Comrades,
This is our first in person meeting since convention. It is an achievement. The funding for this meeting comes from the hard efforts of the membership of the League. It will allow us a deeper and more serious discussion.
Today we will discuss important steps forward for the YCL – we have a lot of work to do. You will see from the agenda that we four major tasks:
- To discuss the political situation today, our organizational strength and what we can contribute to the struggle at the present time
- To focus on our main areas of struggle and our tasks
- To build our internal educational work
- To further Cuba work as a priority for the YCL
We are also happy to announce that Miguel Figueroa, leader of the Communist Party, will bring greetings and speak about developments in the international situation. And as people know, several of you will be staying behind for the joint YCL-Party school. This is a special achievement for us.
Our YCL-LJC Central Committee meeting in November discussed the political situation of youth and students. Since then, events have moved quickly. We need to take a “read,” make an assessment on important topics:
- What is provoking and at stake in the coming federal electoral battles?
- How do the youth in Canada see the struggle today?
- What are the main dangers to youth, especially on the questions of peace, jobs, and education?
- What can the YCL do?
Let’s get to work.
POLITICAL STORMS
We are meeting on the likely eve of a Federal election. While our primary focus is to the streets, given the recent news it would be mistaken not to look towards the storms brewing in Ottawa these days, and the potential of a Federal election – and place these developments in a political and economic context for the youth.
In fact if an election is not called this September, it will probably to come soon after. This election will be sparked after a prolonged period of volatility in parliament. The issue of a government willing to stand for peace, environmental sustainability, jobs, and democratic progress, in the interests of the vast majority of people, versus the slash and burn policies of reaction in its drive for war, ecocide, deindustrialization, and privatization is sharpening into an election.
While some will say the election is a distraction, it is nevertheless true that if called, this event will launch a broad public discussion that has the potential talk about the most important problems facing Canadian youth – in workplaces, on campuses, and in schools. And I think a great many young people will be consciously debating what is at stake in this election, not using our language, but they will discuss:
- Afghanistan – is this war right? What does it do?
- Jobs – will I have a good job when I finish school?
- Manufacturing jobs crisis
- Global warming and the energy policy crisis
Youth and students will no doubt also grapple with – with our own approach, language, even cultural symbols – the struggle for public funding and delivery of social programmes, including education, and the attack on civil liberties and democratic rights There are also important issues at stake facing the people in this election involving democratic Canadian sovereignty, the oppression of Aboriginal peoples, rising prices, electoral reform and workers rights. Youth will talk about these issues. We reject the idea that youth are immune from political concerns; in fact, the opposite.
From this angle we see the election; not as the central dynamic of struggle but neither inconsequential. And while this election could open new possibilities for the labour and people’s movements, including the youth and student movement, it could also bring more danger.
While falling far short of what we demand, a minority Liberal government, with the NDP holding the balance of power, could put issues like limiting and then withdrawing troops from the Afghanistan war, social services like national childcare, and changes in corporate taxation back on the agenda. But there is also grave danger of a return to power by the Harper Conservatives – including as a majority government.
Crisis in the electoral system
The election has come about after two successive minority governments and several years of uncertainty in parliament. Behind the almost daily maneuvering is a search by the big business parties for a majority government that can win the support of a large segment of the people, and at the same time bring home the goods for the corporations.
Canadian transnational capital’s aggressive and desperate drive for greater profits has not got a “green light” from parliament, in the form of a majority government.
No big business party has succeeded in tricking the people to trust them and winning a majority, while the NDP (and the Bloc Quebequois) have not come forward as a realistic alternative. The weakness of the Harper Conservative government in many urban ridings, often predominantly working class, shows the justifiably skepticism of most working families towards that party.
The people, especially working people, have been continually reluctant to deliver to any political party a sufficient mandate allowing implementation of a comprehensive corporate agenda. Instead, the Harper Tories have been forced to bring forward this plan piecemeal, and largely by stealth.
The deadlock in parliament is brining to the fore the crisis of Canada’s electoral system, and the need for a new model – proportional representation.
Proportional representation could force the issue of coalition building inside parliament, and block a reactionary majority. It opens possibility of an alliance of progressive forces, a turning the signal light parliament gives to the neo-liberal agenda from “proceed with caution” to “prepare to stop.”
Impoverishment of the working class
The electoral crisis in Canada has its roots in the economic situation. Its roots are in the social blood-letting that has been going on over the past decades, our generation.
We are the generation after Free Trade. Twenty years of cutbacks and privatization to social programmes, the great Federal swindle to pay off the debt restricting unemployment insurance and effectively passing the buck and socializing the debt into our pockets, dismantling of progressive taxation – after all this there is a clear “growing gap”
Canadian families are putting in more work time, yet most -- 80% of them -- are getting a smaller share of Canada’s growing economy … Canada’s income gap between the rich and poor is growing, largely because the lion’s share of Canada’s economic growth is going to the richest 10% of families. It’s not going to the majority, the 80% of families earning under a $100,000.
The class-bias of these figures is obvious. Productivity and profits are up, but not wages. Today’s manufacturing jobs crisis, rising prices, and the growing economic slow-down which is threatening recession are like dark storm clouds on the horizon. All at the same time as a widely unpopular war in Afghanistan, and the growing concern over climate change.
We are in a toxic brew, the result of recipes from the cookbook of neo-liberalism – and the grand mix-master of this toxic brew is capitalist globalization, imperialism in its modern form.
The truth is that global capital is still in a desperate effort, to escape the stagnation and disequilibria overtaking the global economy since the 1970s and 1980s. The counter-revolution in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the USSR, and Mongolia, merely deflected peoples attention from this reality in the 1990s. Now, things don’t look so good.
In fact, where neo-liberalism denounced democratic control of the economy – workers power – the most successful countries in Latin America are those who have rejected the IMF and the World Bank’s policies.
It is harder to negate socialism as a revolutionary alternative to capitalism.
YOUTH CONSCIOUSNESS
This takes us to a second question the executive would like to consider – the issue of youth consciousness.
People’s consciousness is shaped by these realities. In terms its ideology, the predominant outlook has not shifted, it is the idea that capitalism can be reformed. But the people also have a sensible skepticism – they don’t trust any party that promises to bring more of the same.
What about youth? Young people are not apathetic. I suspect some in this room think otherwise. We should debate this out.
Certainly nothing occurs in a vacuum. What we and our friends, co-workers and class mates think, is tied up with a propaganda process. I have been struck by this assessment of the 16th World Youth Festival describing this process:
“…imperialism uses the media, the education system, art, recreation, and other mechanisms to unfold a sophisticated ideological offensive that provides the theoretical and moral basis for it [tactics].”
But still I would suggest that our generation in particular recognizes the failure of “the-system-as-we-know-it” to provide a better life. For us, life is “random,” often in a negative way. This is not a comprehensive understanding, not necessarily a class consciousness and not a socialist consciousness, but awareness that the claim of a better, post-cold war world is totally off-mark.
Who do the youth blame?
There is criticism, often sharp criticism. I would claim that many young people do not point the finger today at an older generation, or at each other – they point at the system. Our experiences like petitioning on the street are important in this regard. It is a connection to youth we would otherwise never meet. The young people we are speaking to are upset and angry with the way things are, such as low minimum wages, and often they are not afraid to point the finger at capitalism.
Rejection or rupture?
We don’t need to just point at anti-imperialist student formations to find “aware” youth. Even a 2006 youth survey by War Child Canada (funded by CIDA, and avoiding any questions about the War in Afghanistan) found that “By almost a six-to-one margin, youth also prefer that Canada work more closely with the UN rather than with the U.S. in working to resolve global problems. [81% vs 14%].” This would be a direct indictment our our foreign policy today. Also of interest:
“…as to whether multi-national corporations play a positive or negative role in promoting human rights and democracy in the world today … As youth get older and follow global issues more closely, they tend to view the role of corporations more negatively.”
“For the most part, youth regard industry as being the greatest threat to the environment [vs. consumers, although they are also divided on this question]”
“…most youth also believe that decision-makers do not take young people’s views on world issues seriously.”[1]
Does this make sense with your experience? This report isn’t aimed at finding the ‘final answer.’ Lets open this discussion, it is important.
In one study from 2000, 19% of 18 to 34 year olds stated they have attended a lawful demonstration, and 60% would attend.
Among youth in the labour movement, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the way things are, and a growing critique of reformism. (Often this is shared by both the rank-in-file youth, and university students who have been co-opted by labour as young organizers.)
Is it just rejection or compete rupture with the dominant ideology? Certainly this sharp criticism does not spontaneously lead to socialist consciousness. But it does lead to a renewed search for a deeper analysis of the crisis of capitalism, for profound social and political change, and that leads young people to look at the Communist movement.
Fight to be visible!
All this highlights how critical is our need to be seen, heard, read – not just to be viewed on You Tube, to get members in our facebook group, but also and especially: to talk to other young peoples in our communities and campuses, to make sure leading activists know who we are, to be seen at demonstrations with a banner, and to get Rebel Youth magazine to new audiences.
This is not automatic. It is a fight.
It is not enough to simply draw the line between imperialism and Canada today. Our challenge is to provide an analysis and look at how we can change that situation, what the potentialities are for a different better future – and do something about it!
It may be relaxing to sit back and say that “a revolutionary upsurge is not happening among the people, what can we do?” but unity and struggle won’t fall out of the sky.
What we have to do is start from where the people are at, themselves. For our main areas of struggle – peace, jobs, and education, three areas of great important to young people – we have to look at what the great masses of youth and students recognize, and how they are in motion against the narrow interests of monopoly capital.
Strategy and tactics
Our action plan talks about “areas of struggle.” When I visit comrades in clubs I often speak of this. Sometimes I use the term “campaigns.” Sometimes I use them interchangeably. This is a mistake. The two are not the same. We need to talk about this difference.
At the convention we spoke of both – reviewing our experience on the CEC level, we have come to view that this was also a mistake. What we are talking about here is our strategic policy. That is what distinguishes us from just talking rrrr-revolutionary, but without a scientifically substantiated policy, the transition from the politics of protest to the politics of power is impossible.
In determining our strategy and tactics, we have to start with a straight-up analysis of the stage of struggle and the overall balance and distribution of power among the contending forces
We have to see how what the people recognize compares to what the political parties are offering, and other forces such as labour and democratic movements. We have to ask where, within this configuration, do we place ourselves. Where do we ally, and make our contribution?
PEACE AND THE YOUTH AND STUDENTS
Lets start with the question of war vs. peace. We need to have a detailed discussion about this area of struggle.
Peace should be a major issue in the upcoming election. The brazenly imperialist nature of the Afghanistan war is becoming hard to hide. Even the right-wing Toronto Sun ran an article on June 22 headlined “These Wars are About Oil, Not Democracy.”
Indeed, the main conclusion of the Manley report released since our last Central Committee meeting was that the Federal government was not adequately selling the war to the Canadian people!
Although I think many Canadians look at our soldiers as choosing a career-path with a very high workplace safety hazards, the 83 casualties of Canadian troops – many of whom are young, and many of whom have died recently – has also had a strong negative impact on popular opinion about the war.
The Canadian ruling class supports the US efforts in Afghanistan in order to get a share of the profits. The bombs had hardly stopped falling on Khandar went, over six years ago, newly retired Jean Chrétien traveled to that country with a team of Canadian oil men to sign-up billions in lucrative pipeline deals.
It comes down to profits. In order to achieve this, Trans-National Monopoly required three things:
- Transforming not just Canadian foreign policy, but also our military doctrine and the very way our Army operates;
- Increasing the Military Budget to much great portion of the GDP;
- Winning the Canadian people to support this agenda, and our participation in US imperialist wars of aggression.
In the first two areas, Canadian imperialism has obtained dangerous achievements. The cardinal examples of this is the sky rocketing military budget, and also the Security and Prosperity Partnership, which includes agreement on the “inter-operability” of US and Canadian army units, under US command.
This suggests developments in the relations between US and Canadian imperialism, which demands more analysis than we have time for here.
But in the third area, imperialism efforts have been somewhat frustrated. Consistent public opinion polls show that there is very broad opposition to the war and Canada’s continued participation. It is here in this area that we see a sharpening struggle, a battle of ideas. We need to get engaged at this point.
Let us talk about how we have done this, and can, creatively, do this.
Troops Out Now: the big issue
We would suggest the debate over the war in Afghanistan and Canada’s imperialist role is the most important debate about war and peace in Canada today. The Canada’s future role and foreign policy revolves around this issue. This is why the central task of the people’s forces is to withdraw the troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Combating the war in Afghanistan is the primary task in the struggle for peace today. We should present this perspective in our mass work in opposition to the good work people are doing in the struggle for nuclear disarmament, for example, or the active War Resistors support campaigns – which are perhaps even more active than the anti-war movements. That would create a dynamic of disunity within coalitions.
What’s more, if a conflict were to break out around Iran, or if the current war in Georgia were to expand, these two would be come immediate and pressing tasks of the peace movement, in a narrow sense, and all progressive people in a broad sense. And, to be sure, we can not forget about these other issues. We can not forget about Canada’s participation in Haiti.
But we would be confused and making a mistake not to recognize the central importance of the war in Afghanistan and the cry “Troops Out Now!”
Pro-war sentiment and Parliament
What do the big political parties offer the people on this question? The Harper Tories most closely express the viewpoint of reaction. They call for an extension of Canada’s mission, and have effectively done as much during their term in office.
The Liberal’s are desperately searching to carve-out a more realistic position, identified on the one hand as placing a different emphasis or different approach to the war, while at the same time pleasing their corporate masters. This has been expressed in their demand to set the date for their withdrawal. Now, having lost that battle, and are taking shots at Harper through the issue of Omar Khadr.
The Bloc, also a party officially of troop withdrawal, supports this demand but not because it is against the premise of the conflict, but because they are against the cost of the war both in terms of money and soldiers lives.
The NDP have shifted their rhetoric, from initial luke-warm support of the war, to advocating for transformation of the Canadian presence from a fighting force to a peace-keeping, humanitarian presence, and now adopting the slogan Troops Out Now. This has a good sign, although the primary target of their criticism has too often been not the Harper Tories but the Liberals – namely their historic blunder, voting with the Tories and against setting the date for troop withdrawal.
In turn, the Tories have declared the mission essentially open-ended. Even two more years will mean 50 more Canadians killed.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Peace Alliance, Echec a’la Guerre, and the Canadian Islamic Congress have made their position abundantly clear. They are against the war because it is about profits, and has nothing to do with improving the lives of the people of Afghanistan, and the support immediate troop withdrawal.
Military recruitment
Young people are justifiably angry and scandalized by the Afghanistan war and do not see an exclusively electoral way out. Young people can and are contributing to the struggle in two major ways.
- First, they can add mass but also vitality and energy to the peace movement itself, and especially its annual peace demonstrations
- Secondly, they go on strike – we can stop the recruitment of our generation into the Canadian army. That would directly confront the army at a weakspot, during the moment the desperately need more troops.
We could say that 99% of Canadian youth are already on strike against joining the military, and in Quebec that is more like 99.999%!
But that doesn’t we should just chill out and let it take care of itself. Recruitment is difficult for the army, so billions of dollars are going into it. Largely because of the economic crisis in Aboriginal communities, the military thinks they could have better luck with Aboriginal youth. You can even find military studies on line called “Don’t mention it,” advising recruiters to avoid talking about the 1991 Oka struggle.
But this fortress is not invincible. The military is putting such emphasis because they are in a situation of desperation. If military recruitment were to drop by 10 percent, the military would be in turmoil. That’s important.
Fighting recruitment is therefore not simply a hobby or a novel campaign. It is a direct confrontation of the interests of monopoly and finance capital. Military recruitment is inseparable from the war in Afghanistan because that’s where the soldiers are going. Recruitment in high schools is essentially training child soldiers. And there is a third aspect that we shouldn’t forget.
The racalized attack on civil rights.
This is important it has had the real effect of dividing people. The case of the Toronto 18 case, and now the burning issue of Omar Khadr’s freedom both strike at Islamophobia. In the student movement in Ontario, a third of the students are Muslim. This is true elsewhere. There is also a large Sikh community who are subject to the same anti-Muslim prejudices.
Despite widespread support on these cases, recent opinion polls in July have shown that “Six in Ten (60%) Believe Omar Khadr Should Remain in U.S. Custody at Guantanamo Bay.” Other surveys have suggested lower figures, but the point is than many people – including progressives – are confused.
We’ve advanced our policy in this area with the anti-racism statement, and also our involvement in the case of the Toronto 18 especially in Ontario. I think we’ve been making a contribution here and should move this campaign out, across the country.
Canadian Peace Alliance and Congress figure in here, so lets get into that in our discussions of the peace report.
JOBS, YOUTH AND LABOUR
The central crisis facing the working class today is the clearly manufacturing jobs crisis. I’d like to start, however, with the question of the living wage.
Minimum wage
In a way manufacturing jobs and minimum wages are closely interconnected. Wages under capitalism are not fixed by ‘ethical principles’ but economic forces and relative class strength. Capitalism is incapable, within the limits of its own system of property rights, of paying a living wage to all the workers. It is the strength of the working people that can change that, which comes from their organization – and the manufacturing sector is both significantly organized as workforce, and into unions.
Likewise, the significant concession contracts that the grocery workers in BC, who declared “this is our year” and vowed to fight two-tier wages and raise starting salaries above minimum wages – this has had effect on the minimum wage struggle.
We’ve had some debate in the YCL about the first steps here. I think we made somewhat of a mistake shortly after the convention by spending several months agonizing over how to launch, or emphasize our own $15 minimum wage campaign.
In Ontario, instead of getting out into the streets, we put a lot of energies into an excellent pamphlet. But by the time to flyer was rolling, who could we send it out too? The campaign was wrapping up.
On the other hand, in BC the fight over the minimum wage has really got underway, and is reaching literally tens of thousands of youth. Few other campaigns have done this in BC. This is very good. But in other provinces there is almost nothing.
This goes to show how important unity of labour unions, labour councils, provincial federations, and other ‘community’ forces are in this campaign. When they get behind an issue, there can be movement in a big way. Labour councils are especially important, which is why labour council youth committees are significant, for they allow young people to connect with the council’s local actions – and with many other young workers.
There are other factors at play in the development of minimum wage campaigns – a central factor is the provincial NDP’s strategy and tactics. We have seen with Ontario, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia that the NDP can “turn the tap on – and off.” Case in point is MMP Cerry DiNovo’s “$11 in 2011” post-election slogan. This is a step backwards in our demand. And it would be difficult to think of the labour movement fighting for demands that didn’t generally reflect NDP policy. That’s the way things are.
So we’re no longer proposing that every YCL club launch a minimum wage campaign. It wouldn’t be impossible – you could pull in anti-poverty activists, specific unions like CUPE and perhaps even UFCW (for example, No One Is Illegal has won support of UFCW because of the scope of their work). But it would be a major endeavor. Comrades, we’re not there.
The recession in the USA
But does that mean for one moment that we should lower the importance of young workers struggles in our efforts and priorities? Absolutely not. Just because we can’t initiate minimum wage campaigns everywhere doesn’t mean we ignore this major dimension of the youth’s experience.
Minimum wage isn’t the only struggle that youth are or could be militating around, and that the YCL should be contributing to. The CEC thinks there is momentum also around the manufacturing jobs crisis – momentum that could grow. This is the kind of struggle we have to be fully engaged in, because if won it changes the dynamics of every other struggle.
The recession in the US is running like a steamroller into Canada, imploding Ontario and Quebec’s manufacturing sector. There are three factors I want to address here – rising prices, unemployment, and profits. The latest Peoples Voice does a good job of laying out the current horrifying numbers:
“Defying the optimistic predictions of some economists, the Canadian economy lost 55,200 jobs in July, according to Statistic Canada. This marked the single biggest monthly job loss since February 1991, when the country was in the grip of a recession.
Most of the July losses came in Quebec (29,700 jobs) and Ontario (18,900). Continuing another trend, another 32,300 manufacturing jobs were cut in July, for a total of 87,800 over the last year.
This is a catastrophe for working class families already worried about the rising cost fuel, food and other essentials. An Ipsos Ried survey in May says that the economy is the top issue most Canadians are worried about. Example: gas prices –
The top line is this year. Clearly this will have a knock-on effect in just about every area. This is a recipe for devastating poverty, and it will hit hardest among working families of colour.
Just four or five years ago, Human Resources Canada was telling young people that “The impending retirement of older workers will account for an additional million job openings over the next five years.” Now we see unemployment in Canada is chronic, as is the structural unemployment of young people.
While the official unemployment rate dropped from 6.2% in June to 6.1% in July, StatsCan points out that this is only because large numbers of people, especially youth, gave up looking for jobs during that month. Total employment for workers in the 15-24 age bracket fell by 12,900 in July, and another 54,000 youth left the labour force during the month, reflecting low hiring’s for summer jobs:
15-25 year-old unemployment percentage:
July 08 12.1
June 10.8
May 11.8
April 11.8
March 11.0
February 11.4
January 11
December 11
November 11.4
October 07 11
Even more extreme is Aboriginal youth unemployment. A government survey from 2006 says that “Of Manitoba Aboriginal youth not in school but who do participate in the labour market, 35.5% were unemployed at the time of the 1996 Census (about 10% of the total Aboriginal youth population).” It adds: “27.4% of Manitoba Aboriginal youth were neither attending school (even part-time) nor participating in the labour market (even as unemployed persons looking for work).” That’s almost 40% (37.5) real unemployment.
Corporate profits: the flip side
There are connections with an immediate crisis, racialized poverty, and labour. We should keep on the look-out for developments in the Manufacturing Matters campaign, especially outreach to youth. The flip side of this crisis is corporate profits. To be sure, there has been a decline in the rate of profit in 06-07 and now into 08. But the trend is for a massive jump:
Corporate Profits – Canada
2002 2007 Change
$135.2 $210.4 56%
It would be a mistake to connect low wages and the manufacturing jobs crisis with low profits. We can’t forget that even during the post-1934 depression, some corporations were making record profits. Within the immediate trend, what’s new is that in percentage terms, profits have grown about three times faster in Saskatchewan and Newfoundland as in Canada as a whole recently. In both provinces, oil and gas has driven this surge. profits have increased nearly five times as fast as employment earnings:
Wages Inflation Real Wages
Canada 4.4% 3.1% 1.3%
NL 8.5% 3.1% 5.4%
PEI 6.4% 4.7% 1.7%
NS 1.6% 4.2% (2.6%)
NB 2.9% 2.1% 0.8%
QC 3.3% 3.1% 0.2%
ON 4.1% 2.8% 1.3%
MB 4.5% 2.4% 2.1%
SK 7.8% 3.4% 4.4%
AB 5.6% 4.4% 1.2%
BC 5.5% 3.0% 2.5%
This is in stark contrast with the reality that Canada has the third-lowest business taxes of ten countries examined in a study released as part of KPMG’s 2008 Competitive Alternatives report. Canadian taxes for the service sector are the second-lowest and far below most other countries. Canadian taxes for manufacturing are the third-lowest and closer to most other countries.
What is the way out?
What is urgently needed are bold policies to immediately reverse the situation, to protect Canadian sovereignty, to secure Canada’s remaining manufacturing jobs and to re-build, in an environmentally responsible manner, Canada’s industrial and manufacturing base. We need to find ways to connect this with youth. No action is being taken to organize the unemployed.
Another challenge is organizing the unorganized, and strengthening the working class through the trade union movement. This is not a separate question from that of a fighting trade union movement. One of the best incentive for unorganized workers to unionize would be the sight of a very public fight by labour for their jobs.
Raiding and turf wars have generally taken the place of united, militant struggle and organizing the unorganized at the leadership level. Labour in Quebec has been much more militant and united, and the fight back is much better organized and has had a greater impact as a result.
There have been some important break-throughs here – like the UFCW’s victory on August 19th, winning a collective agreement for nine workers in a Gatineau WalMart. But there are major obstacles. Organizing a union has never been easy. I think we need a comprehensive approach here – a sophisticated approach.
Every YCL an organizer?
For a start, we’ve talked somewhat about the “service sector.” I don’t think we’ve properly thought-through this category. We’ve picked it up from labour researchers who use other flash phrases like “McJobs” in conferences and papers. Don’t get me wrong – labour research is tremendously valuable. But from a class viewpoint, how can we talk about a “service sector employees” which groups together low-level bank managers with custodial staff?
While it is hard today to compete with the resources multi-nationals have against union organizing, it is not impossible. Our experience, however, shows some mistakes. We’ve thrown a lot of energy in organizing – for example, Staples, a gas station, an ice cream store, and most recently another gas center. None of these have resulted in unions. None of these efforts have created a single new YCL activist. In fact, I can’t help wondering if some people who were genuinely progressive youth were actually burned in this process.
What I am not saying is that we shouldn’t do labour organizing. What I am not saying is our comrades doing labour work are doing a bad job – in fact, as individuals or with the Party, YCLers are some doing great union organizing. Organizing a union trains our members. Its important.
But here’s a question for debate: is it the YCL’s role or the labour movement’s to get that job done?
As we begin to organize young worker conference calls, this is not just an isolated individual question. I think we’ve learning is that being a trade union functionary as a paid organizer is different from a rank-and-filer, and different from a leader in the labour movement. We have members in all theses positions.
We should open up discussions with the Party’s labour secretary, Sam Hammond, and labour centres. Organizing the unorganized is not just a question of getting some good people who are “real troopers” together and rolling up our shirt sleeves. The obstacles are political. This is the last paragraph in Sam Hammond’s Labour Day article:
The key to getting the "movement" back into labour is rank and file trade unionism. We need to consolidate the unity of membership and leadership, and the instrument is democracy, involvement of the rank and file and a rededication to the needs of the entire working class. That is a movement. That is what ultimately leads to "Labour Power".
Other comrades from the executive will be giving a good report on this question, and I hope we can get into a good discussion. We can be certain this all will figure large in the upcoming election.
SECONDARY AND POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION
Shifting now to the question of education. The central contradiction in education today centers around the question who is going to pay –
- big business for trained workers through taxes, or
- students through their parents wages/savings?
While working class students are more likely not to be going into post-secondary education, we can’t forget that a large number of students work while going to school and come from the working class:
Population 15 years and over by highest level of schooling:
25% -- college only (including trades)
26% -- some university, including 15% of population has a university degree
The Harper Tories have used more of a carrot approach in last budget, with some small positive changes on grant funding, but there have been significant cuts to education, essentially forced privatization with P3s becoming necessary to obtain federal monies, and massive cuts to research and development. Even the acclaimed international journal Nature has condemned these cuts, in an editorial this summer.
The NDP have a big say in the English Canadian student movement, especially the CFS. They are calling for a Post-Secondary Education Act that “commits to reliable federal funding in return for provincial commitments to bring down costs for students;” to launch a national training strategy to expand vocational training opportunities; and to restore needs-based grants for low-income students; to reform Canada Student Loans including federal student loans ombudsperson like they have in the US.
These are good ideas and some of them come from the student movement. We need to assess how they measure up with what is needed. I suspect the policy around tuition reduction and student loans is particularly inadequate. The concept of a Post-Secondary Education Act has bearing on our long-standing demand for a Charter of Youth rights. It raises questions about the National Question as well.
What’s new in the student movement?
We’ve seen a real attack on the CFS with the de-federation campaigns at the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser, and Cape Breton. Simon Fraser, where the CFS accidentally leaked their action plan, is a major set-back for student unity across the country.
The right was organized here. I don’t think we should blame the students themselves. Many analysis of the CFS response campaign have pointed to the failures of their organizing model, which brought in large numbers of student leaders from other parts of the country, especially Ontario. Generally the campus NDPs networks were used, although several of our members were mentioned in the leaked document. This has reflected a method, and political priorities, that down-plays mobilizing the students themselves through their own local committees, and probably contributed to the campaigns lack of success.
We need to keep thinking on this, keep eyes open. There is more too this than just mistaken way to organize and abandonment of direct action, as AK Thompson’s journal, Upping the Anti, sometimes claims. Canadian history shows student unity is very volatile. There is lot of potential strength here – and also money, which is always honey to attract wreckers.
On a cross-Canada level, a very positive sign is the renewed interest in the CFS in coalition work. An example of this was their joining the Canadian Peace Alliance, and working on a sustainable campus campaign with the Sierra Youth Coalition. There has also been very positive interest shown in the 17th World Youth Festival. This is a positive development. Only in the course of the struggles of the working class as a whole will we find the strength to solve the particular problems facing students.
The warming of the CFS to more coalition work doesn’t mean that they will automatically mobilize there members into these campaigns, however. That will require student pressure. YCL members on campus can play a role here.
A worrying development has been the arrests and clamp-down of students on campus recently, for non-violent demonstrations. Why is this occurring now? Perhaps it has to do with the rightward shift across the board with the Harper Tories, provincially, municipally and at the level of university administrations – campuses like UBC have a population the size of a small city. Again, I don’t think we have sufficient answers.
At the U of T there is also a racist undertone. David Naylor reportedly described the U of T students as ‘Robert Mugabe on a bad day.’ Most in this action were students of colour. This is day-light racism.
Student leftism and problems of unity
There are also many flamboyant and often contradictory leftist youth movements today, organized on a local basis and especially on campuses. In Vancouver: No One Is Illegal, the Students for a Democratic Society, now out-shadowing Fire This Time, the IWW in Edmonton, H-CAP in Halifax, the ASSE in Quebec, now-defunct McMaster Socialist group or the Brock Socialist group and in Toronto: Always Question, the Campaign for Just Education, No One Is Illegal, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid – most of these groups are more or less anti-imperialist.
Generally these are a positive sign, although some in particular have been destructive. I’m thinking of Fire This Time here. But in general, I think we should remember the words of one of the first YCL General Secretaries, Leslie Morris:
It is not we 'against the world,' but we with all who want changes.
We stand ready to work with any group or organization that works in practical ways to build the unity we see as essential, not just a formal or forced left unity, but a real unity rooted in practical work among masses of people. Real left unity will be built as we work to build a broad left/center unity for democracy, peace, equality, justice, and workers rights.
Developing more left unity is a political process, not a meeting or agreement or debate between small groups. Marxism bases itself, in part, on the proposition that there needs to be unity between theory and practice, and that practice (in other words, real life) is primary. There are many groups that describe themselves as socialist, and they offer a wide variety of strategies and tactics. How can anyone determine who is right? Only by practice. Practice is the test – not debate – not a superficial unity which is not deep enough to create a real common program. If a strategy is wrong, real life will prove it, not endless debate. All too often, many left groupings distinguish themselves by working against real unity.
So working here is tricky. Sometimes these groups are in conflict with CFS, and often skillful tactics combining united front from above, and united front from below are required.
We will also be discussing special report on Quebec student politics at this meeting. And I hope comrade David will be able to speak a little about the developing struggles around aboriginal education in Manitoba. The principle “that the federal government should do whatever it can to improve the education and training of aboriginal youth and young people” is embraced by 81% of Canadians according to a Compass poll, showing broad support on this question. Instead, federal funding to aboriginal education under the Harper Tories is capped.
THE ROLE OF THE LEAGUE
Drawing every club into these struggles is important. The question is not, ‘are we relevant?” It is, what is our role?
I would like to summarize our role by making three points: 1. our role is to connect the youth with the working class and peoples struggles, including oppressed peoples, and contribute a perspective of unity and militancy into the youth and student movement; and 2. our role is to educate our members, friends and the youth about immediate struggles of youth, and a Marxist-Leninist understanding of the long-term necessity for a socialist Canada, providing leadership to the youth in the revolutionary process – in concert with the efforts of the Communist Party.
I don’t think there is enough discussion and grounded answers to the question: why do we exist? I think we should all be able to explain this one in our own words. Hopefully this discussion will put this question out for reflection and focus.
Training revolutionaries
First I want to start with the second question, of the League and education.
Lenin’s concept of the YCL was, as he said, an organization to learn – and at various points he emphasized the importance of organizational independence or autonomy and political unity with the Communist Party. Famously, Lenin argued that “youth come to socialism in their own way” and therefore need their own organization, not a youth-wing of the Communist Party.
These ideas, however, contain contradictions, and we struggle with them. I am not just thinking of “the young and the old.” Consider the unity of struggle with learning and theoretical development. They would appear opposites. Indeed they are. In our organization we must juggle – not shifting from one emphasis to the other but keeping both concerns in motion.
As to the young and the old – this non-antagonistic contradiction – and our relationship with the Communist Party, I think my own thinking has shifted a great deal on this question. When I joined the League and soon became and organizer, I used to think that emphasizing our relationship with the Communist Party would be a mistake. If people were not prepared to join the Communist Party, would they not also be turned-off the League by this connection? Experience has proven otherwise. We have a dynamic membership which does overlap, but is not a youth wing. It has its own culture and vitality.
But this takes me to another point of reflection – one that Dymitrov often made. Simply-put, we are a YCL, not a mini-Communist Party. As we do our political work we should never loose site of this fact, for it is loosing site of sea we swim in – the youth movement.
Alliances
“Swimming in the sea” is really referring to the question of alliances. In no way can this been seen as working alone. 95% of all our work should be in alliances; we can contribute essential dynamite in the class struggle.
But we have to move our organization into action – it is not to be assumed that without debate, discussion and convincing people of concert actions, even YCL activists build alliances instinctively. In 1960, the leader of the YCL wrote that “The main task that we have before us today both as an organization, and as individuals meeting with young people, is to arouse young Canadians not only to the dangers and problems our country faces, but also to the possibilities that exist and the advances that can be made if we can organize and unite.”
That’s not far off our task now.
The concept of alliance building is a general policy of the working class to build its material strength. We are not talking here about the YCL gaining in influence – we are taking about a strategy and tactic of unity which needs to be promoted throughout our entire class. And not just our class but we as the YCL should build alliances also; the changes we need as an organization to connect ourselves further with other groups and movements can begin here, identified at a leadership level.
What improvements do we need as a League?
This is very relevant question today and our tasks ahead must come from a realistic assessment of where we stand. That’s why, for the first time, the CEC asked for reports from each provincial and national centre of the League. It’s clear there is room for improvement, but we are work very hard over all. We are punching above our weight class. Yet where is discussion of rebel youth in these reports? Some significant features of our political work are consistently missing.
Sometimes, I think, we don’t like to admit that we are as small as we are. There is a culture in the Communist movement to look backwards, to think about our past achievements, and nostalgically dwell on our glorious history. But above all, lets look realistically where we are at. Pablo Neruda, the great Chilean poet, once said that being a member of the Communist Party had taught him to build from reality “as from a rock.” Let’s build from reality – not where we want to be, the castles in the sky.
Look around this room and who you see is the core leadership of YCL. It is not a huge crowd. Is this shocking? Well, it shows need to build cadre! The only way to do that is to get out and get recruiting.
Getting our stick on the ice
Again, I want to return to Rae Murphy:
“Winning the minds of young people is the gigantic task of the Communists, and it is of the utmost importance, for it means winning the future. It means overcoming the passivity and cynicism so carefully natured by our environment, showing young people that there is a future, that there is a better way…
…The Second National Convention of the Socialist Youth League of Canada will convene in Toronto in May. The questions that the delegates will face actually boil down to: How to get into the fight? How do we develop the broadest and most diversified approach to young Canadians and yet maintain our character and identity? How do we put forward our own independent public activity and educational programs, and yet maintain the most flexible and persistent approach to united action with other youth organizations and individuals?
I would suggest that this question about what we do outside of our club is all about what we do inside of our club.
How we connect with the masses of youth in Canada reflects the strength in many ways of our club leadership. Afterall, we’ve come to realize that irregular club meetings are discussion circles, and that no one thing will magically transform a club.
For communists to influence people, we have to be on the terrain where they are already fighting. We have to be attuned to issues that are already pissing them off. We have to be part of the struggles where they are engaged. The most sophisticated tool to make such assessments and ground people as a group is the YCL club.
Some might say that I am arguing that we have to play a following role, that because we have to start where the people are thinking, we shouldn’t initiate campaigns and actions. While this is not what I am saying, I do think that we should really learn from our various attempts and mixed success in setting up such work, and that we should do so only after taking the pulse of the people and with an eye to bringing other forces in on “the ground floor.”
The way we exercise our role is in existing struggles and through existing forms. This not just a virtue of our size. It is our strategic policy. Our style isn’t to play the hockey game by trying to be a one player team. We have to mobilize more people than just ourselves.
This may seem like a very big task, but I am convinced we are up to it.
Thank you.
[1] The study also says: “It is also notable that adults are somewhat more likely than youth themselves to think that young people can make a big difference in making the world a better place (56% versus 49%).”, and that “…youth within Quebec appear to be much better informed about global issues than youth within the rest of Canada.”
