The decay of capitalism is making itself felt more sharply every day. This has led to a growing radicalization of workers and youth with millions rejecting the system. According to a recent poll, one million Canadian youth want communism. Fightback, the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency has launched a campaign titled “Are you a Communist” with the aim of organizing this growing layer of communists in Canada. As part of this campaign, we are opening the pages of our magazine to ask the question: why are you a communist?
If you are one of these hundreds of thousands of communists in Canada and would like to explain to our readers why you are a communist, you can make a submission of no longer than 500 words to our editorial board at eb@marxist.ca.
I left home when I was 15. For four years, I was part of what’s known as invisible homelessness. I sometimes slept on the streets or in shelters, but more often in the homes of just about anyone between two precarious dwellings.
By squee-geeing on street corners to survive, I was confronted with the true face of the police. I’d been told that they were people paid to protect us. But the reality I saw was that they were a bunch of “tough guys” who harassed the most disadvantaged people, those at the bottom of the social ladder, by constantly making them move around, with tickets—or outright imprisonment—for trivialities like loitering, drinking in a park or possession of small quantities of illegal drugs.
In 2001, at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, many people were able to see what I had been seeing for years: the role of the police is to protect the ruling class and serve the interests of capital.
As the years went by, I got my life back on track, but these injustices never left my mind. A group of prominent anarchists is active in my area. I tried to join them, thinking I could lend a hand to the revolution that would overthrow capitalism. Through their “direct actions” (free soup kitchens two or three times a year, unfurling banners in eye-catching places on this or that issue, pasting up posters to denounce this or that bank, etc.) I could see the extremely limited scope of such tactics. I saw myself that small isolated groups doing small actions that are either ignored or misunderstood by the general population will never succeed in overturning a global system like capitalism.
In the meantime, I had become an industrial designer. Day after day, I had to work on the manufacture of remote-controlled mini-tanks, sold to Saudi Arabia. It was unacceptable to me that the consequence of my hard work would be that more people would die. During the sick leave that followed, I got to know and join La Riposte socialiste.
Overthrowing capitalism is a very serious matter, and to do it, you have to be just as serious. You need to understand the workings of the current system, be well-versed in political struggle and, above all, study the revolutionary theories that have enabled the working class to win through the ages. My name is Olivier and I’m a communist because I want a world where poverty, homelessness, police brutality, alienation at work, and war are things of the past.
