.. e' · ------------------·-------I I I BY LESLIE MORRIS : Sc I I • ' \ Leslie Morris is the national leader of the Communist Party. InformatJion and literature about the P!lrty can be ob­ tained by writing: Communist Party, 24 Ceoil Street, Toronto 2B, Ont. PUBLISHED FOR THE COMMUNIST PARTY BY PROGRESS BOOKS, 44 STAFFORD ST., TORONTO 3, ONT. SEPTEMBER, 1962. Bundle rates on application. - The federal election of June 18 left the country in a political stalemate. No problems were solved. The situation 1has become ev·en wo,rse. The Tory government in effect was rejected by the people. The· Liberals w·ere not given a mandate to govern. The Social ·Credit Party gained 30 seats on a vague program of promises which it cannot carry out. The New Democratic Party elected 19 M.P.'s but failed to live up to its oppo·rtunity as the new party of the workers and farmers. * This ·pamphlet offers ·the ·Communist Party's point of view and suggests a progressive way out of the stalemate. The S·hameful Re·co·rd of ltihe Tories and Liberals The tawdry record·s of the Tories and Lib·erals since the end of the war in 1945 can be summarized as fallows: , -T·he promise of lasting peac·e has ·been broken. Instead of peace, Tories ·and Lib·erals have br9ught our country to the brink of thermonuclear war, sadd1led us with the costly arms race, and made Canada an ·expendable satellite of the U.S. military. -They have pushed the cost of living to th~ highest level in Canadian history. -They have created a permanent army of half a million unemployed. • 3 -Th·ey have lost old foreign markets, rejected new ones, and put almost all of our market eggs in Uncle Sam's ·basket. -T1he To,ries, with the Liberals backing them, have fastened an ''austerity ·progriam'' on Canadian work­ ers and farmers, chea,pened our dollar and are driving living standards down. -Since the end of the war, our economy in­ creasingly is ·b·eing placed in the hands of U.S. investor·s. We are no longer masters in our own hous·e. In short, Canada is in deep crisis: in foreign affairs, in economic matters, in respect to our sovereign independe·nce. We can no longer call our soul o·ur own. ' The Issue Is Survival During the summer election campaign the Com­ munist candidates campaigned under the slogan: ''The Issue Is S,urvival. Put Cana,da First!'' What do we mean by that? We mean that the ·supreme question ·before Cana­ dians, and before all humanity, is whether we can before• it is too late save ourselves from the H-Bomb . Unless we have .disarmament, we shall Perish. - We mean that the very existence of ·Canada- 4 French Canada and English Canada together is at stake. Shall we maintain our identity as a country, 01· shall we be swallowed. u·p com·pletely by the U.S.A.? We mean that the economic lives of our people are a.t stake: shall we take steps to make the economy work for th·e 1people, or shall we be at the mercy of µnemployment, the loss of foreign markets to the European ·Common Market, automation and the re­ placement of men by machines and higher and higher ~ taxes and living costs? - Canadians must face u·p to these realities, and shed their iillusions. New national policies at home, new policies of making p·eace in the world, to take us out of this m·ess and to put the interests of ·Canada first before those of the U.S.A., and the needs of our workers and farmers ahead o·f the monopolistic ,profiteers-this is what facing up to realities demands of us. ' · Tories and Liberals Are Bankru.pt The Tories and Liberals have no answer to these new problems of survival exce·pt the ''mixture· as before," t·he same old useless ·medicine of selling out Canada in the interests of the great U.S.-Canadian corporations who have a dollar for a soul and a profit margin for a conscience. 5 Diefenbaker and Pearson are sold to the bankrupt policy .of the cold war. )'hey have no faith in Can­ ada's independent d,evelopment. · I They are the men who led their parties into the hopeless mess o·f ''austerity," into the rotten sham­ bles of ''integration with the U.S.A.'' They are tied ·hand and foot to big business. Their guide in any national emerg·ency is not what is goo!d for the people, but what is good for the big corpora­ tions. An example of that is the appointment of Wallace Mccutcheon to the Senate and to the Tory ca·binet. Mccutcheon is one of the biggest millionaires in Canada. He is the chief figure in the Argus 1C·orp,ora­ tion, whic'h is a ·huge financial empire of Canadian and U.S. money for the exploitation of Canada. There is no do·ubt that Mccutcheon was the bankers' choice for the Diefenbaker cabinet. He is the ''supervisor'' of the ''austerity ·program." You will remember that part of the ''austerity pro­ gram'' announced by John Diefenbaker right after the Tories were rejected was . a billion-dollar loan. Most of that mo·ney was American. .. Who pays the piper calls the tune. The bankers paid t'he piper, and the ·banker·s call the tune. Wallace Mc·Cutcheon is the chief caller. We have a big ·bankers' government now. If the Liberals are elected as the government in a 6 ( new election, Mc,Cutcheon will still be in the Senate (senators are a·ppointed for life!) and he will still call the tune ·for himself and his friends. It r·eally makes njo difference to the financial tycoons · whether the Tories or Liberals are in office. They both · ; carry out thepwishes of the big co·rp·orations. Onfy the Working People Can Save Cana1da Only the working people, in the factories and offices and 011 the land, can save Canada. If they would only realize that they are the ''public'' abot1t which we hear so much from the old­ line party ,politicians, that they are the majority of voters, that they have the potential strength to run t'his country, they could do it, and nGr one could say them nay. But the fact is that, as of yet, the majority of . working people vote for the old-line, ~·partie· s. This ·is completely illogical. What has an industrial worker, an office employee, or a farmer, in common with Wallace Mccutcheon so far as economic interests are concerned? Mccutcheon wants lower wages, higher output, lower social services, ''austerity''; he wants his money and ii1terest guaranteed, cost what it may in human misery. _ · But the workers and farmers want higher ·pay, better social services, and pros,perity, not austerity. 7 They are on the op·posite sid·es 0 1f the fe·nce. Yes, so hypocritical is our present political system that it is made to ap·pear that Mccutcheon and John Worker and Bill Farmer are all friends together; and that it is up to_the workers and farmers to ''vote for their ·bett·ers," to vote for men who have ''made good." They must realize that the ·bankers and indus­ trialists ''make, good'' not because they work for the good -0f society and produce the things that peo·ple need, but because they own t·he means of life, and can co1npel workers and farmers to work for them because the~ are the owners. A \Vorker would not put the boss on the bargaining committee. A farmer would not elect the head of a milling company to his co-o:p board of directors. Why should they elect them to the main committee in the country, Parliament? That is the biggest lesson in politics that the work­ ers and farmers have to learn. T·hey have not yet learned it in sufficient numbers, ·but they will, in the University of Life. It is a hard school, ·but a thorough one. Some Lessons from the Past The New Democratic Party was created by the workers and farmers of Canada. They did it in re- 8 sponse to the need f o,r independent political action- independ·ent, that is, of Big Money. , It was found necessary, after ye.ars of p·utting trust in the spokesmen of business, to form a party that \vould not be tied to the mo.neyed interests, but would exptess the economic and social needs of the workers who work for wages, and the farmers who till the soil. ~ It was a long time a-coming, the N.D.P. Time and again efforts were made to fo,rm a 1labor-farmer party, and all of them failed to make the grade. It was. tried after the first world war, and almost succeeded. It was tried again in the Great Depression of the 1930' s, and almost succeeded. When the Hitlerite armies were smashed, and a new and ·better world· seemed wit1hin the 1people's grasp, it was tried again. Each time, disunity and weakness of the leaders spoiled the opportunity. ,Conditions were there for it, but the political wisdom and stre·ngth wer·e not. · The main shortcoming, every time, was a readiness on ,the part of t·he leaders of these movements to water down their fight, to trim their sails, to· under­ estimate the strength o~f the ·enemy, and to play down / the necessity for the participation in the new party of masses of people, day jn and day out.