Central Executive Committee, YCL-LJC

August, 2014

The Young Communist League – ligue de la jeunesse communiste (YCL-LJC) welcomes and actively supports the convening of the People’s Social Forum. We see this meeting of the labour movement, Indigenous activists, feminists, environmentalists, immigrant rights activists, and youth and student activists as a very useful tool in building unity in the struggle against big business and their puppet austerity governments across Canada. With participation from Quebec labour and social movements and Indigenous communities, as well as English-speaking Canada, the Forum gives us the opportunity to build unity based on equality between nations within the borders of Canada.

We hope that the People’s Social Forum will be more than just an opportunity to share and learn from each other’s struggles, although this is also important. As a youth organization, the YCL-LJC recognizes that the stakes have never been higher! It is true that the future of young people is in jeopardy, but it is equally true that the present is not tolerable either. The gains of the last 80 years of struggle are being swept away by “austerity” policies which include massive programs of cuts and privatization; the liquidation of basic labour and environmental regulations; the encouragement of precarious work for poverty wages; unemployment; the ongoing genocide against Indigenous peoples; inaccessible education; and the introduction of racist immigration laws. For the majority of youth it means intensified exploitation, poverty, prison and war. For the YCL-LJC and revolutionary youth, the root of the problem is capitalism, and the symptoms are the current economic and environmental crises that working people, especially youth, are being asked to pay for.

All the problems confronting youth are connected with the political problems in Canada. They are connected to the Harper government’s anti-people and anti-environment austerity agenda. It is very clear that the Harper Tories and their agenda need to be defeated as soon as possible. With the next federal election possibly less than one year away, we anticipate that this will be on most activists’ minds at the People’s Social Forum, and rightfully so! But the big question that confronts us is how.

The People’s Social Forum will give us new opportunities to come together on concrete united actions. The bigger and broader the better, for example cross-Canada days of action against Harper, but uniting behind strategic struggles battling the sharp edge of the austerity knife, such as the campaign to ‘Save Canada Post’, is also valuable. We must reject the temptations of cynicism that breed retreat and sectarian politics. As the People’s Social Forum slogan says: “build/win Together!”, we should seek out new ways of working together, and the best way to build lasting unity is through common action, based on an agreed upon program.

The Occupy movement, the Quebec Student Strike, Idle No More and environmental struggles against pipelines, tankers and the Tar Sands, have done a lot to reclaim our streets in a relatively short period of time. These mass struggles have produced volumes of precious experience for hundreds of thousands of people, not least youth and students, which will undoubtedly be shared at the Forum. But what is the next step? The YCL-LJC at our 26th Convention this spring stated that: “in order to reverse the corporate austerity attack, and shift to a counter-offensive it is necessary that these struggles develop further and move beyond spontaneous protest towards an even broader, united, militant and organized extra-parliamentary fightback with the labour movement at its core.”

This general strategy is not unique to the YCL-LJC’s thinking, and more and activists, unions, and social movements are calling for variations of what we refer to as a “People’s Coalition”. The Ontario Federation of Labour’s “Common Front” of labour, anti-poverty groups, and other social movements, is struggling with a similar goal in mind. The “Red Hand Coalition”, which was an anti-austerity alliance in Quebec between Labour and Student Unions, also helped pave the way for the 2012 Student Strike. Common Causes and the Port Elgin declaration have put forward similar theses.

In order to build up the political power of labour and people’s movements across Canada, it is necessary to build unity on a political program. As a part of the broader youth & student movement, the YCL-LJC puts forward the following immediate demands as examples of the kind of militant, anti-austerity program needed to mobilize youth towards a counter-offensive:

• Free, accessible, quality, democratic, public education at all levels
• A minimum living-wage (~$20/hr)
• A massive investment in youth employment based on expanding public sector, building affordable housing, and improving infrastructure
• The right to self-determination and self-government for Indigenous nations, Quebec & Acadians
• An immediate public inquiry into Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women
• Allow for the unionization of young workers: guarantee the right to organize, to free collective bargaining and to strike in a new Labour Bill of Rights; end back-to-work legislation; ban scabbing & temp agencies
• Scrap racist immigtation and refugee laws
• Provide free, accessible, abortion and family planning services to all
• Institute a universally-accessible quality, affordable childcare public system
• Close the tar sands; oppose the Northern Gateway and other pipeline developments; stop all fracking of shale gas
• De-militarization and disarmament of police; put police under civilian control
• Nationalise the banks and big insurance companies, double the corporate tax rate
• A foreign policy based on a complete rejection of imperialist intervention (most recently the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine) and for peace and disarmament

Demands like these need to be debated and adopted in as democratic a way as possible in order to build unity, and the demands should spring from experience in particular struggles themselves. But we can say with determination that the capitalists concede nothing without struggle, and a political program with the potential for real change needs to come from the understanding that we need to demand real change. The way forward needs to recognize that capitalism created this crisis and that a clear and deep change in paradigm is necessary. An escalating action plan which is decided within this coalition would root the coalition in concrete action and build its power incrementally.

The YCL-LJC’s view is that politics are an expression of the balance of class forces and what is going on in terms of the class struggle ‘on the ground’. While the strategy of a People’s Coalition should include a united strategy on how best to interact with elections, it is important not to think of a new left or even radical left political party as the solution on its own. With the NDP becoming increasingly intent on transforming itself into a pro-austerity party, many activists are starting to talk about new electoral formations. While recognizing that there are still sincere activists within the NDP, we welcome the growing recognition that the NDP has become an obstacle to extra-parliamentary struggle. In Ottawa, the opposition parties have proven almost totally ineffective in standing up to the Harper government, because on many fundamental principles they don’t disagree! So we should be cautious when it comes to creating a new political party that could end up repeating the same mistakes. Social democracy, with its emphasis on narrow electoralism, helped lay the ground-work for the current situation we find ourselves in, where working people do not have any voice in legislatures across the country. A People’s Coalition of labour and social movements with independent political demands for elections can ensure that it is not co-opted by electoralism. Direct participation in elections, running candidates or forming a party, needs to be based on united action in the streets.

The YCL-LJC supports the Communist Party of Canada in elections, and the Communist Party of Quebec and the YCL-LJC participate in Quebec Solidaire in Quebec. We see elections as an important arena for struggle, but they are not the primary arena where the balance of class forces are shaped and transformed. On the other hand, viewing bourgeois politics as something to fear interacting with in any way, leads to a rejection of this important arena for struggle altogether. Political parties are not necessarily the enemy; it is the capitalist class that controls them (at least most of them). As with electoralism, this is also a recipe for powerlessness in our movements.

Coming out of the People’s Social Forum, concrete plans on how to best increase the militancy and unity of the people’s fightback is the goal. Only with an immediate broad extra-parliamentary fightback will it be possible to defeat the Harper Tories in 2015 and move towards a real alternative. A People’s Coalition with an independent political program, united in an escalating action plan, and with labour at its core, has the potential to seriously shake the foundations of monopoly capitalist control over the economy; to curb corporate power and open the door towards further democratization of society and the economy. As young Communists, we see the longterm goal as Socialism; where working people are in the driver’s seat and capitalist exploitation is abolished.

The YCL-LJC sees the timing of the People’s Social Forum as full of promise. As mentioned, the stakes have never been higher, but also the level of struggle is increasing and the future is full of opportunity. We look forward to sharing our experience in the youth and student movement, and learning from committed activists and movements from across Canada. We can build and win together! The future is ours!