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p Of late spokesmen for pseudo-Leftist trends have vied with one another in their eloquence in putting forward conceptions which differentiate between the student youth and other contingents of the anti-imperialist movement, particularly the working class. They want the young people to feel they should depend only on themselves and that they are powerful enough to “rouse” and then to lead others of different political views and age groups. The students are presented as an abstract body not confined to any social or political framework. It has revolutionary features because it is young (and revolutions, the Trotskyites declare, "have always been carried forward on the shoulders of the young"). The revolution itself is presented by the ultra-Leftist propagandists as something irrelevant to class, and devoid of leadership and purpose.

p The Trotskyites are prepared to invest the students with the role of leader on a world scale in the fight for socialism. For example, the London International Committee of the "Fourth International," declared: "youth must lead the fight to overthrow capitalism—not just here in 54 Britain but all over the world."   [54•1  As to supporters of the Paris Secretariat of the "Fourth International," they have gone farther in claiming that students already have a well-formed revolutionary outlook and that young people have a "Marxist revolutionary / ideological basis,"   [54•2  a fact they claim the youth have confirmed in action.

p One Trotskyite who has left the ranks of the French Communist League, explains why he did so as follows: "The League’s activity among students tended to produce illusions about the students being able, on their own, to bring the government to its knees and, what is more, of being able to become the ‘leaders’ in mobilizing the masses. I felt this view to be erroneous."   [54•3  True enough, the young Trotskyite found no better way out than to switch to a rival Trotskyite organization called "Youth Alliance for Socialism.”

p Most Trotskyite ideologists reason along these lines: a) young people have always taken an active part in past revolutions; b) young people are now ever more actively joining in the revolutionary struggle; and c) consequently, the young can well head the revolutionary movement of our day.

p Indeed, no one will object to the idea that youth have always played a prominent part in revolutionary struggle. Everyone knows that there were many young people who dedicated themselves to the revolution and even died for it 55 among those who overthrew the tsar, the landowners and the capitalists in Russia in 1917. Nor is there any doubt that young people did much to enable socialist revolutions to triumph and take hold in various countries of Eastern Europe and Asia. The young people played a prominent part in the Cuban revolution.

p All that is true. But who would deny that other young people acted to the contrary? After all, there were young people among the Cadet units who defended the Winter Palace in Petersburg in October 1917, as the headquarters of the bourgeois Provisional Government, and shot and shelled other young men who fought on the side of the workers and the soldiers. There were young people in the armies of Denikin, Kolchak, Wrangel and in the foreign legions who tried to quell the revolution during the Civil War. There were young people who, after the Second World War, shot revolutionary activists in the back as they fought for the new, workers’ and peasants’ power in the East European countries. And there were young people who joined the ranks of the counter-revolutionaries in Cuba, and who now take part in organizing provocations against Freedom Isle.

p Historical experience and the need to advance the revolutionary struggle today make it imperative to involve young people on an ever- broader scale on the side of the revolution as a component part of the struggle to win over the masses. It is essential to strive to narrow down the circle of young people who deliberately champion the bourgeois order. It is essential to keep increasing the number of young men and women rejecting the capitalist system and rising against 56 social injustice, violence and spiritual degradation.

p Every new generation taking part in the revolutionary fight reduces the possibility of mistakes (which can be tragic) and miscalculations (which can have fatal consequences at times), as previous experience in revolutionary action is assimilated. This schooling in revolutionary action, this knowledge of the diverse forms and methods of class struggle is essential in order to have the correct approach to the most complicated questions of revolutionary strategy and tactics today.

p The student “vanguard” theory also is at cross-purposes with the objective need to enlarge the anti-imperialist movement and to rouse the young people to struggle. The theory may have a revolutionary ring but it is very reactionary.

p Student “vanguardism” tends to undermine the unity of anti-imperialist ranks. This “ theory” is based on an artificially setting the youth against their elders in the anti-imperialist struggle. However, in our day, as never before, it is important to combine the experience of the older generation of revolutionaries with the enthusiasm of the youth, brushing aside the stereotyped assertions about the "generation gap" frequently used by imperialist propaganda for ideological disruption in the revolutionary movement and to impede the handing down of experience in the class struggle.

p Only mutual understanding between the various contingents of revolutionary fighters can fail attempts by the ruling bourgeoisie to retain 57 power by promoting splitting tendencies within the anti-imperialist front and resorting to the traditional "divide and rule" tactics, so as to deal with the class adversaries one by one. Imperialism regards any division of the revolutionary forces as a temporary respite, and their unity as a mortal danger.

p The ruling circles of the capitalist countries have been trying hard to prevent young students from finding common ground with the working class, resorting to every means—from falsification and slander, crude flattery and demagogy to the stick and the carrot.

p The student “vanguard” theory has essentially the same aim.

p The "Fourth International" slanders the proletariat, declaring that it has "lost its revolutionary spirit." The following fact shows how absurd these assertions can be.

p There months before the French working people took action in May and June 1968, AvantGarde, the Trotskyite youth paper, stated: "In the advanced capitalist countries, the relative stability of the existing regions, and the extreme weakness of the vanguard obviously excludes in the immediate period all struggles of a revolutionary character capable of bringing down our own bourgeoisie.”   [57•1  These assessments, which clashed with the post-war revolutionary practices of the French proletariat, had an especially absurd ring in view of the events which followed soon afterwards.

p High-handed statements about the 58 revolutionary potentialities of the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries were also made at the 9th Congress held by the Paris Secretariat of the "Fourth International" in April 1969. Its resolution described the working class as " demoralized.”   [58•1 

p The Trotskyites began to play up detrimental features, like political indifference and right- reformist ideology which are still lo be found among some sections of the working class. At the same time, they denied, without backing it up with facts, that the proletariat was being invoided on an ever-broader scale, in action against monopoly capital, while the social battles were more and more frequently acquiring a strong political tenor.

p This was to make students believe the Trotskyites’ absurd conclusions labout the proletariat being “passive” and the students having a " special mission." Hence the conclusion about the need to “rouse” the proletariat and the adventurist, provocative recommendations.

p What is the overall result of such a policy? Students are induced to mistrust and even dislike the working class for allegedly being far too cautious. Quite naturally, the proletariat becomes wary of certain adventurist acts by individual students which, the Trotskyite and other ultraLeftist “ideologists” believe, will “awaken” the workers.

p In other words, the obj’ective basis is being created for misunderstanding between the working class and a section of the students, and for continued and growing differences between them. 59 Such is the true nature of the student “ vanguard” theory.

p Student “vanguardism” has done much harm particularly to the young people. A component part of most student “vanguard” theories is the effort to provide a pseudo-scientific basis for the desire of a section of the students to act in isolated groups. Separatist action is extolled and advertised as a principle of behaviour.

p There again, the Trotskyites speculate on the lack of knowledge among the youth.

p The experience of revolutionary struggle shows that "student disorders" and "youth riots" present a real danger to capitalism only when they become an organic part of the class battles led by the proletariat. They have always been put down unless they were tied in with working class action.

p This has been repeatedly proved by the day- today political struggle in our own period. Wherever student action has merged with the struggle of the working class and the other working people, the class struggle has inevitably acquired greater strength, forcing the reactionaries to retreat in face of the common, concerted anti- imperialist front. All the anti-monopoly forces, including the students, benefited ias a result.

p On the other hand, wherever the students rose to struggle alone, without their natural allies, most frequently it cost them dear. The forces of reaction massacred those who relied only on their own strength.

p Left-radical young people talk a lot about the need for socialist revolution, but they do not always realize that such a revolution is impossible 60 without the leadership of the proletariat. All the successful socialist revolutions have been headed by the working class. That was the case in Russia in October 1917, and in the period in which the democratic people’s revolutions in the East European countries developed into socialist revolutions.

p This has also been borne out by the Cuban revolution, where the general strikes staged by the urban and rural proletariat from 1955 to 1959 paved the way for successful revolutionary struggle. Fidel Castro stressed: "It is the working class that, by its general strike, together with the insurgent army foiled the plans of the reactionaries who intended to deprive the people of victory at the last moment, as they had done repeatedly before. It was the strike—and we insist on this with a full sense of responsibility, being entitled to do so by virtue of our own participation in the events of those decisive hours—that wrecked the final schemes of the enemies of the people... The general strike transferred power into the hands of the revolution."   [60•1 

p The long-term and the immediate interests of the young make it imperative that they take concerted action with the working class. Anything that promotes this must be cherished, encouraged and developed. Anything that hampers this must be discarded and shoved aside. One of the things that young people are bound, sooner or later, to discard is the student “vanguard” theory, which has harmed the youth most of all.

p Student “vanguardism” plays into the hands of the pseudo-revolutionaries, the provocateurs. 61 Objectively, the student “vanguard” theory can benefit only those who seek to achieve the following: to have the students politically separated from the working class; to have the student ranks split with the Left-radical youth ranged against the others (as the "revolutionary elite" vis-a-vis the mob); and to play up various reckless acts and irresponsible views as full-fledged "conception.”

p Who stands to gain from all this? Only those who mix among the students to "fish for young souls" and to take the opportunity to bolster their shaken political positions.

p There is a direct connection between the stepped-up subversive operations by Trotskyites and other “Leftists” among the youth and the spread of "student vanguard" conceptions. Wherever these have won the greatest support the Trotskyites, along with the anarchists and the Maoists, have been most active. Conversely, wherever the students have rejected this defective "theory," the pseudo-revolutionaries have failed to make any headway.

p In other words, the ultra-Leftist groups alone stand to gain from separate, sectarian action by the students, whereas concerted action by the young people and the working class has, as a rule, left no room for these groups to manoeuvre.

p The leaders of ultra-Leftist groups, inciting the youth to take hasty, reckless action in the hope of assuming the leadership in the revolutionary struggle, actually plan to take over the leadership of the Left-radical youth movement. Of late one observes that ultra-Leftist leaders have managed to attract public notice when they manage to induce some section of the youth, however 62 small, to engage in action which is obviously doomed to defeat. The young people get hurt, but the ultra-Leftist leaders are quite happy to have gained an audience and write-ups in the press.

p There is good reason why the Trotskyites and the other Leftists have been trying hard to keep young people from being influenced by the Communists, who have proved that unprepared, separate action is futile and has nothing to offer.

p The Trotskyites have resorted to all manner of lies to get the youth to distrust the Communist parties. They have even declared that the Communists "hate the young" land are "hostile to the students" so as to fool those who know nothing about the Communists and how highly the latter regard the role of the youth in the revolutionary struggle.

p When dealing with more informed young people the Trotskyites try other tactics. They claim that although the Communists want to find common ground with the youth it is not to the advantage of the young people who would lose their identity in joint struggle.

p The following shows how much leaders of the "Fourth International" fear Communist influence. During the 1970 electoral campaign in Britain they mounted a propaganda drive under the slogan: "Labour—Yes, Communist—No.”

p In trying to keep the youth from establishing ties with the Communists and accepting the ideas of scientific socialism, the Trotskyites would leave the youth movement without guidance. But neither reactionary university professors, who falsify Marxism in every possible way, nor the Trotskyites who have substituted a system of 63 pseudo-revolutionary views for Marxism- Leninism, can teach the students the laws of social development and the strategy and tactics of the class struggle. Only the Communists can do this.

p The Trotskyites keep saying that the young people learn best from what they claim are mistakes being made by the Communist parties. And they continue to present falsifications of the strategic and tactical propositions of international Communist movement as Communists’ " mistakes.”

p The Trotskyites count on the fact that most students have yet to learn that never has there been a party in history that has been more revolutionary than the Communist party. Whenever the time came to act and whenever the situation called not for catchwords but for the ability to formulate slogans and a political line promoting revolutionary development, it was the Communists who were in the forefront of the revolutionary ranks.

p The Communist parties deserve the credit for
ensuring concerted and purposeful action by the proletariat and its allies in the past and they are continuing and will continue to do so in the future. The Communists have guided socialist revolutions, and sharpest class battles in the past and present, which have wrested new positions from imperialism. The Communists have always been in the vanguard of mass movements for the great goals of social progress. Revamping and improving the strategy of the class struggle, they helped the working people to find the best ways 64 and forms for the revolutionary transformation of society.

p It was the Communists who led the working class of Russia in the first decisive battle against capitalism. It was the Communists who raised aloft the banner of struggle against fascism during the Second World War, in the most trying period of mankind’s history. Today, the Communists are guiding socialist and communist construction over one-third of the globe. The Communists spare no efforts, and are prepared to sacrifice their very lives, in the revolutionary struggle in the capitalist countries. They are, indeed, the most resolute and consistent fighters everywhere for maintaining and consolidating world peace and frustrating misanthropic plans for a thermonuclear war.

p The Communists may not always be right, but one can hardly deny that they are the most influential political force of our day, a revolutionary force that has been steadily growing. The future belongs to the Communists, because they are sure of their goal and will never be diverted from it.

p The Communists are not surprised that many people in the capitalist countries now seek to take a stand to the “Left” of the Communist parties or, at any rate, to present themselves as being to the “Left” of the Communists. This is not news in itself—ever since the Communist movement emerged and gained in stature, individuals and groups have been cropping up in political life and claiming to be more revolutionary than the boldest revolutionaries.

p As Marx and Engels once observed, "in every 65 new historical phase old mistakes reappear momentarily only to disappear forthwith."   [65•1  Something similar is taking place in our own day.

p Nor is there anything new about the Trotskyites’ spreading the attitude of ideological indifference and political promiscuity. Krivine has cynically declared that the students are apt to change views and parties like their shirts, without any marked effect on their studies and activity.

p There is good reason for Krivine’s shirt- andparty metaphor. He is clearly eager to have Trotskyite groups filled with renegades from other parties and organizations. But because the young people are naturally repulsed by many of the planks in Trotskyite “programme” the emissaries of the "Fourth International" insist that they should join it or leave it, if they do not like it. In their heart of hearts the Trotskyites hope that at least some will stay on, thereby helping to bolster the Trotskyite positions.

The leaders of the Trotskyite groups are not worried about the fact that many, on closer acquaintanceship with Trotskyite propositions, realize their futility and leave such groups disillusioned and morally devastated. Very frequently such people give up political activity altogether. Even a short time in Trotskyite ranks tends to make one lose interest in participating in the class struggle. The Trotskyites outdo all others in quelling the revolutionary fervour of the young people since their catchwords are “Leftist” in form and capitulationist in content.