On the weekend of Oct. 17, the Revolutionary Communist Party held its first-ever Toronto School of Communism! It was the first in a series of two-day schools we’re holding across the country this fall, with the next being held in Quebec City and Vancouver.
Nearly 330 people participated from all around Ontario, including the GTA, Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, the Durham region, St. Catharines, Oakville, London, Windsor, Kingston, Thunder Bay, and Kenora. We also had attendees from Montreal, Calgary, and the United States.
The school met against the backdrop of the amazing youth movements currently taking place in Europe. As the school opened on Saturday, massive numbers of students and workers took to the streets of France, braving brutal police repression.
We don’t look on these events as curious spectators. The conditions that sparked them off are also present in Canada. Here too we see horrific housing costs, a huge crisis in education, and strong feelings of hopelessness and pessimism amongst the youth. We follow these movements because they show us Canada’s future, and it’s our job to prepare.
Fittingly, the school’s agenda was themed around the study of revolutions. The weekend opened with a session on the Russian Revolution of 1917, the greatest event in human history and the most important for revolutionaries to study today. The school also discussed the German Revolution of 1919-1920, the Arab Spring, and Lenin’s writings on party building, among other topics.
Two key lessons were highlighted in nearly every discussion. First, that revolutions are created by capitalism. Eventually, the working class will see no other option than to try to take its destiny into its own hands.
The second is that without a revolutionary leadership steeled in Marxist theory, there are limits to how far any movement can go.
Our task today is to educate ourselves in revolutionary history and strategy and, as quickly as possible, build a party that can start to play a role in events.
This school represents an important landmark in our work in Ontario. While Toronto has always been the main stronghold of the RCP, we’ve seen significant growth in our work elsewhere in Ontario over the past two years, including in a number of cities where we previously had nothing. This new marquee event will go a long way in continuing this momentum!
The next step is to turn outward and bring these ideas into the real world. The Ontario comrades are preparing another wave of activity as part of the RCP’s national campaign towards 1,000 communist organizers in Canada. The incredible enthusiasm generated by the school will help us achieve this in short order.
