Avi Lewis vs. Yves Engler: How NDP leadership contenders might have debated Ukraine's resistance to Putin's aggression

 Introduction

Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine, now approaching its fourth anniversary, is the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. Ukraine’s heroic resistance to its much larger aggressor has managed to limit Putin’s conquests to 20 percent of its territory, most of which Russia has occupied and illegally annexed in addition to its seizure of Crimea in 2014.

Ukraine’s defense has suffered from the reluctance of other European governments and the United States, the source of much of its armament, to confront a nuclear-armed Russia. But it is also weakened by the failure of much of the left – of pacifist, Social Democratic or Stalinist origin – to mobilize solidarity with the working people and oppressed of Ukraine. I have posted on this blog many critiques of the fallacious arguments invoked in defense of this outrageous default of the Western Left.

This conflict within the Left is reflected in the NDP leadership campaign, a focus of the major foreign policy debate in Canada at present. Hoping to put its international policy positions in the forefront, the party’s traditional left opposition tendency, the Socialist Caucus, was quick to present Yves Engler as its candidate for NDP leader. Engler is well-known as a trenchant critic of others in the Left – the NDP, trade-union leaders, and some NGOs – for their adaptation to and support of U.S. imperialism and its allies such as Canada. His book Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada, is a well-documented devastating critique of many of the dominant “progressive” forces generally identified with Canada’s Left.

However, Engler is not consistently anti-imperialist. I would define his approach as campist, not internationalist. That is, he tends to support or favour countries and their governments that for whatever reason are in conflict with the United States and its imperialist allies. In Left, Right, Engler says “an essential element of a left foreign policy analysis should be ‘first, do no harm’,” a liberal-pacifist concept that differs from solidarity with all those exploited and oppressed by foreign imperialist powers. This leads him to oppose any anti-imperialist struggle by a nation that has sought aid and weapons from other imperialist powers, Ukraine currently serving as his principal target. His Policy Platform 2026 accordingly states: “No more funds for the Ukraine regime…. The Ukraine regime functions as a belligerent in the U.S.-led Western proxy war aimed at exhausting a geopolitical rival. Halting all Canadian support (material, diplomatic, military) reduces the capacity of a conflict that sacrifices lives for NATO objectives.” His blog, similarly, is replete with misrepresentations of the geopolitical nature of the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an inter-imperialist war, notwithstanding the clear and mounting evidence that Trump is aligned with Putin in pressuring Ukraine to yield to Russia’s territorial conquests. Notably absent is any recognition of the democratic rights and struggles of the Ukrainian people in opposition to the Russian imperialist assault.

Engler and the Socialist Caucus mounted an independent campaign that managed to meet the rigorous financial and other requirements imposed by the party bureaucracy, before they applied for his authorization as a candidate. However, in the end he was undemocratically barred by the anonymous members of the party’s vetting committee, largely on political grounds, many quite spurious and disclosed only when Engler revealed his correspondence with the committee. Engler’s exclusion was a serious blow at those NDP members and supporters who would have welcomed an exchange over his views – and a challenge to some of them – that could have benefited the party and political discourse on the left in Canada.

Engler argues, however, that his exclusion has deprived the leadership campaign of any debate on international policy, and claims that he alone offers a progressive alternative. I will say more in a later post about the differences among the candidates, but Engler’s claim is refuted most clearly in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war. In stark contrast to his opposition to Ukraine’s defense, as noted above, all five official leadership candidates have expressed support for Ukraine – and none more clearly than Avi Lewis, one of the major contenders.

Yves Engler is now touring Canada on the theme “The Failure of Social Democracy: NDP Support for Militarism & Imperialism.” His special target is Avi Lewis, the only leadership candidate offering a platform that would radically transform the NDP as a grass-roots membership-based party with a program that promotes public alternatives to private profit-based production and services. Engler slanders Lewis as a “war monger” for his support of Ukraine.

Lewis vs. Engler on Ukraine

Avi Lewis

 The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a wanton, illegal act of aggression against a sovereign, democratic country by a brutal dictator. Putin’s dream of recreating the Russian Empire is Ukraine’s nightmare, resulting in a level of death and devastation that Europe has not seen since the Second World War.  

Over the last several years, the world has witnessed horror after horror. The forced transfer of Ukrainian children, the destruction of Mariupol, the bombing of schools and hospitals. These are heinous war crimes, for which Putin and his generals must be held accountable. At the same time, we have also seen the best of humanity. The dignity and bravery shown by Ukrainians has inspired the world and Canadians welcomed 300,000 Ukrainians seeking safe haven into their communities with generosity and compassion. 

Our approach to foreign policy must be morally consistent: occupation is always wrong, whether in Palestine or Ukraine. That’s why an Avi-led NDP will support the following policies: 

1. Help rebuild Ukraine. The Canadian government should provide funding and technical assistance to rebuild Ukraine’s infrastructure, institutions and public services. Notably, Canada should use its influence to oppose any attempts to sell off Ukrainian public assets or natural resources. Ukraine needs a Marshall Plan, not a Shock Doctrine. To help finance this rebuild, Canada should allocate any funds seized from Russian oligarchs and push for the cancellation of Ukraine’s debt. 

2. Support a just peace. Canada must advocate for a peace agreement that is not imposed on Ukraine unilaterally by Trump and Putin, but involves the participation of Ukraine and European nations. Ukraine should not have to give up an inch of its territory, and Canada should continue providing the defence assistance that Ukraine needs to protect its sovereignty.

3. Step up sanctions enforcement. Getting tougher on enforcing sanctions, including by closing the loophole that continues to allow banned Russian oil to flow into Canada. We should hit the Russian war machine where it hurts, in the oil barrel. 

4. Assist Ukrainian newcomers. Push for the reversal of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada job cuts and ensure that newcomers from Ukraine and around the world have access to the settlement services they need to thrive.

5. Build links with the Ukrainian labour movement. Work alongside Canadian unions to build solidarity with trade unions in Ukraine, to advance workers’ rights and strengthen Ukrainian democracy.

6. Invest in Ukrainian arts and culture. Promote cultural exchanges between Ukraine and Canada and support organizations that are telling the stories of Ukraine or the Ukrainian diaspora through the arts. 

 Yves Engler

 No more funds for the Ukraine regime…. The Ukraine regime functions as a belligerent in the U.S.-led Western proxy war aimed at exhausting a geopolitical rival. Halting all Canadian support (material, diplomatic, military) reduces the capacity of a conflict that sacrifices lives for NATO objectives.

* * *

What follows, below, with thanks, is an excellent critique by Duncan Chapel, a Scottish supporter of the Fourth International, of the campist leftists opposed to support for Ukraine self-determination and resistance to Russia’s imperialist assault. It was published first on his Red Mole Substack as Part 3 of a series of posts entitled “With Washington and Moscow.” Chapel explains:

“With Washington and Moscow” examines how a section of the international left moved from opposing both Cold War blocs to accommodating the joint US-Russia partition of Ukraine. The series documents the settlement terms, traces the political trajectory of organisations that enabled this outcome, amplifies Ukrainian socialist voices, and argues for an internationalism that sides with the oppressed against all imperialisms.

I link to parts 1 and 2 of his series at the conclusion of this text.

 Richard Fidler

* * *

You Handed Us Over: Ukrainian and Russian 

socialists judge the Western left

For three years, sections of the Western left debated Ukraine. They debated it in conference halls and on Zoom calls, in editorial meetings and on podcast circuits. They debated whether it was a proxy war or a real one, whether arms prolonged the slaughter or shortened it, whether NATO expansion provoked the invasion or merely preceded it. They debated with enormous confidence. They debated with almost no reference to what Ukrainians themselves were saying.

That era is finished. The Trump-Putin settlement documented in Parts 1 and 2 of this series has delivered the outcome the “anti-war” left demanded: negotiations, territorial concessions, the rehabilitation of Russian aggression as a fait accompli. And the people who were handed over in the process have something to say about it.

This instalment inverts the usual dynamic. It is not another Western commentary on Ukraine. It is the verdict of Ukrainian and Russian socialists on a Western left that claimed to speak in their name while functionally abandoning them to partition between empires. These are not victims pleading for sympathy. They are political actors, organisers and theorists fighting a war on two fronts simultaneously, and their judgement is devastating.

The second front

The first thing the Western “proxy war” left never understood, or never wanted to understand, is that Ukrainian socialists are not Zelensky cheerleaders. They never were. From the earliest weeks of the invasion, organisations like Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement) articulated what they call the “two-front” struggle: against Russian military aggression and against the Zelensky government’s wartime assault on workers’ rights. This distinction matters enormously, because it demolishes the campist alibi. You cannot claim to reject “both sides” when the people you’re refusing to support are already fighting both sides.

The second front is real and it is vicious. In July 2022, while Ukrainian soldiers held the line east of Kharkiv, the Verkhovna Rada passed Law 5371. The legislation introduced “contractual labour relations” for enterprises with fewer than 250 employees, effectively gutting the Labour Code for roughly 70 per cent of the Ukrainian workforce. Employers can now bypass collective agreements entirely, negotiating individual contracts that strip standard protections. The Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine condemned it. The ITUC and ETUC characterised it as a “persistent attack on trade unions, motivated by oligarchs behind the ruling party.” A Ukrainian soldier’s social media post, circulated by Sotsialnyi Rukh, captured the fury: while miners, metallurgists, teachers and doctors defend Ukraine’s freedom at the front, “fattened rear rats in the Verkhovna Rada are stabbing us in the back.”

It gets worse. The proposed 2024-2025 Draft Labour Code aims to institutionalise wartime restrictions as permanent features of the economy. Vitalii Dudin, Sotsialnyi Rukh’s leader, calls it “the greatest attack on workers’ rights” in the country’s history. Since the full-scale invasion began, 2,747 workers have been injured and 677 killed on the job; many have not received state-promised compensation. Trade union organisers have been conscripted. Union properties used to shelter thousands of internal refugees face seizure. Organising a protest under martial law, Dudin reports, is “much more emotionally taxing” when activists must prove their right to stand on the street.

Then there is the debt trap. Ukraine’s public debt has exploded from 51 per cent of GDP before the invasion to over 104 per cent by late 2025. The IMF’s $15.6 billion Extended Fund Facility comes wrapped in 325 conditionalities: privatisation of state enterprises, pension cuts, further “flexibilisation” of the labour market. The 2024 privatisation of the United Mining and Chemical Company, a strategic titanium producer, was sold at barely above the starting bid to a single auction participant. Socialist critics call it “accumulation by dispossession” dressed up as modernisation. The US-Ukraine minerals deal grants American capital 50 per cent revenue sharing and first refusal rights over Ukrainian lithium and titanium reserves. Dudin describes this bluntly as “the desire of US capital for unrestricted access to Ukrainian mineral resources.”

And the conscription crisis exposes a class dimension the government would rather conceal. Proposals for “economic reservation,” allowing businesses to exempt employees from military service for a substantial fee, mean in practice that the wealthy buy their way out while the popular classes fight. Sotsialnyi Rukh frames this correctly: it is a “war for the poor.” Families of soldiers who have been fighting since February 2022 without rotation have protested in over eleven cities.

This is the reality the campist left could never accommodate. Ukrainian socialists demand weapons to fight Russia and they demand the repeal of Law 5371. They want arms for self-defence and they want debt cancellation. They fight the invasion and they fight the IMF. No comfortable “both sides” formula can contain this. It requires something the Stop the War Coalition and the DSA International Committee have never been willing to offer: solidarity with a struggle that refuses to fit their pre-existing geopolitical categories.

The verdict

Ukrainian socialists have not been shy about naming names. Their critique of the Western left is specific, sourced, and furious.

Denys Pilash, political scientist and Sotsialnyi Rukh member, has been the sharpest voice. In his March 2025 interview with Federico Fuentes for Links, Pilash characterised the Trump-Zelensky meeting as an attempt to “humiliate not just Zelensky but Ukraine and its people,” with Trump and Vance acting as “bullies taking the side of another bully.” But Pilash reserves his most pointed criticism for the Western progressives who support such a deal out of a desire to end the slaughter. This thinking, he argues, represents a “clear break with leftist politics,” substituting class analysis with “cynical realpolitik.”

Then Pilash asks the question that silences the room: “If this is a proxy war, on whose behalf is Ukraine now waging it? The US is clearly not on Ukraine’s side; it is converging with Russia.” The “proxy war” framework didn’t just misread the conflict. It became obsolete the moment Washington and Moscow sat down together to carve up Ukraine between them. And the organisations that spent three years deploying that framework had no analytical tools left to understand what was happening.

Pilash connects Ukraine’s partition to a broader “global axis of extreme reaction” led by Trump, Putin and Netanyahu, defined by a “chauvinistic, exclusionary vision” that seeks to dismantle the social gains of the twentieth century. If the left is “OK” with this axis’s plans for Ukraine, he argues, they are implicitly endorsing similar plans for the Palestinian people, since both involve “imperialist powers unilaterally deciding the fate of smaller nations.” The selectivity of campist anti-imperialism, which claims to support Palestine while abandoning Ukraine, collapses under this analysis.

Taras Bilous, editor of Commons and a soldier in the Territorial Defence Forces, set the terms of this debate as early as February 2022 with his “Letter to the Western Left from Kyiv,” published in Dissent. By 2025, his frustration had deepened into something closer to contempt. Writing in Jacobin in November, Bilous observed that “Western promises of helping Ukraine fight until final victory increasingly ring hollow,” while much of the international left had retreated into “pacifist formulas” that blamed NATO and the “neo-Nazi oligarchic regime in Kyiv.” He and his colleagues at Commons frame the Trump-Putin negotiations as nothing less than a “partition of Ukraine over the heads of Ukrainians.”

Bilous’s position is grounded in something the Western left often forgets: physical reality. “If we didn’t join the armed forces,” he told International Viewpoint, “the left in Ukraine would cease to exist.” This is not theoretical. Russian occupation means the liquidation of independent trade unions, socialist organisations, feminist groups, and every democratic space that Ukrainian workers have built since independence. When the SWP or the Morning Star call for a “negotiated peace,” they are calling for the physical destruction of the very movements they claim to stand alongside.

Hanna Perekhoda, academic and activist, has contributed the theoretical architecture for understanding why the Western left got it wrong. She identifies “Westsplaining” as a form of intellectual colonialism, an “epistemic injustice” that silences those directly affected by Russian aggression. Abstract pacifism, she argues, leads to “irresponsible solutions in practice.” Perekhoda directly addresses the DSA and other Western organisations: “Those who imagined ‘NATO aggression in Ukraine,’ and who could not see Russian aggression, only opposed Western interference, while ignoring, or even supporting, the engagement of Russia.”

And Oleksandr Kyselov, writing the most significant Ukrainian socialist document of 2025 in International Viewpoint, provides the strategic framework for what comes next. His concept of the “least unjust peace” acknowledges the unbearable military reality while refusing to surrender socialist principles. Kyselov directs particular criticism at the Left Group in the European Parliament, which with few exceptions abstained or voted against peace resolutions for Ukraine in late 2025, preferring to “denounce militarism” while an imperialist aggressor continued its assault. The Western left, he argues, focused on “blaming Europe for sabotaging diplomatic efforts” rather than recognising the existential threat posed by what he correctly identifies as the Kremlin’s “neo-fascist regime.”

Voices from the other side of the wire

The Russian anti-war left occupies a position that makes the campist “both sides” posture look not merely wrong but obscene. These are people who face years in prison for saying what Andrew Murray and Lindsey German are free to refuse to say from the comfort of London platforms. And the repression is not abstract. It is statistical, systematic, and escalating.

Consider the numbers. In 2021, the last pre-war year, approximately 40 per cent of convictions in politically motivated cases resulted in imprisonment. By the first half of 2025, that figure had surged to 67 per cent. The average sentence in political cases rose from six years to eight. OVD-Info reports over 20,000 detentions for anti-war stances. The state has shifted from policing protest to something qualitatively different: the permanent removal of dissenters from society. Sentences for anti-war activity now frequently exceed those for murder. Ruslan Sidiki, convicted of railway sabotage aimed at slowing weapons transport to the front, received twenty-nine years. Not a deterrent. A message.

The Russian Socialist Movement understood this trajectory. Forced to dissolve its formal structures in early 2025 after being designated a “foreign agent,” the RSM issued a landmark statement titled “Against Half-Solidarity and False Pacifism” before its suppression. The RSM condemned Western leftists who claim to oppose “both sides,” arguing that such a position effectively sides with the aggressor by denying the victim the means of self-defence. Their analysis is unequivocal: Putin’s invasion is a “war of colonisation” in which the former colony refuses to remain a colony. “The only way for Russians to end this war,” they argued, “is to convince soldiers to stop fighting.” Their seven strategic demands are worth listing because they represent the precise opposite of what the campist left offered: increased arms transfers to Ukraine, complete Russian withdrawal to 1991 borders, cancellation of Ukraine’s debt, asylum for deserters and dissidents, elite-targeted sanctions, and the abolition of secret diplomacy. Every demand places Russian socialists in direct confrontation with their own state. Every demand was ignored by the Western organisations that claimed to speak for peace.

Ilya Budraitskis, political theorist and key figure in the Russian anti-war left now writing from exile, has provided an influential anatomy of the division within Russian socialism. He distinguishes between “socialism from above,” the top-down statist politics of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation that has enthusiastically backed the invasion, and “socialism from below,” which views emancipation as the self-activity of the masses. Budraitskis has directly challenged what he calls “American exceptionalism” on the left: the view that “anything the US does is bad” is simply too crude to grasp a reality in which “what we are actually seeing is Russian imperialism.” He describes the campist position as the “anti-imperialism of idiots”: a framework that ignores the agency of Eastern European peoples and the specific historical context of Russian expansionism.

The Feminist Anti-War Resistance represents something genuinely new. Founded on 25 February 2022, one day after the invasion, FAS rejected the hierarchical leadership models that the Russian state has historically been able to decapitate. Instead it operates as a horizontal, cell-based network, uniting over 45 separate feminist groups across Russia and abroad by late 2022. Decisions are made through collective voting. There is no central leader to arrest. This is not a design choice born of ideology alone; it is a survival strategy.

FAS’s tactical innovation deserves attention because it demonstrates what resistance looks like when every legal avenue has been closed. Their campaigns are designed around what they call “depersonalised and decentralised resistance.” Activists write anti-war slogans on banknotes that pass through thousands of hands and cannot be traced. The “Women in Black” campaign encourages women to wear mourning clothes in public spaces as a sign of grief for the war: try criminalising that. Zhenskaya Pravda (Women’s Truth), their samizdat newspaper, mimics the aesthetic of free neighbourhood tabloids to avoid suspicion while carrying radical anti-war content. These are the tactics of people who have absorbed the lesson that visible protest means prison and have adapted accordingly.

The ideological confrontation with the Western left came to a head early. In 2022, 151 international feminists signed a manifesto titled “Feminist Resistance Against War,” calling for “militaristic de-escalation” and an end to arms transfers. FAS and their Ukrainian counterparts rejected this immediately, viewing it as a demand for Ukrainian surrender. They signed a counter-manifesto: “The Right to Resist.” The title alone is a rebuke. It insists on the legitimacy of armed self-defence for the oppressed, and it was signed by people who face arrest for saying so.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure of exile has become its own form of resistance. “The Ark” (Kovcheg), founded by human rights lawyer Anastasia Burakova, is the largest initiative supporting Russians who left because of their anti-war stance. The project serves half a million people. It maintains 52 beds in hubs across Yerevan and Warsaw for activists who arrive with nothing. It has processed over 120,000 legal requests. It has provided psychological counselling to 5,000 emigrants dealing with the trauma of displacement. And it operates under the constant shadow of transnational repression: in countries with visa-free regimes like Georgia and Armenia, the risk of kidnapping or extrajudicial pressure remains real. The FSB uses informer networks to track high-profile activists. It uses the families of exiles inside Russia as hostages. Safety is relative. Exile is not freedom.

And then there is the radical underground. The “Stop the Wagons” movement has sabotaged railway lines in Russia and Belarus to slow the transport of ammunition to the front. The “Solidarity Zone” project, founded in 2022, provides legal and financial aid to those who have engaged in direct action against military infrastructure, currently supporting over 40 individuals. Unlike traditional human rights organisations that defend only “peaceful” protesters, Solidarity Zone recognises that when peaceful picketers face eight years in prison, the boundary between legal and illegal resistance becomes a luxury imposed by those who face no consequences for their inaction.

The moral asymmetry could not be starker. Russian anti-war socialists risk sentences that exceed those for murder. The “Foreign Agent” law, expanded in 2022 and tightened further in 2025, criminalises public activity that challenges the state, blocks designated individuals from accessing their earnings, and bans them from political office, university teaching, or working with young people. Russians are now prohibited from searching for “extremist” content online. The censorship agency Roskomnadzor has begun restricting VoIP calls on Telegram and WhatsApp. This is what Oleg Orlov of Memorial described in his closing statement: “It’s not just public criticism that’s banned, but any independent thought. There is no more private life.”

Western campists risk Twitter criticism. When Stop the War’s Andrew Murray refuses to demand Russian withdrawal from a London conference stage, he exercises a freedom that Russian socialists have been imprisoned for attempting to exercise. The least he could do is use that freedom honestly.

What solidarity actually requires

Ukrainian and Russian socialists have not merely criticised the Western left. They have articulated, with considerable precision, what genuine solidarity would look like. The Brussels 2025 Declaration, launched by activists from over twenty countries, provides the framework:

Unconditional debt cancellation. Not restructuring, not extended grace periods, not concessional lending: cancellation. Ukraine’s sovereign debt, now exceeding 100 per cent of GDP, must be written off entirely. As Dudin puts it, “the debt yoke should go in the dustbin of history, together with the army of Russian invaders.” Anything less condemns a generation of Ukrainian workers to paying for their own defence while Western creditors extract interest.

Arms for self-defence with democratic accountability. Ukrainian socialists demand weapons because military force must be met with military force until the invasion is defeated. This is not a demand for blank cheques to the Zelensky government. It is a demand rooted in the same principle that led socialists to support arms for Republican Spain: the right of a people to resist fascist conquest.

Opposition to IMF and EU structural adjustment. The 325 conditionalities attached to international lending must be challenged by Western trade unions and left parties. The repeal of Law 5371 and the withdrawal of the Draft Labour Code should be non-negotiable conditions of any solidarity worthy of the name.

Confiscation of frozen Russian state and oligarch assets for reconstruction under democratic control. Not channelled through BlackRock-designed investment vehicles. Not filtered through G7 coordination platforms that bypass Ukrainian civil society. Transferred directly for social reconstruction managed through democratic institutions and workers’ councils.

Sanctuary and material support for Russian anti-war exiles. The networks established in Tbilisi, Vilnius and Yerevan need funding. Conscientious objectors need protection. Political prisoners need advocacy. The Russian anti-war movement is not an abstraction; it is specific people in specific cities who need specific material help.

Support for Ukrainian labour movements against wartime attacks on workers’ rights. Direct solidarity with the Federation of Trade Unions, the Confederation of Free Trade Unions, feminist organisations like Bilkis and the Feminist Workshop, and the “Be Like Nina” health workers’ union. Solidarity from below, not government-to-government transactions.

None of this appeared in any Stop the War resolution. None of it featured in any DSA International Committee position paper. None of it was discussed on any CODEPINK webinar. The organisations that claimed to stand for peace had nothing to say about the class content of the peace they were demanding.

The accusation stands

The title of this article is not metaphorical. “You handed us over” is a factual description of what happened. The Western “anti-war” left spent three years opposing arms, demanding negotiations, and insisting that Ukraine’s resistance was merely a NATO proxy operation. The Trump-Putin settlement delivers precisely that programme: territorial concessions, demilitarisation, economic exploitation by both imperial powers, and the rehabilitation of annexation as an acceptable instrument of statecraft.

The campist left did not cause this outcome. It is not that powerful. But it provided ideological cover for it. It normalised the frameworks that made partition thinkable. It told a generation of Western activists that Ukrainian self-determination was less important than opposing NATO, that resisting Russian colonisation was secondary to resisting Western arms shipments, that the people being bombed were somehow less worthy of solidarity than the geopolitical abstractions being debated.

Ukrainian socialists fighting on two fronts, against Russian bombs and IMF conditionalities simultaneously, deserved better from the international left. Russian anti-war socialists facing prison and exile for opposing their own government’s imperialism deserved better. They got Stop the War press releases and DSA abstentions.

Part 4 of this series will examine the theoretical bankruptcy that produced this outcome: the analytical error that led organisations claiming the legacy of revolutionary internationalism to confuse Serbia 1914 with Ireland 1916. But the theoretical analysis matters only because of what it cost in practice. And the people who paid that cost have now delivered their verdict.

It is not a forgiving one. Nor should it be.

* * *

Part I – The Robbers’ Peace in Ukraine, https://redmole.substack.com/p/the-robbers-peace

The concrete terms of the Trump-Putin settlement reveal what three years of ‘anti-war’ posturing has actually enabled: the territorial dismemberment of Ukraine, the extraction of its mineral wealth, and the rehabilitation of a war criminal. No theory required. The facts condemn themselves.

Part II - How a Section of the Left Accommodated the Partition of Ukraine, https://redmole.substack.com/p/how-a-section-of-the-left-accommodated

The robber’s peace documented in Part 1 did not emerge from a vacuum. For three years, a section of the international left demanded precisely what Trump and Putin delivered: an end to Western arms supplies, immediate negotiations regardless of terms, and the acceptance of territorial realities on the ground. Now that those “realities” have crystallised into the formal partition of Ukraine, the architects of this advocacy deserve scrutiny.

Quebec's 'Parti pris' and the question of revolutionary organization

 Introduction

By Richard Fidler

I first became interested in the Quebec left when I emigrated from Toronto to Montréal in 1963 in order to continue my university education. My arrival in the metropolis of Quebec culture and politics coincided with the appearance of a new publication, Parti pris, a monthly magazine published by young supporters of independence, socialism and laïceté – a philosophy reflected in the substitution of secular state control over education and social services which until then had been monopolized by the Catholic church.

Parti pris was to play a major role in the debates that swept Quebec during the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s. A dominant theme of its collective authors, the partipristes, was the search for ways in build a revolutionary organization in alliance with the rising and radicalizing labour and nationalist movements.

As members of the Ligue socialiste ouvrière (LSO), a revolutionary Marxist organization I helped to found in 1964, we participated in the debates and initial attempts by the Parti pris team to build what came to be called the Mouvement de libération populaire (MLP).

Recent years have seen the publication in Quebec of books on the history of the left, with particular emphasis on the post-1960s. I recommend, for example, the Brève Histoire de la Gauche Politique au Québec, by François Saillant (écosociété, 2020). However, it says very little about Parti pris and its evolution. Another recent book, Un Pays en Commun: Socialisme et indépendance au Québec, by Eric Martin (écosociété, 2017), includes a brief chapter on Parti pris in its exploration of the dialectic of socialism and independentism in the history of the Quebec left.

The current issue of the journal Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme, however, includes what I think is the first attempt to recount the history of Parti pris and its debates over revolutionary organization for contemporary readers. Published below is my translation, with the original notes supplemented by a few of my own (asterisked).

There is now an ample and growing repertoire online of Quebec publications of the Left, a valuable resource for scholars and activists. And a complete collection of issues of Parti pris is available here: https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/resultats.

 ***

The journal Parti pris and the question of revolutionary organization

By Alexis Lafleur-Payment*

*Doctoral candidate in political philosophy and lecturer at the Université de Montréal, member of the Archives révolutionnaires collective

In the early 1960s, Quebec was in a state of flux. The government of Jean Lesage launched a “Quiet Revolution” marked by profound reforms in the health and education sectors, a separation of church and state, the nationalization of hydroelectric power, and the creation of various government corporations. Nevertheless, a segment of the youth remained dissatisfied with these changes, which they considered too moderate. Many called for Quebec independence and radical social policies, the two often being linked. Thus, in March 1963, Pierre Bourgault, a leader of the Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale (RIN), declared: “Independence in itself means nothing. Independence must be accompanied by social revolution.”[1] The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), an organization that advocated armed action, made the same observation in its April 1963 manifesto: “Let us acquire the vital political levers, take control of our economy, radically rehabilitate our social structures; let us tear down the colonialist yoke, let us expel the imperialists who live by exploiting Quebec workers. […] Only a total revolution can have the necessary power to effect the vital changes that will be required in an independent Quebec.”[2]

Despite these declarations and the growing activism, there was little theoretical space in which to reflect on the condition of Quebec and a strategy for reinventing it. To address this need, a group of young writers, many of whom were still students, created the journal Parti pris in the fall of 1963. Their objective was both analytical and political, as they stated: “For us, analysis, reflection, and discourse are only one aspect of action: we aim to describe our society only in order to transform it.”[3] The journal gave significant space to literature, which it saw as a battleground for fighting alienation, asserting itself as a people, and formulating an emancipatory project. This project was built around the concepts of socialism, independence, and secularism. Furthermore, the journal focused on past and present social conflicts, as well as on the political organizations that could bring about revolution in Quebec. Thus, under the leadership of Jean-Marc Piotte, the team co-founded the Mouvement de libération populaire (MLP, 1965-1966), then joined the Parti socialiste du Québec (PSQ) in the spring of 1966. These initiatives were short-lived and their failure contributed to the decline of the journal, which disappeared in the summer of 1968. Yet, these experiences were important for the left and remain rich in lessons, as we wish to show in the following pages.

The first political analyses

From its inception, the journal Parti pris made a stark observation: Quebec was in a state of political, economic, and cultural alienation. The authors emphasized that Ottawa held sovereign power, that American capital dominated Quebec industries, and that Francophone culture was being reduced to folklore. However, these problems were destined to disappear, they argued, citing the growing acts of popular revolt. In this context, the journal’s team envisioned the creation of an independent and socialist Quebec, capable of resisting American imperialism and guaranteeing the flourishing of Francophone culture. It asserted that its contribution to this project would be twofold: to dismantle the dominant bourgeois ideology and to express “the revolution becoming aware of itself as it unfolds.”[4] Initially, the journal had no specific organizational ambitions, although it hoped for a convergence of existing revolutionary groups. By using the metaphor of childhood to characterize Quebec’s level of development, the partipristes called for Quebec’s maturation and self-reliance, which first requires an adult consciousness capable of stating its goals before implementing them. To achieve this, it was necessary to shed the stifling weight of clerical ideology, as well as the idealism that subsumes social classes to create the illusion of equal opportunity. Pierre Maheu, the driving force behind the journal, explained: “To be able to invent our positivity and our nature as a father, we first had to embrace our nature as a son, our strength of negation and revolt.”[5]

During its first year, the journal adopted an ambiguous position regarding left-wing political parties, which it deemed insufficiently radical, while also judging the FLQ to be lacking in popular support. It maintained a primarily critical stance, although the importance of cultural issues was gradually complemented by a reflection on active political movements. For example, the journal’s sixth issue, in March 1964, was devoted to Quebec socialism. After denouncing capitalist exploitation and Quebec’s colonial status, most authors agreed that the situation was now revolutionary, as confirmed by social movements and their repression. The journal was circumspect about electoral politics but anticipated an exacerbation of social tensions, as well as a rising increase in direct action. In this regard, the oscillation between description and prescription is palpable. By comparing the province’s situation to that of various colonized nations, the Parti pris team envisaged the need to resort to violence to emancipate the Quebec people, as in Algeria or Cuba. Paul Chamberland, a member of the editorial board, summarized: “The national liberation struggle requires, for its complete realization, the expulsion of the national bourgeoisie. It is only truly comprehensive […] if it becomes the struggle of the people themselves, determined to destroy all the forms of servitude that bind them.”[6]

The 1964-1965 Manifesto outlined the journal’s program, coinciding with the establishment of the Club Parti pris, intended to serve as its organizational arm. The editors distinguished between two fronts of struggle: the fight for independence and the fight for socialism. They believed that achieving sovereignty was a necessary condition for a social revolution in Quebec. The Quebec national bourgeoisie and the revolutionaries thus shared certain common interests until independence is achieved, after which an unconditional struggle will pit them against each other. This step-by- step approach broke with some of the journal’s previous discourse and drew criticism from other radical publications, such as Révolution québécoise (1964-1965).[7] However, Parti pris asserted that “the real battle” will be the social revolution, which must be organized immediately. To this end, the journal proposed three tasks that would contribute to the emergence of a revolutionary party: research, popular education, and the creation of political structures. Research would focus on the situation in Quebec and revolutionary movements worldwide. Education would center on developing class consciousness, while also fostering closer ties between intellectuals and workers. Finally, the creation of political structures would include establishing cells and training activists to assume roles within the future party.

In concrete terms, during the 1964-1965 academic year, the journal continued its publication, which included research articles and more didactic pieces, offered courses at its new premises (located at 2135 rue Bellechasse in Montréal), ran a publishing house, and launched the Club Parti pris. The latter oversaw think tanks scattered across several cities, which also engaged in political action and represented, in a way, the skeleton of a potentially more formal organization. The partipristes wanted to establish the unity of revolutionaries in practice and, to this end, they wanted to focus on concrete tasks before assuming a more professional character. Pierre Maheu emphasized that it was necessary to “establish only functional structures, that is, to create committees only to accomplish a specific task” and “always to choose realistic objectives, and remember that one is only truly effective within one’s own community.”[8] Kitchen table meetings were organized to maintain connections with broader sectors of society, to learn about the problems of the working classes, and to disseminate progressive thought. In April 1965, the Club served as a stepping stone for the launch of the Mouvement Parti pris,[9] which itself merged with various groups during the summer, leading to the creation of the Mouvement de libération populaire (MLP).

The Mouvement de libération populaire

In the spring of 1965, as the Mouvement de lilbération populaire was launched, discussions began between the journal’s team and other groups regarding coordination, or even a merger. Working meetings brought together, in addition to the members of Parti pris, the journals Révolution québécoise and Socialisme 65, as well as representatives from the Parti socialiste du Québec, the Caucus de gauche, the Group d’action populaire (GAP), and the Ligue socialiste ouvrière (LSO, a Trotskyist group). In the end, it was the members of Parti pris and Révolution québécoise, followed by the GAP and the LSO, who chose to found the Mouvement de libération populaire at the beginning of the summer.[10] Nevertheless, Parti pris’s leadership was undeniable; the magazine’s offices, now located at 3774 rue Saint-Denis, also housed the MLP’s headquarters, and the movement’s manifesto, published in the fall, was co-signed by the MLP and Parti pris, which handled its publication. The dissolution of Révolution québécoise also encouraged its former members to become more actively involved in the MLP. Pierre Vallières became the movement’s first—and only—paid staff member starting in September 1965. [11] Vallières explained: “It is with this perspective of direct action that the Révolution québécoise team joins forces with Parti pris, less to write for the magazine than to act within the movement it has sparked.”[12]

The August-September 1965 issue provided Parti pris and the MLP with the opportunity to present their 1965-1966 Manifesto, the most comprehensive programmatic document published by the periodical. The text begins by recalling that Quebec is subjected to economic, political, and cultural domination by English Canada and the United States; consequently, the Quebec nation must become independent and socialist in order to emancipate itself. The journal also emphasizes the antagonism between Quebec workers and the national bourgeoisie that exploits them to consolidate its position. In fact, the authors believe that unions are better tools in the hands of workers than electoral parties beholden to the interests of the dominant classes. But unionism alone will not suffice: the journal advocates a “national democratic revolution led by the working classes.”[13] The goal is to seize power and transform the system, taking into account Quebec’s specific circumstances, and to establish democratic governance of society, by and for the workers. In the short term, the MLP aims to fight for the protection of Quebec culture and the repatriation of capital to Quebec, for genuine access to education and healthcare, for tax reform, the municipalization of urban land, as well as for wage indexation and the elimination of unemployment. These demands are intended to galvanize the popular movement and lay the groundwork for truly transformative action.

The manifesto goes on to state that Quebec is in a “latent revolutionary situation” due to popular discontent, the radicalization of the left, and a growing political crisis. In this context, the MLP and Quebec progressives must foster increasingly numerous and radical movements to weaken the state and create a situation conducive to the establishment of socialism. “The MLP’s watchword for the coming year is precisely this: organizing the vanguard to create the revolutionary party, the instrument for seizing power.”[14] Drawing inspiration from Lenin, the authors of the manifesto believe that all forms of action (armed, clandestine, open, and parliamentary) can be considered, depending on the circumstances. They also advocate a structured and democratic party composed of professional activists.[15] For the time being, this organization must be built through open struggle, in terms of recruitment, education, and action. This is why the 150 to 200 members of the MLP organize public meetings, courses, solidarity pickets, and demonstrations, mainly in Montréal, Hull, Quebec City, and Chicoutimi. International ties are also developed, as shown by the visit of Cheddi Jagan, the socialist prime minister of British Guiana – overthrown in 1964 – who gave a lecture in Montréal in September 1965 at the invitation of the MLP.[16]

Solidarity with striking workers, for example at the LaGrenade shoe factory and the Port of Montreal was particularly important as it allowed the MLP to connect with militant sectors of the working class. A Centre d’études socialistes was established jointly with the Parti socialiste du Québec, while the MLP launched its own newsletter, Le Militant. Finally, an MLP chapter was formed at the Université de Montréal, bringing together about forty people.[17] On November 2, 1965, MLP members disrupted a Liberal Party of Canada election meeting attended by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.[18] On December 11, they did it again, targeting the induction ceremony of the new rector of the Université de Montréal, Roger Gaudry.[19] Despite this activism, some disagreements arose, notably due to the attraction of former members of Révolution québécoise to the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ). Pierre Vallières made contact with the FLQ and wrote several articles for its magazine, La Cognée. While a full-time member of the MLP, he discreetly canvassed new members to gauge their interest in armed struggle. In the winter of 1965-1966, Vallières and his comrade Charles Gagnon decided to go underground and found their own FLQ network, which was to carry out a series of attacks in the spring of 1966. Although they took a small number of militants with them, their decision to “go into action” shook the MLP, which could then appear insufficiently radical or determined.[20]

At the beginning of 1966, members of the MLP questioned its effectiveness. A former member who had joined the FLQ reflected in retrospect: “Sporadic, often improvised, and usually without follow-up, the MLP’s actions did not seem to bring activists any closer to the day when they would see a broad mobilization unfold among the population.”[21] However, a majority of MLP activists still believed in open action, while some felt it was necessary to engage with the unions in order to connect with the working class, and most of those who favored violent action had joined the FLQ. In this context, Jacques Trudel, the PSQ’s vice-president of propaganda, called on MLP members to participate in the March 1966 congress of the Parti socialiste du Québec with a view to possible unification of the two organizations.[22] In the end, the MLP agreed to disband in favour of the PSQ, hoping to unite the left and make its actions more effective while overcoming its financial problems and difficulties in reaching large segments of the working class. The editorial board of the journal Parti pris, which had retained a key role in the management of the MLP, announced the news in its April 1966 editorial.

The Parti socialiste du Québec

The Parti socialiste du Québec (PSQ) had been founded in Montréal [*] in November 1963, with trade unionist Michel Chartrand as its president. It emerged from a split within the New Democratic Party of Quebec (NPD-Q), which was accused of not recognizing the province’s right to self-determination. The new party included several union leaders, such as Jean-Marie Bédard and Émile Boudreau, as well as Marxist intellectuals like Jacques Dofny and Marcel Rioux. Despite the PSQ’s desire for rapprochement, the Parti pris team thought the organization was too moderate and criticized it for “its opposition to secularism and its hesitation on the national question.”[23] Two articles from March 1964 echoed this sentiment, emphasizing that the PSQ had to adopt uncompromising positions if it wished to play the role of catalyst for the revolutionary left. In its 1965-1966 Manifesto, the journal argued that the PSQ was composed “primarily of intellectuals, the progressive wing of the neo-bourgeoisie, who claim to represent the interests of workers but fail to truly connect with them.”[24] The first rapprochement between Parti pris and the PSQ occurred around the Centre d’études socialistes, which they co-directed in the fall of 1965. In the early months of 1966, several meetings were held to negotiate the journal’s affiliation with the PSQ, and the decision to dissolve the MLP in favor of the PSQ was confirmed at the latter’s congress, held on March 5-6, 1966.

The Parti pris team had re-assessed its view, acknowledging that its initial distrust was excessive and that the PSQ was not merely a club of self-proclaimed intellectuals. The merger was justified by the need to reach a broader segment of the population in order to provide a foundation for a future revolutionary party, and the PSQ was “the only one capable of playing this role of the party of Quebec workers,”[25] particularly due to its trade union connection. Furthermore, the shared desire to participate in the June 1966 provincial elections, less to seize power than to carry out a large-scale propaganda campaign, encouraged the fusion.[26] The assertion of “tendency rights”—that is, the possibility of forming political groups within the party and defending specific positions as long as they did not contradict the program—was also recognized as a way to encourage internal debate. More importantly, the priority given to building closer ties with workers was unanimously agreed, going beyond participation in elections or the organization of high-profile actions to which the MLP was accustomed. Finally, the right to Quebec independence was enshrined in the PSQ platform, a sine qua non for the partipristes. On May 1, 1966, more than 150 members of the unified party, which now numbered around 300, gathered in Montréal to launch their election campaign. Henri Gagnon, a PSQ candidate, declared: “Our socialism will be a truly Québécois flower, cultivated by our own workers.”[27]

The provincial campaign was intended to popularize the idea of socialism and consolidate the PSQ’s activism. It was conducted primarily on an ideological basis, while grassroots activities were concentrated in the five ridings where the PSQ fielded candidates (four in Montreal and one in Saguenay). These activities included organizing meetings, putting up posters, distributing leaflets, and canvassing door-to-door. On June 5, 1966, the PSQ candidates garnered a total of 1,267 votes, well below the expectations of party members.[28] The Parti pris team and, to a lesser extent, the PSQ leadership were shaken. Despite their lack of electoral experience, expectations had been high, and the significantly better results achieved by the RIN (which fielded 73 candidates and obtained over 129,000 votes) left a bitter taste. For the time being, the Parti pris team went silent, publishing no issues from June to August, while its September issue finally appeared late, on October 10. During the same period, several members of the journal distanced themselves from political activity, including Jean-Marc Piotte and Paul Chamberland, who decided to move to Paris to pursue doctoral studies. The departure of Piotte, the group’s main political organizer and vice-president of the PSQ since the March 1966 fusion, confirmed the growing disconnect between the journal and activism.

In their first editorial following the June 1966 election, the team confirmed: “Parti pris is now nothing more than a journal: in black and white, a theoretical tool at the service of those who identify with each other in the struggle for the advent of an independent, secular, and socialist Quebec.”[29] The publication justified its withdrawal from political action by emphasizing its diminished resources and stating that, if it wished to properly carry out its theoretical work, it had no other choice but to dedicate itself to it full-time. It specified that it would no longer issue practical directives and that it was disaffiliating itself from all political groups, including the PSQ. This choice was explained both by the need for the independence inherent in research and by Parti pris’s “incompetence” in organizational terms. This latter assessment seems to stem as much from self-criticism as from a certain degree of disappointment. While the journal had always sought to connect with the masses and link its reflection to action, in the fall of 1966 it refocused on purely intellectual work, since “the lack of a coherent strategy and effective political action is directly proportional to the absence of rigorous theoretical thinking.”[30] Along the same lines, the journal announced its preference for developing a comprehensive analytical framework rather than focusing on case studies as before.[31]

For its part, the PSQ presented a less negative portrayal of its electoral experience, believing it had succeeded in raising awareness of socialist ideology and consolidating its organization. Nevertheless, the leadership acknowledged that the national question seemed to generate more interest than the social question. In fact, the PSQ’s position, which formally accepted the independence option while focusing its discourse on class struggle, may have been detrimental. The distrust of elections among left-wing forces is another factor that might explain the low vote for the PSQ, especially among young people. Alfred Dubuc, an intellectual close to the PSQ, disputed the importance of electoralism and advocated focusing on the politicization of workers, “which is paramount so that the forces of social progress become the foundation of a left with popular support.”[32] In concrete terms, he called for intervention within the labor unions to move them further to the left. Despite efforts in this direction, the PSQ was unable to recover from the departure of the young and dynamic members of Parti pris, or from its internal divisions. It remained torn over the Quebec national question and the more or less real opposition between participating in elections, popular education work, and activism. In the end, the PSQ disbanded early in 1968. [**]

The final years

After a period of depression, the Parti pris team resumed its intellectual work in the fall of 1966. Although it no longer wished to participate directly in social struggles, it continued its reflection on the state of Quebec and the strategic options available to the left. Like the PSQ, the journal advocated closer ties with the labour movement, impressed by the movement’s politicization, particularly within the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN). Indeed, the moral report of its president, Marcel Pepin, in October 1966, entitled Une société bâtie pour l’homme, presented a genuine socialist shift.[33] At the same time, the partipristes viewed with suspicion those who advocated armed struggle in Quebec, especially after the dismantling of the FLQ network led by Vallières and Gagnon in the fall of 1966. The impasse of this strategy seemed to them to be confirmed by the stagnation of the Latin American guerrilla movements.[34] Finally, the journal’s last years provided an opportunity to emphasize, more than ever, Quebec independence, with the conviction that it was necessary to generate public interest in a comprehensive emancipatory project. The step-by-step approach of Parti pris was reaffirmed: “Socialism cannot be achieved in a Quebec that is not first independent. [...] We no longer have any doubt that independence is a prior necessity for Quebec.”[35]

The journal generally adopted the thesis that Quebec workers constitute an “ethnic class,” that is, a distinct group that suffers both economic exploitation and cultural oppression based on its identity. This thesis breaks with the Marxist approach, which posits that the fundamental contradiction in capitalism pits the bourgeoisie against the workers, despite varying degrees of national oppression. Thus, in addition to its interest in the labour movement, the journal took a more favourable view of the RIN, which uncompromisingly championed the independence project. In February 1967, a major symposium held at the Université de Montréal brought together members of the journal Parti pris and the RIN, leaders of the CSN, and the Communist historian Stanley Ryerson – who was very sensitive to the Quebec national question – and various academics to discuss “Quebec socialism.” In the following months, the journal supported the formation of an inter-union committee to coordinate the actions of the different unions and propose a common strategy. This strategy was intended to aim “towards control of the company, wherever currently possible, through self-management models that, in certain sectors, would foreshadow the face of the future society.”[36]

In the summer of 1967, Parti pris still called for a united left, but without actively participating in such a process. In reality, it increasingly resembled a news magazine, with a particular focus on geopolitics, parliamentary debates, the trade union movement, and cultural issues. Less dedicated to revolutionary organizing than in its early days, the journal even ended up offering its support to René Lévesque’s Mouvement souveraineté-association (MSA), a group that was neither socialist nor pro-independence.[37] This decision shocked many readers who preferred to become involved in more radical movements, notably the Front de libération populaire (FLP, 1968-1970). In this context of waning momentum and a loss of direction, the journal ceased publication permanently in the summer of 1968.[38] However, for five years, Parti pris had played a decisive role for the revolutionary left in Quebec, first by widely disseminating the strategic horizon of “independence and socialism”; then by participating in the consolidation of the radical left and in the formation of an entire generation of activists; finally, by working towards the politicization of the trade union movement.

Indeed, the experience of Parti pris and its relationship to revolutionary organization influenced the left in the 1970s, while also presenting certain ideas that can still resonate with us today. The partipristes were quick to understood that their theoretical reflections would gain in accuracy if tested in practice, which is why they chose to become involved in active politics. Avoiding the pitfall of adventurism, they attempted to build a structured political movement capable of influencing workers. The MLP, without achieving its ambitious goals, succeeded in establishing links with various groups of strikers and gaining a foothold in the taxi sector. Its merger with the PSQ in March 1966 was a wise decision to deepen its ties with the labour movement. Unfortunately, it seems that the Parti pris team, like the rest of the PSQ, placed too many hopes on the June 1966 election, leading to predictable disappointment and disaffection within their ranks. Subsequently, the team recognized the value of working within the unions, which bring together and organize large sectors of the working class. They worked to politicize the union movement and to coordinate among the various federations. The importance for revolutionaries of intervening directly in workplaces and within unions remained the best path opened by the journal Parti pris, taken up by Marxist-Leninists in the 1970s, and continues to prove relevant.

 [1]  Cited in Louis Fournier, FLQ. Histoire d’un mouvement clandestin, Montréal, VLB éditeur, 2020, p. 30.

[2] “Message du FLQ à la nation,” April 16, 1963, in Robert Comeau, Daniel Cooper and Pierre Vallières (eds.), FLQ: un projet révolutionnaire. Lettres et écrits felquistes (1963-1982), Montréal, VLB éditeur, 1990, pp. 16-17.

[3] “Présentation,” Parti pris, no. 1, octobre 1963, p. 2.

[4] Ibid., p. 4.

[5] Pierre Maheu, “De la révolte à la revolution,” Parti pris, n^o 1, octobre 1963, p. 14.

[6] Paul Chamberland, De la damnation à la liberté”, Parti pris, n^os 9-10-11, été 1964, p. 86-87.

[7] See for example Jean Rochefort, “Aux camarades de Parti pris,” Révolution québécoise n^o 3, novembre 1964, pp. 12-16.

[8] Pierre Maheu, “Perspectives d’action,” Parti pris, vol. 2, n^o 3, novembre 1964, p. 15.

[9] The executive committee of the Mouvement Parti pris included Jean-Marc Piotte, general secretary, as well as Léandre Bergeron, Mario Dumais, Andrée Ferretti and Ludger Mercier. See Parti pris, vol. 2, no. 8, avril 1965, p. 46.

[10] Despite their involvement in the MLP, the journal Parti pris and the Ligue socialiste ouvrière chose to maintain their own existence until their respective dissolution in 1968 and 1977. [***] See Jean-Philippe Warren, “Revue, club, mouvement, parti, cercle. L’histoire du Mouvement de libération populaire,” in Gilles Dupuis, Karim Larose, Frédéric Rondeau, and Robert Schwartzwald (eds.), Avec ou sans Parti pris. Le legs d’une revue, Montréal, Nota Bene, 2018, pp. 296–297.

[11] Daniel Samson-Legault, Dissident. Pierre Vallières (1938-1998). Au-delà de Nègres blancs d’Amérique, Montréal, Québec Amérique, 2018, pp. 115-117.

[12] Pierre Vallières, “Pour l’union de la gauche,” Parti pris, vol. 2, n^os 10-11, juin-juillet 1965, p. 103.

[13] “Manifeste 1965-1966,” Parti pris, vol. 3, n^os 1-2, août-septembre 1965, p. 23.

[14] Ibid., p. 34.

[15] These are the principles of democratic centralism. In this regard, see Vladimir Lenin, “Freedom to Criticise and Unity of Action,” May 1906, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/may/20c.htm.

[16] “La Guyane britannique: une autre victime du colonialism,” Parti pris, vol. 3, n^os 3-4, octobre-novembre 1965, pp. 77-79.

[17] Guy Kosak, “La section universitaire du MLP,” Parti pris, vol. 3, n^o 6, janvier 1966, pp. 44-46.

[18] Réal Pelletier, “Le film des manifestations,” Le Devoir, 3 novembre 1965, pp. 1-2.

[19] “La manifestation des protestataires dégénère en bagarre,” Le Devoir, 13 décembre 1965, p. 3.

[20] On the Vallières-Gagnon network, see Fournier, FLQ, 2020, op. cit., pp. 83-101.

[21] Marcel Faulkner, FLQ. Histoire d’un engagement, Montréal, Fides, 2020, p. 76.

[22] Jacques Trudel, “Le PSQ et l’unité de la gauche,” Parti pris, vol. 3, n^o 7, février 1966, p. 52-55.

[23]Jean-Marc Piotte, “Parti pris, le RIN et la revolution,” Parti pris, n^o 3, décembre 1963, p. 4.

[24] “Manifeste 1965-1966,” Parti pris, vol. 3, n^os 1-2, août-septembre 1965, p. 19.

[25] Pierre Maheu, “Pour un parti des travailleurs québécois,” Parti pris, vol. 3, n^o 9, avril 1966, p. 4.

[26] The electoral prospect was all the more attractive as the New Democratic Party (NDP) obtained 12% of the votes in Quebec during the federal elections of November 1965, a score considered promising by left-wing activists.

[27] Guy Ferland, “Notre socialisme sera une fleur bien Québécoise,” Le Devoir, 2 mai 1966, p. 2.

[28] Roch Denis, Luttes de classes et question nationale au Québec (1948-1968), Montréal, Presses socialistes internationales, 1979, p. 496.

[29] Paul Chamberland, “Exigences théoriques d’un combat politique,” Parti pris, vol. 4, n^o 1, septembre-octobre 1966, p. 4.

[30] Ibid., p. 7.

[31] This theoretical refocusing is explicitly based on Louis Althusser, Pour Marx, Paris, Maspero, 1965.

[32] Alfred Dubuc, “Le vote du 5 juin: une revendication sociale,” Socialisme 66, n^os 9-10, octobre-décembre 1966, p. 18.

[33] Marcel Pepin, “Une société bâtie pour l’homme,” octobre 1966, dans Le nécessaire combat syndical, Montréal, ACFAS, 1987, pp. 15-57.

[34] Gabriel Gagnon, “Les leçons de l’Amérique latine,” Parti pris, vol. 4, n^os 3-4, novembre-décembre 1966, pp. 103-107. The author, despite his name, was unrelated to the FLQ member Charles Gagnon.

[35] “L’indépendance au plus vite!,” Parti pris, vol. 4, n^os 5-6, janvier-février 1967, pp. 2-3.

[36] Gabriel Gagnon, “Les voies de l’autogestion,” Parti pris, vol. 4, n^os 7-8, mars-avril 1967, p. 71.

[37] “Parti pris, le RIN et le MSA,” Parti pris, vol. 5, n^o 7, avril 1968, p. 6.

[38] The publishing house Parti pris, for its part, continued its activities until 1984.

 [*] The PSQ was in fact founded in Quebec City at a conference I attended and reported in the pages of the Workers Vanguard, a Toronto monthly newspaper published by the League for Socialist Action. For more on PSQ president Michel Chartrand, see https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2010/04/remembering-michel-chartrand.html.

 [**] In an article published in 2016, Pierre Beaudet described the sad ending to the PSQ experience:

“After the heart-breaking election of 1966, there was no longer any determination to continue. Discussions were held with the Quebec branch of the federal NDP and its president, Robert Cliche, with a view to at least help each other out, but the circumstances were not conducive to anything but fine words. In early 1967, the party leadership tried to convene a congress to reform the structures, but a scant few dozen persons showed up. They were unable to resolve the prickly problem of finances, which reflected the lack of attraction of the party. By the end of the year, it had only 58 members. When its dissolution was announced in 1968, the same cleavages in the socialist family were still there: between nationalists and federalists, between independentist nationalists and those who still hoped to refound Canada, and in a form that was likewise a generational fracture between ‘moderates’ and ‘radicals’.” https://www.cahiersdusocialisme.org/le-parti-socialiste-du-quebec-et-la-question-nationale/. Cited in François Saillant, op. cit.

[***] In 1977 the LSO merged with the Groupe marxiste révolutionnaire, the League for Socialist Action and Revolutionary Marxist Group, to form the Ligue ouvrière révolutionnaire/Revolutionary Workers League. The LOR/RWL declined and disappeared in the 1980s.

A general comment:  Readers may have noted that the very important issue of feminism was not at the time one of the fundamental themes of Parti pris. As Jacques Pelletier notes, with the exception of Andrée Ferretti and Thérèse Dumouchel, women were “busy with managerial and secretarial tasks [and] were almost absent from the editorial staff.” Pelletier reports that only 20 articles out of 600 were written by women, and “none was specifically addressed to the issue of women’s oppression. It must be acknowledged of course that at the time militant feminism based on the critique of the patriarchy, hardly existed. […] It was at the very end of the 1960s, after the disappearance of Parti pris, that radical feminism, coming from the United States, took root and became a major movement that could no longer be ignored.”  Jacques Pelletier, Parti pris, Une anthologie (Montréal, Lux, 2013). Cited in Eric Martin, op. cit., p. 246.