Impossibilism in Canada
This month we begin a series of articles on
socialist ideas and organisation in other parts of the English-speaking
world.
The first political party in Canada claiming to be socialist was the
Socialist Labor Party, an offshoot of the Socialist Labor Party of
America. The Canadian SLP was formed in 1896 and was thoroughly
reformist, as was a breakaway United Socialist Labor Party of British
Columbia, founded in 1899. During 1898, former members of the SLP,
together with supporters of John Ruskin’s “Christian Socialists”
and a number of Canadian Fabians, founded the Canadian Socialist
League. It soon made rapid progress; but it was a loose federation of
locals (branches) and, like the SLP, was a reformist organisation.
In the summer of 1901, members of the Canadian Socialist League,
together with some former SLPers, founded the Socialist Party of
British Columbia. Its Platform contained a long list of reforms and
palliatives. In 1902, a Socialist Party of Manitoba was formed; and in
1905, a Socialist Party of Ontario too. Both advocated reforms, as did
a Socialist Party of the Yukon founded some time later.
Early in 1902 (it may even have been late in 1901), members of the
Socialist Party of British Columbia, mainly from Nanaimo on Vancouver
Island, who objected to the SPBC’s reform platform, resigned and,
shortly after, formed the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Canada. Its
members included Eugene T. Kingsley (a former member of the Socialist
Labor Party of America who had fallen out with Daniel De Leon), Parker
Williams, and James Pritchard (a former member of the British Social
Democratic Federation who had, at one time, worked in the Ermen and
Engels textile mill). The Revolutionary Socialist Party of Canada was
different from all the other aforementioned parties: its sole object
was the abolition of capitalism and the wages system - and no immediate
demands or reforms. On December 1, 1902, a writ for a by-election was
issued for North Nanaimo. Parker Williams contested on behalf of the
RSP on an anti-reformist platform, He received 155 votes against 263
for the Conservative candidate. Some old-time Canadian socialists have
claimed that Parker Williams was the world’s first revolutionary
socialist parliamentary candidate, and the Revolutionary Socialist
Party of Canada the world’s first genuine anti-reformist,
“Impossibilist” political party. It probably had about 60 members.
During the latter part of 1902, members of the SPBC and the RSP came
together to discuss the re-merger of the two parties, a new
constitution, the scrapping of the SPBC’s reformist policy, and the
adoption of a new, anti-reformist Platform. A convention of the new
united Socialist Party of British Columbia, held on September 8, 1903,
confirmed this action in a resolution, carried unanimously, that the
party “absolutely opposed” the introduction of palliatives or immediate
demands, and stood “firmly upon the one issue of the abolition of the
present system of wage slavery for all political organisation”. A new
Platform was drawn up which stated that labour produces all wealth;
that the capitalists own the means of production, and are the masters;
that as long as the capitalists remain in possession of the reins of
government, the state will be used to defend their property; that the
interest of the working class lies in freeing itself from capitalist
exploitation by the abolition of the wages system, and that there is an
irrepressible conflict, a class struggle, between the capitalist and
the worker. The Socialist Party of British Columbia, therefore, called
upon all workers to organise under its banner “with the object of
conquering the public powers for the purpose of setting up and
enforcing the economic program of the working class”. The SPBC called
upon the workers to establish “as speedily as possible production for
use instead of profit”. The Western Clarion of October 8, 1903, claimed
that the SPBC “stands upon the clearest and most uncompromising
platform in the world”. This was more than six months before the
formation of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
Between the beginning of 1903 and the latter part of 1904, there was
considerable pressure, mainly by the socialist parties of central and
eastern Canada, to form an all-Dominion Socialist Party. The Socialist
Party of British Columbia was less enthusiastic, however, as it had
increased in size and influence; it also had three of its members
elected to the British Columbia Legislature. Nevertheless, at the
beginning of 1905 all the various parties united into one Socialist
Party of Canada and, despite the obvious reformism of at least two of
them, the new party accepted the anti-reformist Platform of the former
Socialist Party of British Columbia. But the SPC had created problems
for itself.
For more than a decade, the problem of reform versus revolution
bedevilled the Socialist Party of Canada. The party was a
revolutionary, “Impossibilist”, organisation, yet had many social
democratic reformers within its ranks. Over the years, however, the
majority of them either resigned or were expelled from the SPC. The
Socialist Party of Canada’s official view on unions appeared to be
monolithic, but in fact it contained a fairly broad range of views. The
official SPC policy was that unions were products of capitalism,
struggling against its inevitable effects. Some members were
particularly critical of the American-controlled craft unions which
dominated the labour movement at the beginning of the last century.
Nevertheless, almost all members of the SPC were also members of unions
and some became prominent union leaders.
Most immigrants to Canada came from Europe but as early as 1880 there
were Asian workers in Canada, mainly in British Columbia and the west
of the country. Hostility towards them occurred almost immediately, and
there were riots against them for two decades. Many trade unionists
objected to Asian workers, as they generally were prepared to accept
lower wages than European workers. Reactions by members of the
Socialist Party were mixed. The reformers and social democrats tended
to be anti-Asian and racist; the revolutionaries, the “Impossibilists”,
were generally anti-racist and argued that all workers, from Europe and
Asia, were “all slaves together”. In April 1911 the Socialist Standard
publicly dissociated itself from the anti-Asian stand taken by some SPC
members:
“The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not identical with the
Socialist Party of Canada. We are not sufficiently informed to be in a
position to discuss in detail the action of their members on local
Governing bodies, but remembering that the interests of the workers are
the same the world over, we do not hesitate to condemn such actions as
the advocacy, by members of the Socialist Party of Canada, of the
exclusion of our Asiatic fellow-workers from British Columbia”.
As the reformists either resigned, or were expelled, from the SPC, the
party was then able to declare unequivocally that it looked upon all
workers equally, irrespective of their origins.
Some members of the Socialist Party of Canada, particularly former
supporters of East and Central European social democratic parties,
proposed that the SPC affiliate to the “International Socialist
Bureau”, that is the Second International. The SPC, however, refused to
affiliate, stating that the ISB admitted to membership non-socialist
bodies such as the British Labour Party. The SPC never joined the
Second International, which collapsed at the beginning of the war in
1914.
Socialists in Canada soon found themselves persecuted by the state. As
early as 1903 the police prevented members of the Socialist Party of
Manitoba from holding meetings in Winnipeg. In 1908, in Toronto, the
police used clubs “in brutal Russian Cossack style”, to break up
Socialist Party meetings. The party declared its “determination to
fight for the right of free speech on the Toronto streets”. Meetings in
Vancouver were broken up by the police. SPC and IWW speakers were
arrested for refusing to move and a number were jailed for refusing to
pay fines. The Salvation Army, however, was not subject to such
harassment.
By 1911, the Socialist Party of Canada had rid itself of many social
democrats and reformists, but a number of members in Toronto,
influenced by a member of the SPGB living in the city at the time,
Moses Baritz, did not consider that the SPC had moved away from
reformism, in that part of Canada, fast enough. The entire Toronto
local, therefore, resigned from the SPC and formed the Socialist Party
of North America, which adopted the object and declaration of
principles of the SPGB. The SPNA, however, did not grow and it
dissolved after a few years with its members, or at least some of them,
rejoining the Socialist Party of Canada, feeling that their original
differences with the party did not justify a separate socialist party
in Canada. In 1915 the SPC officially adopted the SPGB’s
Socialism and Religion pamphlet as its own policy on religion.
(Next month: developments in Canada after the War broke out in 1914)
PETER E NEWELL
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