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history of our movement
The long and colorful history of the socialist youth movement in the United States goes back to the very beginning of socialism in America. Soon after founding the Socialist Party of America in 1901 by Eugene V. Debs, its youth group, the Young Peoples Socialist League, was founded.
Together with SP affiliated college student organizations, the YPSL grew to incorporate thousands of young and militant Americans in the tumultuous pre-World War I years in this country.
With the outbreak of World War I though, and the ensuing crack down on all radical groups by President Wilson, the YPSL was subject to harassment and to numerous violations of its members constitutional rights by the government, and the patriotic mobs that that it whipped up.
In the midst of this anti-radical persecution, which continued well into the 1920s, the 1917 Russian Revolution led by V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky grabbed the attention of every radical in America, young and old.
A huge debate broke within the ranks of the Socialist Party and the Young Peoples Socialist League over what attitude to take to the new fledgling workers’ state in Russia.
The revolutionary spirited elements parted ways with the conservation wing of the Socialist Party, and launched the American Communist Party in 1919. And again, shortly afterwards, the students and young workers attracted to the new party’s banner came together to found a youth group, the Young Communist League.
However, the Young Communist League and the CP were born in troubled times. Continued government persecution, now including forced deportation of foreign born radicals, forced the young movement underground. At the same time, intense pressures from imperialist countries, and the overwhelming destruction and backwardness which faced the Bolsheviks, was resulting in a bureaucratic degeneration of the revolution in Russia. Led by the ruthless Joseph Stalin, a self-serving bureaucracy has usurped power in Russia following the death of Lenin in 1924. It quickly moved to quench dissent, and abandoned the idea of world revolution, contenting themselves instead with preserving their new power and privilege.
In America, the leadership of the Communist Party went along with the changes taking place in Russia. Following Stalin’s example, the leadership of the CP sought to end any dissent, demanding unquestioning loyalty to whatever policy the leadership passed down.
A small group of Communist Party members around James P. Cannon however, who were still committed to democratic ideas of the Russian Revolution, challenged the CP leadership. In 1928 they were expelled. Immediately afterwards they launched a newspaper, the Militant, and a new organization, the Communist League of America.
Despite being isolated and attacked by the now Stalinist Communist Party, Cannon and the CLA fought to defend revolutionary politics, and as a result the CLA grew in both members and influence. In the early 1930s it launched a youth group, the Spartacus Youth League.
In the same manner as its parent organization, members of the SYL and their newspaper, the Young Spartacus, sought to win the hearts and minds of students and young workers in competition with the Young Communist League and the Young Peoples Socialist League.
In 1936, both the Communist League of America and the Spartacus Youth League dissolved and re-entered the Socialist Party and the Young Peoples Socialist League. This was in response to a dramatic growth of the Socialist Party, and the Socialist Party leadership’s call for a party that would be home to all socialists.
Taking into the SP though their revolutionary politics, the Trotskyists were attacked by the conservative leadership of the SP, who now worried they may loose control of the SP and the YPSL.
After enduring numerous organizational maneuvers and attempts at censorship by the SP leadership, the Trotskyists left the Socialist Party, and in 1938 founded the Socialist Workers Party. Hundreds of workers left the SP with them, as did all the youth. The Young Peoples Socialist League now became the youth group of the new Socialist Workers Party!
By this time however the winds of World War II were beginning to blow, and once again the left came under attack by the government and its henchmen. The SWP was evicted from its position of power in the Midwest Teamsters union, and its leadership arrested and put on trial for opposing U.S. entry into the war.
Buckling to the intense pressure upon the left to abandon any defense of the Russian Revolution, including the gains which continued to survive despite the bureaucracy, a wing of the SWP under Max Shactman split the party, taking most of the YPSL with it. The remainder of the SWP continued to defend revolutionary politics throughout the war, as well as the McCarthyite 1950s, but it was unable to maintain a youth group.
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the beginnings of a significant radicalization of young people. Fueled by the inspiration provided by the civil rights movement in the United States and the Cuban Revolution of 1959, a growing number of young people began to look to radical answers to the injustices they saw around them.
The Socialist Workers Party responded to this radicalization by reaching out to these young people, and launching a new youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance.
Throwing itself into the growing movement against the unjust war in Vietnam, the YSA quickly grew to become one of the largest and most effective radical youth groups in America. Despite competition from various ultra-left, Maoist and Stalinist groups, the Young Socialist Alliance, through coalitions such as the Student Mobilization, was able to build a mass youth movement against the war in Vietnam around the slogan of “Bring the Troops Home Now!” This was in contrast to the slogans of “Drive the G.I.s Into the Sea” and “Tune In, Tune Out” of its less serious competitors.
The result of the YSA’s and the SWP’s role in the anti-war movement, a majority of people were swung to oppose their government’s policy in Southeast Asia, and to no small degree, end the war.
The YSA entered the 1970s with a strong base on all of the major U.S. campuses, and the respect of student activists everywhere. Its newspaper, the Young Socialist, had a readership in the tens of thousands. Armed with the experience it had gained in the anti-war movement, the YSA was able to play a significant role in the struggles around racism and continued segregation in the schools that unfolded in the late 1970s.
The size and valuable experience of the YSA however was largely destroyed in the early 1980s when a new leadership in the Socialist Workers Party began to abandon the politics it had stood by in the past, and engaged In a series of twists and turns.
Members of the YSA were ordered to quit school and to go and get jobs in industry. In response to this, and the bizarre political lines being passed down by the SWP leadership, many youth in the YSA dropped out, and were lost from the revolutionary movement.
Just as a group of sincere revolutionaries had resisted the degeneration of the Communist Party in the 1920s, so too was the case with the SWP. These dissenters, like James Cannon, were also expelled, and forced to form a new organization. The name of the new group was Socialist Action, the party that Youth for Socialist Action is tied to.
Being born in the conservative 1980s however, Socialist Action found it hard to find young people interested in revolutionary politics. Several efforts were made to reach out to students on the campuses, and throughout the 1980s and early 1990s several “Students for Socialist Action” clubs were formed in places like San Francisco and Cincinnati. Unfortunately it wasn’t until the mid and late 1990s that Socialist Action was able to gather around it enough young revolutionaries to begin thinking about launching a youth group.
The organization that was created by these initial young people was Youth for Socialist Action. Today, in 1999, with still only a year and a half under its own belt, the new YSA is able to stand with the confidence and wisdom inherited from an almost century old revolutionary youth tradition behind it. Drawing from the lessons of the early Young Peoples Socialist League, Young Communist League, Spartacus Youth League and the Young Socialist Alliance, Youth for Socialist Action is proudly marching into the twenty-first century with the banner of revolutionary socialism held high!
The essay above was written by Adam Ritscher.
