Discussion and debate: ultra-leftism and confidence in the people

How much faith should revolutionaries have in the working people and masses, to overthrow the system of capitalism and build a new society? It is an open debate, with Marxists and communists arguing strongly that there are both objective reasons (class struggle) and historic precedent for confidence in the working class majority. The view is not unanimously shared, however. Anarchists, such as Emma Goldman who is pictured left and who the quote below is from, are often much more cynical. Marxists have called-out these kind of approaches as "ultra-left" -- sounding very radical, but in practice promoting a sense of futility and hopelessness and leading to inaction. Writing in his notebook once, Lenin said "Anarchism is a product of despair." What do you think? How is Goldman's concept of freedom similar or different to that of Marxist concepts of freedom? How is it similar or different to the kind of conceptualization of freedom we hear on TV, at school or in political speeches?

All or nothing? The case for cross-Canada student unity.

Nora Loreto presents a hard-hitting commentary from the blog Rabble.ca about renewed claims of 16 CFS disaffiliations across Canada.  As has been said before, "Students have long rejected the parameters of Canada’s flawed Constitution, placing education as a provincial concern, and fought hard for a federal-level student movement... After smashing the CFS, what’s next? We would wake up with a horrible hangover and have to rebuild. At best, the defederation campaigns are an incredible waste of time and distraction; at worst they make all students, well beyond CFS members and including the Quebec’s student unions, incredibly vulnerable to the right’s agenda."  

Please note that not all the opinions expressed in this article are necessarily those of the Rebel Youth editorial board.

Lenin on elections and struggle

This article is part of an seven-part series of short quotes Rebel Youth is issuing about class struggle, revolution, civil-war, and parliamentary democracy. See also: Lenin on elections; the Communist Party of Canada on a counter-offensive against capitalism; Engels on voting and street fighting; Lenin on Democracy and Class struggle; Communist and Worker's parties on the struggle for socialism; and Lenin on tactics and guerilla war; the Communist Party of Canada on force, and a peaceful transition to socialism.

In Western Europe and America, parliament has become most odious to the revolutionary vanguard of the working class. That cannot be denied. It can readily be understood, for it is difficult to imagine anything more infamous, vile or treacherous than the behaviour of the vast majority of socialist and Social-Democratic parliamentary deputies during and after the war. It would, however, be not only unreasonable but actually criminal to yield to this mood when deciding how this generally recognised evil should be fought. (...) Certainly, without a revolutionary mood among the masses, and without conditions facilitating the growth of this mood, revolutionary tactics will never develop into action. In Russia, however, lengthy, painful and sanguinary experience has taught us the truth that revolutionary tactics cannot be built on a revolutionary mood alone. Tactics must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements. (...) It is very easy to show one’s "revolutionary" temper merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism, or merely by repudiating participation in parliaments; its very ease, however, cannot turn this into a solution of a difficult, a very difficult, problem. To attempt to "circumvent" this difficulty by "skipping" the arduous job of utilising reactionary parliaments for revolutionary purposes is absolutely childish. You want to create a new society, yet you fear the difficulties involved in forming a good parliamentary group made up of convinced, devoted and heroic Communists, in a reactionary parliament! Is that not childish?

From Lenin, Should we Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?