HOME
your socialist home on the internet
ABOUT US
who we are, our politics, and what we do
GET ACTIVE!
joining ysa, getting active locally, making a difference
NEWS & VIEWS
articles, fliers, statements and opinions
THEORY
what is socialism, reading lists and study guides
CONTACT US
our email, snail mail, phone number and club directory
LINKS
socialist, youth, activist, labor, feminist, anti-racist, and other important sites
WHAT'S NEW
listing of what's been recently added
ysa canada launched
On Saturday, December 2, young socialists from several cities and university campuses met in Toronto to launch this country’s newest revolutionary socialist youth organization, Youth for Socialist Action. With participants from Montreal, Peterborough and Toronto, and a solidarity message sent by supporters in Vancouver, this founding conference initiated a cross-country movement. And with written greetings from Socialist Action/U.S. and Youth for Socialist Action/U.S., and a political report from Socialist Action/Canada, it was apparent that this new formation will be a fighting, internationalist organization.
Why a youth organization?
The impulse to form a revolutionary youth organization came in the wake of a year of worldwide youth radicalization. Anti-corporate globalization protests in Seattle, Washington DC, Windsor, Millau/France and Prague show there is an emerging international anti-capitalist movement. While anarchists’ violent antics have often grabbed the headlines, the politics of the majority of activists involved in these events are, as yet, still developing. The protesters know what they hate – global capitalism, and the institutions which enforce its rule (IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, NATO, etc.). What is necessary is a revolutionary socialist youth organization which can put forward a viable alternative to capitalist society. This is the task of Youth for Socialist Action, and this was the common goal of the participants at the conference.
healthy debate
The conference was marked by lively debate on key issues, especially in the afternoon session, which focused on amendments to the proposed constitution, political program, and Plan of Action. When all was said and done, YSA emerged as an activist group, with a clear orientation to the working class.
During the debate on the constitution, emphasis was put on the internationalist aspect of YSA, stressing its political connection to Socialist Action, and the Fourth International (the World Party of Socialist Revolution). To quote the “Purpose” section of the YSA constitution:
Youth for Socialist Action is a cross-Canada revolutionary Marxist youth organization committed to winning students and young workers/unemployed to socialist politics, and to building a revolutionary movement capable of leading the struggle to replace capitalism with socialist democracy. On these grounds, Youth for Socialist Action will act as the youth organization of Socialist Action, partisans of the Fourth International in the Canadian state. The Fourth International was founded by Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and lifelong opponent of Stalinism and world capitalism, and is active in over 60 countries. Youth for Socialist Action will strive to build the ranks of revolutionary socialism and Socialist Action.
By socialism we mean a system of societal organization based on the social ownership and democratic control of the major industries and enterprises, and the extension of democracy at all levels.
Another important debate took place on the issue of Leninist organizational principles. Delegates voted that YSA would be democratic-centralist. In other words, rank and file members are firmly in control of the decision making process; policy adopted by majority vote, following ample discussion, should be carried out by all members, subject to further review and debate; and YSA leaders are subordinate and accountable to the bodies that elected them.
political program
One of the most important documents debated at the YSA’s founding conference was the “10 Point Program” which forms the basis for unity for YSA. The program includes the following sections: Socialism, Class Struggle, Youth Rights, Anti-Racism, Self-Determination for Quebec and Aboriginal Peoples, Feminism, Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered Liberation, Anti-Imperialism, Cuba and the Environment.
This document reinforces YSA’s commitment to socialist revolution, and the creation of a truly democratic socialist society, where equal rights for all will not only be protected, but actively promoted legally and economically.
call to action
The final document debated was the “Plan of Action” document. This document is intended to outline the cross-country priority activities of YSA, and provide an orientation for YSA branches. The Plan of Action concretizes YSA’s working class orientation:
Labour Unions are the primary defense organizations of the working class. These are the places where workers’ elementary consciousness of class politics can develop in the context of everyday, real-life economic struggles. Political class consciousness, however, emerges with awareness of our anti-capitalist interests as workers, fostered by the involvement of socialists in the workers’ movement, and is a precondition for the revolutionary transformation of society.
YSA individual members should become as active as possible in their own labour or student union, and the corresponding union centrals (such as the Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Ontario Federation of Labour, etc.).
The New Democratic Party is the political arm of the labour movement in English Canada. As such, it is still the home of the vast majority of politicizing and militant workers.
Although the current direction of the NDP’s leadership and program is rightwards, and is moving far from class-struggle politics, the NDP remains fundamentally different from the parties of big-business (the Liberals, Canadian Alliance, Progressive Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois). The NDP is organically linked to unions and its membership and finances come almost exclusively from workers and their institutions.
Within the NDP there is an organization called the Socialist Caucus. The SC has attracted a cross-country membership of over 300 NDPers who support the fight for a Workers Agenda in the party. The Socialist Caucus, based on the Manifesto for a Socialist Canada, is steadily growing, and is committed to the fighting for socialism within the mass workers’ movement and its political vehicle, the NDP.
In all NDP/NDY related functions, one of the primary tasks of YSA will be to build the Socialist Caucus, and distribute literature of the Socialist Caucus and YSA.
In Quebec, no mass workers’ party exists. The Parti Quebecois was once perceived to be a social-democratic party. Due to this fact, and the pre-eminence of the national liberation struggle among organized Quebecois workers, most unions in Quebec support the PQ. The PQ, however, has long since abandoned its “social democratic” pretensions. It was and is a bourgeois nationalist party. YSA members in Quebec should join with Socialist Action in the struggle to forge a new mass workers’ party in Quebec with a pro-sovereignty, class-struggle outlook.
February 3, 2001, YSA for Mumia!
At the end of the conference, the newly constituted Central Committee began planning Youth for Socialist Action’s first major political event. On February 3, 2001, on the first Saturday of Black History Month, YSA branches in Montreal, Peterborough, Toronto, and Vancouver will hold an event to raise awareness and collect funds for the defense campaign for Black American political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The above article was written by Dan Lovell, the YSA Federal Organizer. Dan is a member of the Ontario NDP Socialist Caucus steering committee, the Ontario New Democratic Youth Provincial Council, and Socialist Action. He is a student at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.
