Issuing body: International pre-conference of youth organizations for the Fourth International, held in Paris following the main (Geneva) conference
THE YOUTH AND THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
The present epoch of capitalist decline offers the great mass of the proletarian youth no other fate than permanent unemployment, hunger and total misery, and, as the only real way out, the annihilation of millions of young proletarians in a new imperialist slaughter of the peoples. Within the framework of capitalism there is, for this generation, no possible salvation. The proletarian revolution which, alone, through an economic and political transformation of society, will allow the youth to satisfy the fullness of its rights to life, is therefore not a distant, future objective but a vital question of immediate necessity.
The road of the proletarian revolution, the path to socialism, is everywhere obstructed by the opportunist and treacherous policy of the Second and Third Internationals, which lead the proletariat from defeat to defeat, and by the lack of a genuine revolutionary leadership linked to the masses. This is the profound cause of the fact that the enormous revolutionary possibilities of these last years have remained unused while the revolutionary energy of the masses has been spent in vain. The demoralizing defeats of recent years have, moreover, led to the situation whereby sections of the proletarian youth today lose faith in the revolution, draw away and hold themselves apart from their own class, or even furnish material to the mortal enemy of the proletariat — fascism — for the formation of its shock troops.
The policy of the Socialist Youth International (SYI) is no less fatal than that of the Second International, of which it forms the youth section. The bureaucracy of the SYI continues to preach confidence in the (capitalist) League of Nations, whose wretched role is today manifest even to backward petty bourgeois. The SYI is not ashamed to demand of this prostituted League of Nations the organization of an impossible peace under a capitalist regime, nor to advocate the deceptive watchword of disarmament, at a moment when the armaments of every country — even where representatives of the Second International participate in or lead the government — are growing at a feverish rate. The bureaucracy of the SYI demands of the working class the abandonment of the use of violence in the class struggle (and the abandonment of the class struggle in general) at a moment when, everywhere, the bourgeoisie is organizing and unleashing fascist terrorist bands against the workers' movement.
Under these conditions, an extremely baneful role is played by these "left" leaders of the SYI (Godefroid, Chochoy, etc.) who, today, under the pressure of the powerful mass movement in the countries of Western Europe, adopt a revolutionary phraseology but, in reality, wholeheartedly support — without ever unmasking it — the counter-revolutionary policy of the reformist parties of their countries. In words, these "left" leaders of the Socialist Youth International are for revolution, armed insurrection, the transformation of the imperialist war into civil war, etc., but at the same time, through their day-to-day policy, they push or call upon young proletarians to place their confidence in socialist ministers who — like Vandervelde — use tear gas against striking workers, or — like Léon Blum — use the bourgeois police apparatus of repression to persecute proletarian revolutionaries. That between the "right" and "left" leaders of the SYI there is no irreconcilable opposition but merely a skirmish between opportunists of different national shades is shown by the puerile plan (today, moreover, virtually abandoned!) of Godefroid and Co. to divide the SYI into a "political" sector and a "cultural" sector — that is, to settle the divergences in a purely bureaucratic and administrative manner. For the working youth, it is not a matter of an opposition between "political" and "cultural" work, but of an irreducible opposition between the policy of social betrayal and that of social revolution. That is the only way to pose and to resolve the question, and it excludes any compromise. But to this the Godefroids and Chochoys cannot consent, for they do not wish, at any price, to break with the social-patriots, the social-traitors — the Vanderveldes and De Mans, the Blums and Salengros. The task of the young proletarian revolutionaries is to demonstrate the true role of the "left" leaders of the SYI, who make use of revolutionary-sounding formulas but who, in the last analysis, cover with their "revolutionary" authority the social-patriotism of the Blums and the Vanderveldes — the counter-revolutionary policy of the Second International.
Without any doubt, today, among the rising generations, the most baneful and most demoralizing influence is exercised by the Young Communist International (YCI), whose opportunism has reached such a degree that it even allows the leftists of the SYI to invoke, with impunity, the names of Lenin and Luxemburg. The Stalinist bureaucracy has today succeeded in definitively killing the revolutionary spirit and enthusiasm which animated the YCI in its early years. The last world congress of the YCI, which took place at the time of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (August 1935), assigned to all its sections the task of "depoliticizing" themselves and creating broad youth organizations standing above parties, above classes. The YCI received the mission of reconciling the proletarian youth of the countries linked in foreign policy to the Soviet Union (and of countries whose foreign policy is directed, in one way or another, against Japan and Germany) with the bourgeois youth of the corresponding country, thereby ensuring the sacred union in the coming war. In France, where at this moment, on the basis of the extraordinary sharpening of class antagonisms, all political processes appear in the clearest light, the YCI pushes ignominy to the point of holding out its hand to fascist organizations and denouncing civil war as the worst of all evils. The Stalinist betrayal finds its culmination in the organization of the World Youth Movement for Peace, Liberty and Progress. Here the Stalinists unite with nationalist and religious youth associations to hold parade congresses "for peace" (Brussels, Geneva), under the protection of reactionary priests and bankrupt imperialist politicians such as Lord Cecil, etc. The aim and the result of these Stalinist peace congresses is not the organization of peace between peoples (which, within capitalism, is a reactionary utopia) but, on the contrary, the organization of civil peace between the classes of the imperialist nations (which will make war possible). The Young Communist International — which arose out of the struggle against the social-imperialism (socialism in words, imperialism in fact) of the Second International during the last world war — is today preparing to lead the young proletarian generation to the imperialist slaughter. Within its own ranks, the proletarian youth movement has no worse enemy than Stalinism.
The International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations is of no practical importance worth mentioning. It is the youth section of the London Bureau, that miniature edition of the Two-and-a-Half International (SAP, ILP, etc.). This youth bureau sees its task as being to render services to Stalinism. In joint appeals "to the German working youth," the German section of this youth bureau (the youth of the SAP) acknowledges that the Stalinists (who did more for Hitler's victory than Hitler himself) enlightened the German proletariat in good time as to "the form, the essence and the task of fascism." Moreover, the youth section of the London Bureau — as far as its modest means allow — supports the deception of the Stalinist civil-peace congresses in preparation for the imperialist war.
The youth section of the Fourth International can be built only through the sharpest struggle against the tendencies and conceptions outlined above within the camp of the proletarian youth movement — tendencies which, in the last analysis, can only deliver the new generations, hand and foot bound, into the hands of international capitalism, fascism and war. Only a revolutionary policy of irreconcilability, condemning in the most categorical manner every concession to social-pacifism and social-imperialism, and everywhere boldly and resolutely pursuing the goal of the proletarian revolution — only such a policy, defended and propagated through active and direct participation within the working youth and its organizations, will make it possible to rally the masses of the proletarian youth around the red flag of the social revolution. Only the organizations of the Fourth International, by gathering the revolutionaries around them, can and will follow this path; only they will succeed in delivering the working class from the swamp of opportunism, betrayal, and the strategy of defeats of the Second and Third Internationals.
The degeneration of the Second and Third Internationals has squandered, in large part, the political energies of the older proletarian generations. The building of the Fourth International is indissolubly linked to the political awakening of new proletarian layers and, above all, of the young generation. This is why it is of great importance that the cadres of the Fourth International within the proletarian youth movement should be in constant growth. In France and Holland there already exist independent youth organizations which stand for the Fourth International. In Belgium, through the machinations of Vandervelde and Co., and with the direct collaboration of Godefroid (who thereby proved that he prefers unity with the sacred-union socialists), the truly revolutionary wing, which is grouped around the newspaper l'Action socialiste révolutionnaire, has just been expelled from the Young Socialist Guards and is currently working toward its independent constitution. Within the unified youth organization of Spain (the unification of the socialist youth organization with the Stalinist organization), within the Labour League of Youth of England, the Zukunft youth organization of Poland, the Young People's Socialist League (Yipsel) of America, in Switzerland, in Austria, in Canada and in a number of other countries there exist fractions, groups and currents for the Fourth International. All these elements of the proletarian youth movement who stand on the ground of the Fourth International will find the ways and means — without contravening the particular conditions of their country and their work — to exchange their experiences, to learn from one another, and to march together toward new successes.
Forward, toward the creation of the youth section of the Fourth International!
Theses adopted by the youth pre-conference, 1 October 1936