White Niggers of America The Precocious Autobiography of A Quebec Terrorist PDF
White Niggers of America The Precocious Autobiography of A Quebec Terrorist PDF
White Niggers of America The Precocious Autobiography of A Quebec Terrorist PDF
of A111erica
The Precocious Autobiography
of a Quebec "Terrorist"
by Pierre Vallieres
Translated by Joan Pinkham
(@
New York and London
Foreword
10 Pierre Vallieres
the lights are never turned out), receiving mail, doing laundry, shaving, etc.
In short, this book was written in a universe of cunningly organized dehumanization . . . which drives more than one prisoner to
suicide-or murder, if he is set free again.
2. This book is first of all a political act. It is necessarily biased. It
contains not so much answers as questions, and facts, that I want to
set before men-in particular the men of Quebec-who are capable
of consciousness, social responsibility, and revolutionary action.
It is the political act of one member of the Front de liberation du
Quebec (FLQ), of a militant who is still young, who has not had a
long experience of revolutionary struggle, and who has no monopoly
on truth.
This book, moreover, was not written with the intent of "shaking
revolutionary thought and action to their foundations," but of performing an act whose meaning is given by the book itself, which
comes from my guts as much as from my head.
3. In this essay, which is no doubt badly put together, and which
I shall probably not have the leisure to revise before it is sent to the
printer (unless my extradition to Canada or deportation to another
country is postponed to the spring or summer of 1967), the reader
will find many faults, repetitions, and awkward constructions, side by
side with limpid passages where the words "flow." For driven by the
constant threat of deportation or extradition that has hung over
Charles Gagnon and me ever since we were arrested in New York on
September 28, 1966, I have had to scribble down in haste my memories, impressions, ideas, my short but brutal experience of life and my
boundless conviction that it is possible to build a better world now, if
we all agree to roll up our sleeves and set to work. The world is waiting to be transformed.
All this necessarily makes for a book that is unfinished, imperfect,
and full of words which, in this age of "relativity," may have different meanings for the author and the reader according to the camera that each focuses on them (his vision of the world). I have tried to
write simply, with everyday words, but I have not always been successful; and in certain parts (Chapter 6 in particular) you may find
"indigestible" passages. Furthermore, certain categories, such as the
words "objective" and "subjective," may now be out of date. I have
Foreword
11
12 Pierre Vallieres
Contemporary scientists are convinced that the physical and
human universe (can one really separate physical from human?) of
which we are a part and which, in each generation, is at a given but
not fixed state of development, of evolution, is "essentially infinite."
I do not know what meaning they give to the word "essentially." But
in any event, if they are right, as I believe, in affirming that the universe is at once infinite and relative-which is fundamentally the
same thing-and if, as they likewise affirm, our knowledge of reality
can only be partial and must constantly be re-examined; if, finally,
our action can only be biased, that means that our activitieswhether in the domain of thought, of scientific research, or of political engagement-will always contain contradictions.
In other words, every new affirmation calls forth a new set of questions. Every scientific discovery gives rise to hypotheses that were
hitherto unknown. Every political action calls forth a reaction ("reaction" being understood here as an effort to prevent man from becoming so identified with his creation or his revolution that he remains
fixed at that point and becomes fossilized).
But none of this, as I say somewhere in this "rough draft," prevents men-us--from using practical, constantly modified affirmations and negations of the contradictions around us to make history,
to evolve, ever more conscious and free, by means of "revolutions."
4. This book contains a considerable number of footnotes, some of
which are of respectable length. These footnotes should be read in
their place, that is, at the end of the sentence, expression, or paragraph where they are indicated by the usual numbers.
With a few changes, some of these footnotes could have been integrated into the text, if I had had the time and means to do three or
four drafts. But under present conditions I am obliged to turn over to
the reader a rough draft expanded here and there by explanatory
notes.
5. I am neither a scholar nor an accredited philosopher. I am only
a proletarian who has had the good fortune to read a great deal (but
without method, since there was no money to buy method at a university) and who has also had the opportunity to act, who is acting
and wants to go on acting. For whom it is enough to be honest with
himself and to try, as best he can, to put his convictions into practice.
6. This autobiographical essay is a conscious witness and a con-
Foreword
13
scious appeal that I have made freely and for the same reason that I
have made my political choice, my choice of the revolution: the conviction that the relations between men must be radically transformed
and that imperialism must be definitively overthrown if-in this age
when biologists, biochemists, physicists, astronomers, and so on are
on the verge of discovering the "mysteries" of matter both living and
inert, conscious and unconscious, and therefore the "secrets" of life
and death-if, I say, we do not want humanity, on the threshold of
tremendous progress, to become, in spite of itself, the victim of a universal nuclear catastrophe which would turn it back to the stone age.
We must wrest the vast resources and gigantic possibilities of this
century (which are due in large part to contemporary technological
discoveries) from the grasp of the businessmen-the businessmen of
state capitalism as well as the businessmen of private-corporation
capitalism-by practical, revolutionary, and collective action.
Today, as in the time of Lenin, this action, which began as far back
as the eighteenth century with the first rebellions of the English
workers and the organization of the Chartist movement, must advance to new stages. It must do so not only in Quebec but in the entire world. For it must be recognized that with the present expansion
of communications and of population movements, etc., which is
based on the international organization of the market, of competition
and class struggle, our true country is increasingly becoming the
world. This, far from destroying nationalities and the individual, actually provides an opportunity, if we succeed in overcoming certain
individual and collective fixations on outmoded "categories," of coming into our own, perhaps for the first time in history.
7. The author of this book is a Quebecois, a French Canadian, a
proletarian, a colonized man and a baptized son of the Church.
Hence, an extremely frustrated individual for whom "freedom" is
not a metaphysical question but a very concrete problem.
My consciousness and activity (what I sometimes call my responsibility) are bound up with my frustrations and my need to free myself
from them completely, once and for all.
I believe that my experience of life has much in common with that
of many individuals, both in Quebec and in other countries, in my
own class and even in the upper classes, which are better off, richer
economically and intellectually.
14 Pierre Vallieres
That is why I spontaneously chose to write an essay that would be
at one and the same time an autobiography and an attempt to reflect
upon and sum up acts which have already been performed and others yet to be performed, acts which concern you just as much as me.
8. I have no diplomas or medals. The one thing I take pride in is
something I owe to the American police, who arrested me at the request of the Canadian police. By so doing, they in a way forced meand my friend and comrade Charles Gagnon-to bear witness publicly to the determination, not only of a little nucleus of individuals
but of the immense class of the oppressed (peasants, workers, students, young people, intellectuals, white-collar workers, and even
scientists and researchers harnessed to the interests of big capital), to
free their human activities definitively from the dictatorship of the
"sharks of high finance."
The increasing number of letters that Charles and I receive offer
us daily proof that we will not have borne witness in vain.
9. I take advantage of this foreword to give infinite thanks to all
those (students, workers, journalists, militants in unions and popular
movements, housewives, friends known and unknown) without
whom this work would have rotted in the many garbage cans of the
Manhattan House of Detention for Men into which, often enough,
we throw the whole plate of dogfood they serve us at mealtime.
To me, as to Charles Gagnon, the disinterested devotion and uncalculating support of all these friends is material proof of the existence of human solidarity. Solidarity which will be the cement of the
new classless society, as money is the cement of the present society
based on the exploitation of man by man.
There is already a growing number of people for whom solidarity
has replaced money as the "reason for living," as the principal
"value" in life.
That is why I have chosen-that is why we have chosen-to work
for the revolution.
As in the physical universe, so perhaps in the revolution there are
neither straight lines nor curves. One can act in many ways, just as
there are many ways of seeking and discovering the "secrets" of the
universe. But there are constant relations among these many different ways of acting on the world and on society. And I have an increasingly clear impression that through these relations, which at first
Foreword
15
glance are difficult to grasp and comprehend because they are complex and integrated with a universe that is perpetually changing, we
are approaching a unity unprecedented in known human history, a
unity which will not be monolithic or subject to the hegemony of any
one group. A unity which we will make concrete only through a long
revolutionary struggle, collective and multinational, conducted by
the majority of the men who people this planet: the peasants, workers, white-collar workers, students, young people, progressive intellectuals, and researchers.
It is this unity of conscious, responsible men, bound together in solidarity, that will create the new society humanity needs in order to
progress. Yes, to progress, for this unity is not an end but a beginning,
the first act of a new world, of a human history that will at last be determined by the majority of men.
10. Finally, this book, as is clearly indicated in the introduction
which follows this long foreword (!), was conceived first of all in
terms of the practical tasks which today confront the workers, students, and young revolutionaries of Quebec.
Nevertheless, perhaps it may also have something to say to the
men and revolutionaries of other countries, colonized or even imperialist.
-Pierre VaUieres
Manhattan House of Detention for Men
New York, fall-winter 1966-1967
1
The W'hite Niggers
of America
Pierre Vallieres
22
talists are completely free to put to work or reduce to unemployment, as it suits their financial interests, whom they are completely
free to underpay, mistreat and trample underfoot, whom they are
completely free, according to law, to have clubbed down by the police and locked up by the judges "in the public interest," when their
profits seem to be in danger.
1
Our ancestors came here with the hope of beginning a new life.
They were for the most part soldiers or day laborers. The soldiers
came, a long time after Champlain, to fight the English, and they remained in New France because they did not have the money to return to the metropolitan country. They became traders, artisans, or
coureurs de bois in order to subsist. The others came as "volunteers,"
especially under the Talon administration, about a century before
the English conquest. They were unskilled laborers who could find
no work in Colbert's France and no reason for living. They belonged
to the growing number of idle men and vagabonds who filled the
towns of mercantile France. In Talon's mind, these "volunteers"
were to be added to the unemployed to serve as a permanent local
source of labor. Married by force, as soon as they arrived in New
France, to orphan girls imported from Paris, the "volunteers" were
given the task of laying the foundations of an independent society.
They were to work at building an indigenous industry and developing agriculture, and they were to have as many children as possible
in order to rapidly expand the labor force and the market. Those who
refused to obey the directives of the intendant were put in prison or
sent back to France. Many colonists preferred to become coureurs de
bois rather than be forced to marry a woman whom they did not
know and often did not want because she was ill-tempered, homely,
or stupid.
The colonists, or Habitants as they later came to be called, were
thus placed at the service of the ambitious projects of Colbert's protege. But these men, who were sent from France by the hundreds,
had learned no trade in the metropolitan country. They possessed no
technical knowledge and had nothing to offer Talon but their muscle,
good will, and taste for adventure. In the mother country they belonged to that mass of unemployed workers whom the development
24
Pierre Vallieres
lish, Talon's industries, and the rapid increase in the number of immigrants irritated them. The money "swallowed up" in colonization
and evangelization brought no returns to France. And all the "volunteers" who were taking root in New France appeared to them as so
many potential rivals and enemies. Decidedly, this Talon had become their chief enemy. They demanded that the king recall him to
France. Which was done in 1672.
No intendant dared pursue Talon's work. The "volunteers," destitute, disappointed, prisoners of their poverty, resigned themselves to
clearing an ungrateful soil on the seigneuries granted by the king of
France; they had to become hunters, fishermen, and woodsmen in
order to feed their numerous children. In 1689 there were 10,000
French Canadians in New France. 1
The fur trade was monopolized by a few French merchants-"the
French of France," as they were already beginning to be called by
the Habitants, who hated them. All the profits went back to the metropolitan country. The little money (many times devalued) that remained in the colony was concentrated in the hands of a minority of
speculators. The people lived in the most extreme poverty, under the
amused eyes of the Fran~ois Bigots of the administration. Sometimes
the Habitants were called to the colors to defend the American possessions of the king of France, while their women cleared the land
and tended to the sowing and harvesting, raising their broods at the
same time. At times, alone or in groups, these women even had to
arm themselves with rifles to confront the Iroquois guerrillas, while
far away their husbands were fighting the English in the name of the
king.
With each war reinforcements arrived from France. And after
each treaty, the penniless demobilized soldiers stayed to swell the
ranks of the Habitants, marrying their daughters and perpetuating
their rough existence. Only a few officers had the signal honor of
being admitted to the society of the nobles.
Soon the seigneuries were overpopulated. Abandoned by the seigneurs, who were more interested in speculation and trade than in agriculture, the land deteriorated and the misery of the Habitants became unendurable. A great many of them abandoned their fields,
cursing God for having led them to this country of forests, rocks, and
26 Pierre Vallieres
history, suddenly found itself invested with a supernatural vocation.
Its task, in the pagan world of the savages and the English, would be
to save souls by patiently bearing poverty, hard labor, and isolation.
The clergy organized the embryonic nation into parishes, created elementary schools and colleges, arrogated to itself the right to regulate
the lives of individuals and groups, and defined the ideology which
was to fashion a vision of the world consistent with the interests of
the Church. The higher clergy became the true ruling class, while
every day the self-complacent nobility sank a little further into
decay.
The population continued to increase at a very rapid rate. The
land, which was already inadequate and impoverished, became less
productive and more overpopulated. The young people left the countryside to try their luck in town, where the number of unemployed
was constantly growing. In the meantime, in its classical colleges the
clergy was educating an indigenous petty bourgeoisie, composed
mainly of lawyers, notaries, doctors, and journalists. Toward the end
of the eighteenth century, this petty bourgeoisie began to develop its
own class consciousness and, in the name of the nation, set itself up
in opposition to the clergy, the decadent aristocracy, and the English. By establishing a Legislative Assembly for Lower Canada (Quebec), England gave the petty bourgeoisie a forum which it used to
the fullest to identify its class interests with those of "the people" as
a whole. After a few years of apprenticeship, the French-Canadian
politicians entered into open rebellion against the masters of the
economy, the English, and their allies, the higher clergy and the seigneurs. The Habitants, who had been completely dispossessed, were
hypnotized by the fiery Patriots and, despite the opposition of the
higher clergy, demonstrated with increasing violence their will to
overthrow the ruling classes. Papineau, more than any other man, inflamed the imagination of the Habitants and became almost a god to
them. Nevertheless, some of the Habitants who were skeptical or discouraged were already beginning to set out for exile, seeking a more
hospitable land. In 1820 there began an exodus of French-Canadian
families to the United States. This exodus was to last a century.
French-Canadian Christendom was suddenly transformed into a
vast insurrection, which was just as frightening to the Church as to
the conquerors of 1760. The French-Canadian population of Lower
28
Pierre Vallieres
30
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32
Pierre Vallieres
the debts of the two provinces. Quebec (which had a larger population and no debts, since the ruling classes had invested nothing in the
development of an infrastructure) was thus made to pay for the considerable deficit created by the construction of many costly canals in
the Ontario of the Loyalists.6 In 1867 the Confederation effected a
similar merger, in more attractive guise. Quebec and the Maritime
Provinces were made to serve the economic interests of the AngloSaxon bourgeoisie of Montreal and especially of Ontario. Once this
conquest was complete, the Fathers of the Confederation undertook
to annex the west. The railroad, accompanied by the army, conquered each of the western provinces and bloodily crushed the least
signs of resistance on the part of the local populations, in particular
the Metis (a people formed by the intermarriage of Indians and
French Canadians from Quebec). The result of crushing the Metis
was to unify all classes in Quebec against the Confederation, the central power, and English Canada only a few years after the provinces
had been united. The Quebecois turned to their own state, the State
of Quebec, and tried to make the best of their forced annexation to
the rest of Canada. The federal government, for its part, granted
them subsidies in order to avoid a resurgence of nationalism. The
premiers of Quebec, in particular Honore Mercier, cultivated this nationalism and turned it into an instrument of blackmail, to the profound irritation of the federal government. Daniel Johnson, like Lesage and Duplessis, is only doing what Mercier did.
But French-Canadian nationalism did not necessarily provide a
living. The petty bourgeoisie, of course, turned it to good account
(while at the same time making deals with the English Canadians and
the Americans behind the people's back). But the condition of the
workers hardly improved, even if Honore Mercier did his best to
make them believe in the greatness of their "mission" as Frenchmen
and Catholics in North America. An estimated 700,000 French-Canadian workers were forced into exile between 1820 and the end of
the First World War. For the people do not readily resign themselves
to dying of hunger . . . even out of patriotism! Today the descendants of these Habitants are to be found in Louisiana, New England,
New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, and even British Columbia.
(Even now, in the period of the "quiet revolution" and Expo 67,
34
Pierre Vallieres
advantage of our docility, first by developing trade in everyday consumer goods, especially in the countryside, and later by creating
those thousands of small, family manufacturing enterprises which are
so justly celebrated for the low wages they have always paid and still
pay-in the name of patriotism.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the English, American,
and Canadian capitalists became aware of all the advantages and
profits to be drawn from Christian Quebec.
Already, in order to build their railroads, they had begun buying
up a number of seigneuries and driving the farmers out. Shortly
thereafter they demanded the abolition of the seigneurial regime,
which restricted their freedom to build roads, speculate in real estate, and exploit the rich forests of Quebec for export. It will be remembered that at that time the English forests had been devastated
and the British demand for lumber was constantly growing. They immediately obtained satisfaction, despite the opposition of certain
French-Canadian seigneurs, including the "revolutionary" LouisJoseph Papineau, then seigneur of Montebello!
Seeing the abundance of cheap labor standing idle in the towns,
suburbs, and even remotest "colonies," businessmen said to themselves that they must take advantage of all these hands begging for
work and use them to exploit cheaply Quebec's vast resources in timber, minerals, and hydraulic power; and at the same time to develop
in Quebec certain industries based on the exploitation of cheap
labor, such as the textile industry, which was flourishing at the time.
In this way they could create and develop, with a minimum of expense and a maximum of profitability, a "Quebecois" economy that
would complement the dominant economies of the end of the nineteenth century, those of Great Britain and the United States.
After buying up the best land, these capitalists obtained broad
lumbering and mining concessions from the provincial government.
And almost for nothing. The sawmills multiplied. The forests were
devastated in record time. Thousands of "colonists" became lumberjacks. Little by little the lumber industry reached out to every region
of Quebec, and the great majority of farmers began to sell their labor
to the lumber companies, at least for several months of the year. The
French Canadians, peasants in spite of themselves, became "a people
of hewers of wood and drawers of water." The textile industry began
36 Pierre Vallieres
to develop in turn, particularly in the Montreal region and in the
Eastern Townships. A whole army of workers-men, women, young
people-were turned into slaves of the spinning jennies and looms in
factories where there was neither light nor air nor safety. Wages
were low, accidents frequent, diseases numerous and sometimes
fatal. (These conditions have not changed.) Finally, at the beginning
of the twentieth century, asbestos began to be mined in the Eastern
Townships, and gold, copper, and zinc in Abitibi; hydraulic resources
were exploited for the manufacture of newsprint on the St. Maurice
and of aluminum ingots in Saguenay-Lake St. John.
The proletarianization of the "rural, Catholic, and French"
French Canadians and the urbanization of medieval Quebec became
irreversible. The "return to the city" needed no propagandists; it
happened of its own accord, like any natural phenomenon.
While continuing to preach "return to the land," "buy at home,"
and the "call of the race," the clergy and the petty bourgeoisie were
taking advantage of the industrialization of Quebec, particularly in
the region around Montreal where a considerable number of industries were being installed, close to the financial and commercial
institutions, communications, and the headquarters of the masters of
the economy (most of them foreigners). The petty bourgeois paid
court to the Anglo-Saxon businessmen and, on the periphery of the
fiefs reserved for the bigshots of imperialism, began to establish hundreds of small, family industries for the manufacture of products for
domestic consumption: furniture, clothing, shoes, candles, food and
drink. (Later, around 1920, they would secure additional revenue by
taking control of the food, dairy, and loan cooperatives, and especially of the cooperative credit unions.) Around the turn of the century a few French Canadians launched out into big industry: railroads (Senecal), lumber (Dubuc), textiles (Hudon), wholesale trade
(Paquet). But their rise was as short-lived as it was rapid. They were
unable to resist the formidable American financial offensive launched
at the beginning of the twentieth century and not yet ended.
In fact, a number of Americans had already undertaken the economic conquest of Quebec in the middle of the nineteenth century,
without being too sure whether they should rely on British imperialism, which was still very powerful, or on the new American imperialism, which was much more dynamic. These "knights of industry,"
38 Pierre Vallieres
tionalist Honore Mercier and of most of the prime ministers of
Canada, starting with the French-Canadian "Sir" Wilfred Laurier.
At the end of the nineteenth century, they were convinced that
England would continue to lose ground and that in a few years the
United States would be master of the world-which the evolution of
imperialism in the twentieth century was to confirm.
The Americans encountered no opposition within the Quebec government, no matter which party was in power. Nearly all the successive premiers of Quebec were invited to sit on the executive boards
of one or another of their enterprises. The electoral machines of the
two traditional parties were also well provided for, and the business
circles got on as well with the "reds" as with the "blues."
At the federal level, the Americans rapidly took control of the Liberal Party, while "les British," who had a sentimental attachment to
the English Crown and managed British interests in Canada, had the
Conservative Party well in hand. The struggles between the two
parties only reflected the extension to Canada of the competition between English and American imperialism for control of the world
market. But while Great Britain increasingly alienated public opinion
by its openly imperialist and racist policy, its colonial wars (such as
the Boer War), its ridiculous attachment to the gilded remains of a
sanctimonious and conservative monarchy, its contempt for the
French Canadians and for "colored" peoples, its hypocritical and
inflexible legalism and so on, the United States, equally racist, imperialistic, and hypocritical-but more intelligent and wily-quietly
effected the economic and, I might say, the "spiritual" conquest of
Canada, especially Quebec and Ontario.
The French-Canadian petty bourgeoisie, in particular the "thinking" elite, ignorant of economic and social reality, of its origin, its historical development, and the direction of its evolution, and perceiving the world through the idees fixes of an immutable system, as in
the Middle Ages, spoke to the people in a language that did not correspond in the least with the reality of the daily life of the worker.
Henri Bourassa and his disciples were still talking about "return to
the land" and "Canadian independence" vis-a-vis Great Britain at a
time when the urbanization of Quebec was an irreversible phenomenon and the Americans were taking control of the economic activity
and even the politics of Quebec. The tutelage legally exercised over
40 Pierre Vallieres
crisis of 1929 broke, the .memployed and the poor of the big city experienced a misery even more terrible than that of the countryside.
Social agitation expanded with the depression of the thirties. The
union movement made enormous progress, and socialism began to recruit sympathizers and propagandists in Montreal. Strikes and demonstrations of discontent multiplied. In 1937 riots broke out in Sorel,
leaving dead and wounded. The port of Montreal was more than
once transformed into a battlefield, and the textile workers rose up
against their exploiters. Finally, when the second "conscription crisis" broke out during the war, insurrections occurred all over, and
Quebec experienced the beginning of a popular revolution. 7 Already,
during the First World War, the draft had provoked violent outbreaks, and every night for three months the streets of Montreal had
been invaded by thousands of angry workers demanding the overthrow of the system and trying to procure arms. 8 But these spontaneous uprisings had not given birth to any popular, political, revolutionary organization. On the one hand, the workers' leaders were for the
most part dominated, if not terrorized, by the clergy, who systematically blocked every attempt at revolutionary organization of the
working class. On the other hand, the "anti-draft" leaders of the
forties were petty bourgeois who had no real influence over the
workers. They were disciples of Bourassa and Canon Groulx, intellectuals who were often sympathetic to Mussolini and Hitler, anti-Semitic and racist. They were incapable of mobilizing popular discontent around a concrete program of social reforms, and all they did, in
sum, was to prepare the ground for Duplessis by their exacerbated
nationalism. 9
After the war, apathy, withdrawal, and indifference followed once
more upon the disappointed hopes that had been raised by the unionists, the Communists, and the anti-draft groups. Duplessis entered
upon his reign without opposition. He took advantage of the fact to
cede the rich iron deposits of northern Quebec to the Americans and,
with their financial assistance, to endow his party with the most formidable political machine Quebec and Canada had ever known.
The cooperative movement and the union movement, both of
which (with few exceptions) were controlled by the Church and the
traditional petty bourgeoisie, were put into the service of the slogans
"buy at home," "French-Canadian thrift" (monopolized by the
42
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44
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46 Pierre Vallieres
money gone? Into the pockets of the ministers, the party hacks, the
Filions?" Swallowed up in Sidbec, the stillborn steel works? Wasted
on pieces of road or on gifts to certain school board members? Transferred to friendly capitalists in the form of "industrial loans"? Given
to the Americans in payment of interest on the ever increasing "national debt"? Invested in projects for the centennial of the Confederation and the Expo of the capitalists?
In 1962 Social Credit gave the first concrete formulation to popular discontent, and Caouette's party, finding support in the old resentment of the French-Canadian farmers and workers against the
capitalists, swept Quebec in the federal elections. t The creditistes
disappointed the workers by their internal quarrels and incongruous
statements, but popular discontent continued to grow. Two years
later strikes broke out pretty much all over. Lesage wanted to
muzzle the press, and conflicts multipled in journalistic circles. La
Presse, Le Soleil, L 'Action, La Tribune went through difficult times.
The very long strike of the employees of La Presse, a strike that had
a strong political coloration, made the population aware of the problem of freedom of opinion and the right to information. The people
understood that in trying to censor newspapers, the Liberals were
trying to hide the truth from them, and that this was being done at
the instigation of the very men who had launched the reform movement.
Strikes increased in number and intensity. The Liberals became
professional strike-breakers and club-swingers. Their speeches boiled
down to irresponsible denunciations that were pointless and sometimes even hysterical. The people saw them as their worst enemies.
In the elections of June 1966, Lesage's crowd received a vote of noconfidence. The National Union Party was carried back to power in
spite of itself-and in spite of the workers, who could not choose
their methods. But never fear. The workers of Quebec may have
voted against Lesage so as not to go through another period of "great
Gerard Filion, long a Catholic Farmers' Union official and suburban mayor, later
director of Le Devoir, is now president of Marine Industries, a mixed state-private corporation. He is an anti-nationalist and an advocate of the view that his fellow French
Canadians should forget about separatism and acquire the business sense of the English in order to get ahead. (Trans.)
t Social Credit is a right-wing, religious fundamentalist, anti-separatist party with a
working-class orientation. It rose from obscurity in the elections mentioned. (Trans.)
48
Pierre Vallieres
2
While it is no exaggeration to call the people of Quebec white
niggers, they are not the only whites in America who "deserve" this
degrading title. The industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries drove from Europe millions of peasants and workers
who came to America in search of freedom as well as work and
bread. Only a small number of them succeeded in growing rich and
enjoying the freedom of enterprise which, on this continent, is
bought at great price. The majority of immigrants have remained the
hired servants of the "first white men," the entrepreneurs of the
superior English race, who ever since the time of the W ashingtons,
Jeffersons, and Franklins have considered themselves the sole proprietors of North America. These immigrants, despised by the European
capitalists, were welcomed with open arms by the founders of American democracy, who badly needed cheap labor in order to make
maximum profits out of the labor and capital they had invested in the
American colonies since the seventeenth century. The "first white
men" became accumulators of profits, speculators and businessmen,
while the newcomers were invited to cooperate, by selling their labor
by the hour, in the rapid development of this gigantic country which
was supposed to belong to them.
The famous "melting pot" was-and still is-a snare and a delusion. There was a "melting pot" at the level of the wage earners, the
"Ayers" refers to three companies: Dominion Ayers Wood, Ayers Blankets, and
Beautyrest Mattresses, all owned by Gilbert Ayers. (Trans.)
50 Pierre Vallieres
unemployed, the poor, those who struggled to survive. But there was
never a "melting pot" at the level of the American aristocracy, the
class of the big bourgeoisie, the financiers and professional imperialists.
Furthermore, American democracy developed a spirit of division
in the working class that has enabled the bourgeoisie to dominate the
enormous and extremely mobile mass of cheap labor without much
difficulty. First, American democracy kept immigrants from the
Christian countries of Europe as far as possible from the blacks. It organized black slavery in the South, white slavery in the North. Later,
it conquered the West, and the new rich of Texas and California organized Mexican and Indian slavery. In the North, the Yankee elite
divided the white slaves into "colonies": Italian, Irish, Polish, German, Puerto Rican, etc. The second industrial revolution, stimulated
by the war of 1939, gave rise to an exodus of southern blacks to the
big industrial cities of the North. The white slaves, already grappling
with unemployment, greeted their black brothers, who were even
poorer than they, like enemies. The unions, which were organizations
of the white slaves of big industry, were closed to the newcomers.
Racism, which had already turned the South into a veritable hell,
poisoned working-class life in most of the cities of the North. The
blacks were penned up in ghettos where the misery exceeded anything that the various "colonies" of white slaves had known. The
workers' struggle against capitalist exploitation was compromised by
fierce hatred of the blacks, engendered by the racist ideology. Financed by the exploiters of white and black workers alike, racism enabled capitalism to delay popular revolution in the United States for
many decades. By keeping the workers at each others' throats for irrational reasons, racism made it easier for the big bourgeoisie to sabotage the American union movement and protected the millionaires
from the disagreeable experience of having to curtail their profits a
little in order to finance social reforms. The union movement, controlled by speculators who were tied to the financial and political interests of the "Warfare State," supported the official policy of Washington and became the surest ally of the big corporations. Disgusted
and in revolt, thousands of white slaves, who had been ardent union
members before the war, set off hundreds of wildcat strikes in protest
against the joint dictatorship of the unions and the companies. As for
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Pierre Vallieres
Marxists (who are more obsessed with scholastic orthodoxy than with
the urgent necessity of working practically, under given conditions,
for the liberation of the working class), I see it as one of the most positive and progressive manifestations of the development of the American revolution. For that revolution will have to take into account
not only the "proletarian" aspect of the worker, but also his culture,
his ethnic origin, his traditions and customs, his particular needs and
tastes; otherwise it will not be a human revolution, total and liberating.
Black nationalism-like French-Canadian separatism-is of inestimable service to revolutionaries in that it forces them to envisage
the liberation of the whole man and enables them to avoid the trap
of half-revolutions which, as soon as they are victorious, change into
the oppression of racial, linguistic, religious, or other minorities.
Black nationalism and Quebec separatism are again teaching people
how much is demanded by a true respect for men in the equality of
natural and historical differences (and not of differences in power
and privilege created by the unequal division of wealth, by private
ownership of the means of production, by free competition, the concentration of capital in the hands of the fiercest exploiters and the division of society into antagonistic classes). This respect of man for
man presupposes the abolition of social classes, of capitalism, of the
exploitation of man by man. And the nationalism of the poor, the exploited-in contrast to the nationalism of the steel and oil kings, the
proprietors of nuclear energy and atomic bombs, the warmongers
and the manufacturers of Agena rockets-aims to crush no one.
Since they are already the ones who are most oppressed, the poor can
only dominate themselves, that is to say, become their own masters.
Their enemies cannot be the "dirty niggers," because they are those
dirty niggers; they cannot be the "French Pea Soups," because they
are those French Pea Soups; they cannot be the "damned ignorant
factory hands," because they are those ignorant factory hands. These
niggers-who do not all have the same color skin, who do not all
speak the same language, who believe in different prophets, live in
ghettos that are foreign to each other and experience in different
ways the dictatorship of the same economic, political, and social system-all these niggers whom the partisans of slavery, the businessmen, and the politicians have for centuries contrived to set against
3
"But how can we, the niggers, who are the ones most deprived
(materially, intellectually, technically) of the means of conquering
power and keeping it, how can we hope to overcome the greatest
economic, political, and military power in the world, overthrow imperialism, and found a new society on a completely different basis
from that of the present society, we who possess nothing and who
find it hard to understand the workings of the oppression that makes
us slaves?"
Every nigger, every worker who becomes aware of the intolerable
injustice of the present system, every slave, in short, who educates
himself and opens his eyes to the truth-which it is the function of
propaganda, religion, and education to hide from him as much as
possible-asks himself with anguish and skepticism the famous question: HOW?
A man accustomed to humiliation and forced labor (labor in order
to subsist) becomes fatalistic, passive, skeptical. He is tempted to say
to himself: "All those dreams only make us even more unhappy and
don't change anything. And then, isn't it in the 'order' of things that
there should be some people more intelligent than others, more hard
54 Pierre Vallieres
working, more thrifty, less given to drink, less lazy, who succeed
more easily because they are more 'capable,' soberer, better educated . . . richer too, you have to admit?
"But doesn't someone become 'capable' because he is educated?
And that education that he got at the university, didn't he pay a lot
for it? Where did he get the money? Where did his father get the
money? How does it happen that his father has a higher income than
the average person? How did he get to be a doctor or an industrialist? Where did his father's father get the money to have his son educated? And where did his father's father's father . . .
"And then, why couldn't my father have me educated, send me to
the university? Why have my father and my father's father always
been so hard up? And why are the schools in the working-class quarters dirty, ill equipped, damp, as if they had been built on purpose to
make you hate studying? (You do better taking lessons from the gangsters, you know. And it pays off fast, tool But I'd be afraid of
that . . . ) And why are workers' wages so low, and the cost of living
so high, that at fourteen or sixteen you have to look for work like
your father, sell your labor by the hour or the week and accept the
hardest job like a gift from Heaven because it brings in a few bucks
-which you will immediately spend at the clothing store, the corner
grocery, the movies, the doctor's . . . and at the tavern when, at the
end of six months of this dog's life, you go there to drown the dreams
of your youth in beer and noise? Can you explain to me, dear doctor,
how it is that there are so many taverns in Montreal and so many
drunkards inside? Can you explain to me why you meet mostly workers there, "ignorant" men and the unemployed? And why there are
more of these taverns in the French East than in the English West?
"There must be an explanation for all that,'' Joe says to himself
over and over. "It's not possible that all of us from the East End of
the city, and from Saint-Henri and the Pointe Saint-Charles, are
mentally retarded. And that all of those damn rich men from Westmount, Outremont, and Mount Royal are more intelligent than the
rest of us. Here, take my boss for example: he doesn't even know that
Cartier made political deals for the railroad companies. He doesn't
know the first thing about the history of his country, and he believes
in fairy tales. The other day he said to me in all seriousness that his
56 Pierre Vallieres
boys, a longshoreman, say . . . or a lumberjack, yes, a lumberjack, a
big strapping fellow, stands up in front of us, thousands of workers
assembled in Lafontaine Park, and strikes up the Marseillaise or the
Chant des partisans-because we don't have any songs like that yet
in these parts-and then this lumberjack shouts to us: 'Aux armes,
Quebecois!' And all together, like one man, we repeat: 'Aux armes,
Quebecois!' And then we get out our rifles and grenades and decide
to make an end of ... But that great day, it won't be tomorrow.
We'll have to rouse the men. If we can get rid of the moss-backs and
the ass-lickers, that will help. Those idiots are worse than the bosses.
By the way, you know the little newspaper La Cognee? I don't know
who writes it, but they're right on target! Read it. If I could write,
that's the way I'd do it. They're just right when they say the bigshots
in the union are rotten. But we're going to change that, and no later
than this year, whether they like it or not. We're sick of being spat
on. I for one, anyway, I've made up my mind. Nothing is going to
stop me. If the men can act like men . . . "
It is through such reflections, based on a daily experience of exploitation, that every conscious worker reaches the conclusion that
the heart of the problem is not the alleged "capacity" of some (the
few) and the incapacity of others; that it is not a question of "competence," much less intelligence, but basically a question of privileges
unequally divided, of powers unjustly acquired through centuries of
violence during which the weaker have always been pitilessly
crushed by the stronger (stronger because richer).
4
The heart of the problem is neither metaphysical nor moral. It is
material; it is at the same time economic, historical, and military.
Consequently its solution must be of the same nature. Since the evolution of humanity is not a philosophical system, there is no theoretical solution to the problems that it raises. There are only practical solutions.
Theory is an instrument of research whose usefulness is measured
by the practical actions it enables us to perform. A theory is progressive and revolutionary insofar as it enables men to perform acts
which transform their world by radically changing their social relationships.
That is why every worker who comes to realize the injustice of his
condition, the condition of his fellows, and consequently of the vast
majority of men, is immediately confronted with the most gigantic
practical problem that has ever presented itself, first to men, then to
collectivities: How to transform thousands of years of exploitation of
man by man and of incessant murderous wars, how to transform
centuries of accumulation of capital and concentration of wealth at
the expense of men's progress and freedom, how to transform this
long history of massacre, pillage, and slavery into a new history of
peace, justice, and freedom? How to transform a world dominated
and perverted by money, hatred, and violence into a world without
money, hatred, or violence? How to make a world without niggers?
How . . . ? It is not a theoretical problem but a practical one, because it is solely a problem of the relationship of forces. It is a question of overturning the present relationship of forces; of seeing to it
that the weak-the vast majority of the two billion inhabitants of the
planet, whose numbers give them a natural, inalienable right to control their own affairs-become the stronger, the sole masters of their
fate, the sole artisans of their social universe; of seeing to it that the
powerful-the small minority who make up the international business bourgeoisie and who monopolize economic, political, and social
affairs, the means of communication, the engines of war and the
reigning ideologies-are reduced to impotence, held in check, prevented forever from exploiting human labor for their profit.
It is a question of making men equal, not only in law but in fact.
It is necessary to create the material conditions for this equality,
that is, to abolish everything that makes the present social relations
the relations between masters and slaves, sellers and buyers, rich and
poor, exploiters and exploited. It is necessary to replace all that with
new social relations which are no longer based on force, money, and
systematic injustice, but on all men's right to equality, on justice, fraternity, and the collective enjoyment of the wealth, both material
and cultural, that belongs to every man from birth.
Humanity, like everything that is natural, can find within itself the
"self-regulators" necessary to its survival and progress, without needing a class of businessmen to act as policemen. Perhaps, up until
now, humanity needed to be run by a minority class of "entrepreneurs" (in the broad sense). But today every man is in a position to
58 Pierre Vallieres
become his own entrepreneur, because science and technology have
already reached a sufficient level of development to enable all the
collectivities on earth-and through them, all men-to acquire the
material and intellectual means of achieving freedom, social equality,
and the happiness of working through personal and collective creation for the progress of humanity.
Only the usurpation by the international business bourgeoisie
(businessmen, manufacturers of automobiles and rockets, warmongers) of the instruments of research, the industries, the discoveries,
the universities, the means of disseminating knowledge, etc.--only
this usurpation by a handful of financiers and their army of technicians, scientists, and intellectuals prevents humanity today from taking the most gigantic step in all its history, from making the most
profound and human revolution the earth has ever known. Only this
class of businessmen, to whom must be added the bureaucrats of Soviet and East European state capitalism, prevents humanity from
coming out of its long prehistory.
The point of departure of all revolutions has been that a broad faction of a given population has recognized the conservative and parasitic nature of the dominant class, which enjoys everything without
doing anything, without producing, while the majority is reduced to
servile obedience to the dictates of the guardians of Order. The great
revolution for which humanity is ripe will really get under way on
the day when the workers, scientists, technicians, and intellectuals
meet in joint opposition to the gold-plated obscurantism of the bankers and monarchs of the universe. In this century more than one revolution, civil war, insurrection, riot, general strike, and war of national liberation has demonstrated the will of the peasants, workers,
and youth of the entire world to transform this world, pillaged by the
international race for profits, into a world of peace, social justice, and
fraternity. But too few scientists, technicians, and intellectuals have
as yet come to understand that their discoveries and labor will always
be subjugated to the class interests of the great financiers (to their
wars, to their exploitation of the labor of hundreds of millions of
men, and to the systematic development of underdevelopment in the
majority of the countries of the "third world") until the day when, instead of assisting the capitalists in their enterprise of dehumanization
"made in U.S.A.," they turn toward those whose toil, over the centu-
5
At first glance, the problems raised by the evolution of humanity at
each historical stage always appear insurmountable. The picture one
60
Pierre Vallieres
paints for himself, and describes to others, of this society without exploitation, for the achievement of which one is ready to take up
arms, is like something out of science fiction.
And in the beginning, your utopia makes some people pity you,
others ridicule you, and the majority look upon you as a kind of mystic without God! It is not long before you have acquired a reputation
for being a dreamer-a fellow who is "sincere" but "idealistic." If,
on top of that, you intend to go on to action, then you become ipso
facto a "communist," an "anarchist," an irresponsible and dangerous
man who, in the interest of society, should be locked up as soon as
possible in a prison or insane asylum. As long as you only preach your
utopia, the established order is content to take note of your "dissent"
with contempt or indifference. But as soon as you begin to act, the
old system hastens to turn you into a public menace and a criminal,
so as to be able to bury you alive before your "idealism" puts Molotov cocktails, dynamite, and rifles into the hands of the workers and
the young people, who are very receptive to the idea of Utopia,
which is all they are waiting for to rise up en masse against those who
organize, profit from, and defend oppression. For no matter what the
ideologists of capitalism, neocapitalism, and imperialism may say
about Utopia, it is not a philosopher's utopia: it sums up aspirations
which cry out not only to be perceived and understood, but above all
to be realized. Nor is Utopia the final point, the terminus of human
evolution. On the contrary. It is only the point of departure, the beginning, the first stage of the new history which men will embark
upon together once they are liberated from their present condition as
niggers, as sub-men.
The worker or petty bourgeois who has one day confronted himself and become personally implicated in the unprecedented challenge which the liberation of hundreds of millions of men on the five
continents represents, cannot help feeling that he is a visionary and a
madman. And this is so even after the Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese,
and Cuban revolutions, for we all know that these revolutions are
still only first, stumbling steps. Much greater changes will have to
occur if human freedom is to become not just an essence of the philosophers but an act, if it is to pass from being an ideal of the moralists to concrete existence, from desire to practice, if it is to become
the individual and collective reality of life.
6
The author of this book is an idealist who, from childhood on,
learned from his father to long for a better world in which the men
who work anonymously from day to day-the farmers, workers, day
laborers like my father-could enjoy life after having toiled so hard
to subsist, to endure . . . and to perpetuate the species. Enjoy life
not by getting drunk on the weekend, by "drinking up their pay,"
beating their wives and children and destroying themselves in useless
fits of anger, but by possessing the material and intellectual means of
creating something in this world; of giving of themselves to others
and of exchanging with them something other than curses, sarcasms,
and humiliations.
"I wonder when we'll be able to take it easy for a bit and enjoy life
without worrying about tomorrow," my father often said. And with a
bitterness mingled with resignation, my mother would answer:
"When you're born for half a loaf, you can't expect . . . " My
mother was learning to forget all the dreams of happiness that, like
all women, she had had in her youth. And she did not want to discuss
fantasies with my father. What was the use? You hurt yourself by
hoping. You increase your disappointments and life becomes unbearable. Better to expect nothing and take what comes, as it comes.
My father would say nothing, suppressing his hopes the way one
holds back sobs. I would look into his deep, gentle eyes and read a
mixture of immense kindness, silent suffering, and perhaps also grief.
Sometimes he would smile, just long enough to tell me, without
opening his lips, that his dreams could be realized, that one had to
believe that.
My mother would complain about her headaches, the dullness of
the radio broadcasts, the slovenliness of such and such a neighbor
. . . while I, trying not to hear anything that was going on around
me, would listen to the revolt that mounted inside me and heated my
blood.
They say that silent suffering is the most terrible. (I read that in a
prose poem of Baudelaire's, I think.) I learned very early to question
fate in silence. Especially on those long rainy days when it seemed to
me that the whole universe had withdrawn into the depths of a
swamp of misery. There, men seemed to have given up, abdicated, as
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Pierre Vallieres
63
time the Quebecois struggled vainly, in anxiety and despair, like penniless prisoners who are totally ignorant of the procedures that cause
them to be in prison one day and in court the next, then in prison
again, without ever understanding the working of the machine that
shifts them back and forth in a universe from which all light, reason,
and meaning are shut out, the universe called Justice, Law and
Order, the Public Interest. 14
Under the reign of Duplessism, it was not easy for the Quebecois
to resist intoxicating themselves by reading the classics of despair.
How could one give a meaning to this society of crushed and silent
men? Not even the best of the oppressed knew how to turn their oppression into revolt. Everywhere there was unanimous silence, a conspiracy among all men to remain shut up in their ghettos, to die there
as soon as possible and no longer have to breathe the atmosphere of
submission mixed with selfishness in which practically no one dared
accept the responsibility, beyond his own immediate interest, of
working for the downfall of Stupidity!
It was as if after the years of struggle during the Depression and
the war, the Quebecois had become indifferent to their fate. They
had no resiliency left.
At that time, a man who chose to give his life for an idea would
have stirred no emotion among the mass of sluggish men. Winter had
frozen the best minds. Nothing was left but day-to-day living, without a future, without passion, without reason. Once in a whilerarely-a revolt, a burst of anger here or there. But no enduring passion, no firm determination, no precise goal. God the Father governed in Quebec, and while the Quebecois did not really justify that
government, they did not seek to contest it either. They laughed at
it; and took advantage of it "under the counter." Political patronage
provided social welfare for the disinherited and profits for the new
rich who were manufactured by the regime to compete with the liberal bourgeoisie.
It seemed as if, having come through many years of black misery,
the Quebecois no longer attached any importance to their future, to
what they called their fantasies of the old days. The only thing they
looked forward to-and they didn't even really believe in that-was
the American money that Duplessis dangled glittering in front of the
64 Pierre Vallieres
bishops, deputies, and petty bourgeois; and, when there was any left
over, in front of the farmers or workers who promised him their votes
and complicity in advance.
And yet, a few years before, these same men had often assembled
to denounce the dictatorship of capital and to demand the heads of
their exploiters. They had invaded the business quarter and done significant damage to the big buildings of the financiers. They had refused to go and fight to defend the interests of Rockefeller. They had
hidden in the woods, armed with their rifles. They had even mobilized their wives and children to organize resistance to the military
police. They had been men.
And now here they were, applauding the demagogy of Duplessis
and the vulgarities of the drunkard Camillien Houde. o The country
was becoming a vast circus where if one still wanted to give a meaning to life, one had to have blind faith and commit one's inner self to
a solitary hope, hard as the rocks of the Gaspe, black as the mines of
Abitibi, dreary as the faces of the workers of Montreal and cold as
the winter of Quebec.
Few were those who dared to believe. Nevertheless, during the
war men of this country had spoken to other men of this country in a
language of combat and fraternity. A language which men like my father kept in their hearts, in the hope that one day combat and fraternity would give them the homeland they did not have. Yet in those
days there was war and hunger.
At the very time when war seemed to be telling men that they
were wrong to be bent on living, there were workers in Quebec, as in
most of the countries of the world, who were longing more than ever
for a change of system.
Notes
l. While the Anglo-Americans numbered 200,000. In 1760, at the time of
66 Pierre Vallieres
French regime, there existed no economic base for autonomous development. Under the English regime, the economic base (agriculture and
commerce) was created and placed at the service of the Anglo-Saxon interests. With the development of banks, canals, railroads, and industry,
this economic base expanded, but it continued to serve English and
American interests. Today, in the era of the great multinational corporations, the economic base of development is controlled and limited by
American imperialism, according to the needs of the world market-that
is, according to the interests of the powerful American business bourgeoisie. Today imperialism is working hard to underdevelop the development
that already exists, in order to prevent the people from building a solid
economic base for the independence and social revolution they
want.
That is why, in nearly all the countries dominated by imperialism, even
the once powerful "national" bourgeoisies, and most of the petty bourgeoisies, are reduced to the role of policemen and lackeys of Yankee interests. And that is why, when the necessary revolutions have taken place in
those countries, everything will still have to be built.
(One of my future projects will be to gather the necessary material for
an economic history of Quebec.)
3. The nobles belonged for the most part to the group of privileged, idle
men who formed the local ruling class (as opposed to the French merchants who were only "passing through" the colony). In reality, this ruling class had only the power to profit from the general corruption, while
the people, who were reduced to the most abject poverty, did not participate in the government in any way. The ruling class was poor because
misery was too widespread for the accumulation of wealth to be the basis
of the social structure of the time. Apart from the merchants, the only nobles who succeeded were the Jesuits, the Sulpicians, and the priests of the
Seminary of Quebec, who did not have to finance the numerous wars
(against the Iroquois and the English). Besides, ever since 1659 Bishop
Laval, who was a Vaticanist and believed in centralization, had been taking advantage of the absence of civil administration in the colony to make
the Church the armature of the emerging nation. The missionaries were
imported not so much to convert the savages as to conquer the country in
the name of the Church. Four years after the arrival of this holy dictator
and aristocrat, the town of Quebec alone had 150 ecclesiastics out of a
total population of barely 500, or one for every three inhabitants! Even
today, after three centuries, the power of the Church is still one of the
greatest obstacles to the development of Quebec. This was proved yet
again when the bishops undertook to torpedo Bill 60 on educational re-
68 Pierre Vallieres
had protected the interests of the Grand Trunk by a piece of legislation
that provided guarantees and substantial loans for the reorganization of
the railroads belonging to the most important financial group in the country. That is what the taxes wrung from the workers were used for.
6. "One powerful force [in London] behind the Union Act was that of the
banking firm of Baring Brothers, which had underwritten almost all the
Upper Canadian securities. . . . One of the principals of this firm, Francis
T. Baring, was chancellor of the exchequer in the Melbourne cabinet, and
the Baring interests may have had something to do with the determination of the cabinet to shift the burden of Upper Canadian bankruptcy
onto the shoulders of the prosperous lower province." F. Mason Wade,
op. cit., p. 225.
It can be assumed that the same phenomenon occurred again in 1867,
if one considers that the Grand Trunk and Intercolonial Railway companies were controlled by British interests.
7. During the summer of 1944 a number of street fights took place in Montreal between French Canadians and the military police. The Saint-JeanBaptiste Society of Montreal, of which Roger Duhamel was president,
publicly condemned violence. "Civilized people should have other methods for finding a common ground for their different viewpoints," he wrote
in La Patrie of June 10, 1944.
In the fall, acts of violence multiplied all across Quebec, even in Chicoutimi and Rimouski. There was more talk than ever about independence and revolution. The Rue Saint-Jacques and the "clique of colonels"
were denounced on every hand.
On November 29, after a speech by Andre Laurendeau, several thousand French Canadians paraded through the financial district of Montreal
breaking windows at the offices of the National Selective Service, the
"sold-out" newspaper Le Canada, the Bank of Montreal, the Montreal
Trust Company, and other Anglo-American businesses.
The riots spread and the English-language newspapers demanded that
the demonstrations be repressed. Le Devoir, as was its habit, "deplored"
the incidents in Montreal, Quebec, Chicoutimi, and Rimouski.
An angry crowd broke windows at the Quebec residence of Louis St.
Laurent, then Canadian Minister of Justice. And eminent English Canadians recommended that machine guns be used to force the "French Pea
Soups" to defend the interests of the "free world"!
8. The disturbances came to a head on August 29 and 30, 1917. Orators exhorted the crowds to clean their rifles and take up a collection to buy
other arms. The police tried to break up the meetings: at least one man
was killed. The wealthy home of Hugh Graham (Lord Atholstan), owner
70 Pierre Vallieres
to save face for the Banana Republic that Quebec had become. His greatest delight was to provide the bishops with opportunities to come and eat
out of his hand . . . when he had concluded good bargains with his American friends.
10. The Grand Inquisitor of the time, Cardinal Villeneuve, was the chief architect, along with Duplessis, of Quebec anti-Communism, the FrenchCanadian and Catholic version of Senator McCarthy's witch hunt.
11. On the occasion of this conflict the Archbishop of Montreal, Msgr. Charbonneau, declared: "We want social peace, but we do not want the
working class to be crushed. We are more interested in man than in capital." (Le Devoir, May 2, 1949.) Alerted by the Rue Saint-Jacques,
Duplessis persuaded Pope Pius XII to force the resignation of Msgr.
Charbonneau and exile him to British Columbia.
12. When Charles Gagnon and I went on a hunger strike at the United Nations, a group of Christians from the University of Montreal demonstrated their solidarity with us. One can judge from the contents of their
"declaration of solidarity" what a long way social consciousness has
come in Quebec, for believers as well as nonbelievers. This declaration
has been one of the greatest consolations to us during our detention in
New York. Here are a few extracts from it:
"We declare our solidarity with the hunger strike undertaken by
Pierre Vallieres and Charles Gagnon in New York on September 26,
1966. By this we mean that we are fighting for the liberation of the
workers of Quebec, and indeed againstall forms of exploitation of man
by man; and that we are trying to promote a more just and fraternal society through socialism. If Pierre Vallieres and Charles Gagnon thought
it necessary to use violence by organizing the new terrorist network of
the FLQ, they did so advisedly. One may dispute the realism and effectiveness of this method of action. One may also approve it. . . . As one
may dispute the realism of a world which 'right-thinking' people believe
to be peaceful when it is steeped in the violence that is done to the
weakest every day . . . !
"We are united in solidarity with those who are fighting against the
chief enemy of Man, which at the present time is neocapitalism . . . and
imperialism. . . .
"We are aware of the fact that our struggle in Quebec is taking
place in the framework of another, much vaster struggle, that of all the
clear-thinking, responsible, and fraternal men the world over, atheists or
not, Christians or not, Marxists or not, who are fighting for the liberation
of Man. . . . " Le Quartier Latin, October 24, 1966; and Le Devoir, October 25, 1966.
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Pierre Vallieres
(3) In addition, Black Power demands that black leaders democratically
elected by blacks to defend the interests of blacks be given the right to
represent the twenty million Afro-Americans at the international level.
That means that if the whites refuse to apply the majority rule, which
they themselves invented, the blacks will simply get along without them.
And that is the profound meaning of what is called "black nationalism."
The blacks are increasingly refusing integration, because integration
means the suqugation of the black majorities of many counties, districts,
and cities in the United States to rich, white minorities. (Thus, in
Lowndes County, Alabama, the blacks constitute nearly 85 percent of
the population, and yet in the elections of November 8, 1966, there were
in that county as many whites as blacks who had the right to vote! That's
integration.) Constitutionally the blacks have the same rights as the
whites, but in concrete reality they do not have the same freedoms. And
when the rich whites cannot crush the blacks with laws, they assassinate
them. Personally, I believe that in no civilized country does one find so
much violence and hate as in the United States. And this hate-filled violence comes exclusively from the powerful American capitalists.
Since the violent death of Malcolm X in 1965, the most influential and
popular leader of the Black Power movement has been the president of
SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), Stokely Carmichael, who is only twenty-five years old. He has already been in prison
several times, but he has not yet been assassinated! Working with poor
blacks of the rural South, Harlem, Atlanta, or Los Angeles, Carmichael
has just launched a campaign against the drafting of blacks, whom the
Pentagon sends to Vietnam by the thousands to murder innocent people
and be murdered in turn in the diabolical war engendered by imperialism. A great number of American officials are now demanding Carmichael's head.
Biack Power is being organized in a climate of riots, bombings, and assassinations and is a strong expression of the class struggle that is developing in Uncle Sam's country and threatening its system. But while
Black Power and the Black Panthers-the political party to which it has
given birth in the South-are organizing the blacks against the white
capitalists, their "nationalism" has a strong socialist coloration and is in
increasingly radical opposition to the black bourgeoisie which, moreover, has just publicly condemned Black Power. Of course, there are
conflicts of interest within the Black Power movement, but dominated
and led as it is by the most progressive (and youngest) elements of the
black "nation," "class," or "community," it has every chance of creating, in the near future, the conditions for a revolution of unprecedented
74 Pierre Vallieres
Clubs (a mixed organization that includes both whites and blacks but is
predominantly white), Students for a Democratic Society, the Progressive
Labor Party, and the Young Socialist Alliance. All of these organizations
are young, dynamic, open, and in ideological agreement with Marxism.
They differ among themselves only as to means of action. Apart from
Youth Against War and Fascism and Students for a Democratic Society,
their members still take refuge too often in the clear conscience that
comes from giving the blacks "moral" support. But they are all in the
process of becoming radicalized and their agitation, like their propaganda, has increasing influence in the cities of the North and the poor
rural areas of the South.
The "white" publications which support and even contribute to the
development of Black Power are as follows:
(a) Monthly Review (of international reputation) which, together with
the French review Partisans (Fran~ois Maspero), contributes the most to
the renewal of revolutionary thought and to the historical, dialectical
analysis of the development of the class struggle throughout the world. By
their profound economic analyses, Baran, Sweezy, Huberman, Gunder
Frank, and the others are successfully carrying on the work undertaken
more than a century ago by Marx and Engels. Together with the Partisans
group, they are certainly the intellectuals of the capitalist world who are
closest to the revolutionaries of the entire world, the most useful to them
on the level of revolutionary ideology and strategy and the most listened
to and respected by the movements struggling against oppression. (b) The
Partisan, published by Youth Against War and Fasci~m, a review more accessible to the masses and, like Monthly Review, open to the problems of
revolutionary movements. the world over. (c) The Young Socialist, published monthly by the group of the same name. (d) Challenge, the newspaper of the Progressive Labor Party, published in English and Spanish
(for the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans "in exile" in New York).
B. The Puerto Ricans and the Mexicans: The Puerto Ricans of New York,
of whom there are at least a million and whose numbers are growing very
rapidly, constitute an increasingly dangerous mass for the capital of "free
enterprise" where everything is the "greatest in the world." Unemployment, slums, disease, and ignorance bring them together with the blacks
in the same struggle for liberation. Besides, the majority of them live near
Harlem, and as nearly all the Puerto Ricans are brown or black, they are
coming more and more to form a single community with the Afro-Americans-especially since they share the same living conditions as their Harlem brothers. (A fact to be underlined: in the Manhattan House of Detention, one of the biggest prisons in the state of New York, where Charles
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Pierre Vallieres
which is the brains and heart of the white, millionaire, extreme Right.
The "Kennedy" men, who are not very firmly established in this region,
are trying to take advantage of the discontent of the Mexican-American
"poor" who are beginning to imitate the black "poor." It is possible that
the Mexican-Americans will continue to be deceived by the Democratic
Party, because their struggle is only beginning and an ideology corresponding to their true interests does not seem to have been formulated
yet. It is possible that they will be fooled by a Martin Luther King or a
Bobby Kennedy (who is only a fascist disguised as a liberal and who is
taking advantage of his brother's "canonization" by capitalist opinion to
attempt to succeed him). But the recent and current history of the "decolonization of the American black" (that is the title of a book by Daniel
Guerin, published by Editions de Minuit, Paris), demonstrates that all the
Martin Luther Kings that capitalism can manufacture, now and in the
future, are-like the system itself-not strong enough to resist the will of
the majority of men, to resist their vital need for concrete freedom. The
Mexicans of Texas and California will also finally come to understand that
this freedom is not to be found by marking an X on a ballot.
C. The "white niggers": Although their unions are rotten to the core,
although most of their parties-including the Communist Party-are conservative and accept the rules of the democratic (i.e., legal) game, the
workers, students, intellectuals, and youth of the United States are beginning to recognize the true nature of the system, its arbitrary character,
which is called freedom of the individual. (Which individuals? The rich,
of course, those who can "buy" anything they want, even the right to kill
the weak, to jail them, exploit them, etc.; those who regularly spend millions to get themselves elected so as to be able to "democratically" impose on the people laws which will enable them to make even more millions, and to manufacture wars-in Vietnam, the Congo, Santo Domingo
etc.-in order to make billions out of the oppression they give themselves
the right to exercise over three-quarters of humanity . . . in the name of
the Rights of Man, the United Nations, world peace, the great Kennedy,
Saint Paul VI, God the Father, and General Motors!) The war in Vietnam,
the bloody repression of the Dominican revolution, the intervention of
the CIA in Indonesia, in Algeria, and in Brazil in 1965, the struggle of the
blacks, the growing number of spontaneous strikes, the widespread and
growing unemployment, poverty, delinquency, etc., the increasingly frequent intervention of the State Department in the private lives of members of the opposition, the rising cost of living, etc., are turning the white
"American Way of Life" into a veritable hell. Revolt is rumbling among
the whites. Housewives boycott the supermarkets; union members go out