£ 1.50 the Communist International and Others

##AUTOR##Should a communist youth movement be inde- DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE € 2 pendent? Answers to this question from 1 Karl Liebknecht, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, £ 1.50 the Communist International and others... Declarations of A collection of texts by the independent Independencecommunist youth organization REVOLUTION 2 DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE INTRODUCTION hy do we need a brochure about the communist youth movement? Is the youth movementW relevant anymore? And why do we Table of Contents need texts by Lenin and Liebknecht – isn’t that REVOLUTION/DE just left-wing nostalgia? On the Road to a Youth International We, as members of the independent commu- Page 4 nist youth organization REVOLUTION, are firmly convinced that these texts have not become less Karl Liebknecht important in the last 60-100 years. They put the Workers’ Movement and Youth Organization question of the youth movement and the revolu- Page 10 tionary youth organization on the agenda. Of course today there is no strong revolution- V.I. Lenin ary youth movement in sight: the “socialist” parties Jugend-Internationale have more or less completely broken from Marx- Page 14 ism and have wholeheartedly turned to “democratic socialism” – really: social neoliberalism. Communist International And their youth organizations have followed. Theses on the Youth Movement No one expects anything revolutionary to emerge Page 17 from the British Labour Youth or the German Jusos. But as the economic crisis deepens, so grows the Communist International need for a mass revolutionary party of the work- The Communist International and ing class and also for an organization of the revolutionary youth. The potential for such proceses of the Communist Youth Movement organization is growing – we must recognize and Page 19 use this potential. Leon Trotsky In the summit sieges of the anticapitalist movement, in the youth protests in France and Chile we The Struggle Against the Youth witness that young people are forcing their way Page 22 onto the political stage to express their discon- League for the Fifth International tentedness, their will for change. They need their own organization. Communist Principles of For REVOLUTION we did not need this brochure to begin a discussion about the independence of Youth Organization the youth organization. REVOLUTION was found- Page 28 ed by the League for the Fifth International (LFI) REVOLUTION/DE as a politically independent youth organization, in accordance with the views of Lenin and Trotsky. The Young Socialists‘ Alliance Although we are formally independent from Page 36 it, the LFI works as a faction in REVOLUTION. This REVOLUTION/UK means that LFI members have to submit to the decisions of the LFI leadership in regards to the Trotksy, Gould and the Youth best policies for REVOLUTION. Since LFI members Page 38 make up a majority at the conferences and in the leading bodies in Revo, since the LFI makes deci- Published by: sions regarding Revo which are obligatory for all LFI members, our organization internationally is Independent REVOLUTION anything but independent. Title graphic: Joß Fritz In the mean time the theory of the independence INTRODUCTION DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE 3 of a youthA organization Brochure seems to have disappeared that the– slogan Why? of the absolute political indepen- as well: the term “independent” is now reduced to dence for the youth (and also for REVOLUTION) “only organizational” or even “structural”. is today, like in the times of the revolutionary Just a year ago the LFI said: “Any attempt to lim- Comintern, “objectively revolutionary”. But this it the political and organizational independence brochure is not just for Revo and the LFI. It should of the youth serves only the interests of reformism offer all interested parties, all active young people and reaction.” But confronted with us, a truly in- the chance to learn about the communist youth dependent youth organization, a new theory was movement, to draw the conclusions from it and announced: “Political independence means only contribute to building up a new, revolutionary independence from Marxism”. The conclusion was youth international! clear: REVOLUTION should, despite all positions of Jalava, for the iRevo Coordination both organizations, be subordinate to the small propaganda groups of the LFI. That was enough for us “Indys” (i.e. non-LFI- members) to oppose this behaviour of tutelage with forceful protest. We founded our own ten- dency, “Independent REVOLUTION”, iRevo for short, and demanded that the LFI dissolve its faction. We were unfortunately not surprised to be de- nounced as “unbolshevik” or “passive”. Therefore we want to counterpose the “Leninist” practice of the LFI to the real thoughts of Lenin. We have decided to publish the texts in full, even if they don’t deal exclusively with the question of the youth movement. Such original texts should be avail- able to all young revolutionaries, not just to party functionaries with private libraries, who can quote an appropriate passage for whatever point they want to make. The discovery that a closed party faction within the youth movement is destructive was not made by iRevo. The “big ones” of the communist movement also recognized this and fought for the com- plete independence of the youth. That’s why there is not one single historical example (more precisely: not one example beyond the Maoist K-groups) of a communist organization working as a faction within a youth organization that sympathizes with it. This brochure should prsent the foundations on which REVOLUTION (and iRevo) was built – also for those comrades who seem to have forgotten them! Perhaps this brochure will help them to realize 4 DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE REVOLUTION On the Road to a Youth International On September 1, 1915, the first issue of the internationalist youth magazine “Youth International” appeared. This small organ of propaganda and struggle was a central tool for founding the Com- munist Youth International in 1919. For young communists today, who recognize the need to build a revolutionary youth international, the first attempt, which dates back to 90 years ago, pro- vides several important lessons. Wladek Flakin wrote... eptember 1915. The war rocked Europe. The dreams of a “victory before Christmas” The Socialist Press drownedS in blood as the massacre entered its sec- The mass socialist parties had called for a “sacred ond year. On the Western front armies of millions truce” (“Burgfrieden” in German, “Union Sacrée” in huddled in trenches to keep each other in check. French, meaning a pause in the class struggle) for In the battle of Ypern the German Imperial Army the duration of the war. Even as they swore their used poison gas for the first time in history. On opposition to the capitalist system and the war the Eastern front soldiers of the Osmanic Empire that it had caused, they wanted to prevent “worse fought against the Czarist Army in the Caucasus things” during the war: the French Socialists de- and the British Army in Mesopotamia. fended their “democratic” fatherland against “Ger- At this time a small paper appeared in Zurich man militarism”, the German Social Democrats de- with the title “Jugend-Internationale” (Youth In- fended their “civilized” fatherland against “Russian ternational), published by the “Secretariat of the absolutism”, etc International Alliance of Socialist Youth Organiza- Their central slogan for the working class was tions.” “Hold Out!” First beat the reactionaries in the With drawings of rebelling workers or Greek neighboring country, and then, sometime, topple gods, and appeals “to our class brothers”, this the ruling class at home. sheet didn’t look much different than dozens of Today it is quite normal to see Social Democrats other socialist youth magazines. But while the supporting or even leading imperialist wars: Tony socialist press was published legally in almost all Blair in Iraq, Gerhard Schröder in Afghanistan, etc. warring countries, the “Youth International” was But back then, the parties of the Socialist Interna- constantly suppressed. Because this paper, in con- tional hat an antimilitarist programme: they had trast to the overwhelming majority of the social- committed themselves, at least in official docu- democratic movement, wanted to end the war ments, to the proletarian revolution. At a congress with a revolution. of the International in 1907 in Stuttgart, a reso- REVOLUTION DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE 5 lution was passed that said: “In case war should sian Bolsheviki, the German group Internationale, break out anyway, it is [the social democrats’] duty sections of the Socialist Party of Italy and others to intervene for its speedy termination and to strive realised the necessity that the workers of all coun- all their power to utilize the economic and political tries fight together for an end of the war. crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and But the youth organisations of the socialist par- thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.” ties could in their majority be won for this inter- The French Socialist Hervé said it this way: there nationalist perspective. At Easter 1915 socialist should be “rather an insurrection than a war.” youth organisations from nine This position had a long countries, with a total of fifty tradition in the worker’s thousand members, met in Bern, movement. In The Com- Switzerland to set up a new alli- munist Manifesto Marx and ance. They founded an office in Engels made clear that the Zurich and decided to organize working class has no father- days of action against the war land. Naturally they have no and publish the paper “Jugend- interest in a victory of “their Internationale”. own” country (i.e. the country in which they are exploited). “Jugend-Internationale” With the famous slogan “Prole- This paper stood in clear op- tarians of all countries, unite!”, position to the imperialist war internationalism became a and its “socialist” defenders.

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