On June 20 the International Conference of Young Socialists was held by the International Socialist League. Thousands of participants from all regions of the planet connected to the virtual platform or to the social networks that broadcast the event live. The success of the Conference reflects the moment of structural crisis, polarization and rebellions that the world is going through, and confirms the eagerness that exists in a broad layer of youth for socialist ideas and revolutionary activism.
The debate began with presentations by leaders of the youth of the Argentine MST, The Struggle of Pakistan, Socialist Alternative of Australia and the Socialist Laborers Party (SEP) of Turkey. This was followed by contributions by comrades from some twenty countries and a rich debate that confirmed a high level of agreement on the analysis of the political and social situation in the world and on the fundamental tasks of revolutionaries to turn everything over.
A New Global Situation
One point of analysis agreed on by all speakers was the analysis of the moment that the world is going through. Without having recovered from the 2008 crisis, the world economy was headed towards a new crash towards the end of 2019. The capitalist response of austerity and repression had worsened the decay of political regimes, fueled growing polarization and sparked a series of rebellions that spread to all regions of the world. Though the coronavirus pandemic and quarantine measures imposed a pause in this process of global uprising, it also deepened the crisis enormously, increased its effects on working people, and exasperated all social contradictions. The inevitable return of the rebellions, with redoubled anger and strength, was clearly expressed in the Conference.
From the belly of the empire, Luis Meiners reported the widespread rebellion that has shaken the United States since the assassination of George Floyd, the process of radicalization of youth that has been developing for years and has led half of the youth to sympathize with socialism and the opportunities that intervention in these processes is presenting for building a revolutionary organization
Our comrades from the Lebanese Movement for the Change detailed the new uprising that has shaken their country for weeks despite the lock down. Their organization was a protagonist of the rebellion that broke out in October last year, overthrowing the government, and the camp that resisted for months in front of the house of government in Beirut. They explained how the current uprising is profoundly more radical than the previous one, and targets banks and capitalist power as such.
Chile was present through the voice of our comrades from the Movimiento Anticapitalista, who explained how the revolution that shook the world last year has been forging an extended vanguard of adicalized youth in the heat of months of daily confrontations with the regime´s forces, how the betrayal of the parliamentary left that saved Piñeira´s government and the Pinochet regime leads thousands to the conclusion of the need for a profound change, and how this has allowed for the growth of our organization.
Comrades from Luta Socialista and Alternativa Socialista illustrated the Brazilian scenario, with the Bolsonaro government in a spiral of crisis and a working people that is beginning to mobilize again.
Today´s parallels with the tumultuous year of 1968 – capitalism in crisis, struck by a worldwide wave of rebellions and revolutions with the youth at the forefront – served to title this great Encounter.
Organize the Rebellion
The dynamic situation, the intervention of our organizations and the opportunities to build them, were reflected beyond the countries with the most well known processes. It is a worldwide phenomenon.
An observation shared by comrades from Ukraine to Colombia and Ecuador, from Paraguay to Kashmir, from Turkey to France and from the Spanish State to Nicaragua, is that the radicalized youth is at the vanguard of all the processes of mobilization, rebellion and revolution. And that big opportunities are opening up to organize that youth for the strategic struggle to turn the whole rotten capitalist system over and build a socialist future.
The hundreds of young people who joined the Conference from the countries where the ISL intervenes and from so many others – India to Venezuela, Uruguay, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Malaysia, Morocco, Algeria, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Western Sahara – to get to know our proposals corroborates this tendency and opportunity. That is why a central conclusion of the Conference was the conviction to embrace that challenge, to intervene in the dynamic class struggle and strengthen the construction of revolutionary and international organizations from the International Socialist League.
To face these tasks, we discussed a roadmap that we will be specifying in the coming days, to prepare an international youth manifesto, a program of action and a series of joint campaigns to take up the struggles against the problems youth faces, to confront the system as a whole and propose a socialist political solution on a world scale.
We intend to develop a common global political response to the precariousness of labor that advances against the youth throughout the world; to the defense of public education, attacked by policies of capitalist privatization and commercialization during long years and now by the challenges of virtual education due to the pandemic; to the struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia and all oppression; to state repression and attacks from the right and the far-right; to the capitalist destruction of the environment.
We intend to build a tool and a political orientation to promote the rebellions and revolutions that cross the world, to organize the thousands of young people who are radicalizing against the prevailing system and unite them internationally to fight for the future that capitalism denies us, a socialist future. We invite you to join us.