Canada - Call-out for the Third National Conference of Revolutionary Youth and Students

Montréal, March 1-2, 2014 This is the best time in over a generation to be a revolutionary. The objective conditions for the emergence of a genuine revolutionary movement in Canada exist. The Revolutionary Student Movement is part of an attempt to build up the subjective conditions—the self-conscious self-organization of communists—to a point where we can face the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities history is presenting us with. Right now, two interrelated phenomena have the potential to push the class struggle in Canada to a qualitatively higher level and we need to respond to both if we intend for this potential to be realized. On the one hand is the increasing rate at which young workers and students are spontaneously reaching communist conclusions in relative isolation from one another—sometimes culminating in the formation of small, independent groups on one campus or in one city—and which is ever-more-quickly creating the core, though still in its infancy, of the next generation of communist and anti-capitalist leaders. These forces, who in general embrace militancy and revolution while rejecting the reformism and revisionism they’ve seen come to nothing but failure, are themselves beginning to rally toward one another where once they were scattered. This tendency toward unity needs to be fostered so that it can expand, manifesting itself as unity in theory and practice. On the other hand is the perfusion among the masses generally of more advanced consciousness. Workers in record numbers are neglecting to participate in the bourgeoisie’s sham elections. Students in Québec showed again the power of unity, activity and militancy. First Nations are resisting the colonial appropriation of their territory and exploitation of their resources at the hands of capitalist enterprise with a frequency and militancy not seen in well over a decade. Though none of them absolutely correct in vision or strategy, they represent a growing discontent with the current state of affairs and indicate an opportunity for us to condense the most advanced among these tendencies into a coherent political line that can galvanize people into action. The masses have not been so ready to be won over to a revolutionary line for some time. Common to both these phenomena is their spontaneity. What we need now on the one hand is the ability to organize that spontaneity, to make it coherent, stable and permanent. On the other we need to provide revolutionary answers to the pressing questions of our day in order to make headway among proletarian students who are more and more staring down the barrel of graduation into an economy that has nothing to offer them but unemployment, debt, and a lifetime of barely getting by. This is not a matter we should leave to chance, it’s one we need to organize and prepare ourselves for. That preparation will require that we develop a robust theoretical approach, practical capacity, and organizational structure. These phenomena are the impetus and impulse for the nation-wide, united, revolutionary students’ movement we’re building. Imagine: a national organization, united around explicitly-communist politics and active in building a revolutionary movement with the breadth and depth necessary to actually challenge capitalism. An organization with systematized propaganda, coordinated campaigns, and a clear political perspective. An organization that can draw from the experiences of revolutionary organizers across the country, synthesize those experiences into strategy, and develop the theory and practice capable of moving significant sections of the masses into action. With this purpose in mind, the Revolutionary Students’ Movement is extending a call for all revolutionary youth and students to come together for the 3rd Conference of the Revolutionary Youth and Students! Scheduled for March, 2014 in Montréal, this conference aims to: Determine the necessary preconditions for founding a national organization Evaluate the current situation in light of those preconditions Outline the steps necessary for those preconditions to be met Following the 1st and 2nd conferences in Toronto and Ottawa, our network has expanded substantially in size and scope. Our work over the past months, whether organizing conscious communists or bringing our politics to the masses where we join them in the struggles they initiate, has generated significant gains and valuable lessons that should be systematized and this conference is the perfect opportunity to do that. Gone are the days where we content ourselves to hide our communist politics, sublimating them into one after another disjointed movement for social democratic reform. We have learned in the development of our respective struggles that, if we don’t make the case for communism, nobody will. We request that local organizations and individuals develop contributions toward these questions and submit them six weeks in advance of the conference for compilation into a document that will be distributed to those in attendance. Registration is now open. For more information, email conference@mer-rsm.com. Now is the time to push forward and create something that will change the political landscape on campus and beyond. It’s the time to move beyond the limitations of the world we were born into and start shaping that world for ourselves. It’s time to come into our own. It’s time to make history. See you in March.