DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

It is particularly among young workers and students that the revolutionary party can expect to recruit the best militants in the struggle for socialism. While often lacking experience in struggle, young workers and students are generally free from the demoralisation of past defeats. Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of youth can guarantee preliminary successes in the struggle and revitalise the best elements of the older generation.

Work among young people can be most effectively carried forward by a socialist youth organisation that is in political solidarity with the revolutionary socialist party but organisationally independent of it.

The independent socialist youth organisation can attract radicalising young people who are not yet ready to join a party, but who are willing and able to participate in a broad range of political actions together with the revolutionary party and its members. It can lead actions and take initiatives in its own name among young people. It can serve as a valuable training and testing ground for potential members of the party, and make it easier for them to acquire the political and organisational experience and theoretical education required for consistent revolutionary activity. Membership of the independent youth organisation enables young socialists to decide their own policies, organise their own actions, and learn from their own experiences.

An independent socialist youth organisation also has many advantages for the revolutionary socialist party itself. It helps the party to avoid acting as a youth organisation and reducing its political maturity and theoretical understanding to the less demanding levels of an organisation agreeable to broad layers of young people.

To facilitate the winning of young people to the revolutionary movement the Democratic Socialist Party actively supports, helps to build, and seeks the closest collaboration with Resistance, the independent socialist youth organisation that is in political solidarity with the DSP.