Are Canadian Trotskyists Tail-Ending Petit-Bourgeois Nationalism?
Comrade Germain’s Accusation The quotation from Liberation which served as a phantom basis for Comrade Germain’s assault on Canadian Trotskyist “Menshevism” is enlisted again in the next section of his document, to sustain the view that the Canadian section is supporting petit-bourgeois nationalism. This time, a single sentence is sufficient evidence for his charge. Comrade Beiner said that the “positions of Lenin and Trotsky on the national struggle of an oppressed people” implied the need “to support Quebec nationalism unconditionally.” (Quoted by Comrade Germain, p. 30.) For Comrade Germain, this is quickly refuted. “Nationalism,” he explains, “is an ideology, the ideology of national solidarity irrespective of regional, ethnic or social differences… . With the epoch of imperialism, nationalism, as a rule becomes reactionary,” and is universally counterposed to the concepts of proletarian class independence and internationalism. (Pp. 32-33, emphasis in original.) And since the LSA
