Home : Western Europe : The United States : Britain and Ireland : Editorials and Commentary

The Political Situation of the Youth in the West

The demonstrations in Prague are a continuation of recent protests in Seattle and London. They are an expression of the impasse of capitalism in an epoch of senile decay, and the reflection of this impasse in the psychology of young people. Their international character shows the ripeness of the socialist revolution worldwide.

They are also an expression of the impasse of the reformist parties in the west which are incapable of mobilizing the aspiration of young people to live in a better future. As a result of this, we see youth with ultra-left, anarchist ideas, and workers with a narrow, trade union consciousness, in a process that Lenin explained in What is to be done?

Like in the riots in St Petersburg in the 1890s that Lenin described, the events in Prague are still a reaction of frustration against the system and not an attempt to change it. Many demonstrators smash up McDonalds and fight with police. They campaign against the IMF, WTO and World Bank but there is no clear idea of what their alternative is. Their activism is primary, their theory in the background.

The spontaneity represents the origins of consciousness, mainly among middle class students. This is not a surprise. It is not poverty that rouses consciousness but the instability for a generation that is worse of than their parents with an uncertain future.

At the same time, even among student activists, in national student movements there is a feeling that the students will not be able to change anything. There is no contradiction between a weak national movement and having more than 100,000 people in Prague. Within the countries themselves, the activists are small in number. In Prague they gathered together.

The youth do not have any experience of successful mass movements to give them confidence in their collective power. While the majority of students are passive, the frustration of a minority bursts out in spontaneous acts.

Or the minority of activists mobilize around single issue campaigns, against racism, third world debt, the destruction of the planet etc. The class questions are often put to one side in the belief that these immediate problems can solved without the socialist revolution.

There is also skepticism in the power of the working class to change society and therefore a lack of unity with the working class. Even in France for example, despite the unity of students and workers in 1968 and a general strike in 1995 which radicalized students, the militant student union does not seek unity with the working class, and has been defeated by the Jospin government because of this.

The pessimism, program and attitude towards the working class could have transformed by a fighting, socialist leadership of the mass parties of the working class. Instead of this though, like in France, these parties in government attack the youth, in Germany, Italy, Britain, Austria (until last year) etc. In Greece, this has happened for 16 of the past 19 years under the Pasok Party.

And when they are not in government they still alienate the youth. In the US the CP is supporting Gore in the election. In Italy, the RCP spoke a lot about Seattle. This was not because they wanted to put forward a socialist alternative. On the contrary, they have used the anarchist ideas of some of the protesters to disorientate the party.

In fact, it is precisely because the protesters in Prague are not a part of the traditional working class movement that they have not been held back by the reactionary leadership of the reformist parties and trade unions. Also, it is because of their lack of experience of mass movements that they do not have the memory of past defeats, which explains why their pessimism can be overcome more quickly and convulsively than that of older workers.

Instead of being alienated by the rotten reformist leadership of the working class parties and organizing outside of them, militant youth need to turn towards them and win them to a revolutionary socialist program. This needs to be an international struggle against the international phenomenon of reformism.

If the youth movement continues as it is it will remain fragmented, divided by single issues, often with a local character, and isolated from the working class. Yet the youth movement will inevitably change as activists draw conclusions from their experience.

Activists need the perspective of world revolution to guide their activism. Even if the youth are successful in some campaigns they will not have changed anything fundamentally, unless they link the struggles of today with the task of overthrowing capitalism. The youth especially need to combine an understanding of Marxism with their energy and enthusiasm. Otherwise, in their impatience to change the world they can also become frustrated with trying to change it.

Today the youth are asking the question what is to be done? The answer is to study the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, and the example of the youth in the 1917 revolution, to test these ideas and methods against their own experiences, and to organize for an international socialist revolution on a higher historical basis.