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The Tasks of the Youth Leagues

Vladimir Lenin’s

The Tasks of the Youth Leagues

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Written: October 2, 1920

Source: Collected Works, Volume 31

First Published: Pravda Nos. 221, 222 and 223,October 5, 6 and 7, 1920
Online Version: marx.org in 1997, marxists.org 1999
Transcribed: Colin S. Cavell
HTML Markup: Brian Baggins and David Walters

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Speech Delivered At The Third All-Russia Congress of The Russian Young Communist League [1]

(The Congress greets Lenin with a tremendous ovation.) Comrades, today I would like to talk on the fundamental tasks of the Young Communist League and, in this connection, on what the youth organisations in a socialist republic should be like in general.

It is all the more necessary to dwell on this question because in a certain sense it may be said that it is the youth that will be faced with the actual task of creating a communist society. For it is clear that the generation of working people brought up in capitalist society can, at best, accomplish the task of destroying the foundations of the old, the capitalist way of life, which was built on exploitation. At best it will be able to accomplish the tasks of creating a social system that will help the proletariat and the working classes retain power and lay a firm foundation, which can be built on only by a generation that is starting to work under the new conditions, in a situation in which relations based on the exploitation of man by man no longer exist.

And so, in dealing from this angle with the tasks confronting the youth, I must say that the tasks of the youth in general, and of the Young Communist Leagues and all other organisations in particular, might be summed up in a single word: learn.

The Darién Gap

Darién Gap

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Coordinates: 7°54′N 77°28′W / 7.90°N 77.46°W / 7.90; -77.46

The Darién Gap is a large swath of undeveloped swampland and forest separating Panama (Central America) and Colombia (South America). It measures just over 160 km (99 mi) long and about 50 km (31 mi) wide. It is not possible to cross between South America and Central America by land without passing through the Darién Gap. Roadbuilding through this area is expensive, and the environmental toll is steep. Political consensus in favor of road construction has not emerged. There is no road connection through the Darién Gap connecting North/Central America with South America. It is therefore the missing link of the Pan-American Highway.

Register to vote in California if you are an out-of-state college student

This month marks about a year, give or take a few months, since I became a California voter.  The laws about out-of-state college students registering to vote are surprisingly little known, and I had to find a posting on an activist blog like this one before I mailed in my registration form without fear of committing election fraud.

So I thought I would share my positive feelings about being able to vote from my school.  First off, it’s easier than voting absentee from another state.  And since after moving to Cali from out-of-state you would have to fill out a form to update your mail voter address anyway, why not just re-register here?  You get the added bonus of being able to vote in physical locations, not having your vote lost in the mail, and actually getting to participate in politics where you LIVE.  And it is legal.  I have voted in two elections and been appointed to a county central committee, all using my campus address.

To summarize:  you can vote in California even if you aren’t a resident for tuition purposes.  You are only required to be domiciled here, which means that this is the state that you sleep in on most nights.  When I registered, I used my campus address as my home address and my mail room box for my mailing address.  You don’t need one of those home addresses that get mail.  Just pick up a registration form and fill it out like any other resident.

Get it done in winter in case you forget later.

“The CSU is being run on a GM business plan”

Last night I tuned into KPFA and heard an interview with a professor at a protest of a meeting of the CSU board of trustees.  She said that it was unrealistic for the board to expect the state to give them more money.  GM can be bailed out by the government, but the real job-creator–higher education–can’t.  They both have a hierarchical organization:  in GM the executives are at the top, followed by the middle managers, then the designers, engineers and production line workers; in the CSU the board of trustees and university presidents are on top, followed by deans, professors, and students and staff on the bottom.  To deal with the budget crisis, the trustees and presidents get to keep all of their salaries, the professors take a 10% pay cut in the form of furloughs, and the students continue to have their fees raised year after year, and classes cut to the point that what was once the best bargain in higher education is now unaffordable to some, even with student loans.

To fix this “business plan” I propose the following:

• Slash the salaries of the Chancellor, Trustees and Presidents and take back their free-rent houses and other perks to cut costs and generate more revenue.
• Freeze salary increases for professors.
• Get rid of superfluous spending on street sweepers, security vehicles etc…
• Use the money saved to lower student fees to the pre-budget-crisis level, end furloughs, hire enough faculty to teach the courses students need to graduate on time, admit all qualified students and have enough fairly paid staff to keep college livable.

Left-wing views of the healthcare reform bill

1. International Socialist Organization (socialistworker.org)

The International Socialist Organization has a negative view of HR 3962.  An article from Socialist Worker emphasizes that treachery of the democrats and points to the aspects of the bill that will force working-class people to buy crappy health insurance plans by law, effectively subsidize the insurance industry, take abortion rights backward, and altogether make healthcare worse.  Further in the article, the expansion of Medicaid is also criticized because it would fall on state governments who are likely to place more restrictions on enrollment in return.  The overall attitude of the article toward the future of the reform is negative, basically taking the view that the democrats will sell out at any opportunity.

2.Communist Party (peoplesworld.org)

The Communist Party, USA has a different tone on the bill, but not necessarily a different take.  Their editorial article in the Peoples World bullet points what they see as positive aspects of the bill:

• “bans on the much-hated denial of coverage based on preexisting conditions, and lifetime coverage caps.
• a public insurance option to compete with private plans in a new insurance exchange for people who don’t have employer coverage.
• Medicaid expansion to provide free health care to all Americans with incomes below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.”

The article finds nothing wrong with subsidies to help people buy health insurance, lists the reversal of Medicare privatization as a plus, and cites advancement in women’s health by banning the classification of rape, Cesarean section, domestic abuse and pregnancy as “pre-existing conditions”.  However, the anti-choice Stupak amendment is slammed as an effort by the corporations to derail the entire reform effort and it seems as though there is little hope for reform to take place as long as it remains.

3. Solidarity (US) (solidarity-us.org)

An article on the webzine of “Left Regroupment” group Solidarity has a well written and sober analysis of the healthcare bill.  In addition to the major problems with the restrictions on a woman’s right to choose , to this author it all boils down to hyperinflation.  This is due to more business going to the insurance industry with no regulations.  As he puts it: “Premiums for subsidized and other insurance will continue rising, since insurers and providers mutually benefit from higher premiums.”  There is also a call to action to protest any reform that violates universality through restrictions on abortion and illegal immigrants and to build a national movement for some form of single-payer system.

The three articles all present the same common sense analysis that the bill distinctly falls short, but the political lines of these organizations can also be seen in the emphasis given to different parts of the bill.  The ISO is completely pessimistic about reform, finding nothing positive in any of the process, although they try to bad mouth the republican opposition equally with the dems.  The CPUSA has continued their trend of avoiding criticism of the democrats as a whole to support conception of a union led political coalition, since the AFL-CIO was extremely supportive of the bill.  Their article makes the abortion issue the main target for activism in the bill, rather than the subsidy of the private insurance industry that the democrats were elected to fight.  Solidarity’s perspective hits the nail on the head in its logic, but misses some relevance by emphasizing the effects of hyperinflation that are unlikely to occur for some years even if the bill becomes law.  What I do agree with is the need for a militant, national movement for a single payer system.

The civil rights movement was only won through years of constant protest, and a single payer system won’t be any different.  Just as the civil rights movement won rights to vote for representation, the single payer movement should be for the right to representatives who aren’t bought by the healthcare monopolies.  The protests at Joe Lieberman’s offices are a good start, they just need to grow.

Who I’m voting for on November 3rd

Since the blog is can be found at “vallejoleft” I thought it would be a good idea to make a post on the politics of Vallejo.  I should make a disclaimer that the address “vallejoleft” doesn’t imply that I represent the views of any movement, ideology or organization or anyone other than myself.  I am simply a progressive who lives in Vallejo.

For school board there seemed to be many qualified candidates, but I thought the most qualified was Adrienne Waterman .  Ruscal J. Cayangyang also seemed very sharp and he has the advantage of being a student of Vallejo schools recently.  My third choice is a tossup between two incumbents, Hazel A. Wilson and Cris Oggee Villanueva.  I’m leaning toward Wilson now because I haven’t seem very much about Villanueva.

On the council side, deciding was easier.  Johnathan Logan, Jr. is an extremely capable candidate who wants to start his political career in Vallejo.  I am also voting for Marie “Punkie” Nelson by process of elimination because the rest of the serious candidates seem to have antagonistic relationships with organized labor which I don’t think are constructive.  Two of them voted for bankruptcy.

My reaction to the October 17th peace march and rally

I attended the this rally on Saturday in San Francisco, which is the first one I’ve been to that was organized by a federation called the “National Assembly” rather than by A.N.S.W.E.R. or United for Peace and Justice.   I like how all of the different anti-war factions that call themselves a movement have finally decided to organize together instead of competing with each other.  The big problem with A.N.S.W.E.R. in my opinion is that through its existence it has always been dominated by only one political group, either the “Workers World Party” or the “Party for Socialism and Liberation”.  Thus, people who aren’t too fond of those organizations probably didn’t put their best effort into building those demonstrations.  I personally thought that the appointed speakers and MCs from A.N.S.W.E.R. were too faux radical sounding, like “ARE YOU READY TO FIGHT FOR PALESTINE?!!!!! Now please stay behind the yellow tape.”

This march and rally was a welcome change from those days and I appreciated the speakers’ list at the rally that didn’t give preference to any one group.  It was smaller than any of the peace rallys I’ve been to previously, but I think this is more because most people think the war is winding down than the change of sponsor.   And Boots Riley was great.

If there isn’t any progress on bringing soldiers home from Iraq, insh’allah there will be a bigger anti-war rally in the spring.  But the anti-war movement (or anti-movement?) has to face the challenge now of calling protests against the occupation of Afghanistan, and pay the price for focusing only on Iraq for the past 6 years.

Single payer healthcare or a public option?

The most democratic, socially responsible and cost effective solution for heath care would be a single payer system, but many left wing advocates of single payer don’t see how a robust public option and expanded Medicaid could strike large blow to the for-profit health care industry.  If the political battle against the insurance and pharmaceutical companies can’t be won immediately, we can at least strike our enemies with the strength we have.  The entire health-care debate shouldn’t be framed in terms of single-payer-government-run vs. multiple-insurance-plans-chaos.  The push for reform now is a historic opportunity to decrease the role of large corporations in the most essential of public services.  The most unfortunate aspect is the lack of leadership President Obama has shown in by not constantly insisting on the need for a strong public option.  I don’t know how it’s fitting into any of the bills so far, but I think increased Medicaid is essential to reducing acute health-care costs.

Lets win this!

BART strike could make people think more about transit alternatives

The BART strike scheduled for Monday morning will likely increase ridership on the ferries from Vallejo, Oakland and Marin County, says a self-sourcing blogger. In fact, it should make people think more about the transportation choices they have in addition to just driving and BART. According to their website, the Vallejo ferry is adding 3 trips to both the morning and evening commutes. The Alameda/Oakland ferry is almost doubling its departures from 7 to 12 daily. Caltrain will operate its regular service.

People from San Francisco and Daly City will be given lots of time to reflect on how they have no other option but already overcrowded highways, and a slow and overcrowded MUNI.

I personally only like to use BART for longer distance travel because streetcars and buses can always get me closer to where I’m going and let me see more of the city, rather than just going from point a to point b like a drone. And nothing beats the atmosphere of a ferry.

Hopefully cycling will grow in popularity.

My overall opinion is that the public should support the BART strike, as they would want the support of the BART workers in a strike, realize how much the rest of the Bay Area’s transit systems need improvement, and demand it in case something more serious than a strike were to happen to BART.