First Published: Documents of the First (Founding) Congress of the Communist Labor Party of the United States of North America, September 1974.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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As members of the working class, young workers in the USNA play an important role both in the work force itself and as part of the reserve army of unemployed for the USNA monopoly capitalist class. At the present time, the USNA state reports that nearly half of the entire population is under the age of 24. One third of the entire work force is between the ages of 16 to 24, and over half of all unemployed workers are between the ages of 16 and 24, with one fourth of the unemployed youth being national minority youth. In addition to those youth who are considered as part of the work force, that is those who have applied for jobs, at least an equal number is maintained as part of the permanent reserve army of the unemployed. This includes all those youth who are in school, in the military, in detention homes or jails, or walking the streets knowing the futility of looking for work.
Among the youth who are employed, the capitalist class often exploits them as a source of extra cheap labor, subjecting them to low paying, unskilled, back-breaking jobs that are dirty and hazardous to their health, stunting their growth and endangering their lives. Besides the youth that are recorded in the labor statistics, there are thousands of others under the age of 16 that are forced to work in the fields as rural proletarians or tenant farmers, in factories, in small shops and stores, in restaurants and hotels, etc., in order that their families can survive.
As the bourgeoisie steps up its preparations for another imperialist war and the establishment of fascism in the USNA in order to force the workers to fight in the war, we witness an increased drive of the bourgeoisie to kill the enthusiasm and fighting spirit of proletarian youth and win them over to fascist ideology. Further, youth are used as cannonfodder for the imperialist wars.
With the development of fascism, the younger generation of working class women, particularly national minority women, faces a specter of sterilization and genocide. Who can deny that the brutal sterilization of teenage Negro girls in Alabama is a clear indication of the plans of the capitalist class for the younger generation of proletarian women.
The only solution to the exploitation and oppression of youth in the USNA and to the stepped up fascist attacks on proletarian youth is socialist revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. We must imbue the masses of youth, particularly working class youth, with the ideals of communism. We must win all young workers away from fascist ideology and train them in the political struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation. We must use the youthful energy and enthusiasm, the militant fighting capacity of the youth to build the United Front Against Fascism and to wage a final assault against capitalism.
The Party resolves to fight around demands for:
1. Prohibition of work by children under 16.
2. Recognition and protection of the rights of young workers.
3. Equal pay for equal work.
Further, the Party realizes that in order to involve the masses of proletarian and other youth in the political struggle for the emancipation of the working class, we must establish an organizationally independent Young Communist League under the political direction of the Party. The Young Communist League is related to the Party in carrying out the Party’s work among the masses of youth, combining practical work with theoretical training and winning the masses of young workers to the struggle of the proletariat.
Therefore, our Party resolves to encourage the active development of a Young Communist League that is organizationally separate but politically united with the Party, in order that young workers can train themselves to be communists in the practical and theoretical movement of the proletariat for its emancipation. The YCL should operate according to the political and organizational principles enunciated by the Communist International for the Young Communist Leagues and their work among youth.