By Adrien Welsh
While Quebec’s election campaign officially launched on August 27, the various parties deployed their troops long ago – in reality, we were in a “pre-campaign” phase since July 1.
Candidate announcements began trickling out last spring, and parties traded volleys and criticisms even before the parliamentary session adjourned. The CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec) and Liberal Party leadership races offered a taste of the election to come, and broad policy announcements didn’t wait for August 27 or the official unveiling of election platforms.
The Parti communiste du Québec (PCQ) was no exception: we have been hard at work since last spring. As early as May, our National Committee agreed on the core of our election program, establishing our five key areas of struggle as the focal points of our campaign.
More fundamentally, and even earlier – back in February – we determined that our campaign would not center on a “platform” but rather on perspectives for struggle.
Social housing, pay equity, jobs, accessible education, revitalized public healthcare, protection against Trump’s tariffs, national equality and Quebec sovereignty, gender equality, international solidarity, lowering the cost of living – all these noble causes remain mere wishful thinking unless the power of corporate monopolies is clearly and concretely targeted.
Capitalist parties centre their campaigns on a platform, a sort of essentially empiricist document that gathers a hodgepodge of proposals, usually accompanied by figures designed to reassure the business establishment while remaining ambiguous enough to hook the voter. They promise everything, yet no one explains how these published commitments are to be achieved. They spend more time dabbling in shallow waters than taking on capital – on the contrary, they vie with one another over which one would be capitalism’s best manager.
We sometimes might think politics is merely governance – a technical exercise rather than an art form where competing ideas, concepts and ideologies clash. Everything is designed to discourage anyone who might disrupt the status quo.
The Communist Party offers no promise other than struggle. We are not campaigning on a standard platform, but rather around five key perspectives of struggle. These align with the concerns of working people, 78 percent of whom fear impoverishment. They represent as many points of rupture with corporate monopolies and their power.
PCQ candidates are championing neither specific figures nor piecemeal demands. They are not dwelling on their personal backgrounds, and nor are they focusing narrowly on local issues.
We are not campaigning to govern; we do not seek to integrate ourselves into capitalist politics. We campaign to raise working class consciousness and to build our Party. If, as a result, we succeed in getting a comrade elected, so much the better.
Our candidates do not hesitate to go beyond mere platform demands – they engage in this campaign by tackling the issues, moving from the big picture to the particular rather than the other way around. In an election where the stakes are dictated by Washington, Communists know better than anyone how to defend sovereignty, specifically the sovereignty of labour against monopolies.
We rise above the fray, the only candidates who do not merely recite a platform in a daze. We draw the necessary connections to challenge the power of the corporate monopolies, and explain the importance of that challenge.
Some will scoff that our campaign is idealistic – we respond that it is revolutionary.
The world is burning. Gaza lies in ruins, its population suffering a genocide while the West Bank remains under occupation and colonization. Iran and Ukraine continue to fall victim to a Western imperialism that is gasping for breath – and becoming increasingly violent – as it faces emerging powers seeking to wrest away its hegemony.
Here at home, destitution is so severe that people are reduced to living in tents. People struggle to put food on the table. A job is no longer enough to escape poverty. As the only way out, capitalism offers us a war economy that would further integrate us into the military-industrial complex that offers no guarantee of employment, but does guarantee destruction which could well be nuclear.
The far right is gathering momentum. Yet the response is to normalize it, to the point that “respectable” parties are adopting some of its rhetoric.
Working people do not need empty promises. They do not need political managers acting as proxies for big business and the bosses. The working class is in dire need of hope, and that hope lies in our struggles. Whether on the political, economic, social or democratic front, there is no question of appeasing capital – parasitic and exploitative as it is – or of domesticating or taming it. The goal is to deliver the final blow and bury it.
Voting for the Parti communiste du Québec on October 5 is an act of commitment to the struggle of labour against capital. It means energizing that struggle and driving forward the five points of rupture against the power of corporate monopolies. It means choosing hope and the future; for before, during, and after the elections, Communists will press on and continue the fight.
In the face of the increasingly violent offensive of capital, imperialism and monopolies, we will not yield; we will continue to reach out to all who want to end the barbarism of exploitation and oppression. We are neither at the table nor on the menu: we do not negotiate the weight of our chains – we fight for socialism to the very end.
With the Communist Party, the future is ours!
Adrien Welsh is National Secretary of the Parti communiste du Québec
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