Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Canadian Communist League (Marxist-Leninist)

Draft Program for a new communist party


10. Youth is a revolutionary force

Our Party pays particular attention to work among youth. We strive to win the masses of young people to the cause of socialism. In every revolution, youth have played a key role. Their enthusiasm and energy have brought a vital element to the revolutionary forces. Their striving for justice and equality has been a powerful support in the fight against reaction.

With correct leadership, the masses of Canadian youth will make up a valuable reserve for the revolution. Youth represent the future of our country. And they want to fight for a better world.

Youth oppressed under capitalism

The vast majority of Canadian youth suffer under capitalism. Most youth come from the working class or are children of working people, and today, like their parents, they face a bleak future under this system. With the crisis, youth have an even heavier load to bear.

For 15 to 24-year olds unemployment is now almost 15%. Youth often have trouble finding a first job and therefore cannot even qualify for unemployment benefits. When they do find a job, working-class youth are used as a source of cheap labour by the capitalists. Capitalists like Macdonalds Restaurants exploit youth, squeezing the most out of their employees while paying them the minimum wage. And the minimum wage for youth is even lower than the general one.

Young people are often concentrated in non-union shops and when layoffs come, they are among the first to go.

The right to education is under heavy attack by the capitalists. With government cutbacks, high school, college and university students face deteriorating education.

The majority of college and university students have trouble paying their bills. Summer jobs are hard to find, while school expenses skyrocket. With government cutbacks, loans and bursaries are harder to get.

The capitalists try to take advantage of the difficult situation in which young people find themselves. They try to lure them into the bourgeois army with promises of “seeing the world” and having a better life.

There are no proper recreation facilities for young people and working-class youth are forced into the streets.

State repression and the social crisis also take their toll among youth. Curfews have been established in some cities and police pickups and beatings of youth are a known practice. Suicide is now the second cause of death among youth.

Youth play a key role in people’s struggles

Young people have played an important role in the history of the struggle of the Canadian proletariat. Youth stood up as part of the vanguard in the fight against unemployment and the labour camps in the 1930s. They responded to the call of the Communist Party and joined the International Brigades to lay down their lives to fight fascism in Spain. More recently, Canadian young people were active in denouncing US aggression and Canadian involvement in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Thousands of students have demonstrated against government cutbacks in the public sector, particularly in education. Many young people have been involved in the general movement against unemployment and government cutbacks in unemployment insurance. Youth of the oppressed nationalities like the Quebecois, the Acadians and the Native peoples are on the front lines denouncing the injustices against their people.

Young people must reject the various false solutions the bourgeoisie is trying to hoodwink them with. In the last few years, culture, especially music and songs, has voiced a lot of the revolt coming from young people. The bourgeoisie has tried to use these forms of expression to divert young people’s energy away from revolution.

Drugs, alcohol and religious cults are other tools used by the bourgeoisie to drain youth of its enthusiasm and turn it away from revolution. And the same goes for the various opportunist and counter-revolutionary groups that are active among the student youth. These groups play on the fact that youth are always looking for change to spread their poisonous influence.

Our party will reach youth and mobilize them to resist exploitation and oppression and to fight for socialism. We defend the rights of youth in factories, in communities and in schools. We will work to strengthen student associations and the unity between them.

We will fight to build unity between students and workers’ struggles, and to mobilize students under the working class’s banner.

We fight to build a powerful youth mass movement that struggles both for young people’s demands and to end exploitation and oppression.

Youth must take up the proletariat’s cause. Our Party defends the rights of working-class youth and appeals to it to rally to the flag of revolution. Our Party fights for:

•  Jobs for youth, jobs or income now

•  Equal pay for equal work and an end to all discrimination in hiring

•  The unionization of all young workers

•  The same standard minimum wage for youth under 18 as for other workers.

•  Democratic rights for students: freedom of speech, assembly, the press, and the right to organize in the schools. An end to repression in the schools

•  No cutbacks in education

•  Autonomy for our student organizations with no state interference

•  The right to free education

•  An end to police repression and harassment.

•  Decent recreational, sports and cultural facilities.