Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33, No. 2 4 March 1970

Revolutionary Socialists

Revolutionary Socialists

The American radical scene, then, is characterised by a major contradiction: at a period of the greatest upsurge for many years, the leadership of the three main streams, Antiwar, Black and Student struggles, are in deep crisis. In fact, all left-wing organisations except one are faced with crises of one sort or another at this point. The Panthers and the SDS have fragmented, Moratorium and New Mobe are bent on suicidal courses, the Communist Party is still scratching its head to find a way of launching a 'youth movement', the Maoists have split into several groups. What then are the aims of the only healthy group?

The Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) Convention which I attended grought together nearly one thousand activists from all over the country. Now larger than any faction of SDS, YSA leaders confidently expect the Alliance to more than double its membership in the next two years, largely among students. Recently several SDS branch leaders — and even whole chapters — joined the YSA en bloc, and more are expected to do so. The YSA magazine Young Socialist, already sells more copies than Monthly Review (an international left-wing journal of long standing) The Socialist Workers Party's Militant has surpassed the well-known Guardian's circulation. Nevertheless, there still remains a base for an old-style SDS — a loose radical formation — among America's seven million university students, and it is only a matter of time before something of this sort emerges.

YSA aims for mass action, democratic decision making, and non-exclusion in the anti-War movement; for control by blacks of their own communities and for the formation of a black political party; for support and participation in Chicano and Women's Liberation struggles; for defence of the Cuban Revolution, the Arab Revolution and the movement for Socialist Democracy in Eastern Europe; and support for the election campaigns of the Socialist Workers Party.

SWP/YSA's strategy is based on the analysis that the American working class, which has not engaged in militant action on a large scale since the mid-forties, will eventually be pressured by economic cutbacks into action again. They hope to be in the right places at the right moments to be large enough to take the lead in those struggles when they emerge and to build them into a mass revolutionary movement which can topple capitalist rule in America. This task is the most crucial in the history of the human race.