Youth Must Ally with Working Class

SYC Speakers at Benefits for Class-War Prisoners

(Young Spartacus Pages)

We print below the slightly edited speeches by comrades Frank Sargent of the Bay Area SYC and Lital Singer of the New York SYC. The speeches were given at the Partisan Defense Committee’s 20th annual Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners held in the Bay Area on 11 December 2005 and in New York on 9 December 2005.

Frank Sargent

The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Here in the U.S., in the belly of the imperialist beast, we are partisans of the working class, fighters for black liberation, fighters for women’s liberation and defenders of all oppressed.

It’s almost 15 years now since capitalist counterrevolution destroyed the Soviet Union. From this catastrophic defeat, the political consciousness among youth and workers has been thrust backward. The capitalists are waging an all-sided offensive. It is into this world that our youth clubs intervene.

The racist contempt of the American ruling class towards the victims of Hurricane Katrina laid bare the harsh reality of black oppression. We of course see the reflection of black oppression on campuses too. At San Francisco State University, on the evening of October 25, Ethnic Studies professor Antwi Akom, who is black, outrageously was arrested by police for entering his own office to pick up a book. Akom is being prosecuted and could face jail. A colleague of professor Akom, speaking to the significance of this racist attack, said pointedly, “At the end of the day, you can have all the credentials in the world, and it doesn’t matter.” Unlike liberals who push the strategy that black oppression can be ended by movements pressuring the government and its cops and courts to “do the right thing,” we know that in the United States black people constitute a specially oppressed race-color caste, forcibly segregated at the bottom of society, subjected to everything from racist social relations and economic marginalization to the barbarous legal lynching of the death penalty. In the face of racist capitalism, the International Socialist Organization [ISO] calls to support a third capitalist party—the Greens—as a way to put pressure on the Democrats. This is an obstacle to the understanding that the working class must have its own revolutionary party, independent of the capitalists, that will fight for black liberation and proletarian state power.

To us, Akom’s arrest is a threat to the right of every black student, worker and faculty member to simply be on campus . We raise the demands: Hands off Professor Akom! Drop all charges now! Cops off campus! We warn students against illusions that the college administration can be relied upon to end racism on campus. Connected to our program of revolutionary integrationism and our defense of Professor Akom is our fight for free, quality, integrated education for all! Anti-racist students must link arms with the multiracial working class, the only force in society with the social power and class interest to destroy the capitalist order that gives rise to black oppression.

The brutal colonial occupation of Iraq continues to be an object of struggle. As Leninists, we say that the working people must take a side against U.S. imperialism. We called for the military defense of Iraq against U.S. attack during the war, and today we stand for the unconditional, immediate withdrawal of all U.S. and allied troops and for the defense of the peoples of Iraq against U.S. attacks and repression. We explain that war is inherent to capitalism. The capitalists seek to control markets and spheres of exploitation. This leads to interimperialist wars and, like in Iraq, predatory imperialist wars against semicolonial countries.

Youth are used as cannon fodder for imperialist wars. We struggle against militarism on the campuses, because military recruiters and ROTC are direct appendages of the military machine that exists to defend the American imperialist ruling class. We raise the slogan: Not one man, not one penny for the imperialist military! But in themselves, students have no social power; the only road forward lies in students allying themselves with the working class in revolutionary struggle.

Recently we intervened with our revolutionary perspective into a conference organized in part by the ISO and their liberal Campus Antiwar Network. They’ve been promoting their “College Not Combat” campaign which included doing a cost-benefit analysis of the colonial occupation of Iraq as “butter not guns” policy advice for the bourgeoisie. Like ex-socialist Peter Camejo, they’ve found their job: progressive investment advisers. We argued that looking to the liberal wing of the exploiters for reforms only serves to demobilize struggle and, through the Democrats, to chain the exploited to the system that breeds war. We had to remind the ISO that Ralph Nader, whom they supported, called for the occupation of Iraq by the United Nations! Towards the end of the conference, we protested against Army recruiters.

The irrational organization of capitalist society breeds increased religiosity and rejection of scientific reason. Bigots are mounting assaults on sex and science, centrally evolution. Of course, the clearest example against intelligent design is George W. Bush himself. In the wake of the decision to teach intelligent design in science classes as a so-called alternative to the evolution of life, over the last month religious bigots in Kansas have been screaming because a University of Kansas professor boldly planned to teach “intelligent design” as part of a course on religious creation myths. Only a few days ago such bigots beat him up. In America religious fundamentalism and Klan-style terror go hand in hand. We say: For the separation of church and state! For science, not superstition!

We joined others in a July 23 clinic defense action against anti-abortion bigots in San Francisco where we raised the call: Free abortion on demand! In the recent elections we said: Vote no on Proposition 73! Though this “squeal law,” which would have demanded parental notification before an abortion, was defeated, the defense of women’s rights must be fought through hard social struggle. The task of women’s liberation can be accomplished only through socialist revolution.

The final goal of socialist revolution is the expansion of human knowledge and freedom extending to every human being, in all aspects of life. The capitalist profit system and its state must be shattered through workers revolution, setting up a workers government which runs production for human need. We fight to win a new generation of youth to the program of Trotskyism. The SYCs provide a training ground for those who will join the ranks of the vanguard party as professional revolutionaries. Join us in that struggle and the struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and abolish the racist death penalty!

Lital Singer

The Spartacus Youth Clubs are the youth auxiliaries to the Spartacist League. They are transitional organizations for youth and a training ground for future professional revolutionaries. We fight to win youth to the side of the working class and the struggle for workers revolution and a communist future. What is crucially necessary is a revolutionary workers party that represents the interests of working people and the oppressed and can lead such a struggle. The SYC and Spartacist League actively work to win youth to this perspective.

We are living in a period where youth face ever-increasing repression and where job prospects are dismal at best; where getting a decent education is a privilege reserved for those with the means to afford it; where for two generations now, black youth have been criminalized in the racist “war on drugs” carried out by Democrats and Republicans alike. Just two months ago students at a high school in the Bronx protested being treated like criminals because they have to pass through metal detectors every morning. The reality is that instead of preparing these youth for a future of higher education and jobs, they are being prepared for prison. Many poor and minority youth have joined the military as a means to get an education and a job, and end up as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism’s war machine. It is notable, though, that the military is having a hard time recruiting, especially among black people, as the bloody occupation of Iraq becomes less and less popular.

We are Marxists who tell the truth that the capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1991-92, which we fought against, was a historic defeat for working people internationally. However, the bourgeoisie and their lying mouthpieces tell you that communism is dead. And there are some who argue that socialism is a utopian idea, that the system can be reformed and can be made to give everyone a piece of the pie. There are many so-called socialist groups, like the International Socialist Organization and the Workers World Party, that continue to push a supposedly “realistic” reformist program and illusions through slogans such as “money for jobs, not for war.” But it is utterly utopian to think that this same ruling class that left blacks and poor to starve to death in New Orleans, that bombs and maims the peoples of Iraq, that continuously attacks workers’ livelihoods, taking away health care and pensions, that further erodes women’s abortion rights, that locks “terrorists” in secret dungeons the world over, can be made to change its priorities and serve the oppressed. That is utopian. The brutality and irrationality of this racist capitalist system has been and continues to be exposed time and time again. It is only the multiracial working class, like the transit workers and longshore workers, that has the social power and interest to sweep away this entire barbaric system and replace it with a socialist egalitarian society. This will take class-struggle leadership and this is the only realistic and viable option for the future.

The Spartacus Youth Club intervenes with our revolutionary program on the campuses. At Columbia University, we have protested against the campus Conservative Club’s racist provocations against affirmative action, and last week we issued a leaflet in defense of Malcolm X against a recent racist column in the school paper which called to change the name of the Malcolm X lounge, suggesting that it be renamed after Whittaker Chambers, an ex-Communist Party member who finked for the FBI during the McCarthyite anti-red witchhunts of the 1950s. We defend young leftists and activists who are victimized by the state, like Miguel Malo, who was framed up and convicted last month for the “crime” of holding up a sign denouncing cuts in bilingual education and hikes in ESL [English as a Second Language education] workshop fees. We defend Sherman Austin, a young black anarchist, who was railroaded to prison for a year and is now serving an outrageously restrictive three-year probation for the “crime” of hosting an anarchist Web site. The judge in the case intended the sentence to be a deterrent to “some other revolutionary who wants to change the world.”

We have engaged in many protests against right-wing witchhunts, led by the likes of David Horowitz, which aim to purge the campuses of those who defend black rights as well as anyone who defends the Palestinians, such as Professor Massad at Columbia University. The Spartacus Youth Club in Chicago has actively been intervening at the University of Chicago against a racist “ghetto party” that happened in the dorms and was rightly met with outrage by many students on the campus. We also intervene into the antiwar movement with the perspective that we need class-struggle opposition to U.S. imperialism and that the way to get rid of imperialist war is to get rid of capitalism. We have initiated, led and participated in many protests to drive ROTC and military recruiters off campus. We say not one penny, not one man or woman for U.S. imperialism!

I became politically active around the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. I was a student at UCLA and was active in the Mumia coalition on campus. Our main focus was on calling for a new trial. We told students that whether you believed Mumia was innocent or guilty, he should have a new trial. Now, I personally believed that Mumia was innocent based on reading the facts of the case, but this campus coalition was appealing to people’s faith in the capitalist state, promoting the liberal illusion that the courts would render a fair verdict if only Mumia got another trial. Our coalition grew and we did all kinds of events for Mumia: art, poetry, mobilizing cars full of students to the protests in the Bay Area. But as Mumia’s appeals were being denied one after the other by the racist capitalist courts, the coalition began to disintegrate. These students had been won to a strategy based on illusions in the capitalist courts, and when that dead-end strategy failed so did their involvement, because they were not won to the big picture. They saw Mumia’s case as an aberration: one person who didn’t get justice.

It was the Spartacus Youth Club that won me to an understanding that we live in a society sharply divided by class. I was won away from illusions in the courts or any other institution of the ruling capitalist class. I came to understand that the way to free Mumia is through a mass movement based centrally on the power of the working class.

Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian anarchist workers who were executed by the state of Massachusetts in 1927. The International Labor Defense [the Communist Party’s legal defense organization] consistently argued at that time that the case was not simply an extraordinary “miscarriage of justice”; rather, it was directly connected to the struggle between the classes. As American Trotskyist James P. Cannon wrote: “It is the vengeful, cruel and murderous class which the workers must fight and conquer before the regime of imprisonment, torture and murder can be ended. This is the message from the chair of death. This is the lesson of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.” This lesson is no less relevant today with the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and countless other class-war prisoners: There will be no end to the system of frame-up, imprisonment, torture and legal lynching until capitalist class rule is smashed.

The SYC won me to an understanding of why it is that so many black men and women suffer behind America’s prison walls. I was won to the understanding that Mumia’s case is an example of the oppression of black people in this country, which is endemic to this racist system. Contrary to what is prevalently pushed by liberals, that racism is the result of bad ideas that can be simply changed by changing those ideas, black oppression has a material basis in capitalism. From the days of chattel slavery to the present, black oppression is the bedrock of U.S. capitalism. Our program is revolutionary integrationism. We fight for black freedom through socialist revolution.

Youth must ally with the working class in the fight for the future of humanity. If you are a young revolutionary interested in fighting for a world free of capitalist depredation, I encourage you to study history, to study Marxism, and to get active with the Spartacus Youth Club. We say: Free Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal! An injury to one is an injury to all! Hands off Lynne Stewart! Free all class-war prisoners!