Quebec City - IWG public meeting

On February 18th, fifty people attended a No War but the Class War conference given by a member of the Internationalist Workers' Group in Quebec City. The conference was held with the precious help of members of the city's Université Populaire; a political forum regularly held by some anarchist-communist comrades. The meeting was called on the theme "How do we Struggle against the War?" A few days before, 800 leaflets had been distributed at the local 7000 strong anti-war demonstration to publicize the event. The leaflet stressed that the causes of the coming conflict are to be found in the inherent rivalries stirred up by the capitalist system of production now in its imperialist phase. It concluded that the battle to stop the war drive can thus only be based on the struggles of the working class and ultimately won by the overthrow of the whole profit system. The IWG speaker presented the internationalist class war position for approximately 30 minutes after which there followed a lively two-hour discussion. Questions and interventions ranged from the usual ones on the possibility of a peaceful transition out of the capitalist society to the more complex ones on recent developments in the class structure of the system and the present level of consciousness of our class. Towards the end of the discussion, there were some questions on the opportunity of using small minority 'direct action' types of actions against the war. The IWG speaker stressed that though anti-war actions should certainly be on the agenda, caution against adventurism and substitutionism had to be advised in order to avoid unnecessary exposure to repression and the usual dead-end of mindless activism. We concluded the evening by repeating that the slogan No War but the Class War meant that only through the mobilization of the great majority of the working class could anything of substance be attained and that this conclusion must thus guide all of our future interventions. Throughout the meeting participants exchanged in a serious and a very respectful manner. People were very interested in our point of view and a good quantity of IWG and IBRP literature was sold at the end of the meeting. Most participants that expressed themselves agreed that a No War but the Class War current presence was an absolute necessity in all future anti-war mobilizations. The IWG is determined to help such a current coalesce in Quebec City and everywhere else we can. Meetings are to be held in the coming weeks in other cities to attain this objective. We invite all Internationalist Notes readers to contact us and attend the meeting in your locality. If there is no meeting in your city (USA or Canada), please write us to see if we can help make one happen.