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September 1, 2010 - No. 144 25th Anniversary of the Mass Party Press A Historic, Nation-Building Project
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 September 2010 issue of Workers' Forum comes off the press. |
At that time, the Party had analyzed that a turning
point was at hand. It declared that the crisis of the system had
deepened with such speed, the factors for imperialist war and
revolution had developed to such an extent that no social force could
act in the old way. For the Party and its press, this meant carrying
on the work to ensure that the working class is armed with the outlook
and ideology needed to face the concrete conditions as they were
unfolding. The mass Party press today continues to play this decisive
role.
At this time, the necessity to fight for the new is a pressing issue facing the working class and people. As objective developments today accelerate the descent into state-organized fascism, with the perpetual wars of U.S. imperialism and the end of the social contract between capital and labour, fighting for the renewal of society is the urgent task of the day. The mass Party press is at the service of the work to renew the society and to organize a Workers' Opposition from coast to coast so that the working class and people can face these dangerous developments and make headway.
Throughout this 25th anniversary
year, workers and youth
have contributed to modernizing the technical base of the mass Party
press in a manner consistent with the concrete conditions today so as
to effectively serve the nation-building project that the working class
is now taking up in all earnest. To mark
the anniversary, the Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L) also restarted the
publication Workers' Forum suspended in 2006 due to other
pressing concerns. The first issue of Volume 2, dated September 1, came
off the press on August 29 and is available by contacting Pierre
Chénier by telephone at (416) 253-4475
or email at workerscentre@cpcml.ca.
Also, in July, Party youth joined the Hardial Bains Party School on Journalism and set a program of study and work through to December when the closing session of the Party School will be held with a seminar on New Journalism. As part of this program, the Party youth have prepared an anniversary video. Click here to view the video (MP4 format -- requires QuickTime Player).
Long Live the Mass Party Press!
Youth Enthusiastically Take Up Journalism
that Addresses the Concerns of the People
The 2010 Hardial Bains Party School on Journalism, convoked by the Communist Youth Union of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) was joyously inaugurated after a two-day seminar on July 10 and 11 in Toronto. This program was held as a contribution of the Party youth to the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). More specifically, it is a contribution to the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Party press and the 25th anniversary of the mass Party and non-Party press.
This national seminar brought together youth who saw the necessity to take up the Party's call to strengthen and broaden the mass Party press and non-Party press, a task taken up by the Party's 8th Congress in August 2008. Throughout the seminar held to inaugurate the Party School, the necessity and urgency of this decision was elaborated in the context of national and international developments, especially the police violence at the G20 protests. These developments fully underscore the necessity to oppose the disinformation of the police state which is being created in order to facilitate the U.S. imperialist agenda of fascism and war in which Canada is participating.
Opening Session of Party School
 First Secretary of the Central Committee of CPC(M-L) Sandra L. Smith (left) and a member of the Communist Youth Union of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) address the Party School on Journalism. |
The seminar's Opening Session began on July 10 with a presentation on the current state of monopoly-owned journalism which highlighted the ways in which journalism as a for-profit industry is in crisis. With the technical revolution, from the Internet to Twitter, the monopoly-owned journalism has given rise to the need to be first at rumour-mongering as a response to the speed of information. Discussion followed, with participants speaking from their direct experience as workers in the journalism and communications industries and their experience of the disinformation spread by the monopoly-owned media.
Following this presentation, the youth were given a tour of the technical base of the Party press, including the printing press, the digital press and the archives of the Party and non-Party press. The Secretary of the Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L), Pierre Chénier, led the tour, emphasizing that it was the Party youth of the 1960s and 1970s who saw the necessity to take up journalism to address the concerns of the people who established this technical base. Although they had no training or experience, the Party led them to operate on a self-reliant basis. On this basis the Party acquired the necessary equipment, set up the entire infrastructure and established the journalism needed. The audacity of this program impressed upon participants the revolutionary spirit that imbued the founding of the Party and its press in the 1970s and 1980s.
A second presentation took place after this tour which
provided information on the history and role of the Party Press. Each
phase of the Party press was presented, from the work of the
Internationalists in the 1960s, the precursor organization to CPC(M-L),
to the period of the founding of the Party and its press
on August 26, 1970 and how it developed over the years to address the
vital tasks needed to open society's path to progress. The presentation
emphasized that the mass Party press is the voice of the working class
and is partisan to the working class and its leading role over the
entire society.
It is dedicated to providing the class with the consciousness and
organization commensurate with its revolutionary position in society.
Following this presentation, participants took up
establishing the offices for their work. From sanding and painting, to
furniture and equipment set-up, the youth worked on the basis of the
Youth Organizing Project (YOP) method: Learning Together, Working
as a Collective and Taking Up Social
Responsibility. Setting up their own conditions of work and study
contributed to creating tremendous enthusiasm for the Party School.
On July 11, the morning session was addressed by Sandra L. Smith, First Secretary of the Central Committee of CPC(M-L). She placed the work of the youth within the context of the overall Party program, highlighting the necessity to create the new forms required to arm the working class, youth and people with the consciousness they need to meet the challenges before us today. She emphasized that an organized force with the conviction of the new arises when that force is part of creating the new forms that are needed.
Party School participants then took up discussion on the work that the youth were undertaking. The Party press puts the concerns of the people as the basis of its orientation and editorial line, one youth explained. The journalism of the Party is in the service of solutions to the problems facing society and is intimately linked to the accomplishments of science. By elucidating the way forward, it must go beyond simply exposing and criticizing the powers that be. Many emphasized the need for collectives of the society to have their own media which serve their aim. A lively intervention spoke to the importance of recognizing the dialectic between form and content and how new content gives rise to new forms and vice versa. In this context, the participants embraced the new technologies in a manner that serves our aim to establish a society where youth build a bright future for themselves and contribute to the same internationally.
Resolution
A resolution was adopted unanimously which declared the Party School officially open and outlined that the work of this first session would continue with a program of study and discussion on the Party's New Journalism to be conducted by local committees. Participants also resolved to hold a closing seminar at which time the results of the work will be presented.
Special projects for this first session were also outlined in the resolution, including the modernization of the Party's technical base and the establishment of TML Weekly Information Project under the direction of the Central Committee of CPC(M-L). The youth further resolved to go all out to make the August 2010 Party celebrations a success, specifically the August 13-14 seminar to be held in Ottawa, the August 14-15 memorial concert and dawn ceremony to honour the legacy of CPC(M-L)'s founder and leader Comrade Hardial Bains and the contribution of all the comrades of CPC(M-L) who have passed away, and the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Party press and the 25th anniversary of the mass Party and non-Party press.
With the resolution, the youth also established their leadership, authorizing the leading team to mobilize people into the work of a Preparatory Committee to organize the closing seminar which will be held in December in Montreal. All those who were not at the inaugural meeting and wish to participate in the work to take up the New Journalism can contact youth@mlpc.ca
71st Anniversary
Falsifications about Nazi Germany's
Invasion of Poland
At 4:15 am on September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded
Poland in a
massive assault. Hitler's Wehrmacht of 1,850,000 troops, 3,200 tanks,
2,000 combat aircrafts, and 11 warships, over two-thirds of Germany's
entire
combat force, destroyed the Polish state and massacred the people. The
Polish people were
greatly outnumbered but fought back bravely. The leaders of Poland fled
to Rumania on September 17 but the Polish people's spirit of resistance
remained strong. Many Poles fought courageously in the communist-led
underground Resistance. They formed their own patriotic Polish
divisions and fought against the
Nazis alongside the Red Army all the way to Berlin.
 Partisans of the Polish People's Army, circa 1944. |
Against Poland, the Nazis perpetuated one of the worst crimes history has ever known. Poland suffered the largest number of casualties per population of any European country. Direct extermination by mass murder, death camps, slave labour, starvation and other means took some 6 million people's lives, including 2,700,000 Polish Jews, 2,000,000 children and youth, more than 50,000 Roma, some 12,000 people deemed mentally handicapped and thousands of Polish prisoners of war, soldiers and officers, as well as national minorities who were systematically eliminated.
Some 40,000 Polish intellectuals, political personalities and other leaders were shot by the SS within the first six weeks of the Nazi occupation. Beginning in May 1939, Operation Tannenberg, which was part of Hitler's Generalplan Ost (Masterplan East), had already identified more than 61,000 Polish activists, intelligentsia, scholars, former officers and others who were to be interned or shot. The bodies of the 4,143 Polish officers who were found buried in Katyn Forest is just one example of the many executions the SS and the Wehrmacht carried out.
The Soviet Union marched into the territory of Poland on September 17, only after the Polish state had collapsed, the Polish army had disintegrated, the government had ceased to function and its leaders had fled. Further, the Soviet Union marched into the territories of the Ukraine and Byelorussia that Poland had forcibly annexed from the Soviet Union during the Polish-Russian War of 1919-20 when Poland was one of the 14 invading imperialist countries that attempted to strangle the newborn Soviet socialist republic. Only about 8 percent of the people in the Ukraine and Byelorussia were of Polish origin. Due to Stalin's timely entry into those territories, Hitler was forced to accept a line of demarcation between his troops and the Red Army. The Red Army saved millions of people inhabiting the Ukraine and Byelorussia from the fate which Hitler reserved for the rest of the Polish people. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill publicly justified the Soviet march into eastern Poland.
Today, the modern-day Hitlerites continue to spread the lies that "both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland" and that the two countries had secretly conspired "to divide Poland" between them. These lies were first put forth by Hitler himself who referred to "secret protocols" in a speech where he declared war on the Soviet Union. The "secret protocols" were resurrected again by the Nazi defendants at Nuremburg where the Presidium threw them out as a forgery. It was only when the U.S. took up the mantle of Hitlerism after WWII and became the modern day master of Goebbels' big lie technique that Hitler's concoction about "secret protocols" became a so-called historical fact.
The real historical facts clarify why Hitler attacked Poland. In 1939, Poland was an imperialist country created by Britain and France through the 1918 Versailles Treaty. One of Poland's aims was to annex the rich agricultural regions of the Ukraine and extend its territory from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The Polish landlords and bourgeoisie dreamed of restoring the medieval Polish empire. Financed and armed by Britain and France, they attacked the Soviet Union in 1918, occupying large parts of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Lithuania. During the following 18 years of semi-fascist Polish rule the workers and peasants in those regions were viciously exploited.
The Polish government considered Britain and France to be its allies and the Soviet Union its avowed enemy. The Anglo-American and French imperialists wanted to ensure their own world domination so they followed the policy of appeasing Hitler and egging him on toward the East to attack the Soviet Union, rather than organizing collective security with the Soviet Union. Poland also hoped that Hitler would go east and attack the Soviet Union, and that Poland could seize Soviet territory itself. Thus Poland refused to settle outstanding border questions so as to make the Soviet defence line as deep as possible within Soviet territory and refused the Soviets permission to enter Poland to stop the Nazi advance. Instead of taking all measures necessary to defend against the impending Nazi invasion, Poland was manoeuvering with the aim of gaining advantages for itself.
 Warsaw, Poland was razed in 1939 by Nazi bombing. |
In attacking Poland, Hitler was taking up the Anglo-American policy of going East and implementing his own plan, outlined in Mein Kampf, to increase Germany's "living space" (lebensraum) by taking over the Ukraine as part of his overall plan to enslave the entire world. Only ten days before the attack, Hitler in his Obersalzburg speech instructed his generals to "send to death mercilessly and without compassion men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (lebensraum) which we need" (Woodward & Riftlep, 1954). In the end, Poland paid very dearly for its own imperialist ambitions and rejection of Soviet assistance.
The lies about the Soviet Union, Stalin, Poland, and World War II aim to put the people to sleep and lull them into a false sense of security by making people think that today there is no danger of fascism. But right in front of everyone's eyes, the fascists are being organized to attack the struggle for freedom and progress of all the peoples on a world scale. In Canada, the Harper government fully supports a project to create a national monument commemorating the Nazis as "victims of totalitarian communism." Abroad, the Harper government fully supports U.S.-led wars of aggression and the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people. "The reactionary bourgeoisie and its government and others are egging on the fascist forces, getting the fascist forces organized" (Bains, 1990). The people should not leave their fate in the hands of someone else but should take measures to actively organize to oppose the activities of the anti-people forces on all fronts.
References
• Bains, Hardial (1990). Causes and Lessons
of the Second World War. Toronto: MELS Institute.
• Woodward, E. L. & Riftlep, Rohan (eds.) (1954). Documents on
British Foreign Policy. 1919-1939. 3rd series. London: HMSO.
7:258-260.
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