From the manifesto of the Workers party of Québec, originally published in the 1970’s. Translation for our foreign comrades.
The colonial fact in Quebec was very cleverly masked by the Confederation Act which made Quebec ONE of the provinces of Canada.
Our elite, finding its interest in this ambiguous situation, seized the residual powers to maintain this ambiguity for the greater profit of the « Canadian » bourgeoisie by participating in federal-provincial conferences. These conferences aim only to redistribute the powers of oppression against the people between federal and provincial bourgeois politicians.
Our elite has always defined its nationalism as the accession of its members to executive or managerial positions in large foreign companies. This nationalism has led the apostle of the « Master at home », Mr. Jean Lesage, to several positions held simultaneously in several companies. These are the same companies that impose the use of the English language on their workers and the major decisions affecting the very existence of Quebec society are made by the administrations of these large American companies and by the « Canadian » bankers. The Quebec government’s budgets are drawn up by the Conseil général de l’industrie, a government creation made up of representatives of foreign multinationals and a few French-Canadian monopolies. All these « prestigious » people have an interest in maintaining Quebec’s colonial status.
The independence of Québec and imperialism
Imperialism is the growing oppression of the nations of the world by a handful of great powers in order to accentuate and expand this oppression of nations with the complicity of the elites of the oppressed nations.
This is the era of military, economic and political interventions against peoples struggling for their liberation: Angola, Vietnam, Chile, etc.
The enemies of the Quebec people, the American and Canadian imperialists, oppressed the peoples of South Africa, Rhodesia, the English West Indies, etc.
It is not without reason that our bourgeois politicians brandish the threat of civil war as soon as the people fight for their freedom. We know the fraternal links of the former liberal government with the I.T.T., which participated in the bloody coup d’état in Chile in 1973. The International Telegraph and Telephone obtained contracts from Ottawa for the automation of the postal service, while Quebec gave it a forestry concession on the North Shore as large as New Brunswick. When Bourassa shouted « No to the separatists », he was representing the interests of imperialism.
Consequently, the struggle against imperialism and capitalism is necessarily linked in Quebec to the struggle for the separation of the state of Quebec from Canada. The solidarity of « Canadian » and Quebec workers is a hypocritical phrase as long as the « Canadian » proletariat does not demand the independence of Quebec.
The right of nations to self-determination
« By self-determination of nations, we mean their separation as a state from foreign communities, we mean the formation of independent national states. «
-Lenin
The representatives of the Canadian bourgeoisie who recognized the right to self-determination of oppressed nations at the UN did not recognize the right to self-determination of the Quebec people. The Canadian bourgeoisie denies the existence of the Quebec nation and only the French Canadian members of the bourgeoisie want to make Canada a bilingual country. The struggle of Quebec’s air people is the opposite of the positions of the former minister of national defense, Richardson, who wants to impose English unilingualism in Quebec for the greater profit of the bourgeoisie: language is a means of communication that favors commerce and therefore the accumulation of capital by the capitalists.
The language question is inseparable from the right to self-determination of the Quebec people, because the language struggle, in reality a class struggle, stems from the forced union of Quebec with Canada. French unilingualism is therefore inseparable from the independence of Quebec achieved by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
National liberation struggle
The Parti des Travailleurs du Québec, as an autonomous political organization of the working class, wants to be the instrument of struggle for the abolition of the national oppression of the Quebec people. The right to political separation is a fundamental and democratic right of all oppressed people. The struggle for national liberation in Quebec is a merciless struggle against U.S. imperialism and the Canadian bourgeoisie.
Quebec, unlike most neo-colonized peoples today, is under the direct political and military control of the Ottawa government. This is 19th century direct colonialism. The Canadian bourgeoisie controls the finance and savings of the Quebec people through its banks, trust and insurance companies. Its political and economic power keeps the people of Quebec in total dependence. He who dominates imposes his language and culture.
What has been called « assimilation » in Quebec has been much more an « integration » of the dominated people into the state framework of the dominant foreign bourgeoisie (1867). In a word, the integration of Quebec as a province into the modern nation-state, Canada, was done for the benefit of this bourgeoisie. All the development of Canada is done according to the interests of the Canadian bourgeoisie, which explains the many underdeveloped regions in Quebec.
The pro-imperialist policy of the Quebec governments has done the rest by squandering our human resources and our natural wealth.
Exploited and oppressed, the workers of Quebec are totally excluded from the direction of the affairs of the state and the development of their country, Quebec. Their task is to produce the wealth that benefits mainly the foreign bourgeoisie.
Quebec workers, by freeing themselves from the yoke of class oppression, from the domination of the capitalists, are freeing themselves from foreign oppression given the absence of a national bourgeoisie. This struggle for separation is therefore interwoven with the struggle for the expropriation of the foreign bourgeoisies, and thus becomes a class struggle. This is why there is no national liberation possible for Quebec without the workers taking control of this liberation struggle.
This is how the workers will be able to assume the responsibility for the development on new bases, for the national unity (abolition of the parochialism) and for the prosperity of the socialist nation.
Only the socialist independence of Quebec will allow the development of collaboration with other nations on the basis of the principles of total equality of rights and mutual respect.
A history of struggles
The Quebec people rose up in 1837-38; they were crushed because the colonialists provoked the uprising before it was ready. In 1867, 50,000 people demonstrated at the Champ de Mars against confederation. The people of Quebec supported the struggle of French-Canadian minorities in other Canadian provinces to defend their language rights. The people of Quebec rebelled against conscription in 1917 and 1942. The people of Quebec unmasked the cardboard pastes of their pseudo-national holiday in 1968-69.
The people of Quebec have proven their will to fight. It is now up to the working class to take this national liberation struggle in hand, because it is the most socially and nationally oppressed class and the only class that does not have selfish interests, that does not claim privileges. All the struggles for national freedoms have so far been led by the bourgeois and petty bourgeois elite. We have had only crumbs because the vast majority of the people, the workers, did not lead the struggle.
Only the working class can and must lead the struggle for national liberation and lead the Quebec people to their total liberation. To succeed and triumph over our enemies, our democratic, national and popular revolution must be led by the working class, producer of wealth and spearhead of the people’s conquests.
Neither our elite, nor Ottawa, nor the Americans, nor any other power can stop the march of a people firmly resolved to conquer its independence and freedom. National liberation is part of the socialist revolution for people’s power and the workers will play their historic role.
