25th
Anniversary of the Death of Comrade Hardial Bains
August 24, 1997
The Work of Youth for Democratic
Renewal
- Alexandre Cubaynes -
 One of the most
important features of the work of Youth for
Democratic Renewal (YDR) is how we deal with the
fact that the youth and students are presented
with a very definite situation. The question is
posed: What must the youth and students do to
secure their future at this time? In other words,
the youth are organized by the very task emerging
out of the concrete conditions. They are not
organized according to some sectarian principles
imposed on the situation by some would-be
revolutionaries or reformers.
By dealing with the actual conditions of the
youth and students, and by posing the question
"What Next?" young people are expressing their
opinions to one another. There are some youth and
students who are already organized with very
definite ideas guiding their work. There are other
young people who are looking towards the YDR for
leadership and organization. There are those who
just want to participate in work or actions. What
brings them together and unites them is their
resolve to deal with the concrete conditions
facing the youth and students and to find ways to
open the path for their work.
Sectarianism in modern times is the most
reactionary thing there is. Every sectarian cares
only about the well-being of their own sect, and
subordinates the well-being of all to it. The real
world tells the youth that what is needed is to
subordinate all organizations and their work to
the success of the work to open the path forward
for the youth and students. The Youth Organizing
Project (YOP) Camps and other activities linked to
the work of Youth for Democratic Renewal,
including the participation in political affairs
during elections, have only one consideration: to
involve all youth and students to open a path for
themselves in order to secure their future. This
imparts to this work its most progressive
character.
Youth and students who participate in YDR work
and activities and YOP camps are called on to work
out their own opinions beforehand. This means that
events are used to deal with the problems of
organizing to achieve success, and not whether
this person's or that group's opinion is right or
wrong. The youth cannot afford to lose their
focus, their aim in getting together which is to
organize the events they decide to carry out. All
participants are called on to contribute their
creative energies to the success of this work.
Youth for Democratic Renewal is not just an
organization. It is also a way of looking at
things and doing them. All participants are called
upon not only to implement the decisions, but also
to participate in arriving at them. The entire
work of arriving at decisions and implementing
them places the participants in the position of
being both decision-makers and
decision-implementers. YDR and the YOP principles
and methods of work truly place everyone in a
position of equality and leadership. These are:
Learning Together
Working As a Collective
Taking Up Social Responsibility
The youth face conditions that are most
destructive to their economic and spiritual
well-being. Managers regularly demand that the
youth speed up at work, yet all the while they
must remain eternally grateful to have jobs! In
other words, they are forced to submit not only to
economic exploitation but also to the capitalist
dictate: Do not think of anything else except
"life" within this system. For all intents and
purposes, these youth feel as if they are on the
margins of society and life, which is materially
and spiritually devastating.
Youth organize picket against the glorification of
Nazism, Ottawa, August 21, 2021.
As if this were not enough, their concerns are
trivialized by those who speak about their
oppression not as an occasion to work for the
creation of a new society, which would guarantee a
secure future for them, but to harp at them to
aspire to having a bourgeois life minus all the
inconveniences that go along with it.
For the youth to secure a future, they must
fashion a profound life for themselves by being
fully involved in creating that new life. It is
this life of struggle and organizing that will
place them at the centre-stage of all developments
and provide them with the wherewithal to change
the situation.
Youth for Democratic Renewal is one such
prospect. The working class youth must be in the
forefront along with the student youth in building
Youth for Democratic Renewal as an indispensable
tool for the success of their work.
In 1996, Hardial Bains, with comradely affection,
wrote a letter to the youth who took up the
project of publishing Voice of Youth.
Congratulating them on their initiative under the
leadership of the Party, he wrote:
"Every new generation of youth has to learn to
take hold of the affairs of the society from the
older generation. This is certainly the case with
the present generation of young people. But what
will they learn and from whom? Will the new
generation of youth merely take hold of the
capitalist status quo and hope for the best? Or
will it actually create a society capable of
opening a path for the progress of the society?
The younger generation can guarantee a future only
if the path for the progress of society is opened.
 "It is quite clear
that the youth will have to learn not just to take
over from the older generation, but specifically
from that particular older generation that has
engaged itself throughout its lifetime in opening
the path for the progress of society. Such
learning involves work, and very specific work for
the progress of society. Your decision to publish
Voice of Youth is a step in the right
direction.
"While remaining loyal to the task of opening the
path for the progress of society, youth must be
extremely militant and broad-minded. Some will
decide to learn Contemporary Marxist-Leninist
Thought and join CPC(M-L), but they must not
permit any divisions in the youth collective on
this basis. They must forge the unity of the youth
as a collective for the progress of society."
Those who want to become Marxist-Leninist, and
more and more are coming forward as the
revolutionary ebb wreaks havoc on society and the
absence of political power is increasingly felt,
must ensure that while they become the future
cadres of CPC(M-L) they must be at the head of the
political struggle and seek the unity of the
entire collective of youth. Political struggle at
this time has taken the form of the defeat of the
anti-social offensive and the victory of the
pro-social program on the basis of making way for
democratic renewal. Youth must be in the front
ranks of this struggle, opposing any ghettoization
and marginalization, Comrade Bains pointed out.
Our organization has taken many successful
initiatives in the past and many more are needed at
this time. Basing ourselves on these past
achievements, I am sure that we will enter the new
school year ready to make our present initiatives to
expand our youth radio, discussion and work for
political empowerment successful as well.
|
