Let’s reject capitalism and its worthless parliament!
Now is the time to organize People’s Power!
Québec’s governing Liberals have finally “dropped the writ” and triggered an election, after months of popular mobilization and a student strike of unprecedented size and depth. The scale of this struggle and the way it has spread across various sectors of society are exemplary. It has revealed the widespread sickness of this society and a massive rejection of bourgeois politics by a significant section of workers and youth.
This rejection is easy to explain: while we get poorer and the cost of living goes up, the Québec State along with the Liberals have maintained the status quo and pushed the same old bourgeois politics like never before, granting special privileges to their friends and financially supporting businesses associated with the Plan Nord, the upcoming amphitheater in Québec City, and the Montréal Grand Prix.
This rejection —of the commodification of rights, of exploitative policies, of corruption, of privileges for the wealthy minority, and of the waste of precious resources— is the rejection of one unified policy: the policy of the bourgeoisie. It is the rejection of a way of organizing society along capitalist lines. We don’t hear about it in those terms anymore because the phrase “class struggle” has disappeared, though the facts tell us it is alive and well. The struggle has never been so real: the gulf between the capitalist/bourgeois class on one side; and the working class, the students, the unemployed, the immigrants and the natives, on the other side, has never been so huge! All the economists, journalists, analysts and columnists want to ignore this, but they can’t honestly deny it!
Over the last four years, we saw bourgeois politics at work with a cynicism rarely seen in the past, as we are subjected to a more and more falsified, truncated, fake democracy. This fake democracy is embodied in the National Assembly, as it only requires 63 representatives —out of 125— to dictate the Law for four years. Protecting the class privileges of corporations, capitalists, and their lackeys has been the primary political project since the beginning of the National Assembly —just like the House of Commons in Ottawa.
For 145 years, two parties of the bourgeoisie, Liberals and Conservatives —the latter replaced first by the Union Nationale and then by the Parti Québécois— have clashed and bickered for seats. A few seats were added and minor parties were created (like the Social Credit and the ADQ in days gone by; or today, the CAQ and Québec Solidaire) only to either disappear from parliament, dissolve into the larger parties or remain marginalized without any hope of breaking into the mainstream.
Parliamentary democracy evolved. But it did not change politics.
Throughout history, whenever the working class challenged the established order in the mines and factories, in the plants and construction sites, in the hospitals, and now at school, the bourgeoisie responded by adopting “special bills”. The Liberal government of Jean Charest is the poster child for this kind of repression. It demonstrated clearly how parliamentary democracy allows a party in power to bypass its own rules and procedures and silence voices that challenge its policies. The new Law 12 – previously Bill 78 – which threatens the very right of student unions to exist and the right to demonstrate in Québec is but the most recent example.
Be they Liberals or “Pequists,” all governments since the 70’s have, at one point or another, repressed hundreds of thousands of workers. Never though, did one make a law taking away the right of businesses to exploit us, to close up shop and run away with the cash, or to impose wage reductions. Under capitalism and its bourgeois politics, the rights of business mean everything, and those of the workers —nothing.
Capitalist society, with its phony democracy, its laws and its politics, treats everything like a commodity —existing only to be bought, sold and exploited. The society we fight for, the dream we share with millions of proletarians, does not exist yet. We need to define, to build and organize it, as well as defend it and fight for its triumph! We need a society of reason and justice: the reason and justice of the victims of exploitation. Instead of preserving bourgeois power, we must fight to destroy it and achieve equality for all, production to satisfy human needs, the emancipation of everyone, the absence of exploitation and violence, education and work for the enrichment of human life and not the enrichment of the exploiters!
Elections are a good opportunity... to defy the bourgeoisie!
Bourgeois democracy and the upcoming elections are like a bad play. The bourgeoisie knows the ending ahead of time, but they need us proletarians to play our part in the production and vote as though these elections matter.
We will take the opportunity presented by these elections... to defy the bourgeoisie. Instead of voting, we will propose an active boycott of the elections and parliament as well as advance proletarian democracy and the struggle for People’s Power in opposition to them. We will propose another project for a society without classes and without exploitation where the community of workers will express itself and decide its future.
The electoral campaign will change nothing, but organizing ourselves as a class fit to take power will make all the difference in the world! Let us unite all our struggles, whether they come from students, the poor, workers, women, migrants, antiracist groups, etc., under one banner: overthrowing the bourgeoisie and building People’s Power!
The electoral campaign lasts five weeks, but our struggle is only beginning! We call for all progressives, radicals and revolutionaries, and also workers, the unemployed and students who want to carry political struggle beyond the immediate struggles to constitute political action committees outside of parliament and bourgeois parties, in their neighborhoods.
We call for the formation of such committees in order to:
• Actively boycott the Quebec elections of September 4th;
• Attack by all available means (agitation, propaganda, actions) the Québec Liberal Party;
• Reject and denounce the fake democracy of bourgeois elections by proposing peoples’ democracy, political action, mass mobilization, and the battle for another society;
• Criticize the “strategic vote,” which is beneficial only for the bourgeoisie;
• Organize support for the actual student struggle as the bourgeoisie is now trying to kill it with elections;
• Develop the People’s Power perspective and our class’s capacity for political action, that of the exploited, the oppressed, the excluded. We must be inspired by the best of people, students and workers’ struggles, by unifying them in one common political project, that of overthrowing capitalism;
• Go from unity in action to political unity in our calls. This will come from struggling over the political perspectives that will defeat bourgeois power and prepare People’s Power.
For the Revolutionary Communist Party, People’s Democracy means much more than taking the streets and being involved in immediate struggles. It cuts to the heart of a new power we must build, a true People’s Power, a power that will transform society and rid us of the exploitation, oppression, and all other injustices generated by the domination by a minority of capitalists and bourgeois on the majority. This project for liberation is nothing short of communism.
The militants of the PCR-RCP, who work to develop a program of struggle and a strategy for revolution, will actively participate in these committees where they are able and propose perspectives of political unity of the revolutionary and proletarian forces. All radical and progressive forces should also participate, debate, discuss and put forward their ideas. This will be the best way to fulfill our “democratic duty” during the next elections!
The Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP) (Québec)
(August 1st 2012)
Now is the time to organize People’s Power!
Québec’s governing Liberals have finally “dropped the writ” and triggered an election, after months of popular mobilization and a student strike of unprecedented size and depth. The scale of this struggle and the way it has spread across various sectors of society are exemplary. It has revealed the widespread sickness of this society and a massive rejection of bourgeois politics by a significant section of workers and youth.
This rejection is easy to explain: while we get poorer and the cost of living goes up, the Québec State along with the Liberals have maintained the status quo and pushed the same old bourgeois politics like never before, granting special privileges to their friends and financially supporting businesses associated with the Plan Nord, the upcoming amphitheater in Québec City, and the Montréal Grand Prix.
This rejection —of the commodification of rights, of exploitative policies, of corruption, of privileges for the wealthy minority, and of the waste of precious resources— is the rejection of one unified policy: the policy of the bourgeoisie. It is the rejection of a way of organizing society along capitalist lines. We don’t hear about it in those terms anymore because the phrase “class struggle” has disappeared, though the facts tell us it is alive and well. The struggle has never been so real: the gulf between the capitalist/bourgeois class on one side; and the working class, the students, the unemployed, the immigrants and the natives, on the other side, has never been so huge! All the economists, journalists, analysts and columnists want to ignore this, but they can’t honestly deny it!
Over the last four years, we saw bourgeois politics at work with a cynicism rarely seen in the past, as we are subjected to a more and more falsified, truncated, fake democracy. This fake democracy is embodied in the National Assembly, as it only requires 63 representatives —out of 125— to dictate the Law for four years. Protecting the class privileges of corporations, capitalists, and their lackeys has been the primary political project since the beginning of the National Assembly —just like the House of Commons in Ottawa.
For 145 years, two parties of the bourgeoisie, Liberals and Conservatives —the latter replaced first by the Union Nationale and then by the Parti Québécois— have clashed and bickered for seats. A few seats were added and minor parties were created (like the Social Credit and the ADQ in days gone by; or today, the CAQ and Québec Solidaire) only to either disappear from parliament, dissolve into the larger parties or remain marginalized without any hope of breaking into the mainstream.
Parliamentary democracy evolved. But it did not change politics.
Throughout history, whenever the working class challenged the established order in the mines and factories, in the plants and construction sites, in the hospitals, and now at school, the bourgeoisie responded by adopting “special bills”. The Liberal government of Jean Charest is the poster child for this kind of repression. It demonstrated clearly how parliamentary democracy allows a party in power to bypass its own rules and procedures and silence voices that challenge its policies. The new Law 12 – previously Bill 78 – which threatens the very right of student unions to exist and the right to demonstrate in Québec is but the most recent example.
Be they Liberals or “Pequists,” all governments since the 70’s have, at one point or another, repressed hundreds of thousands of workers. Never though, did one make a law taking away the right of businesses to exploit us, to close up shop and run away with the cash, or to impose wage reductions. Under capitalism and its bourgeois politics, the rights of business mean everything, and those of the workers —nothing.
Capitalist society, with its phony democracy, its laws and its politics, treats everything like a commodity —existing only to be bought, sold and exploited. The society we fight for, the dream we share with millions of proletarians, does not exist yet. We need to define, to build and organize it, as well as defend it and fight for its triumph! We need a society of reason and justice: the reason and justice of the victims of exploitation. Instead of preserving bourgeois power, we must fight to destroy it and achieve equality for all, production to satisfy human needs, the emancipation of everyone, the absence of exploitation and violence, education and work for the enrichment of human life and not the enrichment of the exploiters!
Elections are a good opportunity... to defy the bourgeoisie!
Bourgeois democracy and the upcoming elections are like a bad play. The bourgeoisie knows the ending ahead of time, but they need us proletarians to play our part in the production and vote as though these elections matter.
We will take the opportunity presented by these elections... to defy the bourgeoisie. Instead of voting, we will propose an active boycott of the elections and parliament as well as advance proletarian democracy and the struggle for People’s Power in opposition to them. We will propose another project for a society without classes and without exploitation where the community of workers will express itself and decide its future.
The electoral campaign will change nothing, but organizing ourselves as a class fit to take power will make all the difference in the world! Let us unite all our struggles, whether they come from students, the poor, workers, women, migrants, antiracist groups, etc., under one banner: overthrowing the bourgeoisie and building People’s Power!
The electoral campaign lasts five weeks, but our struggle is only beginning! We call for all progressives, radicals and revolutionaries, and also workers, the unemployed and students who want to carry political struggle beyond the immediate struggles to constitute political action committees outside of parliament and bourgeois parties, in their neighborhoods.
We call for the formation of such committees in order to:
• Actively boycott the Quebec elections of September 4th;
• Attack by all available means (agitation, propaganda, actions) the Québec Liberal Party;
• Reject and denounce the fake democracy of bourgeois elections by proposing peoples’ democracy, political action, mass mobilization, and the battle for another society;
• Criticize the “strategic vote,” which is beneficial only for the bourgeoisie;
• Organize support for the actual student struggle as the bourgeoisie is now trying to kill it with elections;
• Develop the People’s Power perspective and our class’s capacity for political action, that of the exploited, the oppressed, the excluded. We must be inspired by the best of people, students and workers’ struggles, by unifying them in one common political project, that of overthrowing capitalism;
• Go from unity in action to political unity in our calls. This will come from struggling over the political perspectives that will defeat bourgeois power and prepare People’s Power.
For the Revolutionary Communist Party, People’s Democracy means much more than taking the streets and being involved in immediate struggles. It cuts to the heart of a new power we must build, a true People’s Power, a power that will transform society and rid us of the exploitation, oppression, and all other injustices generated by the domination by a minority of capitalists and bourgeois on the majority. This project for liberation is nothing short of communism.
The militants of the PCR-RCP, who work to develop a program of struggle and a strategy for revolution, will actively participate in these committees where they are able and propose perspectives of political unity of the revolutionary and proletarian forces. All radical and progressive forces should also participate, debate, discuss and put forward their ideas. This will be the best way to fulfill our “democratic duty” during the next elections!
Let’s denounce the bourgeoisie and its parliament!
Boycott the bourgeois elections; struggle for People’s Power!
Boycott the bourgeois elections; struggle for People’s Power!
The Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP) (Québec)
(August 1st 2012)
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