p The Trotskyites have managed one way and another to get together youth groups in several countries including Britain, France, the FRG, Belgium, the USA, Canada, Japan and in some Latin American countries. Of late they have started a propaganda campaign in some countries urging that preparations be made for establishing a Trotskyite "Youth International." The magazines and newspapers put out by "Fourth International" groupings keep insisting that the time has come for such a step. While some question how feasible it is, the Trotskyites have been stepping up their activity to put across the idea with the Paris Secretariat of the "Fourth 97 International" and an outfit calling itself "For the Reorganization of the Fourth International" being the most insistent.

p In November 1970, the Paris Secretariat held an international meeting in Brussels which was attended, if we are to believe its periodicals, by almost 3,000 persons, mostly under 30. The meeting was prepared by the French "Communist League" and the Belgian "Young Socialist Fighters" organization. Krivine, who heads the " Communist League," urged that there be a " consistent merger of the old Trotskyite cadres with the new generation" thus clearly aspiring for leadership of the proposed international Trotskyite youth alliance.

p Another active group is the French "Alliance of the Young for Socialism" (Alliance des Jeunes pour le Socialisme) which is part of the organization "For the Reorganization of the Fourth International." In May 1970, the “Alliance” declared at its congress that it was out to establish a " revolutionary Trotskyite youth international." It sent its activists to a number of the West European countries to establish contacts with similar Trotskyite organizations.

p In 1971, these contacts were considerably extended. On May 17, the “Alliance” organized what it claimed to be a 40,000-strong demonstration to mark the centenary of the Paris Commune (the police put the number of demonstrators at 10,000). Representatives of Trotskyite and other Left-extremist youth organizations came to Paris from Britain, the FRG, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden and other countries.

p The “Alliance” was active in the conference held in Essen, in the FRG, on July 3 and 4, 1971. 98 They claim that it was attended by 5,000 young men and women, including 4,000 from France, and also by representatives of youth groups from a number of other West European countries, the USA and Latin America.  [98•1 

p The Essen conference set up a "liaison committee," or a "co-ordination committee," to prepare for the establishment of a Trotskyite youth international.   [98•2  Since then the Committee has met twice: in November 1971 and in January 1972.

p Other Trotskyite groups of the "Fourth International"—the London "International Committee" and the Latin American “Secretariat”— have been keeping close tab on what their rivals are up to, declaring they will also take steps to establish their own "youth international.”

p International Trotskyism has set itself at least three aims in seeking to set up a "youth international.”

p First, the Trotskyites hope to get more of a hold on the young people who have succumbed to their propaganda. They hope to get the International’s centre, which would be based on larger groups, to influence the smaller Trotskyite youth groups to step up their activity. In the long run this amounts to an ideological subversive campaign against the unity of the anti-imperialist youth movement. The idea is that the establishment of Trotskyite groups as an independent international structure would strengthen the positions of international Trotskyism and increase the number of its followers.

p Second, the Trotskyites hope that, if successful, they would have more opportunity of infiltrating the working class. The idea of the youth international is a means of implementing the Trotskyite proposition: "Through the young people to the workers." Germain has posed the task as follows: to attract the vanguard of the young people and then penetrate the working class.

p Third, the Trotskyites expect to bolster the positions of international Trotskyism in its fight against the Communist parties and the socialist countries. They have made no secret of the fact that their “International” is mainly to be an outfit that is hostile to the international Communist movement, to the Soviet Union and to the whole socialist camp.

p Analysis of the theory and practice of Trotskyism and of its policies with respect to the young prompts the following conclusions:

p Trotskyism is against strengthening the positions of the revolutionary-minded students. The objective consequences of all Trotskyite activity among the youth is the loss of their allies and isolation from the proletariat, the most revolutionary class. Everything the Trotskyites have been doing to separate the student movement from other contingents of the great anti- imperialist army, to foster splitting tendencies in the movement and promote internal strife, weakens the youth movement and isolates it from the principal sectors of the class struggle.

p Trotskyism is against any real movement among the young to the Left. While voicing Leftist, pseudo-revolutionary catchwords the Trotskyites have been trying to get the student 100 movement to take extreme Rightist positions. Alongside efforts to spread mistrust of the working class, they have been inciting the students to fight the Communist parties, the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat, and the socialist countries, the bulwark of the international revolutionary movement, instead of directing their fire against imperialism. The Trotskyites have been working hard to get the young men and women to swallow their ultra-revolutionary bait, to take their place alongside those who dish out aritiCommunist propaganda in the imperialist camp, the extreme Right-wing leaders and ideologists of social-reformism.

p Trotskyism is out to discredit the very idea of revolution in the eyes of the young. While remaining on the sidelines of class battles the Trotskyites keep flinging dirt on revolutions of the past. They question any successes scored in the anti-imperialist struggle today. At the same time, with a few meaningless slogans, they seek to convince the youth that revolutions in separate countries have no prospect. When they do talk of revolution, it is not action by the masses, but something like "revolutionary gymnastics" by men who are steeped in sectarianism and have lost their revolutionary orientation. The Trotskyites have very little understanding of the revolutions of the past and the ways of revolutio nary development in the present and in the future.

p Trotskyism means indifference to the vital interests of the youth. It is much too self-centred and egoistic to display interest in anything except strengthening its own positions by any means. Its present attention to the youth will 101 apparently continue until the young people turn away from it. Policy-making documents issued by Trotskyites of late show that it is alien to the needs and interests of the young people and is hardly aware of what they are. Just as it denies the need to struggle to secure the proletariat’s general democratic demands, it takes the same attitude to the vital needs of the students of the capitalist countries. Acting on their traditional "all or nothing" formula, the Trotskyites promise the young people to solve their problems "at one go" some time in the distant future. Meanwhile, they have no intention whatsoever of complying with the young people’s desire to have their demands taken into account in a programme of current revolutionary action.

p Trotskyism corrupts the healthy young people who fall for its propaganda. In the post-war pe riod hundreds and perhaps thousands of young people have joined Trotskyite organizations in various capitalist countries, but at any given moment the membership has never been more than a small fraction of all who have come and gone, disillusioned and heartsick. Many have rejected Trotskyism only to become totally indifferent to politics. Is it possible to gauge the harm done by Trotskyism?

p Probably some of the ones who became apathetic were very vigorous, resourceful young people who might have made a great contribution to political struggle. Thus, Trotskyism has done a great deal of harm to the revolutionary struggle and to the efforts to extend and deepen its social basis.

p Are the young people aware of all these negative aspects of Trotskyism? Unfortunately, not 102 always or everywhere. For the time being, various "Fourth International" groupings manage to benefit from the lack of experience and knowledge among the youth.

p But of late, more and more young people have been seeing through Trotskyite schemes. As the young people become more politically aware and ideologically mature, they have been more adamantly rejecting the plot of the Trotskyites and other pseudo-revolutionaries of that kind.

p In the 1970s, many young people who had broken away from the "Fourth International" found their way to those who are truly fighting against imperialism, instead of opting out of politics altogether as many had done in the past. These young people join the Communists or the Communist youth organizations. Thousands of young men and women have become disillusioned with the “Leftists” and have joined the Communists.

The young people want nothing to do with Trotskyism. With time more and more young people will break away from the "Fourth International." The more actively is Trotskyism exposed as the handmaiden of imperialist reaction and the enemy of socialism, peace and democracy the sooner this will happen.