The youth and it’s global struggle against the crisis: Statement on REVOLUTIONs 3rd International Conference

From 2nd to 3rd of August REVOLUTION held it’s third International Conference and a global camp afterwards – both in Berlin, Germany.

Nearly 100 Members and sympathisers from Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden and the United States participated to discuss the burning issues of today and the task of a revolutionary youth organisation. We especially see a big success in winning comrades in the United States for our programme and our method of building an outward-orientated and active youth organisation with the clear aim of overthrowing the capitalist system we are living in. To combine the struggle against the reactionary role of US-imperialism and it’s massive attacks on the working class and young people in the US itself can only be fulfilled by an internationalist organisation. Having sections and members in the US and also in the poor, semi-colonial countries affected by imperialist interventions is therefore one of the most important things REVOLUTION achieved in the last years.

It was because of the racist border-control policies of the European Union and the German state that our comrades from two of these oppressed countries – Pakistan and Sri Lanka – couldn’t make it to the conference. It’s more than cynical that German troops are at the moment invading Afghanistan with the excuse of bringing “democracy” to the region and at the same time are refusing people the democratic right of free move. This in itself is an expression of the rotten character of this system. While it legitimizes it’s rule with an “enlightened” ideology it is in fact just acting in the pragmatic interests of big companies and multinationals. We strongly condemn this racist approach and underline our demand of open borders for people and not for profit-seeking capital.

The discussions at the conference and the camp were focussing on different social, political and economic issues. Especially the economic crisis, the struggle for the liberation of women, protests against cutbacks in the education system and against the so-called “war on terror” were in the forefront of several workshops, debates and plenary sessions. The conference adopted a new Action Programme that is proposing a strategy for how to struggle against the results of the economic crisis and the general inequalities of capitalism. Moreover the question of youth unemployment was discussed intensively as we can clearly observe a massive rise in young workers being sacked or not even finding a job after finishing education.

The conference also adopted International Perspectives that are clearly stating that we are living in a historic crisis of capitalism in which the biggest problem is the gap between militant actions that have to be taken by workers and youth on the one hand and the weakness of revolutionary forces being able to organise these on the other hand. Building a revolutionary youth international and a world party of socialist revolution – the Fifth International – therefore remains today’s most important tasks.

REVOLUTION also underlined the necessity of building strong structures on an international level that are capable of not just of discussing the politics of REVO but also of coordinating struggles on an international level. Especially the developments of the Social Forum movements clearly show that structures for just exchanging opinions are by far not enough. We therefore issue our call for an international coordination of all structures and organisations of youth around the world that are willing to take action against the efforts of capitalism to make us pay for it’s own crisis.

“Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full” wrote Trotsky in his testament of 1940. It is us, the youth in today’s struggles, it is our generation that has to take up this task. The steps that have to be taken are big. We are glad to announce that we have taken some of them with our work in the past period and that we were able to win new fighters for the idea of revolution and socialism. But we are even more pleased with the spirit of the conference and the camp that clearly showed that we not just did take steps forward in the past, but that we have the strong aspiration of taking even more of them in future for reaching the emancipation of mankind.

Secretariat of the REVOLUTION International Council, 13.08.2009