Mouvement socialiste (Canada)

Last updated April 26, 2019

The Mouvement socialiste was a left-wing political party in the Canadian province of Quebec. Formed in 1981, it ran candidates in the 1985 and 1989 provincial elections.

Quebec is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is bordered to the west by the province of Ontario and the bodies of water James Bay and Hudson Bay; to the north by Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay; to the east by the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador; and to the south by the province of New Brunswick and the U.S. states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York. It also shares maritime borders with Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. Quebec is Canada's largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division; only the territory of Nunavut is larger. It is historically and politically considered to be part of Central Canada.

Origins

The Mouvement socialiste emerged from discussions among six prominent Quebec academics and unionists: Yvon Charbonneau, Marcel Pepin, Raymond Laliberté, Albert Dubuc, Jacques Dofny, and Lucie Dagenais. After meeting for a year, they launched the Comité des Cent in 1979. This group, described as an alliance of "trade unionists and reformist academics,"^[1] produced the new party's manifesto in 1981.^[2]

Yvon Charbonneau, was a Canadian politician.

Marcel Pepin was a trade unionist in Quebec, Canada. He was the president of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux from 1965 until 1976.

G.-Raymond Laliberté was a teacher, trade unionist, politician and professor in Quebec, Canada.

The Mouvement socialiste was committed to feminism and ecology and supported Quebec sovereignty as a means of promoting socialism.^[3] Because of its opposition to Maoist entrist tactics, its members chose not to work inside social movements.^[4]

Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management, as well as the political theories and movements associated with them. Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity. There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.

Maoism, known in China as Mao Zedong Thought, is a communist political theory derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong, whose followers are known as Maoists. Developed from the 1950s until the Deng Xiaoping reforms in the 1970s, it was widely applied as the guiding political and military ideology of the Communist Party of China and as theory guiding revolutionary movements around the world. A key difference between Maoism and other forms of Marxism–Leninism is that peasants should be the bulwark of the revolutionary energy, led by the working class in China.

Yvon Charbonneau resigned from the party in 1982, after being elected as the leader of the Quebec teachers' union. He argued that union leadership was incompatible with membership in a political party. In a 1983 interview, however, he said that the Mouvement socialiste still represented his beliefs.^[5] In later years, he would shift toward the political centre.

Members of the Trotskyist group Combat socialiste were briefly affiliated with the Mouvement socialiste in the early 1980s. They left in 1983 to form the Gauche Socialiste group.^[6]

Gauche Socialiste is a Trotskyist faction within Quebec Solidaire. It was formed in 1983 by Trotskyists who left or were expelled from the Revolutionary Workers League/Ligue Ouvrière Révolutionnaire when the group turned away from Trotskyism in the early 1980s. Gauche Socialiste members had previously been in the Organisation Combat Socialiste, which existed from 1980 to 1982, and were briefly part of the Mouvement socialiste, which was founded in 1981.

In 1984, Mouvement socialist president Marcel Pépin joined a coalition of Quebec nationalists in a bid to renew the sovereigntist movement. This followed Quebec Premier René Lévesque decision that the Parti Québécois would downplay Quebec independence.^[7]

The Premier of Quebec (French: Premier ministre du Québec or Première ministre du Québec is the head of government of the Canadian province of Quebec. The current Premier of Quebec is François Legault of the Coalition Avenir Quebec, sworn in on October 18, 2018 following the 2018 election.

René Lévesque was a reporter, a minister of the government of Quebec (1960–1966), the founder of the Parti Québécois political party and the 23rd Premier of Quebec. He was the first Quebec political leader since Confederation to attempt, through a referendum, to negotiate the political independence of Quebec.

The Parti Québécois is a sovereignist and social democratic provincial political party in Quebec, Canada. The PQ advocates national sovereignty for Quebec involving independence of the province of Quebec from Canada and establishing a sovereign state. The PQ has also promoted the possibility of maintaining a loose political and economic sovereignty-association between Quebec and Canada. The party traditionally has support from the labour movement, but unlike most other social democratic parties, its ties with organized labour are informal. Members and supporters of the PQ are called "péquistes", a French word derived from the pronunciation of the party's initials.

Electoral politics

The Mouvement socialiste was not initially committed to running candidates for public office, but in 1985 it announced that it would run candidates in the upcoming provincial election to provide voters with a "socialist alternative." Party leader Roger Deslauriers indicated that the Mouvement socialiste was aiming for six per cent of the popular vote.^[8] The new party was opposed by the New Democratic Party of Quebec (NDP), a more established democratic socialist party that was still in this period aligned with the New Democratic Party of Canada. Provincial NDP leader Jean-Paul Harney dismissed the Mouvement's electoral prospects, saying that it "barely exist[ed] as an organization."^[9]

The Mouvement socialiste ultimately ran ten candidates and received 1,809 votes, about 0.05% of the provincial total. Several supporters of its involvement in electoral politics later joined the NDP.^[10]

The Mouvement socialiste fielded ten candidates again in the 1989 provincial election, but was unable to move beyond marginal status. During the election, party members took part in negotiations with the New Democratic Party of Quebec, the Green Party of Quebec, the Workers Party and the Communist Party in a bid to create a united left party.^[11] By 1991, the Mouvement had disappeared.^[12]

External links

Party manifesto

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References

↑ Sébastien Bouchard and Bernard Rioux, "The Quebec left: then and now", Canadian Dimension, 1 July 2002, p. 26.
↑ William Johnson, "An impossible blueprint for a better world", Globe and Mail, 30 October 1981, 8.
↑ "Quebeckers get socialist alternative", 13 May 1985, p. 3.
↑ Sébastien Bouchard and Bernard Rioux, "The Quebec left: then and now", Canadian Dimension, 1 July 2002, p. 26.
↑ Margot Gibb-Clark, "Politics as the art of no compromise", Globe and Mail, 21 March 1983, 8.
↑ François Moreau, Balance Sheet of the Quebec Far Left, 1986, stored by the Socialist History Project.
↑ "Nationalists create coalition to press Quebec sovereignty", Globe and Mail, 4 December 1984, 9.
↑ The party had fewer than five hundred members at the time. "Quebeckers get socialist alternative", 13 May 1985, p. 3.
↑ Francois Shalom, "NDP sees its fight for third in vote", Globe and Mail, 22 October 1985, A8.
↑ Sébastien Bouchard and Bernard Rioux, "The Quebec left: then and now", Canadian Dimension, 1 July 2002, p. 26.
↑ David Johnston, "On the fringe of Canadian politics, truth is stranger than fiction", Montreal Gazette, 18 September 1989, pp. 1, 6.
↑ Martin Masse, "In Quebec, Karl Marx doesn't translate" [commentary], National Post, 17 September 2004, A15. As the title implies, this article is written from a right-wing perspective.

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[1] Sébastien Bouchard and Bernard Rioux, "The Quebec left: then and now", Canadian Dimension, 1 July 2002, p. 26.

[2] William Johnson, "An impossible blueprint for a better world", Globe and Mail, 30 October 1981, 8.

[3] "Quebeckers get socialist alternative", 13 May 1985, p. 3.

[4] Sébastien Bouchard and Bernard Rioux, "The Quebec left: then and now", Canadian Dimension, 1 July 2002, p. 26.

[5] Margot Gibb-Clark, "Politics as the art of no compromise", Globe and Mail, 21 March 1983, 8.

[6] François Moreau, Balance Sheet of the Quebec Far Left, 1986, stored by the Socialist History Project.

[7] "Nationalists create coalition to press Quebec sovereignty", Globe and Mail, 4 December 1984, 9.

[8] The party had fewer than five hundred members at the time. "Quebeckers get socialist alternative", 13 May 1985, p. 3.

[9] Francois Shalom, "NDP sees its fight for third in vote", Globe and Mail, 22 October 1985, A8.

[10] Sébastien Bouchard and Bernard Rioux, "The Quebec left: then and now", Canadian Dimension, 1 July 2002, p. 26.

[11] David Johnston, "On the fringe of Canadian politics, truth is stranger than fiction", Montreal Gazette, 18 September 1989, pp. 1, 6.

[12] Martin Masse, "In Quebec, Karl Marx doesn't translate" [commentary], National Post, 17 September 2004, A15. As the title implies, this article is written from a right-wing perspective.