Greetings, my name is Jessamclain and we're here as always to share some blueprints of

disruption. One of the main goals of this little podcast is to amplify the work of the grassroots

on Turtle Island and beyond. If you enjoy this content and want to help to that same end,

please take a minute to find us on Instagram, YouTube, and now Blue Sky and boost our reach.

All the links you need are in the show notes along with other ways to dive even deeper.

into our next conversation. There is nothing to be gained by allying with the Canadian settler

state. There is nothing to be gained in allying with the capitalist class that seeks to dominate

nations across the world and native nations here on this continent. We cannot engage in

class collaboration. We cannot be short sighted and seek those immediate gains as something

desirable or something that we should aspire to gain. We should be engaging in revolutionary

defeatism, seeking the defeat of our own nation, of the Canadian settler state, to ensure the

liberation of all peoples, both here on this continent and across the world. That was Comrade

E. who is joined by M., the Secretary of the Atlantic Regional Communists. Both of them

have gone through a political journey very familiar to me and to many of you listening out there,

and what you heard is where they arrived. This show is where I arrived, but there are many

folks out there that still have this feeling of being without a political home, being abandoned.

This is even more so the case after the last... 450 days of genocide and massive disappointments

all around. But with elections looming, there are many people re-examining their positions

and the possibilities of electoral politics. Do they go out and support the NDP, the Greens,

maybe an independent? Do we start another political party so we can participate somewhat on our

own terms? Or do we turn away from the bourgeois systems and try something else altogether.

Can we do both? These folks have chosen to create something new. And as they share what that

is, we get to explore the benefits and possible pitfalls of things like centralized authority,

vanguard parties, and entering the realm of partisan politics. We also become privy to

the beginning stages of this group. where they needed to collectively decide what they wanted,

what they didn't want, and where to start. I wanna reiterate that there is no one right

answer to the predicaments we're facing right now. If the show has taught me anything, it's

that there are roles for all of us and many paths to the other side of capitalism. There

are also many different ways to organize as communists, which M and E are definitely going

to get into. So let's get started. Good evening comrades. Can you introduce yourself to the

audience please? Absolutely. My name is E. She, her pronouns. I've been a communist for about

four years now, doing lots of study and work, developing some projects here in the maritime

provinces of Canada, working towards developing political consciousness in the region. Hi everyone.

I'm comrade M. My pronouns are he him and like II I'm in a group called the Atlantic regional

communists We operate primarily out of the areas currently known as the Atlantic provinces of

Canada MIG maggi for anyone in the know and yeah, I've similarly been a communist for Probably

four years four years four or five. I've been doing a lot of study and work with II to raise

the level of class and political consciousness here. What were you all before you were communists?

It sounds like, you know, it was, there was just this moment in time where you were reborn

into a communist. So like, just naturally my brain goes, well, what were you before? And

sometimes we get some interesting answers. Yeah, I can, I can go first on that. Before I was

more of sort of your NDP sort of social democratic person. eventually switched over to anarchism

for a while and did a lot of anarchist praxis within the community, what you might consider

mutual aid works, that sort of thing, and eventually became a Marxist and from there developed into

what we might say a Marxist Leninist or revolutionary Marxist or any sort of adjective that you'd

like to add on to there, but Marxist first and foremost. I'm sure there's lots of people who

have names for people like us. But yeah, no, it's a journey, isn't it? So, yeah, I was a

social democrat for a relatively short amount of time in my political consciousness era.

Before that, I was, I don't know, drifting with not really a whole lot of paying attention

to it, which is very typical of a lot of settlers. And so I joined the NDP because I was like,

well, that's the progressive party, right? I helped run the NSNDP socialist caucus for a

while, where I met a lot of very, uh, great well-meaning people, um, who were really earnestly

trying to turn that party around, um, into something that could create change. And during that process,

a lot of the questions of like, well, what is socialism and what is this kept coming up.

So I took it upon myself to dive into theory, to be able to. bring it to everyone else in

the group. And through that, I realized that the that project would not work. So I quit

and became a communist. I'm just smiling and chuckling to myself because like, I just I

would love to know how many people have gone through. It's like the gateway drug to politics

or but of hell, you know, like everyone has to somehow go through that wringer of Going

to the NDP because you know, they're the ones with the beacon up telling you that they're

the progressive party and you know It's very common cannot fault anyone for this, especially

me so but and I'm sure almost every listener here can relate in some way of like being Hopeful

in an avenue namely the NDP and then becoming disillusioned and especially in today's political

climate, now finding themselves adrift again. Not that they don't, aren't paying attention

or they don't have an ideology, they might not have a label for it, but they just don't know

who to vote for. They don't know where to put their energy. And you know, on the show, we

definitely drive home the point always, you know, organize, organize wherever you are.

That could be tenant organizing, that could be a mutual aid, it could be at work, it could

be at your school. You know, like we've talked to all sorts of people that just organize where

they are, but there is that aspect of creating a political type party. And I know you guys,

you folks are going to correct me there because you're very distinct that you're not a vanguard

party. But let's talk about what you are because it is my assumption and maybe definitely correct

me if I'm wrong, that you were created. through this disillusionment. So it's kind of an assumption

of mine also that you're looking to replace perhaps not the NDP, but as another place where

people can go to do similar things and have similar outcomes that they thought they would

get in electoral politics as we know it. Yeah, I think that's pretty fair. I would add that

there is actually one more stage of disillusionment. that E and I both went through after our issues

with NDP and anarchism caused us to leave those scenes. There is actually a group calling themselves

a Vanguard Party in Canada. It's called the Communist Party of Canada. E and I were both

involved with that for a short while. And right before we formed ARC, There was a pretty big

explosion. And I say big, I mean, communist groups in Canada are pretty small. So this

was relative to that. It was a big explosion. A high ranking member of CP Canada had sexually

assaulted a member of the young communists. And so that was exposed on social media. What

that really revealed was. the inability for that organization to accept criticism and its

inability to change its positions on things. Because the response to criticism of this type

of thing and many others, including their rejection of settler colonialism, for example, was to

essentially turtle up and protect the leadership and reject any criticism. and then try and

undermine the people who were putting this criticism forward in quite good faith. When we joined

the party, part of what makes a communist group a communist group is this, well, we have to

accept criticism. We have to be open to it. And on top of that, we have an organizational

structure that allows us to elect and recall leaders and to vote majority decisions in.

and to stick by those things. And so this really was a breakdown in the fabric of what makes

a communist organization communist. So that further disillusionment was really the impetus

for us forming ARC to find a place not just for people who had left the NDP, but to find

and build a place where communists could actually organize in a communist manner. M hit the nail

pretty well on the head, but I guess I would just sort of add the emergence of ARC as an

organization came also from the necessity of needing a proper grounding among fellow comrades

within the NDP and within the Communist Party and my background, anarchist

ideas, core beliefs and core values and core structural beliefs and tenants. And there are

times and places in which sort of a broad-based approach where the strict adherence to a political

program or a political structure is not the be-all end-all. For instance, like a single

issue campaign, if you're trying to organize a union, for instance, a union organizer does

not necessarily need to adhere to every single tenant of a communist organization. But if

a communist organization is leading that, the participants must have some type of fundamental

mutual understanding and mutual values and goals to align with. And so much of our early study

was on studying the philosophy of Marxism, of decolonization, of Marxist concepts of dialectical

materialism. democratic centralism, which is our organizational structure, among many other

things, so that through our work, when we go into the public arena of the material world,

the real world, and interact with people in our everyday lives and as an organization,

we all have a mutual recognition of how to engage with the world, how to engage with the material

world, how to engage with each other, and from which organizing and philosophical principles

we are all operating from. The way you described the issues with the Communist Party of Canada

there, I mean, like some people can chalk it up to individual faults and whatnot, but it

really, I think, comes part and parcel with that vanguard mentality. I mean, just, I mean,

by definition, they're meant to be leaders and, you know, all-knowing. It's kind of based on

that presumption, right, that there's not much left to learn. And You just need to get people

to come along to where they're at. And from the folks that we've had on as well, a lot

of the critique is the lack of recognition for the decolonization project and the rejection

of intersectionality as any point of analysis as well. You folks mentioned that right on

the front of your website as it being central to what you're doing as well. Was that also

very deliberate and kind of sets you apart from what most people have probably experienced?

Because I was just gonna say, because a lot of people have had similar experiences, not

even just in parties like the NDP or the Communist Party, but in Marxist groups and them operating

like vanguards, whether or not... in the electoral sphere or not. So I'm just, it was more of

a comment than a question, but E, what were you going to say there? No, I think it's a

good point. It is a sort of part and parcel aspect of majority settler parties and organizations

in general, I would say, and to place temporary short-term self-interested goals for the settler

class. to ally with their capitalist bourgeois, colonial capitalists at the expense of native

nations and native peoples who we have far more to gain by allying with than to lose. Proper

returning of the land, a proper decolonization, is a necessity to break both capitalism, misogyny,

sexism, transphobia. racism. These are not things that will happen overnight. Absolutely not.

But if you attempt, for instance, to maintain a settler state that still maintains the colonial

relationships with Native nations and Native peoples and Black peoples on this continent,

you will simply replicate the same harms. You will simply replicate the same exploitation

that has been ongoing within Canada and the United States since before their inception.

land back and national self-determination, including the right to secession for Native Nations,

must be core of any Marxist program. To reject that, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure

Comrade M would agree with me, is just to engage in settler chauvinism and to not recognize

the complexity of the contradictions on this continent. not to take it seriously and to

only view a very simplistic concept of very narrow economic exploitation from a capitalist

to a worker and not recognize the various dynamics of exploitation and national oppression that

go on this continent that must be addressed. I hope people are listening to that. We know

people that need to hear that, don't we? We all do. your time in the Socialist Caucus and

trying to reform the NDP. And I feel like that is, it comes in waves, this suggestion en masse,

you know, when they shit the bed. Right? I think today the tweet was just like, can someone

please save the NDP? And I responded, we tried, they kicked us all out. So many of us have

gone in there seeing its potential and trying to reform it. the inability to do so speaks

to E's point. So go back, if you forgot what he said, rewind about two, three minutes there,

and it's just built on the wrong foundations. You can't go in there and be like, oh, I'm

gonna write a resolution B, and it's going to pass, and this will allow us to be more democratic.

It's just, I think we've got, I don't know, nine or 10 episodes now to just heavily document.

all of the problems, but E really summed it up there, at least like the most underpinning.

Like it's just like a colonial institution. It's structured just like the unions are, that

have the most problems, you know, that are theoretically the vehicles we need, but they're not operating

like that at all, right? They've been, let's just say, I don't know if they ever were, but

they've been manipulated into shells of what we need them to be. So can you answer the question

on whether or not all the work that you do, like we'll talk about the work that you're

doing right now, but do you have goals for electoral politics? Because a lot of people feel like

to not engage in elections is to abandon the electoral sphere, right? And just from the

way you both try to interject within electoral politics in some way and tried to find another

avenue. Will that eventually fill this gap? Is that years away? Or is it just like we are

abandoning ship? Forget representative democracy here in Canada. That's a good question. I think

electoralism is a tool to be used for a specific purpose.

tool for the oppression of one class by another class. In Canada, which is not just capitalist,

but settler colonial, capitalists are running things, but it's also like the vast majority

of capitalists here are also settlers. And so they are trapping these oppressed nations within

Canadian borders. And that's what the state is. So when we look at the electoral system,

you are voting for what representative of the colonial capitalist interests is going to manage

things for the next two to four years. So yes, you might get, you know, maybe you get like

a half-assed dental plan out of it, but guess where that funding comes from for that? The

state is not just, and it's not just nations here within the borders of Canada. Canada's

home to what, 80% of? mining nation or mining nation, mining operations. They've got more

autonomy than some. Yeah, they might as well be mining operations. Yeah, all across the

world. So Canada is oppressing and exploiting like the vast majority of the world as it as

tied up in the imperialist system. And that brings home a lot, a lot of money in the term,

the term we use is super profits. a profit off of like a worker at a factory, it is the profit

off of the backs of an entire country that is siphoned. There's a study, I think it's Jason

Hickel pointed out that in 2021, it was something like $17 trillion went from the global south

to the global north in terms of actual value that was extracted. So when you vote for even

the NDP, I know like orange is the progressive color supposedly in Canada. There'll be some

folks saying green is, they'll have the same. Or green, yeah, whichever. You're voting to

get dental coverage off of the backs of like, you know, Ghana. That is effectively what you're

doing when you're engaging in that. Now there's arguments to be had about the effectiveness

of voting for one party or another in terms of causing friction within the system. And

I don't mean like accelerationist, like let's just vote for the worst guy and things will

collapse. Oh, shit. Do people do that? Yeah, absolutely. Like, I know what accelerationists

are, but I never thought of using your vote for that. Yeah, people do. E was just going,

yep, definitely. You can absolutely use a strategy of manipulating the electoral system. When

you have the sway of blocks of voters who are ready to do something beyond just vote for

a guy and then go back home for four years and hope for brunch, you can look at the US politics

as well and see exactly that's exactly what happened with Biden, with Trump and Biden and

Biden's comes in as supposedly the savior, and he literally tells his rich donor friends,

hey, nothing's gonna fundamentally change. And then nothing did change, but a lot of Democrats

decided it was fine and went back to brunch. So the same thing happens in Canada, and it's

mostly settlers who are deciding it's fine to just vote and then that's it. Coming back to

your question of like, Is Arc going to turn into an electoral or use electoralism? Not

right now. That's for sure. Maybe somewhere down the road, but I doubt we would even be

Arc at that point. We would be merging with other Marxist groups and building up something

that might actually possibly turn into a party of some sort. I'm going to quote from your

website there because such a party can only emerge through unifying advanced politically

conscious elements, developing logistical capacity, and struggling alongside the masses against

exploiters and oppressors. Right. So we've talked about a little bit about creating or finding

advanced politically conscious elements, right? About, I imagine that's what your upcoming

events are a little bit about, right? Yep. Do you want to talk about how we advance politically,

our political consciousness, and then talk about how you folks are developing logistical capacity

after that? I think we know what struggling alongside the masses are, but we'll talk about

that as well, but I think that's the one thing that you can definitely point to, at least

the NDP, that they don't do very well because they have logistical capacity, a lot. That's

what makes us so angry. Like the... labor and the NDP have sucked so many donations and resources

and free labor that they have the reach if they could only do the proper thing with it, right?

So the other two points of what you are and aim to be completely diverge from what we consider

to be a political party in Canada. So let's talk about your upcoming event and other things

that you folks do to find each other and Build your consciousness, because it seems like a

less rigid form of Marxism, perhaps, but correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, to answer the question,

we should go to understand the problems that Marxism currently has in the West, largely,

and very much so in US and Canada. So a lot of people, and you hinted at this a bit when

you mentioned other people who have a lot of problems with Marxist groups. And the problem

isn't the concept of the Vanguard Party, because we view that eventually a Vanguard Party will

emerge, but it emerges not is declared. I see a lot of Marxist groups who claim that they're

very, principled or whatever, and it's like 10 people or something, which is about our

size, we're not very big. Um, but like, you know, it's a small group of people and they

put out this announcement that the Vanguard has arrived finally and all workers and oppressed

peoples can just join them. And it, it reminds me of that scene from the office where, uh,

Michael Scott walks out and declares bankruptcy and like, sorry, that's not how it works. Like

a Vanguard is an actual, an organization that has particular features. And one of those features

is political consciousness. And presently what we have is people reading books, but not studying.

And so they catch a lot of the Marxist phrases. Um, and then they say, Oh, well, I'm a Marxist.

And then they can just, Oh, I'm just going to go quote Lenin. I'm going to go quote Marx,

but you know, spoiler alert, they're dead for one. Um, and. we've gone like a hundred years

since the last one was alive, right? So yeah, there were in a different time and place. It

starts to become like when we, the way we criticize religion, sorry for cutting in there, you know,

like it's like people just declare themselves the knowers of all, and they're using a text

written another time and being very rigid about it. And that Yes, absolutely. No wonder both

of you coming from a bit of an anarchist, maybe not beginnings, but there were a seed at some

point. Does the Vanguard Party not to, as it emerges more organically, that it becomes a

collection of everybody's understanding of these concepts and where they kind of bring us now

and it's not an answer that we can like give anybody. It's a collective answer that we come

to. Yeah. I would say that it emerges. organically, but not spontaneously. No, it takes work. Yeah.

So like class consciousness can develop spontaneously when you are, you know, on a picket line kind

of thing, and you start to realize through the action that you're doing that, Hey, there are

people out there who are against me. And you start to realize these class divisions in society,

but political consciousness is something that, um, develops intentionally through. uh, like

scientific inquiry and you don't really get political consciousness if you aren't focusing,

um, your attention on educating yourself and like collectively working in a collective education

situation and then using what you learn creatively. And this is the thing that where many Marxists

today in Canada struggle with because they're reading the texts and they're just repeating

things. And they're not applying it for the here and now because Marxism is really a methodology.

So that's why when he said earlier, we were studying dialectical materialism. We don't

want to study just the conclusions that, you know, were reached a hundred years ago in,

you know, the Russian empire. We want to study the methodology that reflects. how the universe

actually works and use that to analyze the current society. And once you do that, it becomes a

lot easier to relate to other people who have the same analytical framework. You might arrive

at different conclusions, but that's where this then debate comes in and you, you have to provide

evidence for things. So from what we started with. was this, well, we need to first and

foremost advance our own political understanding and make sure we aren't making these mistakes.

And so we armed ourselves with the methodology of Marxism. And when there were conclusions

that bumped against conclusions we made, like evidence of society. then we would say, okay,

well, there's evidence for this here. And then that sends these dogmatists into spirals and

like, Whoa, I don't know what I mean. Well, and then they just end up calling you, you

know, ultra left or whatever, you know, so yeah, anyone listening who has been in a Marxist

group, um, or is interested in Marxism, find some people who are also interested and learn

the methodology. and analyze society and come to your own conclusions about things because

that's really the power of Marxism is that it's not a set of holy scriptures. It's just science

and you use science to come to an answer. And then eventually down the road, that answer

might be proven incorrect. And so you have a better answer and you should celebrate and

you keep moving. And eventually enough people. will become advanced enough through this study

and through this scientific inquiry. And that's where we see an intentional effort to merge

together organizations into something that really is a vanguard. That's a lot of people's gripe

too, even when we talk about failed strikes or especially general strikes that never manifested.

we boil it down, we boil it down and we get to this realization that there is a real lack

of political understanding. Anyone can notice political literacy is awful. You know, you

got people calling Justin Trudeau communist, right? So there's so much work to do there.

But I feel it sounds like a long project and I get frustrated with long projects even though.

I know it's a necessity, but do you want to talk about how you're using the methodology

of Marxism to engage, like how that's being applied? Absolutely. So some broad strokes

of how the methodology of Marxism works. It's a very granular philosophy, so I'm not going

to go into everything, but broad strokes. Marxism uses what's called dialectical materialism,

which... It sounds like a big, fancy, scary word, and it is kind of, but it's very straightforward

in its day-to-day use. It views the world as comprised of opposites that are in unity with

one another. So you can think of, for instance, I'll use a political example.

exist without one another. You cannot have an exploiter without an exploitee. They are opposites,

they are opposing forces if you like, but they have a unity in being only possible because

of their opposite. You do not have a settler for instance without lands that they are settling

on and people that they are exploiting. These are dialectical relationships, they are opposing

And the job of dialectical materialism is to analyze the contradictions, these opposing

forces that exist in society, and act within them. And the materialism aspect is also very

important because this is not some like when we say opposing forces, we're not saying like

heavenly forces or this is some beyond the pale kind of thing that exists. It's a social relation

between people. that materially exists, materially in the real world, that you can see and understand.

That's the big basis of dialectical materialism. And in applications in our work, it is recognizing

those contradictions, analyzing them with data, with facts, with figures, with as much information

as we can get our hands on, as much books as we can get our hands on, and to look at which

contradictions are antagonistic, those that are destined to rupture, like between workers

and capitalists, and those that may be non-antagonistic, ones that aren't destined to erupt into outright

conflict. So for instance, an old example, but a classic example, peasants and workers in

India, for instance, don't have an antagonistic contradiction because peasants exist, it doesn't

mean that workers in a factory... must therefore exist. They don't share that same unity with

each other. They don't oppose one another either. So what does that mean? It means that they

can work together. In our context, you have people who are unemployed and you have people

who are employed. They can be opposed to one another when they compete for jobs, for instance,

but this is a temporary contradiction. This is a temporary antagonistic relation. It is

not inherently the case. that because a worker is employed, another is unemployed. Yeah, I'm

like, it could be remedied. Yes, absolutely. And it will. I want to stress that. It absolutely

will. And it has historically. There is a recognition amongst our group that white settlers, for

instance, while, yes, having one antagonistic contradiction between capital and their own

labor, their own labor power, for instance. That is an antagonistic contradiction between

the two of them, but they only experience the one, which means that they have less overall

revolutionary potential than other more exploited categories. Native nations, for instance, are

being exploited and the wages, the benefits of white labor in this country is being paid

for out of, like Comrade M said previously, the exploitation of the Third World and the

exploitation of Native nations here on this continent. That is a antagonistic contradiction

that exists between Native nations and white settlers, for instance. Does that mean they

can't work together? Not necessarily, but it's also a question that we're figuring out over

time. But what we do know for sure, and this has come out in the history of this continent,

is that white settlers overall have a tendency to ally themselves with the capitalist class,

with the overall bourgeois class, at the expense of native nations. In our neck of the woods,

the recent pogroms that were enacted against Mi'kmaq fishermen, for instance, is a great

example of that, in which white settlers brutally attacked and burned the facilities of Mi'kmaq

fishermen who were aiming to use their own lands to fish. Therefore, they have far less revolutionary

potential. Especially those assholes. Yeah. And there are other demographics of settlers

that may have more revolutionary potential. Recent immigrants, for instance, are hyper-exploited,

especially in the agricultural sector. There's a recent report on slavery in Canada, and one

of the main talking points throughout that particular report was on the hyper-exploitation and enslavement.

of recent immigrants who arrive into this country. That is a demographic that is hyper-exploited

and has a much higher likelihood of recognizing and allying with, and we see this in practice.

We do. With native nations. Yes. With black people on this continent and recognizing the

necessity for revolutionary action where white settlers often don't. So. I'm just going to

give a shout out here to the international students and also the tons of migrant workers that have

been very defiant and have organized and done things that unionize folks who have the legal

right to do, don't do. So it's just to boost your point that it's not just in theory and

reality. That revolutionary potential plays out. Yeah, that's more of what we do, analyzing

the contradictions that exist in the social structure and how that pans out. Right now,

for instance, we are looking at the contradictions that exist in housing. That's a big project

of ours because it's very, very important and a very important prompt to many people in our

community and the recognition of the need to raise political consciousness, not just class

consciousness, but political consciousness. means ensuring that any settler that we are

talking to or any settler that we are engaging with understands not just that they are being

exploited by the capitalist class, but that they have everything to gain by allying with

native people and native nations and advocating and fighting tooth and nail for their self-determination

and fighting against white chauvinism wherever it rears its ugly head.

is that what we're going to be fine with just being useful to whatever social revolution

and decolonization comes about in the future. It's unlikely that it's going to be a settler

or a group of settlers at the head of it. I fucking hope not. I'm really sorry everyone

to tell you this, but it's probably not going to be you settlers. I'm okay with that by the

way, like Seller talking to you. We don't have to be, you know, on the poster. It's fine.

There is a group out there that, you know, behaves like a vanguard party. I won't name them because

it's not useful to the discussion. However, they have like tenants, I'm not sure they call

them tenants, but they're like, they're numbered. And one of them is to distribute the image

of their leader as far and wide as possible. And I'm just not sure how anybody, I know,

I know. When I saw that, I thought it was fake and I had to go to their website because someone

sent me a screenshot, you know? And I was like, no, no. I don't even remember their leader's

name because I guess they have not shared it as far and wide as they should have because

I see their work, but I cannot believe that even becomes a priority when people, how so

many different sets of people can study marks and... come to such different conclusions,

like to hear you speak of the need to, you know, land back. And I mean, that's not foreign to

a lot of those groups, but it's definitely not a discussion point. And any talk of settlers,

like divisive, right? You're just dividing the working class. And like, these are like two

completely different outcomes. Like you hit the nail on the head when you were just saying

that of this, like you're dividing the working class. The working class is divided. And you

have- The working class is absolutely divided. It is divided by race, it is divided by nationality,

is divided by gender, it is divided by sexuality, is divided by which whether you are part of

the white settler nation or whether you are part of a colonized nation on this continent.

The working class is divided and pretending that it isn't is both A, unscientific and B,

not going to get you any revolutionary results because you cannot do any sort of material

analysis of the actual conditions of Canada. You are idealizing what you want Canada to

be and then acting as though that is the case, but it's not. The working class is absolutely

divided. They're idealizing what they want Canada to be. And that's a big thing is that settlers

have an affinity with the Canadian state and the Canadian identity. But that identity is

a manufactured thing that has been created with the explicit purpose. of class collaboration.

So like that's and that's a historical thing that's happened for, you know, however the

fuck hold this country is, I don't know. Oh, well, the auto workers union is a great example

of, you know, I know, we're not gonna call them necessarily communists, but just the nationalist

theme that run through even the most progressive politics or the protectionism and whatnot that

goes on with it. Yeah. So Canada's nationality is an explicit project to get settlers and

predominantly white settlers to side with capitalists against oppressed nations. That is what Canada,

what that thing is. And it has been that way for a long time. And so there's an immediate

interest that settlers have in having an affinity to the Canadian Settler Project. the state,

the identity. And the identity is really little more than Tim Horton's hockey, oil and gas,

and throwing up our hands at elections. And a fuck Trudeau bumper stick. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, holding on to that Canadian identity is tricky or not, because especially, like, that's

all part of the political game here in Canada too, right? Even the most progressives, it's

all about Canadians, what I'm going to do for Canada, and very little critique is allowed

for, you know, what it is, the way you said, like, that's what it is. It's like trying to

explain to somebody on Twitter the other day, even just, you know, why the Canadian flag

is a red flag for me, if it's, you know, in your bio, I'm kind of just like, eee. And they're

like, but I'm proud to be Canadian. You know, they consider themselves progressive, but I'm

proud to be Canadian. And I said, why? And it was just gobbledygook was the response. I mean,

that's not what we're here to talk about, but I haven't quite spent an episode unpacking

what is wrong with Marxist groups. We've kind of, with some Marxist groups, sorry. Cause

I felt that when you're like, scare quotes, they're giving us a bad name. You know, you

still want to, we are a Marxist Leninist group, but hear me out. You know? And this is coming

from someone, I grew up in a communist household. I am not, I am, I don't know what I am at this

point. Cause when you're like, and then I became an anarchist. I feel like that's where I'm

at right now. But you know, they do have a bad name and not even just like, I mean, right

wing. Spew it out. Like it's like something, a bad word, but it's just even amongst our

circles. We're just so like, so, and also like political parties, some people are just done

with them, like me, like a lot of. Folks ask me, you know, would you put your effort into

this and that? And I'm not sure, right? It would have to look really different. So at some point

y'all got together, maybe not all of you, but a bunch of you. And we're kind of going backwards

here, by the way. And you're like, we need something else. Like this sucked, this sucked. And this

is why, right? This is all the things. But what did it really look like at the beginning? Because.

there was a long growth stage, am I right, where you were just figuring out maybe what you didn't

want to be and then what that meant you were going to be? Do you want to talk to some of

the people out there that aren't in the Atlantic region that can't just join up with you folks

but are desperate for something similar where they are, where they know all, they've gone

through the same canon experiences as you just with different orgs perhaps, or the same, just

regionally. And They're looking to do what you're doing to a degree. So like, how did you start

having those conversations where, you know, everybody's input was taken in and, and you

didn't really know where to start. It was a sort of orderly exit from the CPC, I guess

you could say, despite the big explosion, but an orderly exit. Most of the, uh, Halifax chapter

departed. Uh, so we had a sort of core group of folks that were already still, had previously

been involved in the Communist Party and who still wanted to be involved, but there was

a long learning stage of, as you said, what do we want to be, what do we want to do, how

do we fit into this whole situation, do we want to organize into one of the other Marxist-Leninist

groups across the country, and just federate or what have you. There are all these questions.

And we decided to continue not alone. We've made lots of connections with other groups

and stayed in contact with a lot of other orgs and a lot of other groups throughout both the

United States and Canada, but to ensure that before we go into the community, before we

do any other further steps to first get a structure in place to elect an executive that could make

day-to-day minute-to-minute decisions and to ensure that the work was still getting done.

and to, like we said before, really, really understand the theory, proper theory. I think

one of our slogans at the beginning is like, we're not going to talk to the masses, and

we're not going to talk to colonized people as an organization until we as our little settler

group get our heads together and actually know what we're talking about, at least to a small

extent.

You cannot decolonize oneself without first decolonizing the material conditions. And that

means the land. We can talk a little bit of the structure that we went with, which is democratic

centralism, big, another big, scary, fancy term, but the, uh, nutshell of it is, is that we

hold firm that when there is an issue that is brought up or a tactic or a proposal, something

that the group wants to do that someone has raised, um, there is a. openness to discuss

that particular proposal of whatever kind. There is, to quote sort of Lennon, there is a plurality

of opinion, but a unity of action. Once the vote has carried forward and a majority decision

has been made, the minority who voted no must move forward with the proposal. to the absolute

best of their ability. The debate is over and the action is to be carried through. Once the

action is over or it becomes very evident that something is dearly wrong with the proposal

and a majority votes it down, you can reassess, regroup, see what went wrong and ensure that

things are changed in the future to consistently improve your tactics and strategies and actions.

But that plurality of opinion is really, really important. so that you don't simply have an

executive who is shoving down dissent, shoving down critique, shoving down criticism, ensuring

that any sort of forward momentum is stymied. You want to have open debate and criticism,

but at the same time, you want to make sure that stuff is getting done. This is one of

the reasons that I, coming from an anarchist background, left anarchism is because while

I have great respect for many anarchists, working as an anarchist in an anarchist organization

often meant that work... would not get done. Because it's such an emphasis on a flat hierarchy,

quote unquote, it meant that no one knew what their responsibilities were. No one knew how

the democratic structures worked. No one knew the sort of like how they were to interact

with it and social hierarchies that are already in place formed even if they people weren't

meaning them to. And so making sure that the executive is able to be recalled at a given

notice of a 50% majority 50% plus one majority vote that the executive is constantly subject

to criticism, that members are subject to self-criticism, that they are consistently self-criticizing

themselves and ensuring that they are not lacking in their studies, lacking in their organizing

capacity, and also being a human being and knowing that life is hard and difficult and we're not

treating people like workhorses or anything like that. Resources are limited. And I understand

what you're talking about when coming from the anarchist background where it seems ineffective,

right? Especially if it's like 20 different projects and it's only one person working on

each and there's very little accountability. But I would like to find this kind of happy

medium, though, where you could have a plurality of actions as well, because I think most people

would recognize it takes a plurality of actions to kind of get where we need to go. So I know

you're not the only... people out there. So other avenues are tried and other actions taken.

But I wonder, does the centralized approach leave room for the minority to take their own

action? Or do you have an argument against that? Yeah, I'll say two quick things to it. One,

there is, there should be, I should specify, being flexible and creative locally. For instance,

the Black Panthers had many different projects throughout their various cities that they operated

within, sometimes completely different from one another because they were responding to

different conditions, different circumstances, different logistical issues, priorities, what

have you. And there is a necessity to be flexible, to be willing to change and to give any sort

of local organizing a lot of autonomy. However, when it comes to like a club in that particular

city or a group in that city, an org, what have you, there is a necessity for the minority

to still work and move forward with the majority decision because otherwise it becomes anti-democratic

in itself. You are saying if the minority is not willing to abide by the majority decision,

they are saying that... We think we know more, we are not willing to abide by a democratic

consensus, we are going our own way. And what this often leads to, even from like a not a

moral perspective, but from a practical perspective, is it leads to groups, it leads to groups splitting

from one another, forming even smaller, more insular groups that are less effective. This

happened famously with ACT UP, the AIDS organization in the 1980s that was combating the AIDS crisis

in New York and many other cities. where the emphasis on affinity groups, local sort of

cellular organizations in the broader organization meant that those, when the cells no longer

wish to abide by the majority decision, they splintered off and left. And obviously we can't

force anyone to do anything nor would we in the sense of like, you must stay in the party.

But if you want to be part of a, or a party of the organization, but if you wanna be part

of the organization, you must... abide by the majority decision or else it's not a democratic

institution. Democratic centralism, you mentioned flexibility and because we view everything

in dialectics, you could say leaders and members or a regional and a local or central and a

regional in terms of if you imagine like the hierarchy of a party like that or an organization

or a political you know, whatever you want to call it. Um, these things are in, um, a contradiction

with one another. And so you have to know everyone involved in that relationship on both sides

has to know when it's advantageous, what, which aspect is dominant, you know? So in some cases

you do have to be a little more centralized for one reason or another, for famously. If

the state is actively repressing your organization, then more centralization would be important

because you can coordinate things and hide people and figure out a response more adeptly than

if everyone was doing their own thing all the time. But if the state is not repressing you,

then... You don't need heavy centralization. So democratic centralism can be more democratic

and more centralized depending on the circumstances. And so everyone in an organization must be

aware of it because if you have a leader who is trying to take advantage of it, and we saw

this with CP Canada, where they literally said that people who were standing up for the victim.

in this sexual assault. They said that they were doing a color revolution against the organization,

which if listeners if you don't know what a color revolution is, it's an imperialist fake

revolution, usually against a socialist country, or a country that is less friendly with the

West. But that's an example of leadership. manipulating things to be overly centralized, to be a bureaucratic

centralist organization. It's not a democratic centralist organization. When you create the

atmosphere of people expect you to do work and they are absolutely open with criticizing you

in front of everyone else, then you start to... then you start to say, ah, well, maybe I should,

maybe I should make sure I'm doing the right thing, or they're just going to kick me out.

And that's honestly is like a good feeling. It sounds strange, maybe to say that, but like

it is a good feeling to feel that your the authority that is given to you by being elected is not

yours. And I think once leaders start to think that it is theirs, that's when there's a problem.

And so you always have to have the members doing the job of members, which is to criticize leadership

and to recall if there's a problem. It's not like they don't try in the NDP. But that's

because the NDP also is not at all a democratic organization. No, not at all. I mean, I'll

link folks to the many, many episodes that we've done to explain why it's not democratic from

like convention down to the local institutions. But those, you know, having that ability to

recall leadership and to encourage criticism is completely alien to anybody who's been heavily

involved in the NDP, especially. with the use of online meetings and the ability to just

like mute people and whatnot and the treatment that people get when they are critical internally

that I don't know if it's the same in the greens or in the communist party it sounds like it

was but it's just you're almost treated with vitriol for openly criticizing power within

the other parties even if they'll acknowledge that there is a problem doing so in any kind

of open manner or even maybe assertive, I was gonna say aggressive, but we'll pull back,

assertive manner, it's just like not acceptable. And that leaves no room for growth as we've

seen, right? So I think there's a lot of folks that have great ideas that are politically

conscious, but they are trapped in these systems that won't allow for that critique. you know,

and so their energy is being wasted. So how do you spend most of your energy within ARC?

But I'd like both of you to answer because I imagine as Secretary, perhaps your energies

are a little bit different, but what is the group doing? other than learning? We have been,

besides from learning and our studies, which comprise a lot of our time, we have been doing

some community work. We were fairly involved in the Palestinian encampment that was ongoing

at Dalhousie, which was the Students for the Liberation of Palestine Chiboktuk, if I'm not

mistaken, which was a cross-campus organization aimed at getting. multiple universities in

Halifax to divest from Israel and war shipments to Israel and a bunch of other reforms that

they were aiming to gain there. We organized weekly food deliveries to them, engaged in

public educationals, that sort of thing. For the record, not claiming any sort of leadership

or direction on that. That was totally the students. They did a great job. We were there to offer

material support and some theoretical support. And that was what we did. We also have monthly,

what we've been calling Coffee with Communists, which has been fun, which is there to bring

in people who are interested on communism, or just interested in liberation in general, and

to demystify what it means to be a communist, show the sort of politics and the practical

side of being a communist as well. theoretical discussions that we've been having to teach

people a little bit and to learn from them, which is a huge part of what we've been doing.

Not simply going in there as sort of a teacher-student relation, but that we are collectively learning

and that we are collectively coming to an understanding about our material conditions and our projected

futures. We've been doing what we call social investigation, which is going out into the

community and asking people in various circumstances. what they believe about their current conditions,

what they believe to be important issues to them, and especially what they are willing

to do about that. As that gives us an understanding of where people are at roughly, what people

are looking to do, what people are aiming to do. If it's as radical as a simple protest,

then we will organize to do that. If it is something as a petition, then we will organize that as

well. We are taking... from the masses to the masses. We are understanding from them and

also going back to them and trying to advance the struggle just that little bit further to

make sure that at any point, things are getting more forward ahead, raising political consciousness

and raising people's ability to engage in the world. Coffee with communists, does anybody

ever wander into it and wonder where the hell they ended up? I mean, the communist has such

a, you know, it's been weaponized almost at this point and you wonder how much work there

is to do to demystify it. I mean, even from talking, clearly there's some demystification

to go on even within our own communist circles. But the concept of going out into the neighborhood

to listen. rather than talk. Well, I mean, like, it's an interaction, right? So you are, as

admittedly, trying to glean stuff off of them, but as well as leave a little bit behind, right,

to further the cause. But I find when people are just engaged in these conversations and

living in the material conditions that we have, it comes out pretty organically, not spontaneous,

like we spoke of, and it doesn't necessarily have to be like in a location like the picket

line, but it's just like doing that back and forth with people on, like you say, what do

you believe? Like finding maybe what direction they're punching at, right? To like, are they

punching down or do they understand how much work is there to do in this particular neighborhood

or, you know, are they ready to burn it down already? So that is that's work that's not

common in, you know, again in the political parties, right? The practice of canvassing.

for folks that are looking at a federal election now and what they're going to do with their

time, you are sent to the door with a very specific message and you really just need to know whether

they buy it or not. It's a one-liner or two-liner that you're given and that is just, I feel

like, really empty work. I think most people felt like that to begin with when you're canvassing,

even if you're just very hopeful of what these parties can do in Canadian politics or whatnot,

but it just sent. felt very shallow. And I also liked the idea of, as you folks do, that it

helps shape your organization, not just an understanding of the community around you, but you adapt

to this input. That is unique. Not from a grassroots organizing perspective, we've talked to a lot

of tenant organizations who do that work, right? They go into buildings and find out what they

need and what they're willing to do and start there. and grow from there, right? And go on

rent strike from there and do good things. So definitely, definitely important work. And

yeah, we are kind of getting to the typical length of our episode. Is there anything that

we did not even touch on that you folks would definitely like to unpack or share with the

audience? The main thing that I just like to leave the audience with is There is nothing

to be gained by allying with the Canadian settler state. There is nothing to be gained in allying

with the capitalist class that seeks to dominate nations across the world and native nations

here on this continent. We cannot engage in class collaboration. We cannot be short-sighted

and seek those immediate gains as something desirable or something that we should aspire

to gain. We should be engaging in revolutionary defeatism, seeking the defeat of our own nation,

of the Canadian settler state, to ensure the liberation of all peoples, both here on this

continent and across the world.

So socialists, people who consider themselves socialists need to investigate that. And I

would probably also plug, this isn't us, this is a website, it's a newspaper called the Red

Clarion. And they're based out of the US, but they have contributors from north of that border.

And they put out a lot of good stuff, and they're principled Marxist-Leninists. who believe that

national liberation is the way forward. It was kind of a sign off, but now I have a question.

Please go for it. Do you think participating in electoral politics, because okay, a lot

of folks will do work like you are doing, but then they will also say, well, we'll run an

independent in this election, you know, maybe even a local one. But let's say, you know,

we have a federal election coming up and people just like they don't want to let it go. they

want to have influence over this outcome, or perhaps they want to utilize the platform that

exists during elections. It's the only time you can really go to, no, it's not. But it's

the time where politics are foremost in people's minds and there's a discussion point and they

want to participate. Do you think that participation contributes to the Canadian state? Like, do

you think it's counterproductive to what you folks are trying to do? I mean, I know you

don't have the foundations to participate right now. Like that's not your interest at all.

But do you think doing so even while ill-equipped perhaps, even with the best intentions? Like

is that feeding into the system? Are you contributing to it? I think it really depends on the tactics

you use during the process. So if your intention is to go in and... win some reforms and govern

or be part of the governing system in some way. I don't know if that's really being helpful.

If your intention is to consistently bring forward demands of oppressed people and hyper-exploited

people to the attention, not of, you know, parliament or legislature or whatever. Because. A lot

of them know and just their interests lie elsewhere. You mean the sound bites and question period

and stuff? Yeah, but to just grasp a hold of the media system that they have created that

normally pumps out capitalist colonial propaganda and then say stuff that is, yeah, that is completely

opposite. That might be helpful. But I think you can only really... consistently achieve

that if whoever it is who's thrown into that den of lions has a solid organization at their

back. Because that person can very easily get destroyed or co-opted or sidelined or whatever.

It's not a it's useless in all scenarios. But you have to be really aware of what you're

trying to do. I usually also add the warning like you only have so many resources. So will

the work you put into gaining that seat and that platform, you know, there is a balance,

there's a trade off there. What other work aren't you doing? And you know, which is going to

be more effective. So but yeah, it's not to demonize anybody who's trying to go and do

exactly what you're trying to do. I do often look at some of the smaller organizations that

do try to do this and think like, that's a lot of money, time, and quite often it doesn't

end in success. It doesn't mean we don't try, but it is a question I struggle with in terms

of supporting and volunteering their time and whatnot. And now, like I said, I keep saying

there's a lot of elections coming up, but the federal election is the one that's probably

people talking about the most right now. And they're just like, who do I vote for? Or maybe

they do have spare time and on top of all the other things that they do, I don't know how

you do, but you do. And you're like, I wanna go door to door. I wanna stop the conservatives

because they're the worst possible scenario. I mean, do you have a message to those folks

and do you vote? Do you know who to vote for or is that kind of neither here or there at

this point? I mean, that's where I'm at. I'm just like, I might go to the ballot box if

there's someone locally that's really surprising to me. But otherwise, uh, no. I'll just say

as secretary arc does not have a policy for members on like, you have to vote for the quote

unquote least bad, or you can't vote or whatever. So members can do whatever my personal opinion.

on the upcoming election, which will be Poliev, I'm guessing probably Freeland, and then Singh.

I think that's really a choice between Mussolini, Hitler, and Strasser. Okay, but let's say they've

got a local Communist Party candidate or a Marxist-Londonist is on the ballot. an independent who has good

things to say. It depends who they are. Depends who they have at their back. Um, you know,

depends, depends. We do. I know. Cause the idea of going door to door to for anybody at this

point, like for a person, not like a conversation and doing a deep canvassing is, is impossible.

How do you vouch for anybody at this point? How do you go and tell your neighbors and risk

that political capital that you have with your neighbors, that social capital that you have

and say, like, this is the person they'll they won't do you wrong. I promise this is the best

choice. No one can even do that anymore. Not with a straight face.

of bourgeois interests, and that is by oppressed peoples for oppressed peoples. You know, Marxists

would say under a democratic centralist model and so on and so forth. But so long as we are

voting for this is sort of personal, but also based in Marxism for just lesser evilism, we

end up just getting more evil. Yeah, like there's no there's no positive. We're left with no.

no good options, but there is a necessity right now in our small local organizing and building

connections with Marxists and communists across the nation and across the entirety of this

continent to ensure that some type of independent political party for oppressed peoples can emerge

because that is what will hopefully bring about some type of liberation. No, I just wanted

to get your two cents on that, especially because it's a question on many people's minds right

now and as we talk about, you know, the effectiveness. But yeah, it's hard for people not to look

for the, it's not even immediate gains that you talked about, it's thwarting what they

think is the worst case scenario. And like, you know, I do agree with you, but... The conservatives

are fucking bad. Like they are just going to be so awful for workers, for all of the groups

that we've talked about today. I do have that understanding for folks that are just like,

no, I can't just leave this alone in the next few months or whatever it ends up being. I've

got to do something and put my energy somewhere else. And my answer still to them, if they're

listening, is pretty much what you heard these folks say like, just keep organizing your community.

Just get people ready to mobilize when they need to. Just work to that end. Keep doing

that. Cause no matter who wins, like that's still going to be your work. Trust me. So like,

don't, don't take your foot off the pedal there. Also, ultimately, like as we saw, so Nova Scotia,

uh, here had an election not too long ago, um, the party platforms were so similar and now

the PCs here. have the conservatives have a super majority and the NSNDP is celebrating

being the quote unquote official opposition, which functionally means nothing compared to

a super majority. So like Nova Scotia is right now just, you know, the scary term one party

state it is. And and it's just like the parties put out platforms that were pretty much the

same. So Why does the vote matter in that case? Like functionally, why does it matter? It doesn't.

And all the work of the people who did work for the Nova Scotia NDP. I mean, we had some

of them on to talk about their experience and them, you know, sidelining candidates for their

support of Palestine and just the inner workings again, doing what they do and the way it just...

disillusioned people and drove them from like the political outlets that they had. So it's

good to know that there are other outlets for them in the area. So I hope they're listening.

If not, I'm definitely going to share it with them because yeah, getting more like-minded

people together to start building capacity is certainly the start. I very much appreciate

you folks coming on. I have been wanting to talk to your group for quite some time. I think

before you even had a name, I'm pretty sure. So it's been an interest of mine and it's kind

of been something I've been teasing to the audience a little bit as well a few times because it

comes up all the time, you know, what do we do then? What do we do then? And I think you

folks have helped start to answer that question of what we can do then in the political realm

on top of. the many, many other forms of activism we talk about on the show. But it is like that

political capacity and an outlet that folks are kind of yearning for and it just doesn't

have to look like the structures that you've seen. I wish people would kind of let go of

that a little bit, bit more, but I think a lot of people haven't seen an alternative. So I

guess presenting it to them is, is my first start there. Uh, so yeah, I very much appreciate

the time. that you guys spent coming on here and all of the work that you've done creating

and getting your organization off the ground and growing. So thank you very much, Ian M.

Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. And whether you identify as a communist, a

socialist, an anarchist or not, this next song is for everybody out there causing good trouble.

It's by Faith Petrick and it's from the IWW collection of Rebel Voices.

When I was just a little thing I used to log parades With banners, bands, red balloons and

maybe lemonade When I came home one Mayday my neighbor's father said Them marchers is all

commies tell me kid are you a red? Well I didn't know just what he meant my hair back then was

brown Our house was plain red brick like most others in the town So I went and asked my mama

why our neighbor called me red. My mommy took me on her knee and this is what she said. Well,

you ain't done nothing if you ain't been called a red if you march tragedy that's in my day,

you said. So you might as well ignore it or love the word instead because you ain't been

doing nothing if you ain't been called a red.

When I was growing up, had my troubles, I suppose When someone took exception to my face or to

my clothes Or tried to cheat me on a job or hit me on the head When I organized a fight

back why the stinkers called me red But you ain't done nothin' if you ain't been called

a red If you marched raggedy today and you're bound to hear it said So you might as well

ignore it or halt the words instead Cause you ain't been doin' nothin' if you ain't been

called a red When I...

that I had. See rotten landlord let me tell ya he was bad But when he tried to throw me

out I rubbed my hands and said You haven't seen a struggle if you haven't bought a red And

you ain't done nothing if you ain't been called a red If you march raggedy then you're bound

to hear it said So you might as well ignore it or lull the words instead

Well I kept on agitating, cause what else can you do? You're gonna let the sons of bitches

walk all over you. My friend said, you'll get fired hangin' with that commie mob. I should

be so lucky, buddy, I ain't got a job. And you ain't done nothin' if you ain't been called

a red. If you're hard-stretched, you ain't got anything you're bound to hear it said. So you

might as well ignore it or love the words instead. Cause you ain't been doin' nothin' if you ain't

been called a red. I've been agitating now for 50 years and more For jobs, for equality, and

always against war I'll keep on agitating as far as I can see And if that's what being red

is, well, it's good enough for me Cause you ain't done nothing this day before Red, if

you march tragedy, you'll find they hear it said So you might as well ignore it or love

words instead

That is a wrap on another episode of Blueprints of Disruption. Thank you for joining us. If

you'd like to help us continue disrupting the status quo, please share our content. And if

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