THE YOUNG VANGUARD Youth Notes The Young Communist League Convention the socialism of the Hillquits, the Lees, the Vanderveldes, the MacDonalds. They are supporters and instruments of the capiTHE YOUNG VANGUARD talists in time of need. This is the kind In the last issue of the Young Vanguard of socialism we must struggle against we asked our readers for contributions. crush and overcome in the course of the class war.
The response has been exceptionally poor.
This immediately poses the question: Is INDIIAN YOUTH EXECUTED there a need for a Young Vanguard? and, On March 24 Baghat Singh and two of have we the forces to publish it with?
his co workers were hanged by the Indian The National Youth Committee defin authorities for the alleged murder of Lieut.
itely answers these questions in the affirma Col. Simpson in Lahore, in December 1928 tive. The necessity of carrying on Left Op and for participation in the so called Lahore position work among the youth, of crystal conspiracy, an anti British move back in Izing a group in the official Young Com 1929. This murder, which must be put at munist League and winning over its mem the door of the British Labor Government bers, of propagating elementary Communist and the Left Socialists, who demanded the youth education, and of acting as the trl release of all political prisoners except those bune of any independent activity we may involved in acts of violence. led to, big carry on, can best be done with the aid of protests throughout the country.
an organ of our own, a paper. At present In Cawpore, thirty persons were killed this must take the form of a section of the and more than one hundred injured at a Mitant.
demonstration held in protest of the execuTo publish such a section requires the ton. Two companies of British troops and cooperation of number of comrades. We two hundred additional police were sumhave enough young comrades in our League moned to maintain order. For several days, today to begin with. At the same time we rloting continued. In Bombay and Calcutta welcome articles which express views con general strikes were held. When Mahatma trary to those expressed above, that is, Gandhi came to Karachi, he was greeted which contend that youth work in general by a large group of workers, peasants and is superfluous or that the Left Opposition students with cries of: Down with Ganshould not carry on such activity.
dhi. Go back with your truce. We want the murderer of Baghat Singh. According CONVENTION to reports, Bharat Sabha, a revolutionary The date for the Sixth Convention of youth, struck at Gandhi with the butt of a flag. The protest of the masses and esthe Young Communist League has been set for June 7, and The Young Worker of pecially the youth, against the murder of April carries the official statement the three young revolutionists which came of not accidentally on the heels of the infamous the opening of the pre convention discusGandhi Irwin agreement has taken on wide sion. The statement makes a rather weak dimensions. It shows the possibility of a and inadequate analysis of the events which has transpired since the last convention, turn in the development of the Indian revMay 1929. It states: From one thousand olution. The recent failure of the petty members at the time of the Party conven. bourgeois youth inside the Indian Youth League to give leadership is proved by their tion, we have grown to more than two miserable failure thousand members. This is only the bethe recent Indian National Congress. Only a Communist party ginning, and at the time of the conand under it a Communist Youth League, vention we must have at least four thousand members in our League. What hypocriuided by Marxist strategy, tactics and leadtical nonsense! First, the comparison of ership can lead the Indian masses on the numerical strength should logically be made eorrect road to revolution.
between today and the time of the last conAGAINST THE vention. But this would reveal that, even The struggle carried on by the Social accepting official figures, the League has lost Problems Club of New York City College at least fifteen hundred members during this against the Reserve Officers Training Corps period of unprecedented opportunities. This has once again brought to the fore the quesof course must not be done! Second. on tion of student anti miltarist activities and the occasion of the Party convention, the B0 called academic liberties. The Club preLeague claimed over seventeen hundred sident, Max Weiss, and ten colleagues were (1700) members. Now this same figure be comes one thousand. Well, what is seven suspended for the remainder of the semester for protesting the censoring and confiscation hundred members to these mass workers?
of the first issue mere trifle. It is our opinion that the the Club paper. Frontiers. The Club itself was dispresent total League membership is closer solved.
to seven hundred than to two thousand. This action was taken ostensibly for Third: To call for and expect an increase such innocent reasons as: the Club did not of one thousand young workers in the Leaget permission to issue the bulletin, the gue by June with the present inactivity of Club had borrowed too much money, the the League is the height of bureaucratie utoplanism.
bulletin is a product of an outside radical organization. etc. The real reason for the THE FREE YOUTH suspensions, as a subsequent leaflet of the The semi monthly organ of the Young Club correctly pointed out, is the campaign Peoples Socialist League Free Youth sets of the organization against militarism and as its purpose To convey to young men the Academic liberties are, as and women as frankly and forcefully as has often been proved and this time with possible the horto ming сар lism and especial clarity rights which do not inte the possibilities of socialism. Shortcomfere with the authorities, of the college, the ings of capitalism! Possibilities of socialstate and the social order.
ism! What sort of mlitant, socialist, youth The suspensions were however met with words are these? Shades of Liebknechtbig protests. Social Problems and Liberal Even the liberal Youth Section of the LeaClubs of a number of universities, several gue for Reconciliation uses stronger lancollege professors, and other groups sent guage.
in protests. petition was circulated at The four issues which have so far apCity College demanding the reinstatement peared fully substantiate such an interpreof the Club, of the eleven students suspendtation. They contain a mixture of that ed and the return of the confiscated issues mushy liberal and pacifist nonsense that one of the Frontiers.
is accutsomed to read in any one of the The support of the Social Problems Club fother petty bourgeois youth publications by these divers elements compelled the in this country.
Board of Directors of the college to Instruct In the April issue, Free Youth President to reinstate the Club, and carries the caption What the Young ten of its members, and to return the conSocialist Means When He Talks of Internafiscated copies the Frontiere. In a tional Socialism and the sub caption Here word, the status quo ante was established is the living power of Socialism thruout the with one important exception: Weiss is to world today. Under these captions there remain suspended for insubordination. Such follows an account of the parliamentary militant action as that of Weiss canstrength of the European socialist parties.
not go unpunished! The dignity of the We learn although we thought these peo authorities must be upheld!
ple would try to forget it that in England The students should continue the fight there is a socialist Premier with 289 Against the RO TC. The struggle for the socialist members of parliament; in Ger reinstatement of Max Weiss must go on.
many 152 socialist seats, etc. No wonder there is no mention of the bloody events in India, of the murder of Baghat Singh It is wholly Inadequate that the youth and his two fellow militants by the Mac should repeat our formulas. It is necessary Donald Government. little wonder that that the youth should take the revolution Free Youth abstains from commenting on ary formulas fighting transform them into German polities, and the daily betrayals flesh and blood, work out for themselves the living power of Socialism in sup their own opinion with that courage which porting reaction against Communists pro comes from sincere conviction and indepentesting the Fascist murders in Hamburg etc. dence of character. Passive obedience, mechetc. If this is what the young socialist anical drill, characterlessness, obsequiousans when he talks of International soc ness, caruerien, away with these things we must say: Yer, this is indeed party. Trotsky The much postponed convention call of ship.
the Young Communist League has at last Low political understanding of membeen issued. Under the aegis of a certain bership, inexperienced and new.
claimed growth in membership and other No competent leading cadres.
small alleged gains, fortified behind the unThese indices to the strength of the proved statement that these were made on are indisputable. In all probabilthe basis of a struggle against resistance to ity even the most ardent defender of the the correct line, the newest edition of leadStalinist régime would not undertake to re ers in charge of the have at last fute them, for realities of the situation ventured to open a pre conventon discushave too flagrantly exposed them. In fact sion. For now they can show concrete re sults! Small gains, it is true, but anyhow they have for the most part been compelled gains.
to acknowledge them openly. They strike one all the more glaringly when constrasted However, it is not by such spurious to the objective situation which furnishes methods that the can grow and such good opportunities for the growth of produce conscious, devoted, and ideological the The Stalinists do, however, ly equipped Communists. To us a convendispute most vehemently the causes for this tion and the discussion which must pre positively wretched situation. They protect cede it, is a highly serious matter. To themselves behind the worthless and unattempt to conceal the real facts, to avoid proved assertion that the reason lies in the a discussion of the actual situation, to failure of certain leading individuals and create confusion, all behind much noise and the membership to put into practice the indin about certain claimed new successes, fallible line.
is to vitiate the entire purpose the convention. And on In our opinion the immediate causes for of this to load on the the membership the utterly unattainable and present enfeeblement of the League are as follows: loud sounding task of doubling the member1. Ultra Left and adventurist line ship from 2000 to 4000 during the pre convention period, when more time must be based on the erroneous and anti Leninist allowed for every comrade in the theory of the third period.
for study of the problems, for thought, for Abandonment of youth policies and reading, and for discussion, is to make a activities, tendency to transform farce and a mockery of a Communist con into a junior appendage of the party.
vention. Bureaucratic régime.
For Genuine Discussion Elimination of workers democracy, It is evident that the Stalinist burthat is, distortion of democratic centralism.
eaucrats do not want a free and genuine Inability of to function as discussion. Under the pretense of a discusan educational organization that is, to make sion they want a docile acceptance and ap communists out of class conscious young proval of the policies and tactics prescribed, workers. We will elaborate on this point that is, a purely formal, superficial, pseudo in a separate article. discussion which allows no real or serious The Root Causes difference of opinion. They want to confine the expression of the inembership to The basic explanation for the critical condition of the is to be found inane and trivial remarks on how to apply the reet in the general crisis which today afflicts handed down from above. For the discussion to have any the international Communist movement. This crisis has been developing since 1923. It value whatsoever, the members of the had its inception in the struggle launched League must assume a sharply critical attitude toward the leadership and its polagainst the proletarian wing of the party icies. This is necessary not only as a weapon led by comrade Trotsky. There crystallized against Stalinist opportunism, but doubly the Right wing group of Rykov, Tomsky, necessary for the Oommunist youth who in and Bucharin, and the Centrist bureaucratic group of Stalin, both of which combined general must advance themselves ideologiin a bloc against the Left wing. In the cally. It is useful to recall in this connecUnited States these tendencies are repretion the words of Lenin addressed to the sented by the Lovestone group and the third congress of the Russian Communist who would dream of boasting of present Foster leadership respectively.
his Communism on the basis of the ready The Right wing reflects the pressure on made conclusions taught to him, without the party of alien class forces hostile to performing the most serious, the most dif the proletariat. The Centrist group of fficult and persistent work, without under Stalin supporting itself on the bureaucratic standing the facts of which he should be apparatus has no independent policy of its extremely critical, would be a miserable own, but staggers between the Right and Communist indeed.
the Left. Up to about 1928 Stalin executed The strain in which the bureaucratic the policies of the Rights. These were emnotes of the convention will be sung was hodied in the failure to restrict the growth sounded in the convention call: In its be of the Kulak in the Soviet Union, in the ginning to carry out the line of the Young subordination of the Chinese Communist Communist International, our League had Party to the bourgeois Koumintang in the to struggle against resistance from sections 1925 27 revolution, and in the opportunistic of the leadership and the membership. It application of the united front in the Anglois in the last period on the basis of this Russian committee. It was during this struggle that the League can record certain perio the Exe Committee of the gains.
the meaning of such a Communist International gave its whole statement contained in a convention call?
hearted support Lovestone in leadership It can only be interpreted as a warning of the American party. Due to the rising in advance to discourage any discussion militant mood of the working class and the which raises fundamental problems. It pressure of the Left Opposition, the Cendraws the boundaries within which the dis trists were compelled to break with the cussion must flow: criticize yourself for not Rights. They veered toward the Left, but applying the correct line of the Stalinist innately incapable of pursuing a consistent leadership!
line they plunged into an ultra Left advenThe statement itself, however, turist one. At the present time circummust raise two questions in the minds of the stances are pushing them to retrace their steps to the right, and they are consequent League members which should be directed ly headed for a new debacle of opportunism.
to its authors: First, why is it that the whole League, including a section of its We cannot here in any way deal adeleadership, has been unable to absorb this quately with this question for space does correct line and apply it during a period not permit. Our purpose is merely to pose of two years? Secondly, why don you the question and arouse the members of the prove through concrete examples that it is League to a study of it. No member of the application of the correct line that the League if he strives to be a serious comcaused the gains claimed, and the failure munist can avoid this study or neglect it to apply or the wrong application that for it concerns the very existence of the caused the decline?
Communist movement. If the convention, despite the Stalinist bureaucrats, serves the The Real Situation What is really the conditon of the Young purpose of stirring the young Communists Communst League. See the Young Vanto study and think about the burning and guard of March This analysis must be vital questions that confront the divided made not upon the splurge of some Communist movement then it will have been of benefit. The entary (and exaggerated gain) but upon Left Opposition standa the evaluation of the present situation in ready to answer any question that any relation to the past two years. The folmember of the League wants to put to it for clarification and to facilitate in every lowing facts must be considered. Isolation of the from the way possible his approach to the road of Leninism.
young workers. Absolute loss in membersuip (3400 at last convention, drop to 1000 at time of As we go to press, the Young Worker party convention, June 1930, at present announces the postponement of the conven2000 an inflated official figure. tion to June 28. Very mania turnovers in memher.
LOWOROD.
What nom