United in Struggle

Thank you to the organisers for the invitation to speak on the 75th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I’m an organiser with United in Struggle – a working class organization in East Vancouver, building working class power to fight back against the Canadian ruling class.

I’m going to address three main points: 1) what is the role of human rights in our struggle; 2) what are the basic problems that people in Canada face; 3) what is our solution to these problems.

1. Human Rights

Marking this day is more challenging than ever this year, given all the contradictions and inherent limitations of the UN framework that are in sharp relief right now in Palestine. For anti-imperialists, Human Rights Day can be a way of starting a conversation about the crimes of imperialism as they are felt around the world. But the truth is, we know that human rights are often used as a cover and even justification for imperialist aggression that’s driven by Western countries grouped into what we call the Anglo American imperialist alliance. They are a cover for the plunder, exploitation, and domination of the monopoly bourgeoisie – in other words, a cover for the perpetuation of capitalism on a global scale. 

Our revolutionaries and freedom fighters, from the Philippines to Palestine to Turtle Island, struggle for full and complete economic self-determination as the prerequisite for political self-determination of all oppressed nations and exploited people around the world. 

In 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, he was there for a garbage truck-driver strike. He was speaking as part of the Poor Peoples Campaign that was agitating the multiracial, multinational US working class to push Congress to reallocate funding for the Vietnam War into an “economic rights” program that King developed – he called it “A Freedom Budget for All Americans.” 

Every time economic rights have been raised for inclusion in human rights frameworks, (including the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) they’ve been shot down. The US bourgeoisie accepted human rights in the form of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but they literally shot down a movement leader when economic rights were put on the table. 

This is the terrain of struggle that truly threatens those in power, and it is the terrain of struggle where the possibility of our full liberation as exploited and oppressed people lies.

2. Basic Problems – Liberation from What?

In Canadian society, human rights discourse and the legal structures that support it, give some recourse for individuals and groups facing some of the most obvious abuses by the system. But redress is usually symbolic and often requires significant material resources to pursue. Even more insidiously, the ruling class separates formal legal rights, which they accept, from collective and economic rights, which they reject. This framework has evolved as a way to ‘soften’, without ever fundamentally addressing, capitalism and colonialism, or national oppression, which are the underlying conditions that shape our lack of real collective freedom as working class and oppressed people. 

As workers, the sum of our labour is the wealth of society, but we receive just enough to survive, and sometimes not even that, while a small group of capitalists and ultra wealthy elites at the top hoard it all. When we try to assert any control over the economy our demands fall on deaf ears. Just look at the unwillingness of the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec) government in Quebec to negotiate with the common front of unions representing over 400,000 workers, who are putting forward only moderate demands. The workers in Quebec are really just demanding their right to an adequate standard of living which is ironically actually protected under the UN Declaration of Human rights.

This example cuts through the hypocrisy of so-called “Canadian democracy”. It shows the class interests anchored in the political system – protection of capital at all costs. It cuts through the charade put on by liberal political elites who claim to represent us while supporting endless and bloody wars around the world, like the genocidal war being waged against the Palestinian people. These same elites legislate us back to work when we get too militant and wage campaigns of austerity against us. They don’t serve our interests. They serve the interests of the people who exploit us at work, and plunder wealth and resources from people around the world.

Indigenous national struggles also reveal the total sham of Canadian democracy. The question of land and the national oppression of Indigenous people is obvious through any study of the history of this country, and any analysis of the present. Time and time again Indigenous people have risen up to assert political claims to land and sovereignty and are subject to state repression and violence. Canada was created through colonial violence and dispossession, which is reflected by what we see today: a country dominated by the monopoly capitalists which will violently repress any attempts by Indigenous people to assert national rights or autonomy.

Recently the state has begun to adopt a new tactic to deal with the quote “Indian problem”. The Canadian State reconciliation industry is working hard to recruit Indigenous people politically and economically into the Canadian imperialist project. This means attempting to create an Indigenous comprador bourgeoisie in bed with imperialism and actually opposed to the interests of most Indigenous people who are working class! This is not the achievement of national rights or collective liberation.

3. Vision for Liberation

In Canada, the struggle for liberation is the struggle for a multinational socialist confederacy. This means recognizing that the working class are the true producers of all wealth in our society and that national liberation for Indigenous nations cannot be achieved under capitalism. Economically, the working class in itself represents an alternative to Canadian imperialism. Production in our society is collective, we all rely on the labour of others to survive. We constitute a well oiled machine forcibly harnessed to create profit. This machine of socialised production could be turned and used for our common interests. That is socialism.

Political power for the great majority is what we need, which means working class democracy, Indigenous liberation, and socialism. This is why we fight for a multinational socialist confederacy to replace this bankrupt system. We need to create a new state for the people, uniting the nations of this land with the leadership of the multinational working class. Only this new society can address the questions of land and labour.

There is a tendency on the left to divide the struggles of Indigenous people for liberation from the struggle of the working class for socialism. Sometimes they will even pit these two aims against each other. This is a mistake. The liberation of Indigenous peoples cannot come under capitalism. The solution of the bourgeoisie to the Indigenous national question is to complete the assimilation of Indigenous peoples into capitalism. This does not serve the interests of the vast majority of Indigenous people. Multinational socialist confederacy is our solution to the basic problems of Canadian society for oppressed nations and for the working class.

On the international front, the truest expression of our support for the struggles for national liberation and socialism around the world will come through waging revolutionary struggle and overthrowing the Canadian imperialists. It will come through the creation of a new state which can and will play an active role in promoting and supporting all anti-imperialist and socialist struggles around the world.