On North American Integration

The meeting of the Communist Party of Canada, the Communist Party of the USA, the Partido de los Comunistas de México, and the Partido Popular Socialista de México is a long overdue development necessitated by the accelerated integration of North America.

The four parties have made a contribution by drawing attention to regional integration, one of the most important issues confronting the North American working class.

Unfortunately, the statement itself consists of nothing more than bluster about sovereignty, democracy and peace, invocations of the corporate bogey-man and general fear mongering and exaggeration. The parties do not bother to analyze any of the provisions of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), because they oppose any moves for integration under bourgeois auspices. It all sounds very radical, but since they propose no program themselves, their statement is simply a defense of the status quo.

The parties appear to be interested only in associating themselves with “the trade union, anti-war, environmental and other social and people's movements” which, of course, have no integration programs either - only grievances. The most the four parties permit themselves in terms of a program is the toothless “cooperation and friendship across our borders”. The program of the SPP, limited as it is, is more interesting, constructive and forward-looking than the empty rhetoric of the four parties' statement.

If only the SPP really was driving towards a North American Union, which the three heads of government publically deny and probably genuinely oppose! Would it not be an advance to have a single citizenship with workers able to live and work anywhere in North America? A single legislature with at least Canadian and Mexican socialists? A single (continental) communist party? One may prefer continental or hemispheric integration on a socialist basis, but account must be taken of the advances the current process will bring. Mere opposition can only be reactionary.

What is the problem here? How have the four parties painted themselves into such a sterile corner? They decline to look at these developments in an all-sided way with all their complexity and contradictions, so they are unable to formulate a viable response. Perhaps they eschew Marxist analysis to appeal to a supposedly non-Marxist mass audience. Whatever the reason there is no trace of Marxism in their statement.

It is the task of Marxists to identify the main historical trends leading to communism and to sort through the mass of contradictory phenomena and possibilities to identify those that move the process forward. Marxists know that the development of the productive forces and their increasing socialization creates a more powerful material basis for the transition to socialism and communism. Along with this comes the elimination of obsolete classes and strata, the growth, internal development and global integration of the working class, and the breakdown of national exclusivity. These are objective developments that nobody can stop. Even the capitalists cannot help but facilitate this process.

The working class of developed capitalism, particularly its advanced contingents, lives all sides of its contradictions – its material and cultural advances and its cruelty and increasing decadence. Most of us are not attracted to political trends that offer only one-sided critiques and no alternative.

The process of economic and social integration of North America is not new. It has been underway for decades. It cannot be reversed! The SPP is a reflection in politics of objective developments that are beyond the control of any state – the evolving unified market for goods and services and single labor market. The heads of state are only doing their job – addressing the legal and organizational issues raised by these developments. Communists would do well to follow suit. The working class has, if anything, an even greater stake in the disappearance of borders and a unified market for labor, goods and services than does the bourgeoisie. Our class requires communists to engage this process politically.

Until the four parties break with 'left' abstentionism and embrace Marxism, they will be unable to play more than a marginal role in the politics of North America.