Contribution au 15^ème Séminaire communiste international
« Expériences passées et présentes dans le mouvement communiste international »
Bruxelles, 5-7 mai 2006
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

About the generation shift in Communist Party and Revolutionary Communist Youth.

Communist Party, Sweden

The Revolutionary Communist League, the Communist Party’s youth league, was founded a little more than ten years ago. It all started with just 30 members around our sports club, the Proletarian Football Club. During the 16 years our Party had existed before, it didn’t have any youth league.

From the start, the youth league grew fast and its membership reached more than 400 members. They were involved in antiwar activities and issues concerning the youth, especially questions dealing with working-class youth issues. Currently, the number of members is stagnant but it has not decreased. I will give you some numbers. Ten percent of the membership are into technical education courses preparing for jobs like construction workers, carpenters, car mechanics etc. Thirty-two percent already have blue-collar jobs. They are the older generation of the youth league.

Thirty-two percent are female members and among the delegates to the last congress, 25 percent were girls.

Last year, 34 members went to Venezuela, to the youth festival, and this year they are mobilising for a youth brigade to Cuba. Some years ago they sent teams to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

New, young members are recruited into the youth league and older members eventually become members of the Party. Some of them are organised in both. Some of the youth league members will eventually leave and become passive.

We value the work the RKU is doing among the youth as very important for the survival of the communist Party. We have to work both inside the Party and together with the youth league to reach out to the youth.

In order to prepare the generation shift in the Party itself we have a cadre school for younger (under 30) potential cadres who have taken direct responsibility in the leadership of Party branches. Each cadre school spans the period in between two congresses, which is three years. There are 25 students, and its is among these comrades we are planning to recruit most of the upcoming Central Committee and Executive Committee.

But we also know from experience that autodidacts, that have not been engaged in centralised education can pop up and take big responsibilities.

From the outset university students were slightly overrepresented and the composition tended to be a little "middle class." That has been corrected and now the majority is working class youth. Sorry to say there are just few female comrades in the cadre school. So that’s is a problem that we must deal with. A few of the cadre school students drop out because they feel the theoretical tasks are too difficult, but we cannot compromise on the theoretical level which has to be advanced for comrades who will take over from our generation.

However some adjustments have been made to the curriculum of the Party's cadre school. Now there is more stress on practical issues like how to lead a party branch, how to make good agitation and propaganda speeches, how to hold lectures, how to make leaflets, how to debate with demagogical political opponents and how to do researches and reports in the social field. Comrades were given the task to investigate and report about the Swedish segregation, for example.

So we see this cadre school as an important part in working for the planned shift of generations. During our last Party congress in January 2005 we elected a Central Committee that is composed of a total of 24 members: 19 ordinary and five deputy members. There were three younger comrades elected under 30 years of age and one under 40 years. In the three coming congresses we are planning for a real generation shift in the Central Committee. We have now at least 10 younger comrades under 30 who have demonstrated the qualities to sit on the CC. But to avoid a too sudden shake-up our plan is to elect at least five younger comrades, under 30 years, to the CC each coming congress for the next decade--if our congress decides so at least. This is a strategic task.

Again some words about our youth league.

We see our youth league, as just a youth league. Sometimes young comrades tended to see their own youth league as a mini party, out of respect for the real Party. So they sometimes mechanically copied forms and methods from the party. This is a wrong point of view. The youth league should deal primarily with youth issues and be a base for recruitment into the Party. We cannot have the same requirements for members of the youth league as we have for older party members. Our youth league is open to members of as young as 12-14 years. At the same time there are members that are ten years older and who are outgrowing the youth league. So the political knowledge and experience differs a lot among the members. Older members in the youth league are the " youth leaders".

With sometimes very young members it is inevitable that the different branches of our youth league can be more unstable in organisational and political terms, than our party branches. So emphasis is laid to a strong central and organisational leadership of the youth league. To lead and give guidance to the local branches is a central task. Most members leave the youth league when they are in the early 20s up to mid 20s when they get jobs, and in many cases join the party. But for the leaders of the youth league there are higher age limits. In the earlier days of our youth league the chairpersons already left when they were 23-25 years. Now the youth league set the age limit for them at 27-28-29 years, because it would be a pity if the youth league would not be able to benefit from their experience. So now chairpersons leave about five years later.

The youth league was attacked by a reactionary offensive in the fall 2004. The anticommunist campaign from reactionary circles pressed the social democratic government to stop all public funding to the youth league. In Sweden almost all youth organisations are funded from government, or municipal funds. Often up to 90 percent of their budgets comes from these sources. Our youth league received on a yearly basis 45,000 euro. This funding was stopped overnight in December 2004. As a measure to overcome this problem, the youth league set up some kind of sponsorship program and people can donate sums like 10 to 30 euros each month. This measure has been able to to keep the organisation intact, thanks also to a strong leadership and the help of the Communist Party.

It is an important task for our Party to tackle the problems with the generation shift, to take appropriate measures and encourage a young proletarian core, based on Marxism –Leninism, in due time, not waiting for it to rise spontaneously.

Erik Anderson , international secr.

Communist Party , Sweden