1. In the last period, the Fourth International has made progress in party building in two fields.
• the beginning of the ability to seriously root our organizations in the working class and its organizational consequences in the turn to industry.
• starting to take up more generally the political importance of the youth in the class struggle and the organizational steps which have to be taken to relate to these young people through the building of revolutionary youth organizations.
This is a process of changing the FI and its sections in their fields of work, as a pre-requisite for their future tasks. These two organizational steps are not separate but interrelated.
The aim of the present document is to indicate how we should go forward in this process in the imperialist countries in regard to the question of youth.
THE ROLE OF YOUTH IN THE CLASS STRUGGLE
2. In the class struggle the decisive role is played by the working class leading its allies. Within that framework a crucial role is played by the youth from these layers. This is demonstrated not only by historical but by contemporary experience.
This crucial role played by the youth of the working class and oppressed is directly reflected in the building of the revolutionary party itself. Although a revolutionary party has more experienced forces in its leadership and cadre the majority of its membership will be young people. While of course precise analogies must not be made it is worth noting that the average age of the Bolshevik Party in 1917 was 23, the FSLN in Nicaragua in 1979 24, and the German Communist Party when it was a mass revolutionary party had an average age in its early 20s.
The new wave of politicisation in the imperialist countries also began in the 1960s with young people-particularly starting in solidarity with the colonial revolution. Following the May/June general strike in France this politicisation increasingly affected layers of the working class and greatly widened the range 18 of issues which it took up. In the colonial revolution, and in the movements of opposition inside the workers movement, •a crucial role has been played by young people. These young people formed the backbone of the strengthening of the sections of the Fourth International since the late 1960s.
However, young people radicalize with great speed and have the ability to go in a very short time from lack of experience and campaigning on a single question to accepting a full revolutionary programme. Furthermore the pattern of radicalization of young people often differs in important aspects, and often has its own rhythms and forms compared to that of older layers. This creates the need for an additional different type of organization to the party to win the maximum number of young people to revolutionary politics, i.e. an organization without the same level of political experience and requirements as the party for initial membership and wide open to radicalising young people. Today the Fourth International has important openings to construct such revolutionary youth organizations in the imperialist countries.
3. The question of constructing revolutionary youth organizations is inseparably connected with the question of building the revolutionary party. Once a youth organization is created, this does not relieve the party of one of its sectors of work. On the contrary it increases the responsibilities of the party. For the first time the problems posed by the existence of the youth organization begin to be confronted practically. None of the major problems confronted by the youth organization can be solved simply by that organization itself but they are above all problems which must be confronted by the party. All the errors and weaknesses of the party will reappear in the youth organization in an even larger form than in the section of the Fourth International itself.
A youth organization is only possible with a major allocation of resources to it from the party, and if it is seen as one of the priorities of the section. Adoption of this document therefore indicates that the Fourth International considers that a high priority today should be given by its sections in the imperialist countries to building revolutionary youth organizations.
BUILDING THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY TODAY
4. Strategy and tactics in building the revolutionary party and youth organizations are not timeless but must be derived from the objective situation and tasks confronting the working class. We may summarize these briefly in the present period as follows.
i. The situation which is developing today is decisively one of an international crisis of capitalism, imperialism and Stalinism. This is shown dramatically in the revolutionary struggles in Central America and the Caribbean, in Poland and in the anti-missiles and anti-nuclear weapons movement. This increasingly direct international crisis must be built into our perspectives in every country and is fundamental in building both the Fourth International and national parties.
ii. Within this framework the economic offensive of the bourgeoisie will deepen and widen. The first generalized post war recession of 1975, and the second of 1979-81, are only the first stage in a deepening crisis. A continual and intensified attack to impose 'austerity' policies, and weaken and destroy the organizations of the most important sections of the working class, will be more and more necessary for capitalism.
iii. There is a permanent general social crisis of capitalism-and also in a different form one affecting the bureaucratized workers states. This hits with particularly great severity against the most oppressed layers of society-women, blacks, young people but its effects strike the working class as a whole.
iv. The outcome of all these struggles inside the imperialist countries will be long and difficult. We are only just at the beginning of the great struggles which will take place in the imperialist centres. Only the strongest forces on either side can hope to gain victory in this struggle. Neither can do so without developing the strongest possible all-round political strategy and without using the strongest social forces available to them. This means the bourgeois state and reaction on the one side and the industrial proletariat and its organizations on the other. It is this political framework, and the social conclusions that flow from it, which determine the tasks in building the revolutionary party. As an aspect of this it also determines tasks in building the revolutionary youth organization.
5. It is often the case historically that a new wave of radicalisation starts outside the core of the working class among students, white-collar, and intellectual layers. This was the case in the 1960s with the movements of solidarity with the colonial revolution. The dynamic, however, is for this radicalisation to increasingly touch the most decisive layers of the industrial working class and for this to become increasingly the backbone of the struggle on all political questions.
Within this framework of an intensification of political crises and developments the present international situation therefore also sees an increasing tendency for the working class to play, conjuncturally as well as historically, a more and more leading role in the class struggle. This has been the increasing trend inside the imperialist countries since the May- June 1968 general strike in France. From this flows the chief organizational task of the Fourth International in this period, with tactical implications flowing from it, the turn to base itself inside the industrial working class. This includes the need to transfer forces into industry so as to gain a majority of our members inside the industrial working class.
From this political situation and its social dynamic flows the type of parties which we have to build. Parties socially based inside the working class but capable of taking up all the issues of the class struggle.
6. While the new radicalization has already penetrated into the industrial working class this necessarily continues to be extremely uneven. The defeats imposed by Stalinism, the long post war capitalist boom, the continuing weight of the reformist apparatuses, mean that the masses, and even most of the older organizing cadres of the working class in the capitalist states, continue in all except a few countries, to have reformist illusions. These will only be overcome through a whole series of massive struggles on a scale far greater than those we have already seen.
The dynamic of the class struggle, however, necessarily drives towards an increasing conflict between the orientation of the masses and those of the reformist leaderships. This poses the task of the construction of the revolutionary party, of a class struggle left wing. This process, however, is one of a prolonged period of the class struggle and we are only just at its beginning today.
7. This process of working class radicalization and differentiation inside the workers movement does not take place in a gradual or even manner. It develops abruptly around particular issues, layers or specific struggles. Furthermore, it is fundamentally uneven by age. Contemporary and historical experience confirms once again that young workers are the layer which moves decisively to take up the issues of the class struggle and to reject the line of the reformist leaderships.
This shows precisely the decisive layer for building revolutionary parties today. The revolutionary organizations of the Fourth International will recruit individual experienced worker militants of 30 or over, and each such member is of tremendous importance, but there will not be in the next period large-scale gains from this layer. The overwhelming numbers of those who can and will be won to a revolutionary organization in the next period are much younger starting in their mid-teens and going up to 30. Building parties socially implanted in the working class capable of taking up all the issues of the class struggle means above all today orienting to the recruitment of young workers. It is recruiting these layers, educating them in the workers movement, creating a class struggle left wing, that is the basic perspective on which the sections of the FI must base themselves today.
8. It is from this point of view of the dynamics of radicalization and recomposition inside the working class that it is possible to understand the present tasks of building the revolutionary party and youth organization. It means the party concentrating and orienting its work, and especially in the factories, towards the young workers. This is in the perspective of two processes reflecting the same underlying development.
i. There is the continual process, accelerating in the future, of young workers coming forward to recompose the rank and file leaderships of the working class in its everyday struggles. This is an inevitable product of the deepening and intensification of the clashes between the classes.
This development in the factories and unions is paralleled by similar processes outside, with different forms, in which young and particularly oppressed layers are forced to engage in serious struggles to defend even limited rights, to force back deprival of their minimum social needs and oppression by the state, etc. This also brings to the fore young militants in the struggles and movements of blacks, women, oppressed nationalities, and other layers.
ii. Periodically movements based primarily on young people outflank altogether the reformist leaderships. The youth rebellions in Britain in summer 1981, the struggles over housing in West Germany in 1980, represent the extreme examples of this development.
Often, however, a 'united front' with sections of the reformists can be imposed by the weight of the social forces involved and we fight for this. But even within this development the youth represent by far the most active component and dynamic force and one that can often tend to take on specific forms of organization within the general movement. This was the case, for example, with the big actions of the Anti-Nazi League in Britain in 1977-79 and is generally the case with the movement against remilitarisation and nuclear weapons, as well as in solidarity with Central America, in the imperialist countries today.
It is in this process of recomposition of the workers movement and working class leadership that the question of building the revolutionary youth organization is posed from two key angles.
The first is to intervene in and gain from the process whereby significant layers of young people move to outflank, come into conflict with, and break from the reformist leaderships.
The second is as a tactic in the construction of the revolutionary party.
These two are tied together by the basic dynamic of the class struggle and pattern of radicalization.
9. This process means understanding that the youth tend to radicalize even more than any other section of society around the most burning political questions.. They are more willing to engage in political action, because they are less influenced or controlled than other layers by the apparatuses of the reformist bureaucracies or the institutions of the bourgeois state. It is this which gives the possibility to take the most burning political questions directly into the working class via the young workers and recruit from this layer. This also helps to create a real force for intervening in the differentiations inside the reformist organizations-an effective intervention towards which cannot be achieved simply by propaganda but only if we have a real organization for this work. It is these tasks which form the basis for building revolutionary parties today and within which framework building youth organizations must be posed.
THE NEED FOR A REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH ORGANIZATION
10. Within the framework of constructing the revolutionary party the task of building youth organizations in political solidarity with sections of the Fourth International is an important part of tactics for achieving this goal. It is not sufficient to rely only on direct recruitment to the party-although of course many people will be directly recruited to the sections. The youth organization helps answer two questions simultaneously. Firstly, it reaches wider layers of youth and organizes them in big struggles on youth and working-class issues. Secondly, it is a field of recruitment for the party of the best militant youth.
The developments of radicalization in the last period have posed the question of the construction of youth organizations with an increased importance and in a new context. In the mid and late 1960s, youth organizations supported by the Fourth International existed in North America and in France with the JCR, and there was a movement in that direction in Italy. They however did not exist in the majority of Western European countries.
This policy was changed at the Ninth World Congress and a general decision taken to build youth organizations.
This decision however only had a short period of application in the majority of European countries. The old sections of the International in general were fused with the youth organizations to create qualitatively new organizations of the Fourth International.
It is only in the later 1970s that a number of FI sections in Western Europe started from their own initiatives to build independent youth organizations. This trend is correctly being more and more taken up today.
Results available from the different countries strongly confirm that this represents a correct orientation for building organizations of the Fourth International today.
The general strategic need for youth organizations therefore today comes together with the conjunctural possibilities to show that the sections of the Fourth International in the imperialist countries should put as one of their key priorities at the present the building of independent youth organizations.
11. This importance is confirmed by experience of attempting other solutions than building organizationally independent youth organizations. Where these do not exist, and there is simply a 'youth sector' of the party, major problems are encountered. When the organizational orientation of the party is no longer almost exclusively to youth, as it was in the late 1960s, and when the party starts to do work in the labour movement as its center of gravity, there is a serious danger of youth work becoming marginalized in the party. It creates difficulties not only to centralize and lead youth work, but as well to be in the position to grasp new opportunities of youth radicalization.
The inadequacy of a youth sector of the party will become more and more obvious as the party turns to industry. All evidence shows that the turn to industry and the building of youth organizations are totally linked. A turn to industry not accompanied by the building of youth organizations will not succeed in utilizing the possibilities for party building which exist. Building a youth organization among working-class youth is however impossible without the turn to industry of the parties themselves.
12. In the framework of the political tasks of the sections, the building of revolutionary youth organizations has two decisive aspects-to take action and educate militants, and as a tactic in party building.
i. The youth organization and action and education of militants.
a. A youth organization which is organizationally independent of the party but politically in solidarity can attract radicalizing young people, workers and those in the education system who have not yet made up their minds about joining a revolutionary party or adopted a perspective of becoming lifetime revolutionaries, but who are willing and ready to participate in a broad range of political 20 actions taken through their own organization and together with the revolutionary party and its members.
b. Youth, precisely because it is young, because it has not known the defeats, the disillusions of the past, is more combative, more ready to fight, than older layers. It therefore needs an organization which corresponds to this instinctive readiness to fight.
c. The youth organization is above all an organization for action, for struggle. The best way to learn Marxism is not by learning by heart books on the history of the workers movement but by engaging in struggle. People learn through action. Youth must have the right to
make its own mistakes because it is only through taking initiatives and responsibilities, through determining its own tactics, that they can become real cadres.
ii. The youth organization is a party building tactic.
The tasks outlined of a youth organization in no way cut across, but interrelate with, the fact that one of the chief aims is to recruit from it to the revolutionary party.
Obviously it would be possible to reach certain numbers of very militant youth and try to recruit them directly to the party through consistent contact work. But the sections are faced with another situation. It is not a relatively few individual young people who are open to new ideas, ready to fight, disgusted with capitalist society and wanting to change it. There is a relatively large phenomenon of radicalization among youth and this provides the possibility of winning significant layers of youth to revolutionary Marxism and to the party. This requires a different organizational answer than simple contact work' If the party takes the initiative to build an independent youth organization, with a real organizational independence, including on occasion contrary to the party, this is precisely because it is the only form of organization which can correspond to the needs of young people.
Within this framework a youth organization not only educates young people for the class struggle but also to become members of the revolutionary party.
a. The youth organization operates in the direct sense of education, learning Marxism and its principles, and what constitutes our program. We explain to all the youth who are disgusted with this society that it is only under the flag of revolutionary socialism that we can end its evils.
b. The youth organization is a school of education because its solidarity with the party gives to the youth the opportunity to meet, work together, learn from its members, i.e., trained cadres devoted to the cause of their class, professional revolutionaries. This does not overturn the organizational automony of the youth organization but indicates its political relation to the party.
c. We are building definite political organizations of young people and not 'movements'. This necessity for a clear political profile, programme, and structures means also that we fight for such youth organizations even where they contain other forces, to be in political solidarity with the sections of the Fourth International and the International itself.
d. From the above flows the correct conceptualization of the difference between the youth organization and the party.
In order to play its role of political vanguard in the struggle the revolutionary party, against the pressures of capitalist society, requires of its members a definite level of understanding and activity far higher than a reformist party, an understanding of the basic programatic positions of Marxism and their application. All of this takes some time to absorb. The party therefore guards its 'frontiers' carefully.
The youth organization is, however, an organization of a different type. A youth organization must be able to. reach out to a wide layer of young people who are rebelling against several aspects of capitalist society but who do not yet necessarily understand all the ways these are related. This explanation of the whole nature of capitalism and all the strategy for how to fight it is a task inside the youth organization and not a precondition for membership. In the words of the founding congress of the Fourth Innational, "The youth organization...in deciding for itself its actions in line with its program, in taking the task of educating the toiling youth on that program, poses no conditions for joining other than a general agreement, even of sentiment, with the goals pursued by the Fourth International and its methods of struggle. It is the expression of the instinctive revolt of young workers against superexploitation, of the young peasants chained to the land, of the young intellectuals, of millions of declassed young unemployed, and is the expression of their enthusiastic support for the revolution. In that sense it is an organization wider than the party."
The distinction youth organization/ party therefore should not be seen chiefly as one of age but of different type of organizations.
A CAMPAIGNING YOUTH ORGANIZATION
13. It is not possible to separate the building of a revolutionary youth organization from the building of a revolutionary party. It is the strategy for building the party that is the framework in which the youth organization operates. Indeed, considerations in building the party show up most dramatically inside the youth organizations.
Our tasks and priorities in building the revolutionary party flow from the fact that increasingly central political questions, national and international, will dominate the situation. Above all, the party will be built up by means of centralized political campaigns on the most central issues of the day. This is reflected, as a political and not merely an organizational, concept of building a campaigning party.
Naturally in certain sectors, factories, etc., sections of the Fourth International may assume positions of leadership which force them to give answers on all questions. Indeed the very uneven development of the situation, and of the sections of the FI, means they may of course have specific tactics in different sectors. However, it is false to conceive of building parties 'sector by sector'-particularly in terms of taking up the issues specific to that sector of work.
14. This aspect of political campaigns in building revolutionary parties applies with particular force to youth organizations. At the centre of the work and building of youth organizations must be political campaigns.
The central political issues confronting society today-war, direct and indirect effects of militarisation, austerity, suppression of democratic rights-touch all layers of the youth. It is therefore increasingly possible and necessary, for both our youth organizations and sections, to carry out campaigns aimed at all these layers of youth and in particular at young workers. Where we have established sections and youth organizations which are only in the process of making the turn to industry, this can express itself in a sense in a double turn— of the sections towards the youth, including utilizing already acquired working class implantations for this, and a turn of the youth organizations towards the young workers. Where our organizations are strongly making the turn to industry, this comes together in the common priority orientation for building the party of an orientation to the young workers.
This type of campaigning work must be carried out together with permanent activity in certain mass structures which organize the youth (trade unions, youth sections of unions, student unions, etc.). Such work of course demands specific tactics. However, such work must take as its starting point the political struggle in society as a whole and not issues conceived of as 'internal' to these structures.
Finally, this centrality of political campaigns in building youth organizations reflects the fact that young people, even more than older people, are oriented to action. Even more directly than with the 'adult' party, a high level of activity gained through campaigns, is decisive in building the youth organization.
15. The nature of the crisis facing society, the tasks in constructing a revolutionary party, and the objective needs of young people determine the types of campaign which our sections and youth organizations should prioritize. These campaigns must correspond to the objectively most central and important questions of the class struggle-austerity, militarism, division of the workers movement, anti-imperialist struggle, racism,
Naturally the tactics and particular emphasis of the youth organization may have different forms compared to those of the party, but the essential themes of the political stiuation to which the two organizations respond must be essentially common.
The differences in activity between the party and the youth organization are differences in tactics and specific emphasis at particular points in time (e.g., the LCR in France campaigning most centrally on the 35 hour week during the latter part of 1981, and the JCR on reduction of military service to six months). These differences flow essentially from the differences in patterns of radicalization of young people, compared to that of older layers, already discussed. But both organizations must be campaigning on different aspects of the most central political questions confronting society.
16. These general questions of the character of youth organizations are reflected also in its launching-a state several of our sections are still going through. There is of course no exact blueprint for starting to build a revolutionary youth organization. Precise tactics have to be decided upon in light of the concrete situations in each country where the work is started. Nevertheless, there are basic patterns for starting the work which flow from general considerations and reflect the concrete experience of most sections. Two are crucial.
-The first is the launching of a youth paper. This really only becomes effective when it is a national paper.
-The second is the establishing of groups (circles) in particular around the paper.
It is in general this combination of national paper and local groups i.e., a first accumulation of cadres, that creates the organizational framework around which the youth organization can be built.
Linked to these organizational steps, however, there are in general two key political preconditions to actually launch the organization.
The first is that the newly emerging organization's members must be able to project, and themselves have, a sense of political identity with a national organization. This requires firstly, key central political campaigns as already discussed, carried out on the national scale, and types of national events-rallies, nationwide meetings, etc. These begin to give the youth involved the sense of really belonging to an organization.
Secondly, the organization has to have and discuss a programme. This is crucial in creating a political homogeneity out of young people attracted out of different campaigns and with diverse experiences. It is in this process that the youth organization so to speak chooses its flag, and its cadres begin to get a sense of the organization's historic political identity-in this case the Fourth International.
Finally, the actual launching of the youth organization must be built as a major initiative of the organization and of the party as a whole.
THE REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH ORGANIZATION AND THE TURN TO INDUSTRY
17. The building of a revolutionary youth organization, while a permanent, long-term goal of the revolutionary party, acquires different forms and different priorities at different phases of the class struggle and the development of the revolutionary organizations.
Today, considering the objective tasks confronting our sections, the turn to industry, and our necessities in building the party, we can see clearly our priorities in building the youth organization. We are building a youth organization which is open to and aimed at all layers of youth, whatever their social origin, who accept its programme. However, there are key priorities within that framework. Our parties and youth organizations today have above all to be oriented towards young workers. To grasp this we must analyse the general conditions of building the revolutionary party and the building of the youth organization in the present period.
18. Since the Second World War, capitalism in the imperialist countries has undergone important social transformations which touch in a major way upon the situation of youth. The most important of these, deriving from the need of capitalism for a more trained labour force and a massive expansion of the state sector, is a massive expansion of the education system and the clear incorporation of new layers into the labour movement (outside of the United States where this is more limited).
This incorporation of new white-collar and public sector layers into the labour movement is a permanent and important strengthening of it. Student layers also have not only an increased nu. merical weight but, because they incorporate a far wider social range of destinations than previously, will not become again the essentially rightwing elitist political force which existed prior to World War II.
These social transformations however, while altering the quantitative elements in the working class, do not alter what constitute qualitatively the most decisive forces of the class struggle. It remains the central bourgeois state and its political apparatuses on the one side, and the strongest sections of the working class on the other, that alone have the weight to really polarize and lead the other social layers. This becomes increasingly 22 JCR France demonstrate against Giscard, May 1: true as the class struggle intensifies and social forces polarize.
This does not mean that these layers of youth in the education system do not engage in struggle anymore but they do so increasingly as part of more general political struggles whose leading forces are often elsewhere. At the same time, the depth of the economic, social, and political crisis forces the radicalization increasingly into the core of the working class. This pattern of development of the class struggle and the working class, and the tasks in building our organizations which flow from it, is reflected inside the changed pattern of youth radicalization itself in the last few years.
19. This new pattern of youth radicalization is of course uneven and differs in its precise forms from country to country. Its general trend however is very clear.
Although there continues to be a radicalization in most countries among certain layers of students, the youth radicalization is today no longer led by these layers. This is a key change which has to be noted since the 1960s and the last major experience of most sections in building youth organizations. It brings to the fore the point that the majority of the youth is not only an ally but also a component part of the working class.
20. The broadened social composition of the youth radicalization is not however by itself the only reason, or sufficient, to understand why it is primarily to industrial young workers the Fourth International turns as the most decisive layer. In no country are the majority of young people in industry. On the contrary, in some cases those in industry form quite a small minority of young people.
However, the importance of a layer is not decided simply or even primarily by its numbers but by its social and political weight. To take extremes, the millions of old age pensioners in a country like Britain do not have even remotely the same weight in the class struggle as 250,000 miners. It is social weight, capacity for struggle and organization, which is decisive. This is why, for example, that it is the struggle, or lack of it, of the industrial working class in Europe which has been decisive in determining the class relationship of forces in that continent since 1968. This is why it is the industrial working class, and above all the young workers, which is the decisive layer in building the party and, within this framework, the guiding axis in building youth organizations.
This naturally does not mean that our youth organizations should or will be built only among young industrial workers. A large part of young people will always be in the education system, in job training, in layers outside the industrial working class, and our organizations are open to all those who accept its program. We are building a broad, open, youth organization which will therefore have many layers of young people in it and not a 'small party of youth' • Nevertheless, this does not alter the fact that the decisive layer we aim to win over is young industrial workers and that, to embody this as with the party itself, special and particular measures must be taken to ensure that this is achieved.
21. Although all experience shows that at least in the countries in which the class struggle is most developed there are important possibilities today to build a revolutionary youth organization among working class youth, these opportunities will not be taken advantage of simply spontaneously. Furthermore, this is particularly the case given the social composition of our sections as they start the turn to industry. Experience in a number of countries shows that a campaigning youth organization can fairly readily attract young workers around it. Without conscious measures, however, we will retreat back into those layers which were the traditional base of our sections.
Experience shows that conscious steps therefore have to be taken to maintain, or turn around, the social composition of the organization. Every organization left to spontaneous developments recruits in its own image socially —a student based organization spontaneously recruits students, a white-collar based organization recruits white-collar workers, etc. In order to reach out to working-class youth an organization has to take specific measures-allocation of comrades, from other sectors of work, to do work among or directed towards working-class youth, comrades moving into industry and industrial areas where there are important concentrations of workers, etc.
This therefore provides the basic combination through which we have to build up our youth organizations today: central political campaigns that can touch all layers of the youth; specific organizational measures to take these campaigns into, and gain from, the young workers. It is on this basis that we will build youth organizations.
ORGANIZING THE YOUTH ORGANIZATION IN THE TURN TO INDUSTRY
22. In aiming to win layers of young industrial workers, the decisive role in the youth organization, as in all other questions, is played by the party. In the revolutionary party it is the question of whether the leadership makes and leads the turn which will decide whether the policy will be carried out or not. In relation to the youth organization, it is above all the party as a whole, as well as its elected bodies, which constitutes the leadership of the organization. Whether the youth organization will succeed in orienting itself towards young workers will depend upon whether the party as a whole, and the party members inside the youth organization, succeed in this task.
This latter point is of considerable importance as an extremely dangerous situation will result if one section of the party is carrying through the turn to industry and another is building the youth organization in quite different layers. What will then happen is that relations between the party and the youth organization will become strained to the utmost.
This also requires that the turn is an organized process. As with the section, a situation where the turn is left as an individual responsibility of comrades will not work. This involves special measures inside the youth organization itself and clear links between thr youth organization and the section.
23. Naturally there are significant differences in practice between the turn of the party and the turn of the youth organization. A large part of young people will always be in the education and training system, there are legal limits on the age at which young people can commence work, etc. Some of these layers are very important and working class in composition-for example, in France there are 600,000 young people in technical colleges of whom 80 percent go to the working class. Given that there continues to be a significant radicalization among students and in high schools, a youth organization must be built which has a presence in these layers of youth, ie., they must be organizations of the whole of youth. However, this does not alter the fact that our aim is a clear priority to working class youth and to gain a big majority of our organizations in the working-class youth with the existing social composition of the sections, specific measures must be taken in regard to this. Each country requires a specific combination of these but general steps can be indicated.
i. Above all, the building of the youth organization and the turn to industry must be seen as part of an integrated perspective of building the party. They are not different tasks, but different tactics in the same task of building up a party implanted in the working class and capable of taking up all the key political issues of the class struggle. This means the sections and the youth organizations must have specific tactics and organizational forms, but the same political issues must be confronted and campaigned on, in different ways, by both. It also means they must be built essentially in the same layer inside the working class. Young people, in the section and the youth organization, can play an important role in leading the turn to industry. However, if these youth are to be recruited to the organization, and if young workers recruited are to be maintained in the organization, then the party itself must be making the turn to industry.
ii. The party members in the youth organization must be participating in the turn to industry. A major crisis of leadership will develop if the party makes the turn to industry, but the youth organization is left to build essentially among students and high school layers. In that case, the youth organization will be peripheral to the thinking and concerns of the party, no serious attention will be given to it, and a crisis of leadership will develop.
iii. As with the party, and in links between the two, the turn must be an organized process. This involves special measures inside the youth organization and in the structures (e.g. jobs committees) leading the turn in the party. Special measures such as conferences of young workers or those prepared to make the turn may be useful in the youth organization. A situation where the turn is left as an individual responsibility of comrades will not work.
24. The situation inside the reformist youth organizations shows great unevenness from country to country and no general tactical orientation can be adopted. The following trends, however, can be noted:
-In those European countries in which there were mass Communist Parties, the youth organization of the Social Democracy had, for a long period, been moribund, and no significant field for work existed. In these countries, there are not today important openings in the youth organizations of the reformist parties. The building of open independent youth organizations is the crucial task.
-The situation is more complicated in those states where mass social-democratic parties dominate the workers movement. The youth organizations of these parties were also greatly weakened by the upsurge leading to and surrounding 1968. However, in most countries, they continued to maintain at least a minimum of forces and therefore an ability to rebuild themselves to some degree in the period of crisis of the centrist left from the 1970s onwards. There is still a qualitatively different relation of forces between the independent revolutionary and centrist forces and the reformist youth organizations than existed prior to 1968 but the latter continue to be of significance and have undergone a certain revival in some cases. This poses in a new way the question of systematic work directed towards or inside these organizations.
This is particularly clear in Britain where the youth radicalization of the 1960s was less broad in its scope than in some other Western European countries and where the Labour Party enjoys historically an unchallenged hegemonic position within the working class. Here a definite revival of the Labour Party Young Socialists occured from the 1970s onwards. This today is an important field of intervention for revolutionary Marxists in Britain.
In West Germany the weight of the centrist organizations created out of the youth radicalization was greater than in Britain. It is the phenomenon of the 'alternative lists' in West Germany which today attracts young people primarily. However, the youth organizations of the SPD, in particular the Falken, possess in certain areas significant forces of radical young people. Work by revolutionary Marxists inside this organization on a locally decided basis is one of the tasks of youth work in West Germany today.
In other countries, attention must be paid to developments inside the reformist youth organizations. A prolonged crisis hitting young layers of the working class in some countries leads to an increased participation in the reformist youth organizations.
25. In the framework of our general orientation towards the young workers two specific areas stand out as posing particular tasks and problems.
i. In certain countries, our youth organizations can make a priority of work directed towards immigrant workers. Experience in a number of Western European countries indicates that, as one would expect, the youth form the most combative layer of immigrant workers. The youth organization in some countries where legality is not the decisive question (e.g. Britain) can be a particularly suited instrument for intervening in this layer. This is specific from country to country. It must be judged concretely in each case.
ii. Work to support movements in the army. There is an experience of this in a number of countries. This has under- • gone a revival around the question of struggle against missiles and nuclear weapons (Holland) and demand for reduction of military service (France).
26. The building of a revolutionary youth organization gives particularly important opportunities for recruiting young women to the revolutionary movement. As with every oppressed layer, it is when they are young that women will become most easily involved in organized struggle against capitalist society and its effects on them.
In every country there are major specific laws reinforcing the repressive role of the family and to repress youth sexually-for example in Britain the laws forbidding all sexual relations under the age of 16, in France abortion rights are forbidden to young women under 18. Young women are systematically deprived of rights to training for jobs, for educational opportunities, and other needs to develop for themselves their lives. It is not only young women but also young men who feel concerned and can be mobilized on issues of women's oppression-and also young women radicalized around these issues can be won to rapidly expand their politicization to a challenge around all aspects of capitalism.
This means immense opportunities not only for recruiting young women but also building up real cadres and leaders among young women. For example, in France the proportion of women in the youth organization in 1980 was 40 percent compared to less than 25 percent in the LCR. In Revolution Youth in Britain, 45 percent of the National Committee and 50 percent of the Political Committee elected after the 1980 conference were women.
This recruitment of young women is important not merely in itself but for the whole future of our organizations. It gives the possibility to train a whole layer of women cadre and leaders for the or- 24 ganization. In cases where crises or negative developments in the sections have led to a major loss of women from the organization, youth work is by far the most important means for redeveloping the work on women's liberation of the organization and winning a layer of women members.
27. It is within this overall framework that the Fourth International's work among students is posed today. These continue to face increasingly sharp attacks due to the economic crisis, lack of jobs upon ending their studies, and the general economic, social, and political contradictions facing society. Layers of students will therefore continue to be propelled into action both around the more narrowly conceived interests of students and more importantly around all the big social and political, national and international issues of the day.
However, compared to the period of the late 1960s, students are more conscious of the unfavorable relation of forces which exists between them as a social group and the bourgeoisie. This means they look more to political organizations based on the labour movement and working class for leadership and linking up to the mass organizations and the movements of women and oppressed for struggle. Students are in general less inclined to launch struggles by themselves and more dependent on the political dynamic of struggles waged by the labour movement than at the time of the radicalization of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
This situation naturally means revolutionaries participating in all struggles of students and within the education sector giving particular emphasis to high schools, technical schools, and trade schools, but integrating these in our overall political work.
Except in the very initial period of disruption as we make the turn to industry, this does not imply that we are orienting away from political work aimed at students. On the contrary, with a political line and campaigns taking up the key political issues of society and an organization based inside the labour movement and industrial working class, we will in fact be a more attractive organization to revolutionary-minded students in the big class battles which are coming. If, on the contrary, we do not succeed in building real working class organizations, then in addition to general political orientation the actual attractive power of the organizations of the Fourth International for students will decrease. An organization implanted among young workers and the labour movement will on the contrary, be increasingly attractive to students and over the longer term our ability to recruit students will increase.
PARTY/YOUTH ORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONS
28. Overwhelmingly, the single most decisive element in all aspects of building and functioning of the revolutionary youth organizations is the positions and attitude taken to it by the party. These above all of course are based on all the political aspects discussed previously, and the correctness of the line taken by the party in each concrete situation, but also have, flowing from these, certain significant organizational aspects which can aid or hinder the resolution of the political questions and tasks. These will of course differ greatly in different situations, stage of building of the two organizations, etc. but certain general questions are posed.
i. The attitude of party members to the youth is of key importance and should not be underestimated. The party must maintain the principles of organizational independence and right to take their own decisions for the youth organization as the best tools for education. "The young worker needs leadership from the party. But this should not be leadership by command. When at every step coercion is substituted for persuasion, the breath of life disappears from the organization, and with it, the people' (The Bolshevik Leninists and the Youth Organization). This must be translated into organizational measures otherwise it amounts to only calling on 'good will' of comrades within the party.
il. The relations between the youth organization and the party must above all be transparent and open. Even the most vigorous open political intervention by the party is better than any form of back stairs manoeuvring, cliquist relations, two standards in the transmission of information, etc. Young people are not fragile. They are quite capable of withstanding and enormously developing from strong criticism, their own mistakes, differences, and so on provided it is genuinely designed to convince and not to destroy or manipulate. It is the latter which will breed the deadly disease of cynicism, the antithesis of young people, and lose forces and weaken or wreck organizations. It is this which must provide the basic point in all party/youth relations from formal aspects right down to tone and personal manner of conduct.
iii. The most crucial of all is that the organizational independence of the youth organization must be real and not fictional or formal.
This means that the party has the right to attempt to persuade the youth organization to adopt a certain course by political argument. It has no right to impose a line on the youth organization. The latter is in all matters self governing. 'The congress of the youth organization is sovereign. In the case of political divergences between the youth organization and the party, the latter cannot bureaucratically impose its politics on the youth organization. In such a case, the task of the leadership of the party is to appeal to the militants of the youth to show them in what way their positions are false and to lead them to change their positions by their free decisions.' (The Bolshevik Leninists and the Revolutionary Youth Organization).
iv. Most important of all for practical party/youth relations, in particular given the real organizational independence of the youth, is that the section must put major resources into in practice building the youth organization. If the party is seen as the decisive force really practically aiding, both in political line and activity, the building of the youth organization this can lay the basis for correct party/youth relations. If, on the contrary, the party is not seriously building the youth organization then this will inevitably be perceived by the members of the youth organization. Under such conditions, moods and currents opposed to the party, showing themselves in developments such as opposition to affiliation of the youth organization to the section, will inevitably arise.
v. In this framework, links between the party and youth should be between the organizations as such and not be individualized ones. A system which relies on the fact that members of the youth organization are also members of the section, and that individual leaders of the youth organization are also members of leading bodies of the section, is not adequate. This means steps such as representatives of the youth organization attending Central Committee and Political Committee of the sections with voice or voice and vote, official observers from the party at leadership meetings of the youth organization, etc. Similar measures should be applied at levels such as branches, town leaderships, jobs committees, and other structures where it is suitable.
vi. This question of clarity also determines the question of discipline of party members inside the youth organization. It must be quite clear that the members of the party are under its discipline in all fields of work-including the youth organization. However, at the same time this formal aspect of discipline should be utilized to the minimum possible extent-in the sense every time it has to be used, which will occur, it is a defeat.
vii. The youth organization should be closely linked to the party in the question of the turn to industry and work in the unions.. Naturally there are particular concerns of the youth organization. In general it is necessary to have a system where there are clear representatives of the youth organization in the party jobs committees in the areas. Similarly it may not generally be useful for the youth organization to have its own separate trade union fractions, but trade union fractions should be held jointly or, where more appropriate, comrades from the youth organizations should be invited to the trade union fractions of the party.
vili. The organizational independence of the youth organization from the party must be a real one. This means that while there will of course, particularly in the initial stage, be material aid from the party to the youth organization, the latter must, right from the beginning, have real independence, to educate a real cadre and leadership, clearly have its own finances, control over its journals, creating the resources for its own full timers, etc.
The chief support the party should be giving to the youth organizations is its militants building the youth organization in their activity, selling its journals, building its meetings, etc., and not in the form of centralized subsidies, full timers, etc. There will always be an element of the latter but it should be kept small if the youth organization is to have its own real internal equilibrium.
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF YOUTH WORK
29. The eventual organizational aim of our youth work is to create a Revolutionary Youth International. We are however today a long way from this goal and much more limited steps in that final eventual perspective are what are posed today. The most important of these at present are:
i. Increasing internal activity, and education, on the question of youth work and youth organizations.
This must be undertaken chiefly in the national sections but can be significantly aided by the International through international meetings, centrally published material, and above all by adopting a new international resolution on the question, with the debate preceding it at the IEC and World Congress.
ii. Systematic international work towards young people and youth organizations.
Internationalist traditions among young people are one of the strongest, most progressive, and most important parts of their politicisation. This developed even under the Second International, was extended during the First World War-which most of the youth organizations of the Socialist Parties opposed, and was continued with the Youth Communist International.
Today there are important openings in this field. The organizations leading the revolutionary struggles in Central America, and where they exist their youth organizations, are extremely open to contact with revolutionary youth organizations—in some cases more directly than with our sections. Youth organizations which attempted made good contact with developments in Poland. Given the prominent role played by young people in all movements of revolt, extending our work and contacts in this field is one of the most important areas of work of the youth organizations of the Fourth International.
iii. Regular international youth meetings of the Fourth International. Taking into account the restraining elements such as finances, experience indicates that such international meetings should be regular and carefully prepared in advance so as to limit the element of exchange of simply national experiences actually in the meeting and having the maximum of international discussion.
iv. Coordination through the Bureau of the United Secretariat. It is unrealistic at the present stage to believe that the coordination of the youth work can be carried on by the youth organizations themselves. For the foreseeable future youth work must continue to be coordinated through the international centre and Bureau of the United Secretariat.
THE NECESSITY TODAY OF A CENTRALISED PRIORITY OF WORK AGAINST WAR AND IMPERIALIST MILITARISM
30. A revolutionary youth organization is based on a programme of struggle against all aspects of human exploitation and oppression. It must develop propaganda work against racism and the oppression of women, against national oppression, against all denials of democratic rights. The youth organizations in solidarity with the Fourth International have the same fundamental programme. The key issues of this in each situation must be transformed into central political campaigns of the organization. These priorities must of course be decided in the light of concrete conditions which prevail. Certain of the important of these however flow from the international political situation and around these we can and must develop centralised international coordination of work and initiatives.
In the present situation the decisive axis along which such work must be developed is that of the campaign against imperialist militarism and against imperialist intervention in Central America. This corresponds to a key objective necessity-the military drive is together with austerity one of the two chief axes of the imperialist counter-offensive-and to the state of our forces. It should be the priority of work of our youth organizations in imperialist countries today.
The sections and youth organizations in each country will of course have other priorities in addition.
The precise axes of struggle against imperialist war and militarism will of course change in different situations and different countries (e.g. for solidarity with El Salvador, for unilateral disarmament in Britain, against joining NATO in 26 Spain, against the draft in the USA) but the basic themes are dictated by the nature of the imperialist policy.
The aim of the present imperialist drive is not a military attack on the Soviet Union or the Chinese workers states-although the Cuban and Vietnamese states do today face military threats. The United States and its allies are above all carrying out and preparing themselves for a counter-offensive against the colonial revolution. At the same time they are building up a military superiority against the Soviet Union which they can use to threaten or prevent the latter giving physical and military aid to unfolding revolutionary processes. The key direction of work and initiatives which must be taken up are twofold-and of course interconnected.
i. Direct solidarity with colonial struggles threatened or attacked by imperialism. This includes, in particular, general solidarity with El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Cuba, Vietnam, but also struggle against French imperialism in Africa, generalised solidarity with Southern Africa, against the British occupation of the North or Ireland, etc. Given the generalised nature of the imperialist counter-offensive and the continuing struggles in the colonial revolution there is a certainty of new developments and needs for solidarity in this field and our sections, and the International as a whole, must be prepared both for sudden, rapid, and further long-term campaigns in these fields.
ii. Direct struggle against militarism inside the imperialist countries. This in particular includes struggles against nuclear weapons (USA, Britain, France), deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles and the Neutron bomb (West Germany, Holland, Belgium, Britain, France. etc.), against conscription or for reduction of military service (USA, France). In particular we should aim to link this struggle to the one against austerity around slogans, themes, and campaigns of the type, 'Jobs not Bombs' , demanding abolition, or as a partial step, elimination of specific elements (Trident programme in Britain, seventh nuclear submarine in France, MX missiles, etc.) of military expenditures, and a mass programme of public expenditure to create jobs and improve social conditions; we can campaign for full civil and political rights in the armed forces, etc.
In terms of immediate ways to internally centralise these campaigns there are not, both for objective and subjective (material resources) reasons, major coordinated initiatives that can be taken. However, certain immediate steps can be undertaken: i) Placing struggle against militarism regularly on the agenda of international youth meetings. ii) Exchange of information and press articles, common leaflets, etc. organized centrally, internationally, and bilaterally. iii) Organization bilaterally of exchange of speakers, messages of solidarity, etc. At a later stage it may be possible to take bolder initiatives (international meetings, campaigns, etc. against militarism). But we should start now with what is practical and will help to homogenise our work and increase consciousness, including internationally, on these questions.
By these means we can take up key objective tasks, stimulate our youth work, and by giving an international profile somewhat increase the attractiveness of our national youth organizations, and use it as a way also of increasing the international links and consolidation between our sections and youth organizations.