From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Lessons From History: Founding Conference Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International-"Resolution On The Youth"

Markin comment on this series:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
From the Revolutionary Communist Newsletter, May-June 1973

Lessons From History: Founding Conference Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International-"Resolution On The Youth"


Trotsky was always keenly aware of what he called the problem of generations. He began the New Course (1923), his opening shot in the struggle against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution, with a discussion of the "question of the party generations, "and in the most important document among the founding resolutions of the Fourth International (Fl), The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program, Trotsky stated the problem of generations in the following way:

"When a program or organization wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past. Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution."

—p45, Pathfinder Press edition

Trotsky had not forgotten the lesson of the collapse of the Second International and the building of the Third. When the leading parties of the Second International capitulated to the national chauvinism of WW I, it was the militants primarily concentrated in the Socialist youth and women's groups (representing a more oppressed stratum of the working class than the privileged labor aristocracy—the most influential component of the Western European Socialist parties) who carried the banner of internationalism against the tide of national chauvinism,, It was these militants who, under the impact of the Russian October, provided the precious founding cadre for the new Communist International (Cl). With the destruction of the CI as a world revolutionary party under the heavy blows of the failure of the German Revolution, the bureaucratic degeneration of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of fascism and the impending renewal of imperialist world war, the tasks of creating a new international were placed on the agenda, Trotsky, one of the creators of the Cl who had authored its founding manifesto, turned to the generation of young workers, unscarred by the defeats and betrayals of the past. Hence, the founding manifesto of the FI ends with a clarion call to "Open the Road to the Woman Worker-' Open the Road to the Youth.'"
As Nathan Gould, the youth delegate from the U.S., reported in the weekly organ of the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Appeal (22 October 1938):

"The resolution on relations between the youth and adult Internationals accepted the classical Leninist concept of these relations. The Youth International, which accepts the proletarian revolutionary international leadership of its adult body is to be politically subordinate to and organizationally autonomous of the Fourth International."

Gould then stated that all decisions and resolutions of the Youth Conference, including the "Resolution on the Youth" flow "from and are subordinated to the demands of the theses on The Death Agony of Capitalism." Indeed, the capitalist death agony developed with such rapidity and acuteness that the "youth question" was soon superseded by the "military question.” The principal concerns of working-class youth in civilian life under capitalism—the lack of jobs, education and social equality, problems with which the "Resolution on the Youth" were mainly concerned—were soon to be transcended as imperialist war gave these youth the "jobs," "education" and "social equality’ of the barracks. Within the context of universal militarism, the Trotskyists conducted themselves with exemplary valor, e.g., building revolutionary cells within the German Army. But the objective conditions forced the Fl to temporarily abandon the tasks set out in the "Resolution on the Youth" and the struggle for a Trotskyist youth international.

The seriousness with which Trotskyists undertook this necessary historical exhortation to find the road to the next generation of revolutionaries was displayed by the fact that-though the founding of the Fl took place under the most difficult conditions requiring careful preparation and secrecy, at a time when the Trotskyists had meager resources and were being hounded throughout the world by the police and agents of all wings of the bourgeoisie from the fascists to the most "democratic" and, with special vehemence, by Stalin's secret police—nonetheless the Founding Conference was followed one week later by the "World Youth Conference of the Fourth International." Both Conferences were held in September 1938; the former was attended by 21 delegates representing 11 countries, while the Youth Conference was attended by 19 delegates from 7 countries (Poland, Austria, Belgium, Holland, England, the U.S. and France). There was a considerable overlap in delegations and, in addition, the International Bureau of the Fl, elected at the party Conference, sent three delegates to the Youth Conference. Besides adopting the "Resolution on the Youth," the world Youth Conference endorsed the Transitional Program and voted to affiliate as the official youth section of the Fl.
-

Rise of Pabloism

After WW II, the Trotskyist movement, decimated by fascism and Stalinism, tried to regroup and reorient itself. However, the destruction of a whole generation of Trotskyist cadre, including Trotsky himself, left the Fl theoretically unarmed and isolated from the working class. The untested and inexperienced cadre that rose to the leadership of the Fl, personified by Michel Pablo, were overtaken by the post-war pre-revolutionary upheavals whose course their weak forces could not significantly influence. These cadre were further disoriented by the apparent stabilization of capitalism on the one hand, and the growth of Stalinism and social democracy on the other (see "Genesis of Pabloism," Spartacist No. 21 )„ Pabloism meant the abandonment of the struggle to build independent Trotskyist parties and the liquidation of Trotskyist cadre into the existing Stalinist and social-democratic formations which were seen as playing an eventual revolutionary role under the impact of the "objective process," The corollary for Trotskyist youth was the command that they should bury themselves in the Stalinist and social-democratic youth groups and wait for the "objective process" to unfold.

Thus the "Resolution on the Youth" and the prospects for a Trotskyist youth international were abandoned when the Fl succumbed to Pabloism. Although many of the specific demands and slogans of the "Resolution on the Youth" are clearly dated, the resolution possesses more than just historical interest. The document, especially section 14 entitled "The Revolutionary Program," is a valuable reaffirmation of the programmatic criteria governing youth work as Lenin, Trotsky and the early Cl and Fl conceived it0 Such a reaffirmation is particularly important today when so many political tendencies claiming to be Trotskyist display the most elementary confusion on this question. The early Cl and Young Communist International, and the Founding Conference of the Fl and corresponding Youth Conference were explicit and insistent that the Leninist-Trotskyist youth group must be a section of the vanguard party which embodies the continuity, tested political leadership and developed programmatic clarity of the revolutionary movement,, The program of the youth section must be developed within the framework of the party's program, as the "Youth Resolution" states: "It is within the framework of the transitional programmed of the Fourth International that the present programme should be developed and applied." "Youth" is not a class, there is no "youth program" as such. The program which addresses itself to the objective needs and special oppression of youth is part and parcel of the program for proletarian power. "The struggle for these demands cannot be separated from the struggle for the demands of workers as a whole, both employed and unemployed" ["Youth Resolution"].

Youth Vanguard ism From the SWP to the WL

The various pretenders to the banner of Trotskyism all reject Trotsky’s class approach to the youth question—namely, that the question of special oppression and needs of youth must be subordinated to and integrated into the revolutionary program for the working class, the Transitional Program. Modern Pabloism, embodied in organizations like the SWP, the International Marxist Group in England, the Ligue Communiste in France, and personified by "theoreticians" like Ernest Mandel and "activists" like Tariq Ali, after years of self-internment in reformist organizations, have recoiled from entrism and have tried, in their various ways, to jump on the bandwagon of the "international youth radicalization." Starting from the proposition that we live not in the era of capitalist decay but in the era of "neo-capitalism," i.e., capitalist crises stabilized by state intervention into the economy (e.g., debt expansion), they come to the conclusion that therefore the "epicenter" of world revolution has shifted from the industrial to the colonial countries, or from the industrial working class to more peripheral "sectors" of the work force such as white-collar workers and white-collar "apprentices" (i.e., students). They see the industrial working class as hopelessly bureaucratized and bourgeoisified, only approachable from the "peripheries" of guerrilla warfare in the colonial countries and youth and petty-bourgeois vanguardism in the industrial countries. The SWP has surpassed Pabloism in adopting a non-proletarian ideology. It has lifted the "cultural autonomy" slogan from the Austro-Marxists and applied it to the present by having each oppressed "sector" of the population independently "self-determine" itself, into that pure realm of freedom which is, of course, obtainable only on the gilded comfort of the college campus. Each "sector" of society (students, blacks, Chicanos, women and yes, even the working class) is provided by the revisionists with its very own "transitional" program. Departing from Trotskyism and proletarian revolution on another road, a road akin to "third-period" Stalinism, is the Socialist Labour League, its gang in the U.S., the Workers League, and their corresponding youth groups, both called "Young Socialist.” Starting from a radical perspective—that capitalist productive forces can no longer grow and, therefore, capitalism can no longer grant long-lasting reforms—they draw a reformist conclusion, i.e., that the struggle for such reforms is inherently revolutionary. In fact, this is simply inverted social democracy—that socialism can be won through piecemeal reform struggles. The Transitional Program, on the other hand, raises demands that flow from the real objective needs of the proletariat, but also prepare and mobilize the workers for the revolutionary struggle for proletarian power.

The WL's treatment of the youth question is completely opportunist: Ignoring the heterogeneous social composition of youth, the WL calls upon youth (all youth) to pressure union bureaucrats to build a labor party, and presents transitional demands for youth, as an undifferentiated mass, to carry out. The WL's line embodies classless youth vanguardism. The irony of the WL's constant exhortations to the "youth" to build a labor party, create general strikes, etc., is that in the WL's propaganda to the working class (e.g., in their auto program for 1973, Bulletin. 12 February, p. 18) it often "forgets" to mention the labor party as well as other key transitional demands like nationalization of industry under workers control. Its youth group, furthermore, has no internal political life taut is a front group manipulated by the WL0

The Revolutionary Communist Youth, as the youth section of the Spartacist League, continues the traditions of the early Cl and Fl, the traditions of Lenin and Trotsky, that the youth section must be programmatically linked and united to the vanguard party ("politically subordinate and organizationally autonomous"),that the special demands which address themselves to the problems of the youth must flow from the Transitional Program ram and must link the struggles of youth to the struggle of the proletariat for power.

-RCYN Editorial Board
**************
Founding Conference of the Fourth International 1938

Resolution On Youth

The Capitalist Impasse

1) Capitalism, Whether it be authoritarian or liberal, admits the inability to bring the slightest relief to the misery and sufferings of working class youth. The young want a trade, and when (rarely enough!) it consents to give them one, it is only to chain them the better to a machine which tomorrow will stop and let them starve beside the very riches they have produced. The young want to work, to produce with their hands, to use theft strength, and capitalism offers them the perspective of unemployment or of “the execution of work in conditions other than the normal conditions of production,” according to the excellent hypocritical definition of labor camps by the League of Nations, or of armament production, which engenders destruction rather than improvement. The young want to learn, and the way to culture is barred to them. The young want to live, and the only future offered them is that of dying of hunger or rotting on the barbed wire of a new imperialist war. The young want to create a new world, and they are permitted only to maintain or to consolidate a rotting world that is falling to pieces. The young want to know what tomorrow will be, and capitalism's only reply to them is: “Today you've got to tighten your belt another notch; tomorrow, we'll see . . . . In any case, perhaps you're not going to have any tomorrow.”

Give Youth a Future Give the World a Future

2) That is why youth will rally under the flag of those who bring it a future. Only the Fourth International, because it represents the historical interests of the only class which can reorganize tile world upon new bases, only the Bolshevik-Leninists can promise youth a future in which it can put its abilities to full use. Only they can say to the youth: “Together with you, we want to make a new world, where everyone works and is proud to work well, to know his job down to the smallest details; a world where everyone will eat according to his hunger, for production will be regulated according to the needs of the workers and not those of profit; a world where one must constantly learn, in order the better to subordinate the forces of nature to the will of man; a world where, by ceaselessly extending the domain of the application of science, humanity’s theoretic knowledge will be daily increased; a new world, a new man who can make real all the hopes and powers he bears within him” It is under the banner of a new world and a new humanity that the Fourth International and its youth organizations must go on to win the working class youth; it is under that banner that they will win that youth.

The Struggle for a Future the Struggle for Bread

3) The promise of a better future would be only demagogy if the Bolshevik-Leninists were not fighting for an immediate improvement in the situation of working class youth, if they were not formulating youth’s immediate demands, if they were not spreading word of the necessity for working class youth to fight by class struggle methods for the satisfaction of these demands, and if, through this struggle and on the basis of the experience gained therein, they were not demonstrating to exploited youth that its demands could be finally satisfied only by establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, that the struggle for these demands must be transformed into a struggle for power by means of a struggle for the control and management of the economic system.

We Demand the Right to Work!

4) For the young workers engaged in production the Bolshevik-Leninists put forward slogans with the aim of a) measuring the work done by the young not according to the desire to drag as much profit as possible out of it, but, on the contrary, according to their degree of physical development; b) assuring them of a standard of living equal to that of adults, by that very fact assuring them of economic independence; c) raising their technical qualifications as far as possible; d) against the equal opportunity for young and old to be exploited in, capitalism, setting up their equal rights.

For the young under twenty, they also formulate the following demands:

Reduced working week, with schedules allowing young workers to engage in sports in the open air;

At least one month’s paid vacation per year;

The organizing, by factories, or groups of factories, of training courses, at the bosses’ expense and under workers’ control;

Hours of craft training taken out of the working week, and paid for at regular rates;

Application of the principle “equal pay for equal work” under workers’ control;

The fixing of a minimum living wage for young workers; fixing of the wages of young workers under the control of all the workers taken as a whole;

Prohibition of night work, of overlaborious, unhealthy, or unwholesome tasks; workers’ control over the use of young labor.

Equality for Youth in Social Legislation

All Together for the Struggle!

5) In order to take the defense of their demands into their own hands, the young workers should have the right to choose their own delegates, whose task is above all to draw the attention of the adult delegates and of the workers in general to youth’s specific demands, to tie up the struggle for these particular demands with the struggle for the general demands of the working class. In the same way, in all branches of trade union organizations, union youth commissions must be created and imposed upon the trade union bureaucracy, whose task shall be to study the demands of the youth, and to recruit and educate young workers. The task of the Bolshevik-Leninists is to take the lead in the organization of such commissions.

In order to throw trade union doors wide open to exploited youth, the Bolshevik-Leninists demand the establishment of reduced dues for young workers.

We Want a Trade!

6) In the fight against unemployment the slogans raise the school age, organize apprenticeship, make sense only to the extent that the weight of this must be borne not by the working class but by the big capitalists. Hence the Bolshevik-Leninists owe it to themselves to formulate the demands of working class youth in this field as follows:

Prolongation of the school age to 16, with a grant for family support in working class and small farmer families.

Reorganization of the school in cooperation with the factory:

the school should prepare children for life and work; it should weld the youth to the older generations; hence the demand for control by workers’ organizations over technical education.

Reduction of the period of apprenticeship to a maximum of two years.

Forbidding of all work not connected with the actual apprenticeship.

The setting up, at the expense of the bosses, in connection with every business or group of businesses engaged in manufacturing, mining, or trade, of apprentice schools, with an attendance of at least 3 percent of the personnel employed in the business or group of businesses.

Choosing of the instructors by the labor unions.

Control of these schools by a mixed commission of workers’ delegates and delegates of the apprentices themselves.

We Demand Our Right to Live!

7) The task of saving the unemployed youth from misery, despair, and fascist demagogy, of working them back into production and thereby binding them closely to the working class, is a vital task for the future of the proletariat. Revolutionaries must struggle to force capitalism (a) to undertake to work the unemployed youth back into production through the organization of technical education and guidance; (b) to put the unemployed youth back immediately into productive activity; (c) to organize such work not according to semimilitary methods but on the basis of regular wages: Down with labor camps, either voluntary or obligatory!; (d) to furnish youth, which it is throwing into misery, the wherewithal to live. Hence the Bolshevik-Leninists put forward the following demands:

Unemployment benefits on the adult scale for all young unemployed, manual or intellectual, immediately upon their finishing school;

Forcing the big bosses to open technical reeducation centers under workers’ control;

Technical reeducation organized according to the needs of production, under the general control of the trade unions and. the congresses of workers’ delegates;

Reopening of the shutdown factories;

Commencement of large-scale public works (hospitals, schools, lowcost housing projects, sports fields, stadiums, swimming pools, electric power stations), paid at trade union scales and under workers’ control from top to bottom.

For Our Brothers on the Farms! 8) The misery of the farm youth is no less than that of the industrial youth. For farm youth the Bolshevik-Leninists formulate the following general demands:

Strict application of all the above named laws and social measures in the country just as in the city;

Suppression of the domestic exploitation of young children;

Particularly strict application of the principle: “Equal pay for equal work";

District organization of technical education at the expense of the big finance capital farm owners;

Healthy food and lodging for young farm workers living in their bosses’ houses;

Cheap credit for small-scale farmers, and especially for small-scale farmers with family responsibilities.

For Our Countryside

9) The industrial and farm youth are the most exploited part of all working class youth. The youth organizations of the Fourth International must draw particular attention to the following demands: Strict application of the principle “Equal pay for equal work!";

An extra day off per month;

The right to voluntary maternity;

A six month leave of absence for maternity;

Maternity grants for young mothers.

Open the Schools and Universities!

10) One of the necessary conditions for the progress of humanity is that large sections of working class youth should have access to culture and science. The Bolshevik-Leninists put forward the following slogans:

Open the schools and universities to all the young who are willing to study.

Free education and support for workers’ and farmers’ sons and daughters. Bread, Books, and Civil Rights for Coolies!

11) In colonial and semi colonial countries, laboring youth are the victims of a double exploitation capitalist and patriarchal. In these, and in imperialist countries, the defense of the demands of the young colonial workers and peasants is the first duty in the fight against imperialism. This fight is carried on around the general slogan: The same rights for colonial youth as for the youth of the imperialist capital city.

Organization of hygiene and similar care in all villages.

Organization of homes for young workers, peasants, and coolies, under the control of labor and nationalist organizations.

Schools for native children; teaching in the native language.

Open the government administration to native language.

Open the government administration to native intellectuals.

Take the necessary financial credits from the war and police budgets and imperialist privileges.

12) The bourgeoisie recognizes working youth’s right to be exploited; but refuses it the right to have anything to say about that exploitation, and deprives it of all political rights; in certain countries it even forbids youth under eighteen to have any political activity whatever. The working class replies to these measures by saying: Whoever has the right to be exploited has also the right to struggle against the system which exploits him. Full political rights to young workers and peasants!

The right to vote beginning at 18, just as much in legislative and municipal elections as in the election of delegates.

Abolition of special laws forbidding youth to engage in political activity.

We Demand Our Right to Happiness!

13) Working class youth’s need for relaxation is utilized by the bourgeoisie either to stupefy it or make it submit to an even tighter discipline. The duty of the working class is to help create a youth that is strong and capable of throwing all its physical and mental strength into the fight against capitalism; to aid it in using what leisure capitalism gives it to learn to understand the world better, in order to be better able to change it. Hence the Bolshevik-Leninists demand:

Free access to all sports fields, stadiums, museums, libraries, theaters, and movies for all young workers and unemployed;

The ordering of their leisure by the young unemployed themselves;

The using of young unemployed intellectuals for the organization of lectures and discussions, etc. on physics, chemistry, mechanics, mathematics, political economy, history of the labor movement, art, literature, etc.;

The establishment of homes open to the working and unemployed youth, where the young will not only have the opportunity to be amused and instructed, but can also study out for themselves the social problems with which they are faced; these homes to be managed by working class youth itself under the supervision of the local trade union organizations.

The Revolutionary program

14) The struggle for these demands cannot be separated from the struggle for the demands of workers as a whole, both employed and unemployed. The final disappearance of unemployment among the youth is closely linked to the disappearance of general unemployment. The struggle for raising the school age and for compulsory technical reeducation is closely linked with the struggle for the sliding scale in wages and in working hours. The straggle to drag out of capitalism those reforms which aim at developing the class consciousness of working youth is closely linked with the struggle for workers’ control of industry and factory committees. The struggle for public works is closely linked with the fight for the expropriation of monopolies, for the nationalization of credit, banks, and key industries. The struggle to smash back all efforts to militarize is closely linked to the struggle against the development of authoritarian state tendencies and against fascism, the struggle for the organization of workers’ militias. It is within the framework of the transitional program of the Fourth International that the present program should be developed and applied. It is under the banner of the proletariat fighting for power that the Fourth International will win the demands of exploited youth.

The International Conference of the Youth of the Fourth International

Lausanne, September 11, 1938

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Lessons From History:From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-"The New Course"-CHAPTER 1-The Question of the Party Generations (1923)

Markin comment on this series:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
From the Revolutionary Communist Newsletter, May-June 1973

"Trotsky was always keenly aware of what he called the problem of generations. He began the New Course (1923), his opening shot in the struggle against the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution, with a discussion of the "question of the party generations, "and in the most important document among the founding resolutions of the Fourth International (Fl), The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program, Trotsky stated the problem of generations in the following way:

"When a program or organization wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past.Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution."

—p45, Pathfinder Press edition
***********
Leon Trotsky-The New Course-CHAPTER 1-The Question of the Party Generations

None of the resolutions adopted during the discussion in Moscow, the complaint is made that the question of party democracy has been complicated by discussions on the relationships between the generations, personal attacks, etc. This complaint attests to a certain mental confusion. Personal attacks and the mutual relationships between generations are two entirely different things. To pose now the question of party democracy without analyzing the membership of the party, from the social point of view as well as from the point of view of age and political standing, would be to dissolve it into a void. It is not by accident that the question of party democracy rose up first of all as a question of relationships between the generations. It is the logical result of the whole evolution of our party. Its history may be divided schematically into four periods:

a.quarter of a century of preparation up to October, the only one in history;
b.October;
c.the period following October; and
d.the new course, that is, the period we are now entering.
Despite its richness, its complexity and the diversity of the stages through which it passed, the period prior to October, it is now realized, was only a preparatory period. October made it possible to check up on the ideology and the organization of the party and its membership. By October, we understand the acutest period of the struggle for power, which can be said to have started approximately with Lenin’s April Theses [1] and ended with the actual seizure of the state apparatus. Even though it lasted only a few months, it is no less important in content than the whole period of preparation which is measured in years and decades. October not only gave us an unfailing verification, unique in its kind, of the party’s great past, but it itself became a source of experience for the future. It was through October that the pre October party was able for the first time to assess itself at its true worth.

The conquest of power was followed by a rapid, even abnormal, growth of the party. A powerful magnet, the party attracted not only workers with little consciousness, but even certain elements plainly alien to its spirit: functionaries, careerists and political hangers on. In this chaotic period, it was able to preserve its Bolshevist nature only thanks to the internal dictatorship of the Old Guard, which had been tested in October. In the more or less important questions, the leadership of the older generation was then accepted almost unchallenged by the new members, not only by the proletarian ranks but by the alien elements. The climbers considered this docility the best way of establishing their own situation in the party. But they miscalculated. By a rigorous purging of its own ranks, the party rid itself of them. Its membership diminished, but its consciousness was enhanced. It may be said that this checkup on itself, this purge, made the post-October party feel itself for the first time a half million headed collectivity whose task was not simply to be led by the Old Guard but to examine and decide for itself the essential questions of policy. In this sense, the purge and the critical period linked with it are the preparation, as it were, of the profound change now manifesting itself in the life of the party and which will probably go down in its history under the name of “the new course.”

There is one thing that ought to be clearly understood from the start: the essence of the present disagreements and difficulties does not lie in the fact that the “secretaries” have overreached themselves on certain points and must be called back to order, but in the fact that the party as a whole is about to move on to a higher historical stage. The bulk of the communists are saying in effect to the leaders: “You, comrades, have the experience of before October, which most of us are lacking; but under your leadership we have acquired after October a great experience which is constantly growing in significance. And we not only want to be led by you but to participate with you in the leadership of the class. We want it not only because that is our right as party members but also because it is absolutely necessary to the working class as a whole. Without our modest experience, experience which should not merely be taken note of in the leading spheres but which must be introduced into the life of the party by ourselves, the leading party apparatus is growing bureaucratic, and we, rank-and-file communists, do not feel ourselves sufficiently well armed ideologically when confronting the non party people.” The present change is, as I have said, the result of the whole precedent evolution. Invisible at first glance, molecular processes in the lift and the consciousness of the party have long been at work preparing it. The market crisis gave a strong impetus to critical thought. The approach of the events in Germany set the party a quiver. Precisely at this moment it appeared with particular sharpness that the party was living, as it were, on two storeys: the upper storey, where things are decided, and the lower storey, where all you do is learn of the decisions. Nevertheless, the critical revision of the internal régime of the party was postponed by the anxious expectation of what seemed to be the imminent showdown in Germany. When it turned out that this showdown was delayed by the force of things, the party put the question of the “new course" on the order of the day.

As often happens in history, it is precisely during these last months that the “old course” revealed the most negative and most insufferable traits: apparatus cliquism, bureaucratic smugness, and complete disdain for the mood, the thoughts and the needs of the party. Out of bureaucratic inertia, it rejected, from the very beginning, and with an antagonistic violence, the initial attempts to put on the order of the day the question of the critical revision of the internal party régime. This does not mean, to be sure, that the apparatus is composed exclusively of bureaucratized elements, or even less, of confirmed and incorrigible bureaucrats. Not at all! The present critical period, whose meaning they will assimilate, will teach a good deal to the majority of the apparatus workers and will get them to abandon most of their errors. The ideological and organic regrouping that will come out of the present crisis, will, in the long run, have healthful consequences for the rank and file of the communists as well as for the apparatus. But in the latter, as it appeared on the threshold of the present crisis, Bureaucratism has reached an excessive, truly alarming development. And that is what gives the present ideological regrouping so acute a character as to engender legitimate fears.

It will suffice to point out that, two or three months ago, the mere mention of the Bureaucratism of the apparatus, of the excessive authority of the committees and the secretaries, was greeted by the responsible representatives of the “old course,” in the central and local organizations, with a shrug of the shoulders or by indignant protestations. Appointment as a system? Pure imagination! Formalism, Bureaucratism? Inventions, opposition solely for

the pleasure of making opposition, etc. These comrades, in all sincerity, did not notice the bureaucratic danger they themselves represent. It is only under pressure from the ranks that they began, little by little, to recognize that there actually were manifestations of Bureaucratism, but only somewhere at the organizational periphery, in certain regions and districts, that these were only a deviation in practice from the straight line, etc. According to them, Bureaucratism was nothing but a survival of the war period, that is, a phenomenon in the process of disappearing, only not fast enough. Needless to say how false are this approach to things and this explanation. Bureaucratism is not a fortuitous feature of certain provincial organizations, but a general phenomenon. It does not travel from the district to the central organization through the medium of the regional organization, but much rather from the central organization to the district through the medium of the regional organization. It is not at all a “survival” of the war period; it is the result of the transference to the party of the methods and the administrative manners accumulated during these last years. However exaggerated were the forms it sometimes assumed, the Bureaucratism of the war period was only child’s play in comparison with present day Bureaucratism which grew up in peacetime, while the apparatus, in spite of the ideological growth of the party, continued obstinately to think and decide for the party.

Hence, the unanimously adopted resolution of the Central Committee on the structure of the party has, from the standpoint of principle, an immense importance which the party must be clearly aware of. It would indeed be unworthy to consider that the profound meaning of the decisions taken boils down to a mere demand for more “mildness,” more “solicitousness” toward the masses on the part of the secretaries and the committees, and to some technical modifications in the organization. The resolution of the Central Committee speaks of a “new course, and not for nothing. The party is preparing to enter into a new phase of development. To be sure, it is not a Question of breaking the organizational principles of Bolshevism, as some are trying to have us believe, but to apply them to the conditions of the new stage in the development of the party. It is a question primarily of instituting healthier relations between the old cadres and the majority of the members who came to the party after October.

Theoretical preparation, revolutionary tempering, political experience, these represent the party’s basic political capital whose principal possessors, in the first place, are the old cadres of the party. On the other hand, the party is essentially a democratic organization, that is, a collectivity which decides upon its road by the thought and the will of all its members. It is completely clear that in the complicated situation of the period immediately following October, the party made its way all the better for the fact that it utilized to the full the experience accumulated by the older generation, to whose representatives it entrusted the most important positions in the organization.

On the other hand, the result of this state of things has been that, in playing the role of party leader and being absorbed by the Questions of administration, the old generation accustomed itself to think and to decide, as it still does, for the party. For the communist masses, it brings to the forefront purely bookish, pedagogical methods of participating in political life: elementary political training courses, examinations of the knowledge of its members, party schools, etc. Thence the bureaucratism of the apparatus, its cliquism, its exclusive internal life, in a word, all the traits that constitute the profoundly

negative side of the old course. The fact that the party lives on two separate storeys bears within it numerous dangers, which I spoke of in my letter on the old and the young. By “young,” I mean of course not simply the students, but the whole generation that came to the party after October, the factory cells in the first place. How did this increasingly marked uneasiness of the party manifest itself? In the majority of its members saying or feeling that: “Whether the apparatus thinks and decides well or badly, it continues to think and decide too often without us and for us. When we happen to display lack of understanding or doubts, to express an objection or a criticism, we are called to order, discipline is invoked; most often, we are accused of being obstructers or even of wanting to establish factions. We are devoted to the party to our very marrow and ready to make any sacrifice for it. But we want to participate actively and consciously in working out its views and in determining its course of action.” The first manifestations of this state of mind unmistakably passed by unperceived by the leading apparatus which took no account of it, and that was one of the main causes of the anti party groupings in the party. Their importance should certainly not be exaggerated, but neither should their meaning be minimized, for they ought to be a warning to us.

The chief danger of the old course, a result of general historical causes as well as of our own mistakes, is that the apparatus manifests a growing tendency to counterpose a few thousand comrades, who form the leading cadres, to the rest of the mass whom they look upon only as an object of action. If this régime should persist, it would threaten to provoke, in the long run, a degeneration of the party at both its poles, that is, among the party youth and among the leading cadres. As to the proletarian basis of the party, the factory cells, the students, etc., the character of the peril is clear. Not feeling that they are participating actively in the general work of the party and not getting a timely answer to their questions to the party, numerous communists start looking for a substitute for independent party activity in the form of groupings and factions of all sorts. It is in this sense precisely that we speak of the symptomatic importance of groupings like the “Workers’ Group.” [2]

But no less great is the danger, at the other pole, of the régime that has lasted too long and become synonymous in the party with bureaucratism. It would be ridiculous, and unworthy ostrich politics, not to understand, or not to want to see, that the accusation of bureaucratism formulated in the resolution of the Central Committee is directed precisely against the cadres of the party. It is not a question of isolated deviations in practice from the ideal line, but precisely of the general policy of the apparatus, of its bureaucratic tendency. Does bureaucratism bear within it a danger of degeneration, or doesn’t it? He would be blind who denied. In its prolonged development, bureaucratization threatens to detach the leaders from the masses, to bring them to concentrate their attention solely upon questions of administration, of appointments and transfers, of narrowing their horizon, of weakening their revolutionary spirit, that is, of provoking a more or less opportunistic degeneration of the Old Guard, or at the very least of a considerable part of it. Such processes develop slowly and almost imperceptibly, but reveal themselves abruptly. To see in this warning, based upon objective Marxian foresight, an “outrage,” an “assault,” etc., really requires the skittish susceptibility and arrogance of bureaucrats.

But, in actuality, is the danger of such a degeneration really great? The fact that the party has understood or felt this danger and has reacted to it energetically which is what was the specific cause of the resolution of the Central Committee bears witness to its profound vitality and by that very fact reveals the potent sources of antidote which it has at its disposal against bureaucratic poison. There lies the principal guarantee of its preservation as a revolutionary party. But if the old course should seek to maintain itself at all costs by tightening the reins, by increasingly artificial selection, by intimidation, in a word, by procedures indicating a distrust of the party, the actual danger of degeneration of a considerable part of the cadres would inevitably increase.

The party cannot live solely upon past reserves. It suffices that the past has prepared the present. But the present must be ideologically and practically up to the level of the past in order to prepare the future. The task of the present is to shift the center of party activity toward the masses of the party.

But, it may be said, this shifting of the center of gravity cannot be accomplished at one time, by a leap; the party cannot "put in the archives” the old generation and immediately start living a new life. It is scarcely worth while dwelling on such a stupidly demagogical argument. To want to put the old generation in the archives would be madness. What is needed is that precisey this old generation should change its orientation and, by virtue of that, guarantee in the future the preponderance of its influence upon all the independent activity of the party. It must consider the “new course” not as a maneuver, a diplomatic stroke, or a temporary concession, but as a new stage in the political development of the party. In this way, both the generation that leads the party and the party as a whole will reap the greatest benefit.


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NOTES

1. The April Theses was delivered by Lenin upon return to Petrograd on April4, 1917. The April Theses was an attack on the Bolshevik leadership (Kamanev, Zinoviev and Stalin) for their conciliatory stand toward the capitalist government. The Theses reoriented the party for a working class siezure of power and against any attempts at compromise with the government.

2. The Workers Group was one of several dissident factions inside the Bolshevik Party that was opposed to the the leadership.