Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
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YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM<br />
6. ECYCI, Remove the Frontiers!, 9.<br />
7. Young, No More War, 11.<br />
8. This position was severely modified on the basis of working with Trotskyist influenced youth groups. Though young<br />
communists were willing to work with all segments of youth including conservative youth on the basis of a minimum antifascist<br />
program, they consistently insisted that Trotskyism represented an ideology that was incompatible with the goals of<br />
the Popular Front and that no common action would be tolerated with the followers of Trotsky. Though many of the anti-<br />
Trotsky positions became increasingly irrational and were reprehensible in their representation of Trotskyists as class<br />
enemies and agents of fascism, the traditional Bolshevism of the Trotskyist movement made many of their theories and<br />
practices incompatible with the revisionism of the Popular Front. The reality that lay behind these Popular Front tensions<br />
is that Trotskyism represented a trend of revolutionary Bolshevism that strategically relied upon entryism and disruption of<br />
existing organizations as potential opponents and that this position was not compatible with the revisionism of the Popular<br />
Front. While Trotskyism was incompatible with the Popular Front, it did represent an existing left revolutionary and<br />
working-class tradition and assertions that it stood for fascism were blatantly false distortions.<br />
9. VI Lenin, "Report to the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. on the St. Petersburg Split and the Institution of the Party Tribunal<br />
Ensuing Therefrom," in VI Lenin Internet Archive .<br />
10. One of the earliest complaints waged by socialists against the communists is that they were intentionally destroying any<br />
unity that existed within the working class movement. Young socialists who did not join the YCI asserted that they opposed<br />
both Capitalist Dictatorship and Bolshevik Terror, insisting that the programme of the YCI "did not serve the aims<br />
of the youth but exclusively those of the Russian Communists." See "The Programme of the Social Democratic Internationals<br />
of <strong>Youth</strong>," in ECYCI, Fundamental Problems, 65-81.<br />
11. ECYCI, Programme, 82.<br />
12. ECCI, "Theses On The United Front Adopted by the EC, December 1921," in Communist International History Internet<br />
Archive .<br />
13. ECYCI, Fundamental Problems, 81.<br />
14. Gyptner, From Isolation, 6.<br />
15. ECYCI, Draft Programme of the Young, 45-46, 47.<br />
16. Ibid., 56.<br />
17. Mick Jenkins, "History and Programme of the YCL Vol. 2," (CP/IND/MISC/5/4: YCLGB, 1929), 22.<br />
18. ECYCI, From Third to Fourth, 6.<br />
19. CPGB, The Role and Tasks of the YCL, 7.<br />
20. ECYCI, Programme of the YCI (No City/Publisher, 1929), 29.<br />
21. Denunciations and vehement attacks were not just directed against outward organizations, but were also an internalized<br />
phenomenon within the young communist movement. The YCI insisted it was necessary to win the most committed following<br />
to a "correct" Bolshevik line, even if this meant expelling large numbers of their own activists. In evaluating the<br />
development of their movement, the YCI insisted that "new groupments of forces and many expulsions were necessary"<br />
within the communist movement to create a solid base of Leninist cadres. To be a young communist meant to accept<br />
without hesitation the international leadership of the Comintern on issues of communist theory and practice. International<br />
discipline and Bolshevik self-criticism were expounded as the highest virtues for young communists to emulate as evidence<br />
of their Leninist divergence with Social Democracy. During the period of Bolshevization, the YCI directed the energies<br />
and outlook of their membership inward towards denouncing ideological deviations from Comintern policy within<br />
the youth and adult movements. The YCI asserted that their position was "correct" since it struggled "against both the<br />
Right opportunist digressions and the ultra-left mistakes" by evaluating their comrades strictly from the "standpoint of<br />
Leninism and of bolshevism." The trend towards an internalized youth culture to enforce Comintern dictates was intensified<br />
during the turbulent years of the Third Period. See ECYCI, From Third to Fourth, 4; ECYCI, Resolutions Adopted at<br />
the Fourth, 11.<br />
22. Ibid., 33.<br />
23. "Manifesto of the Second Congress of the Young Communist International," <strong>Youth</strong>: Official Organ of the Young Workers'<br />
League 1, no.1 (February, 1922): 11.<br />
24. Dimitrov, "The Fascist Offensive," 22-23.<br />
25. Ibid., 65.<br />
26. Ibid., 66.<br />
27. Kuusinen, <strong>Youth</strong> and <strong>Fascism</strong>,12, 25.<br />
28. Ibid., 11.<br />
29. Ibid., 18.<br />
30. Ibid., 22.<br />
31. Ibid., 26.<br />
32. Michal, <strong>Youth</strong> Marches, 8.<br />
33. Ibid., 9.<br />
34. Ibid., 13.<br />
35. Ibid., 15.<br />
36. Ibid., 38.<br />
37. Ibid., 41.<br />
38. Kuusinen, <strong>Youth</strong> and <strong>Fascism</strong>, 24.<br />
39. Dimitrov, "The Fascist Offensive," 88.<br />
40. Georgi Dimitrov, "<strong>Youth</strong> <strong>Against</strong> <strong>Fascism</strong>," in The United Front: The Struggle <strong>Against</strong> <strong>Fascism</strong> And War (San Francisco:<br />
Proletarian Publishers, 1975), 150.<br />
41. Kuusinen, <strong>Youth</strong> and <strong>Fascism</strong>, 21.<br />
42. Michal, 36.<br />
43. Ibid., 26.<br />
44. Ibid., 21.<br />
45. Assertions in the communist press that slandered Trotsky and his followers as terrorists and agents of fascism were false<br />
and unwarranted, but both movements vehemently asserted that their ideological positions made them political enemies.<br />
46. Georgi Dimitrov, "The Tenth Anniversary of Stato Operaio," in The United Front: The Struggle <strong>Against</strong> <strong>Fascism</strong> And War<br />
(San Francisco: Proletarian Publishers, 1975), 223.<br />
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