Thoughts on the 2023 Montreal Marxist Winter School
I just got back to Toronto from the 2023 Marxist Winter School in Montreal. Official reports will be released shortly from La Riposte socialiste and Fightback [Edit: links updated 02-25], Quebec and Canada sections of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) which hosted the school. But I’m still buzzing from the excitement of this weekend and had to share some of my own reflections on this inspiring event.
The Montreal Marxist Winter School is an annual gathering that dates back to 2011. I was lucky to attend that first year when, as I recall, it was known as the Northeast Marxist School. A few dozen comrades attended this inaugural school. I’ve gone to most of the winter schools since. But the 2023 event on Feb. 18-19 shattered all previous attendance, with a record 450 people registered. It was incredible to see so many enthusiastic young people packed into the auditorium of the Collège Notre-Dame to learn more about socialism. So many attended that some participants had to listen in an overflow room during the plenary sessions.
The most striking aspect of the school for me was the difference between the misery and cynicism we’ve grown accustomed to as capitalism faces crisis on every front, and the revolutionary optimism I felt throughout the weekend in every conversation I had. That hope and enthusiasm was infectious. I often feel ground down by the daily realities of life under capitalism, particularly in Toronto where poverty, homelessness, and transit violence are exploding. The only answer of city council to the growing desperation of people in this city is more repression, giving more money to police and closing warming centres while people freeze to death. Rent prices are skyrocketing, the pandemic continues despite official silence, the climate crisis grows more acute, and imperialist war escalates in Ukraine. It’s easy to fall into despair, and many people do. I don’t blame them. No one in mainstream politics is proposing a serious alternative. But that’s exactly why it was so refreshing to attend the first in-person Marxist Winter School of the pandemic era and discuss the very ideas that workers and youth need to put an end to this rotten system, and create a society “fit for human beings” as the Black Panthers used to say.
The theme of this year’s school was “The Revolutionary Party”. Fightback editor Alex Grant kicked off the weekend by taking us into the history of the classic revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks, with his presentation “What Is To Be Done? The Bolshevik/Menshevik Split”.
The Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning sessions offered a variety of options. The two leadoffs I chose were “Lessons from the Indonesian Revolution” presented by Ted S., a Fightback activist in Alberta; and “The Struggle for a Workers Party in the U.S.” by Tom Trottier, member of the editorial board of Socialist Revolution, newspaper of the American section of the IMT. The closing plenary session saw Fred Weston, editor of the IMT’s international website In Defence of Marxism, speak on Ted Grant and the Fourth International.
Both days were packed with exciting political discussions, at the sessions themselves and with people I encountered at the literature stalls, during meals, and at the evening socials. Some were already IMT members; others were new and looking to get more involved. I talked to high school and university students who explained how their generation is looking for radical ideas in response to the bleak future capitalism offers them. I spoke to members of the U.S. section who shared how no one they speak to harbours illusions anymore in so-called “progressive” Democrats, whom they correctly recognize as careerists and opportunists. The growing strike wave south of the border shows the sleeping giant of the U.S. working class is beginning to wake. I heard comrades from La Riposte socialiste describe the political situation in Quebec, and their efforts to defend socialist ideas within Québec solidaire.
As with any in-person event these days, COVID was a concern. The efforts of the ruling class through their politicians and media to pretend that the pandemic is over, and their abandonment of any public-health measures—even as the World Economic Forum shows the capitalist elite knows COVID is not “just a cold”, and will take every possible method to protect themselves—show how the ruling class views the rest of us as expendable. They don’t care how many workers get sick and die, so long as they continue to create wealth through their labour and profits through their exploitation. They don’t care how many children, how many elderly, disabled and/or immunocompromised people become infected. For them the toiling masses are not human beings, but tools to be replaced as necessary.
Everything is a risk now thanks to a system that prioritizes profit over human need. In a rational system, the COVID-19 pandemic could have been stopped in its tracks through nationalization under democratic workers’ control, contact tracing, paid sick days, vaccine access for all, closing down non-essential workplaces when they’re not safe, and re-opening them when they are safe. Instead, governments pushed to re-open as soon as possible, subsidized pandemic profiteers, refused vaccine equity for poorer countries allowing new variants to spread; and now simply pretend the pandemic is over. This is the world we live in. I wore an N95 mask as much as I could at the Marxist Winter School, which is all I can do. But you can add governments’ pro-mass-infection, “forever COVID” policies and the permanent pandemic as another reason why this rotten system needs to go.
When I returned to Toronto, I immediately returned to the poverty and suffering in my neighbourhood. Look at the tent city in Allan Gardens—the park turned homeless encampment, where a thin layer of canvas is all that protects people from the freezing elements if they’re able to afford a tent in the first place. I see people warming themselves around campfires every time I walk by in the evenings. This is happening in the richest city of one of the world’s wealthiest countries. I saw people on Sherbourne Street struggling with addictions and mental illness, as I do every day. I returned to my overcrowded apartment building, where someone was shot outside last summer, and rent to provide for landlords who don’t work takes up a large portion of everyone’s paycheque. These are the daily realities of the system we’re told is the best of all possible worlds.
To quote a popular slogan: “A better world is possible.” Marxism is the best tool we have for understanding the world around us, the roots of exploitation and oppression, and how the working class can fight to transform society. This year’s winter school showed the way forward to a better future. I’m proud to support the IMT.