finally and promptly end this war [in Iraq].”

The chairman of the Communist Party USA, Sam Webb, at this moment, expressed this concern: “What is more, to win, the campaign has to reach out to independents and disaffected Republicans. Without winning a section of them, a landslide victory is improbable […] In order to advance one iota of a pro-people’s agenda; the people’s movement has to elect Obama and to enlarge the Democratic Party majorities in Congress. Without that everything else is wishful thinking.” This is part of an article reproduced in the People’s Weekly World.

In the world, other countries are keen to develop a foreign policy, sometimes different from the one of the USA. In July, Fidel Castro wrote in the news bulletin Argenpress that basically the competition between the US administration and the government of North Korea could lead to insecurity for all countries in the region, especially this country and China. “We were satisfied by the declaration of North Korea on the decision to suspend their program of nuclear weapons. This has nothing to do with the crimes and blackmail of Bush who now boasts that this decision is the result of his policy of genocide.”

It is even more obvious than the policies of the large capitalist countries are dictated or shaped in the head offices of multinationals. It happens that often the governments yield quickly to their desiderata; nevertheless, the workers are more and more determined to protect their lifestyle and rights. The numerous upsurges of the European workers against the oil corporations last summer are a good indicator.

Some other topics will confront the future President of the USA. For instance, members of the Bloc québécois, of the New Democratic Party (NDP) -both in Parliament (before October 14th)- and the Communist party of Canada (CPC) have given their support to the world campaign urging for a fair trial for the five Cubans detained since nine years in the USA. Their situation is opposed to the Constitution of the country and the International Laws. La Vie Réelle in English spoke about them in the September issue; here is a poem of Antonio Guerrero, one of the Five:

In the Eye of the Hurricane

In the eye of the hurricane
Where it is feeling so much unfair
When time of revenge
A bloodstained iron
I have figured out more
Than four brothers
Which millions of brothers
Theirs arms, theirs voices
And have failed
Doves thus flying
Around my body
Bringing hope
The vital hope
In its giant wings
A troubadour with his guitar
Singing my adventures
And my misadventures
A painter with a flower
Drawing a face and many other ones
Cherished and beloved
And a poet with a lamp that
By day and by night
Brighten up everything
What shall I need more!
In the eye of this hurricane
Everything which was scattered
By evil winds
It is worth really
To be willing for dying.

(Poem in Spanish under the title En el ojo del huracan, written in USP, Florence, Colorado, on July 2nd, 2008 and translated in English by Michel Pratte, in Montréal, Canada, on August 27th, 2008.)

For all of these considerations and many more things, Barack Obama should listen to the communists of the United States of America. Their strength lies surely in their deep passion for the working class and their true affection for their country. Let’s break bread!

- 30 -

FULL SWING FOR THE LEFT IN QUÉBEC

2008-09-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

vol. 1, no. 2, Federal Elections, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

Obviously, the Conservatives have a chunk in the Province of Québec. This was confirmed by the CROP-La Presse poll where they were supported by 31% of the interviewees. However, The Gazette of August 17 stressed that “The Summer’s public-opinion polls show Conservatives and Liberals neck-and-neck across the country; evidently Harper doesn’t believe that.” Previously they would have garnered 24% of the people’s support in the homeland of the French-Canadian nation, according to Léger Marketing-Le Devoir on June 20th, while one week later they reached 26%, after CROP-La Presse completed the same exercise on June 27th. This is consistent with the real favour of the right in Québec. On the left side, the New Democratic Party (NDP) jumps slightly from 16% to 17% during the same period. They summed up at 14% August 27th.

Bloc Québécois (an alliance of conservative and progressive nationalists) vacillated and plunged from 31% to 29%, to come back at 30%. As for the Liberals, they moved from 23 to 21%, and finally 20%. Meanwhile, the Greens collected 5% and now 4%.

The fact is that the voters of the Liberal party are more than often progressive-minded people, the Reds. Their vote added to the NDP and a fringe of the Bloc Québécois, and hopefully the Greens; and the political landscape in Québec is rather encouraging.

Apparently, the Conservatives gained five points during the summer period; they gleaned points from each of the other political parties. Basically, there is no room for conservative policies in the “dormant” Québec. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been surely briefed on this issue. For instance, the Action Démocratique du Québec (ADQ)’s sweeping since the last elections in La Belle Province confirms the slowdown of the right. They represent less than a third of the whole population, at the moment.

And the winner is…

One afternoon after the working session, our group of journalists was getting ready to leave, still surrounding the editorial table. One of us was reading La Presse. It raised a question: what party is going to win the next federal elections? Nobody actually reacted to the question. I said: I am going to vote for the Liberals. Quickly another declared that she was leaving the Bloc québécois and intended to do the same. Another told the same thing, referring to the cuts in the cultural industry by the Tories. At last, a younger one expressed her choice for the NDP. “It will be my first ever vote for them.”
The day after, a Chilean friend –psychologist and communist- declared that “this time”, he would opt for the Liberal Party. Another friend, a professional welder, affirmed that he would vote for the NPD. It seems that spontaneously the people decided to vote for anything rather than the Conservative party and as well the Bloc québécois in the province of Québec.

Two lessons: the left in Québec is deserting the Bloc québécois or is ready to talk about this taboo; especially significant, since the progressive intelligentsia has for years been linked to this party. Secondly the population is attached to the defence of culture. The same day (August 27th), Radio-Canada confirmed that more than a thousand artists and friends marched in Montréal to protest the cutbacks of 48,5 millions $, by the minority federal government. Even the mayor of the city, Gérald Tremblay was part of the demonstration.

Moreover, not only the Conservatives have been in power for just a few years and already the most cynical, rightist and fascist elements of the Canadian society looked up. They are against democratic rights. They are racists. They are opposed to women’s movements. They are full of hatred for immigrants, especially Moslems. They stand for a climate of vulgarity and coarseness. There is no room for love, friendship and harmony when they are around. We certainly need more than their “balanced” budget!

Meanwhile, The Gazette, in an editorial, lectured them in mid-August: “Stonewalling, heel-dragging and ad-hominem attacks might play well to some part of the Conservatives’ constituency, but most Canadians, we suspect, have no patience with Tory truculence on this issue. What makes all this particularly galling, and disappointing, is t hat the Conservatives won the last election largely because they promised a cleaner; more transparent government. The time has come for them to live up to those promises.”

They must be defeated. Canadians need freedom of thought, and the protection for the social liberties won over the last decades. Harper and the Conservatives must go. In Québec, an important battle ground in the coming elections, the Tories shall be fired, especially in Québec City celebrating its 400th anniversary. A political slip-up would tarnish our beautiful capital.

- 30 -

A CASE OF DISCRIMINATION

Five Cuban citizens were dispatched by their government to enquiry into the Cuban community of Florida to prevent a new attempt to destabilize the life in the island and avoid a new terrorist attack. They reported the results to the US authorities. The government of the USA arrested them, sued them and scattered them in different jails. This occurred 10 years ago. Now, a movement of solidarity is growing to condemn this injustice, even members of the Canadian parliament criticized the decision of our southern neighbour, especially after the exposure of the arrest based on mere allegations. We entered in contact with them. Here is the reply of Antonio Guerrero: one of the Cuban 5.

“Dear Daniel Paquet,

Excuse me for my delay to reply to your letter. We had a long “lock down” and I have been very busy with legal issues and an art project.

In “my dictionary” there is not the word “demoralized”. We never will feel that way. You are right; we are free, totally free with our conviction and the solidarity that support us.

Today, Che’s example is more important and necessary than ever, because we live in a world that every day demands us to stand up and fight against so much poverty, exploitation, and inequality, so much arrogance from the rich and so much aggression and threats from the Empire. Today, Che’s example is indispensable in building the new world that we know is possible.

I reiterate our eternal gratitude to all our friends for their immense and unconditional support. With conviction I reaffirm: Venceremos! A great embrace from the 5.
USP Florence, Colorado, July 2nd

I send, in the name of the Five, a greeting to the readers of your bulletin. Your friend,

Antonio Guerrero “

A JOURNEY IN TORONTO

2008-06-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

vol. 1, no. 1, September 2008, $ 1.00

si vous voulez lire en français, : http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

When I told my doctor that I intend to publish an English-speaking newsletter, she said to me, both startled and amused: “you’ve got to be sick; why do you want to support the English imperialism while too many cultures on the planet are threatened by the rules of their domination?” Since she was not dealing with my health, I decided for the first time to do not follow her piece of advice.

I know by experience that our neighbours in English-speaking Canada and the USA can be touched by any culture if we find the correct way to present it to them. Maybe then, they will be inclined to learn other languages and cultures. Naturally, almost everybody knows Céline Dion. She is herself very popular in Québec, because she has a nice voice, she comes from a very large family and she has ordinary people’s roots. However, she is not the best of the singers that one can discover in Canada. For instance, Lara Fabian, an Italian-born composer and singer, has more than a beautiful voice; she is sensual, more profound and she deals in a simple way with themes such as love, optimism and hope.

Nevertheless, Céline is an idol because, for the ordinary folk, she represents the success of a young French-Canadian girl, who made it big in Québec and especially abroad. As we state it here: “she put Québec on the map.”

Most of the people in English-speaking Canada do not understand the Québec nationalism. Of course, La Vie Réelle does not support such an ideology, but we acknowledged it. After being a French colony, Canada (then called la Nouvelle-France), was conquered by Britain who turned it to an English colony from 1760 to 1867. The French elite left the Nouvelle-France after the war opposing France to England at the end of the 1750s; 60 000 peasants remained along the St.Lawrence river, and the aboriginal peoples. A few years later, the Britishes authorized the Catholic Church to organize the spiritual life of the Canadians. In fact, they maintained the spiritual control for the military administration at least until the foundation of modern Canada with a larger population composed of English-speaking immigrants. French became a minority group. But the matter is not in numbers, it is in the policies of the British rulers who tried to assimilate the French-Canadians, already after 1839, i.e. the years that succeeded the armed uprising of the patriots in Ontario and Québec.

While the English-speaking provinces of Canada were industrialized, Québec stagnated into a pastoral province. It lasted to the 1960s, when important changes took place. The period was called the “Quiet Revolution”. A Department of Education was established, public colleges opened, hydro energy was nationalized and the like. The church lost its grip on the people. An urban intelligentsia emerged and forced the government to modernize life in the province. Trade unions developed and demanded a better treatment for the French-Canadian working class, similar to the one in Ontario for example.

Artists, intellectuals and trade unions leaders united to claim an independent Québec, confident in their strength and ability to manage the province. Two referenda gave almost the majority to the nationalists, especially in 1995. But now, the situation is at stake. In fact, an important ally (and political leader)for the forces of changes and equality between the two Canada is only recovering from internal crises and… you guessed it: international events that destroyed its credibility in Québec; we speak of the communist party.

Up to now, every party or group in the scope of the left is surrounding the new political formation called Québec solidaire. However, the communists are completed sunk in this party. Further, they don’t have the resources to publish regularly their newspaper Clarté. Anyhow, they received the help of the Communist party of Canada.

At the end of the day, the workers of Québec will see that the solution to the national question, to the reduction of the purchasing power and evils of capitalism goes through a strong communist party. La Vie Réelle wants to bring its contribution to this feat, because we believe in the words of the Communist Manifesto: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

The reader of La Vie Réelle should notice that the newsletter is independent from the Communist party; the newspaper of this party is People’s Voice, published bi-monthly. It is a good paper. We only wish that eventually, the communists in Québec will have such a paper in French language.

Now, why the title of this article? In 1976, then a student leader, I have been invited to join the Communist party of Québec. After double-thinking, I agreed; the day after, we drove to Toronto to meet the Young communist League (YCL) members in this city. Believe me, the YCL was really the organization to be member of in the 1970s. We had fun, we drank beer and we had talks about politics. We reshaped the world. A few years after, the caucus of the YCL and the Young New Democrats in the National Union of Students (of English-speaking Canada) along with the writer of those lines contributed so that the union and the Association nationale des étudiants du Québec recognized each other as an equal partner and as well the right of Québec to self-determination including secession, if it is the choice of the people of Québec. Even today, such a stand could be agreed upon in the workers movements and the progressive intelligentsia. The spirit of the Young Communist League is well and alive. They discuss and… they act!

- 30 -