Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

NOTES
throughout the Popular Front era they had asserted that Churchill could potentially be trusted to lead an anti-fascist People's
Government if it was based on a Popular Front style coalition with Labour. Since Churchill was in power and the
YCL could no longer argue that the Axis powers were going to go East to attack the Soviet Union and that this was a
"phoney war," the YCL had to reframe elements of its anti-war rhetoric. Instead of attacking Churchill as they had Chamberlain,
the YCL continually asserted that Churchill needed to remove all of "the Men of Munich" from his cabinet in order
to form a true anti-fascist government. See "We Don't Want Any Gestapo Here: They're Going to See Him About the
Men of Munich," Challenge: The Voice of Youth 6, no.30 (July 25, 1940): 1.
22. Gates, "The Nature of This War," 4, 24, 25.
23. Unlike the traditional Leninist anti-war program that called for "revolutionary defeatism" in order to turn the "imperialist
war into a civil war" through socialist revolution, the YCI did not direct its national sections to take such a traditional
stance. The Trotskyist movement took notice of the communist position against war and its divergence with Leninism, asserting
instead that their own positions represented a correct Leninist stance by calling for international socialist revolution.
Prior to the outbreak of war, the Trotskyist Fourth International denounced those who questioned if "revolutionary
defeatism" might be an incorrect tactic to apply in any war with the fascist powers. The Trotskyists condemned such assertions
as "extremely dangerous concession to the social-patriots," countering that even in wars with the fascist powers
that "all the fundamental rules of proletarian "defeatist" policy in relation to imperialist war retain their full force." Once
war was officially declared the Trotskyists mocked the communist's essentially pacifist position in a scathing article entitled
"Will The Communist Party Go Communist" The Trotskyists insisted that by not embracing "revolutionary defeatism"
that the Comintern position had "nothing in common with Lenin’s policy." In other articles the Trotskyists went on
to denounce the communist call for a negotiated peace stating that "revolutionary socialist’s support neither imperialist
war nor imperialist peace." See Editorial Board of the Russian Opposition, "A Step Towards Social-Patriotism: On the
Position of the Fourth International Toward the Struggle Against War and Fascism," in The New International Internet Archive
; "Will The Communist Party Go
Communist," in Worker's International News Internet Archive: 1938-1949 ; "Spotlight on Centrism," in Worker's International News Internet Archive: 1938-
1949 .
24. ECYCI, "Manifesto of the Young Communist International," Young Communist Review 4, no.9 (December, 1939): 12, 13.
25. Mick Bennett, Youth and the War (London: YCLGB, 1940), 13,14.
26. YCLGB, Make Life Worth While: A Course For Members of the Young Communist League (London: YCLGB, 1944), 13.
27. See Earl Browder, Eugene Dennis, Roy Hudson and John Williamson, Shall the Communist Party Change Its Name
(New York: NCCPUSA, 1944).
28. Ottanelli, 215.
29. Raymond Guyot, "The Unity of the Working Class Youth Will Triumph," World Youth Review 1, no. 7 (July, 1939): 133.
30. Gil Green, "Creative Marxism," 5, 27.
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