MOSCOU - UN AMOUR ÉTERNEL

vol. 1, no. 17

Je regardais une émission de variétés françaises sur la chaîne internationale francophone TV5. Un jeune jongleur russe s’est acheminé face à l’écran et a présenté son numéro. Quel brio, certes! Mais la musique qui accompagnait ce tour de force, eh bien c’était une chanson de Charles Aznavour, Un amour éternel (Vechnaia Lioubov).

Je fus saisi d’une grande émotion. Oh, Moscou! Qu’es-tu donc devenue? Toi qui as fait de moi un homme, toi qui m’as éduqué en tant que communiste, dans l’espace de deux voyages. Le premier à l’été 1977, alors que je venais d’être réélu à l’Exécutif de l’Association nationale des étudiants du Québec (ANEQ) en tant que secrétaire à l’information de cette fédération qui regroupait 110 000 membres; le second fut toute une épopée, qui a duré sept beaux mois.

Car, en janvier 1979, je partis pour l’Union soviétique, un peu à l’aventure, pour étudier à l’École supérieure de formation des cadres des partis communistes près du Comité central du Parti communiste de l’URSS. Oui, le nom est plutôt long. Entre nous, on disait : l’École du parti. J’étais moi-même un membre du Parti communiste du Canada.
(Photo Internet: Le Kremlin de Moscou et la Place Rouge).

Moskva, n’est-ce pas ainsi qu’on t’appelle en russe, tu m’as accueilli, recueilli et instruit? Quand je suis revenu à Montréal, je vivais à distance avec toi : une liaison heureuse, tes succès étaient nos succès; mes succès. Tu étais généreuse. Tu as reçu tous les exilés de la Terre : les Espagnols de la République, les Grecs de la Résistance et les Chiliens du socialisme et j’en passe.

Et puis est venue cette nouvelle qui m’a frappé et encore frappé, comme un coup de poignard au cœur. Les sbires de l’horreur reprenaient ouvertement le contrôle. On t’a violé Moskva. Ton voile virginal a été souillé et lacéré. Quelle douleur! Nous ne pouvions rien faire, nous du Canada. Comme beaucoup, nous avons cru que la « démocratie » s’installait. Ce fut un leurre…

Mais ce n’était que le dernier épisode du retour vers le capitalisme, cheminement qui avait été adopté après la mort de Joseph Staline dans les années 1950. J’entends les détracteurs : tiens un fidèle du culte de la personnalité. Qu’est-ce que je peux répondre à cela, si ce n’est que dans mon pays, il y avait Maurice Richard, un homme du peuple, qui fut un joueur de hockey hors-pair, je dirais même plus qu’excellent et qui vit toujours dans nos mémoires? Il n’a pas terrassé l’hydre nazie. Il n’a pas conquis la paix, mais on le vénère.

Le Premier ministre de Grande-Bretagne, Winston Churchill, a dit de Staline qu’il « était empreint d’une énergie extraordinaire, c’était un érudit, avec une volonté forte, inflexible, impitoyable au travail de même que dans les discussions et que, moi-même, malgré toute ma science du Parlement anglais, je n’aurais pu contredire en rien. La force active de son travail était si grande, chez lui, qu’il constitue un cas unique, parmi tous les chefs d’État de tous les temps et de tous les peuples. […] Lorsqu’il entrait dans le hall de la conférence de Yalta, chacun de nous, comme si on nous l’avait commandé, se levait et, de façon surprenante, gardait les mains sur les coutures des pantalons tout en restant immobile. Il possédait une intelligence profonde. […] Non, quoi que l’on dise de lui, ni l’histoire ni les peuples ne l’oublieront. » (Staline, le plus grand stratège militaire de la seconde guerre mondiale et de tous les temps, Discours de Hysni Milloshi, Premier secrétaire du Comité central du Parti communiste d’Albanie, 2003, cité dans Northstar Compass, Montréal, édition française, vol. 8, no.3, mai-juin 2010, p. 31).
(Photo Internet: vue de l'intérieur du Kremlin de Moscou, siège du pouvoir d'État, sur le fleuve Moskva).

Les évènements malheureux des années 1980-1990 en Union soviétique m’ont précipité dans le deuil et dans une grande souffrance intérieure. Tout ce que je pouvais faire, c’était de continuer d’étudier ta langue, le russe. J’espérais tant que ça change.

Je t’avoue que j’ai douté. Les mass média ont déversé leur fiel contre pratiquement tout ce que tu avais entrepris au nom du socialisme; en même temps, c’est le Parti communiste de mon pays qui titubait et « perdait des plumes ».

Et puis, j’ai senti le besoin d’aider les camarades états-uniens dans la reconstruction de leur parti. On m’a parlé là-bas du Conseil international pour l’amitié et la solidarité avec le peuple soviétique. J’ai hésité. Excuse-moi, Moskva; mais chat échaudé, craint l’eau froide. J’ai tâté le terrain. Première constatation : il manquait de jeunes. Dis-moi, suis-je trop vieux à 53 ans?

Pourtant, je t’aime mieux et plus qu’avant, Moskva. Nous n’avons plus rien à nous cacher. Tu me connais et moi de même. Le temps de la séduction est derrière nous. Nous pouvons vieillir ensemble et nous avons encore de belles années comme on dit ici. Alors, si tu veux bien et si tu me laisses y aller à mon rythme, nous pouvons –non pas revenir à la case départ-, mais repasser dans les sentiers qui ne sont pas vraiment oubliés et redécouvrir cette profonde unité qui a jadis fait ta force.
Je lis davantage sur toi, sur notre Joseph et j’essaie d’ameuter mes amis et connaissances. Il me semble que nous serons nombreux, jamais trop, au rendez-vous. Fais-moi confiance, Moscou, celle dont je voudrais sauter au cou. Tu es généreuse, tu verras que tes amants toujours plus hardis et fidèles clameront : vive Moskva!
(Photo Internet: station du métro de Moscou, construite à l'époque de Joseph Staline).

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

La Vie Réelle: http://www.laviereelle.blogspot.com/

-30-

A PROGRESSIVE PARLIAMENT FOR USA

On Election Day, November 2nd 2010, the people must vote for the Democrats, in the absence of the Communist ticket.

vol. 1, no. 17

MONTRÉAL – One word about the break up of the US communist newspaper People’s Weekly World: the US Marxist, James Connolly, recalls that “the Party’s newspaper during the repressions of the McCarthy period served as ‘the only means for the CPUSA to reach outside of its own ranks.’ (Zoltan Zigedy, ‘The Demise of an Old Friend, the PWW’). To this day, the newspaper remains the single most effective way for the Party to communicate with broader masses of working-class people [...] through distributions at mill gates, on shop floors and picket lines, at mass meetings, and even deliveries in neighborhoods.”

This “get to the topic” reveals the dead-end of the current electoral campaign in USA, while the communists don’t have any more the will –in the case of the leadership-, and the possibility –in the case of the membership- to expose their views and to support their own candidates. As for the General Secretary of the Party, Sam Webb, he wrote: “They (the workers, Ed.) expected bold action on the economic crisis, but it didn’t happen. The stimulus didn’t go far enough. Ditto for health care legislation. The scale and pace of change has been too slow – too many people are out of work, out of affordable health care, and out of their homes.” At last, one wise conclusion about this system...
(Photo Internet: The US Congress Buildings in Washington, D.C., USA)

This viewpoint is shared, for other purposes, by Rightist, CNN’s journalist, Tom Foreman who wrote in New York Metro newspaper, on October 18th, that “many congressional Democrats are sprinting away from any association with the White House as they try to salvage this election. It’s no wonder. They are getting more bad news than Sarah Palin (Republican presidential contestant, Ed.) when Bristol calls. The unemployment numbers stink. The mortgage crisis is still a mess. The deficit is ballooning. And the polls are placing the president in the middle of it all. Even a novice campaigner knows to run from that.”

Instead of advancing its program, –that we are not informed of-, the CPUSA electronic journal People’s World lectures (!) us: “Politics is a contested, complex, and impure process. There are waves and breaks –progressive and reactionary – in continuity to be sure, but in between there are longer periods in which the struggle doesn’t soar to new heights or sink to new depths, but still is consequential to the breaks that do come.” Webb is certainly a “nouvelle vague” poet, but he seems to forget about bread and butter issues, that the working people are longing for.

The CPUSA Labour secretary, John Wojcik, is not any better. Here is one of his last reports of the AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka"s speeches: “The ‘enthusiasm gap’ among progressive voters, he told the union leaders, is also the result of frustration that comes from watching Republicans throw up roadblocks on every single thing workers care about, and additional frustration comes from watching some of the Democrats ‘we thought were our friends’ join them saying, ‘Go slow, play it safe, split the difference.’”

The US conservatives don’t say much about the toll of wars in the US Budget. With Foreman, quoted above, they repeat that “President Obama’s Dems are in trouble now: a broad sense among voters that the party had launched too many programs that were too expensive in an economy that was still too weak.” It is worthy of noting that New York Metro “does not endorse the opinions of the author”. They are aware of their readers' expectations: less war, less bails-out to US monopolies and banks, more for the needed and the workers...

Talking about the work of the union staff with the rank-and-file members, he continues: “After a relationship is established, the AFL-CIO staff can roll out the program”. You say: a program... What does it look like, what does it deal with? The Party leaders affirm that the workers are not ready for more. Wrong! The Pew Opinion Poll (May 4, 2010), which came out after the Rasmussen poll, found that 43% of Americans under 30 years old describe “capitalism” as positive but the same poll found that those who described “socialism” as positive also equated 43%. Those figures were taken from a Jarvis Tyner (one of the Party leader, Ed.) speech at a youth conference in USA, last summer.

Probably, the members of Communist Parties around the world cannot understand the scale of damages caused to the cause of communism in USA, by the Sam Webb clique. As put it several members of the CPUSA since last spring: “We need another Jacques Duclos!”

In the history of the Communist Party of America (CPA), it is related that: “Internationally, Jacques Duclos, secretary of the Communist Party of France, published an article that solidly denounced Browderism (akin to Sam Webb’s political views). The article played an important role in mobilizing already existing opposition to and critics of Browder. The CPA received a copy of Duclos’article on May 20, 1945, which was immediately discussed in the Political Committee. [...] A special convention was held in July 26-28, 1945. The convention thoroughly cleansed the party of Browderism and restored it to a solid Marxist-Leninist basis. The CPA was liquidated and the Communist Party was reconstituted. [...] The reconstituted Communist Party rejected Browder’s post-war no-strike line, incentive wage, subservience to the tow-party system, and ‘organized capitalism’. Browder then tried to build a revisionist factional grouping. However, he failed to split the party and in early 1946 he was expelled.”

“The history of the crucial defeat of Browderism and the restoration of the party are more relevant now than ever. The CPUSA is currently controlled by another group of right-opportunists who also seek to liquidate the party much like Browder tried to do. Only the CPUSA’s membership and supporters can save it at this key moment. Strengthening of the CPUSA as a Marxist-Leninist party will allow for new, bright chapters of its history to be written.”

Most likely, friends and supporters of the CPUSA around the world will be adequately informed about the situation at the 16th Congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions, in Athens in April 2011, outside the convention floor.
(Photo Internet: the war in Viet Nam, typical of the US foreign policies, from either the Democrats or the Republicans; the reason the world expects so much from the Left, including the US communists).

SOME INTERNATIONAL CLUES

A statement by the Canadians for Peace and Socialism, on October 13th 2010, stresses that “the rejection by a majority of the member states of the United Nations, of the bid by the right-wing minority Conservative Government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper for a seat on the Security Council of the UN is a stinging defeat for the pro-NATO, pro-Israel, pro-war, anti-people’s program foisted on the UN by the leading G7 imperialist states led by the U.S.A. [...]

There should be no doubt that the minority right-wing Harper Conservative Government was delegated by international reaction led by the U.S.A. to attempt to seize another position on the Security Council to strengthen the extremist pro-war forces in the inner circle of the UN. The Harper administration is viewed by international finance capital as a reliable representative of extreme reaction, an avowed and open exponent of subverting the U.N. to the purposes of U.S. imperialism. The defeat of the Harper Government’s bid is a significant event in the struggle to preserve the integrity of the original intent of the U.N. and its Charter.”

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

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

WORKERS' CONGRESS IN CANADA

vol. 1, no. 15

MONTRÉAL -- From November 29 to December 3, the Québec Federation of Labour (500 000 members) will hold its 29th Congress in the Province of Québec, the homeland of the French Canadian nation (7, 8 million inhabitants). For the leadership of the union, “whatever may be their status, workers must be respected”. One of the two main topics will be the amelioration of the pension plan. This was reported by Le Monde Ouvrier/September-October 2010.

On the other hand, Unity, the Communist Party of Ireland’s newspaper, mentioned in September that “French unions have launched a massive strike over President Nicolas Sarkozy’s deeply unpopular plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 by 2018. Two million public and private sector workers, students and pensioners took part in over 200 street demonstrations across the country against the pension “reform”, which would also lift the age at which employees would be eligible for full pension payments from 65 to 67.”
(Photo PCF/Bagneux: people's demonstration in France in defence of the workers' pension plan, Fall 2010)

Meanwhile, a less developed country, Bolivia, according to news release has decided in May 2010 to decrease the retirement age from 65 to 58 years old, and will consider 56 for underground worker; each of worked years will count for two.

It goes side by side with the general demands of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). The union is not well-known in Canada and United States. So, just a reminder: WFTU has 72 millions members in 110 countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Middle-East. Its own 16th Congress will take place in Athens, Greece, April 6th to 9th 2011. Observers from Canada will be “on the spot”.

Unity, titled “We will not pay for their crisis” and forwarded the union statement that coincided with their International Day of Action, Tuesday 7th September. They demand: “to stop the expenditure on military equipments and this money to be granted to the unemployed and the poor [...] Through small and big struggles, the international working class will understand that the future of humanity can be drastically improved only through the abolition of the exploitation of man-by-man”.

At the European Seminar of Communist and Workers’ Parties in London, communists urge workers to organise and mobilise: “for increased taxes on wealth and monopoly profits [and] for the reduction of retirement ages and substantial increases in pensions”, (Unity, 14 August 2010).

The French WFTU affiliated, Front syndical de classe, remembered the words of the late General Confederation of Labour (CGT) General Secretary, Henri Krasucki: “There is nothing more harmful to the workers than class collaboration. It deprives them from their tools in the defence of their own interests and provokes division. Class struggle, on the contrary, is the basis for unity, its most powerful leitmotiv. To achieve it with success, while uniting the workers, we created the CGT. Class struggle is not an invention, it is a fact. It won’t stop just by denying it: to stop fighting equals a general surrender of the working class to exploitation and crushing.”

The reader will then understand that on October 1st, WFTU called rightly upon its members and friends in Ecuador to deepen and accelerate the transformations in the country for the best interest of the working class and its goals, and wishing a rapid recovery to the President Rafael Correa after the attempted Coup d’État.

What is generally called “US imperialism” was behind this plot. But there is another America. The CP USA People’s World published on October 2nd this piece: “Actor-singer Harry Belafonte remembered Dr. King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial as well as his 1967 Riverside Church speech in New York City against the Vietnam war. He pointed out that Al Queda has as few as 50 members. “Do we really believe that sending 100,000 troops to kill innocent men and women in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes any sense?” he asked. Bring the troops home and use the trillions of tax dollars to rebuild schools, hospitals and affordable housing, he said.”

With a strange determination, the current General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, Sam Webb, wrote in this electronic bulletin: “For anyone to affix to the president singular or even the lion’s share of the blame for the present impasse reveals an incredible ignorance of class and, especially, racial dynamics.”

Then, to whom should we talk to if we want a strong and independent Canada, freed from the US giant corporations and as well the end of the war in Afghanistan? The Canadians are putting pressure on the federal government of Canada to bring home its troops for 1st of July 2011, as promised by the minority conservative power; but they want the war to stop now. Is somebody on the line in USA or should they wait for..? Well, it does not make sense not to involve the current President of USA.
(Photo: public meeting of the Communist party in Montréal. From left to right: Pierre Fontaine, president in Québec; the interpreter and Miguel Figueroa, the Canadian leader, Summer 2010. The party was gearing for a general strike in the Province of Québec)

At last, "Pour la KOMINTERN now!” is not a nationalist bulletin, but we were happy to read in Unity (March 6th, 2010) that the Communist Party of Ireland stands for a “socialist united Ireland” as a long-term goal. Actually, the father of Daniel Paquet’s grand mother, William Harris, was Irish: a tall and vigorous man who worked as a stevedore in the Québec City Harbour. His son, Joseph, was a member of the Communist Party of Canada and his daughter, Beatrice, got marry with Eugène Paquet, a trade-unionist and militant of the Confederation of Catholic Workers of Canada in the same city.

Workers of All Lands, Unite!

danieleugpaquet@yahoo.ca

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