Marxism and Youth

“Let the liberals and terrified intellectuals lose heart after the first genuinely mass battle for freedom, let them repeat like cowards: don’t go where you have been beaten before, don’t tread that fatal path again. The class-conscious proletariat will answer them: the great wars in history, the great problems of revolutions, were solved only by the advanced classes returning to the attack again and again—and they achieved victory after having learned the lessons of defeat.” (Lenin)

Inextinguishable light of Marxism

The working class youth and those young people who are discontented with capitalist society today need Marxism more than ever. Capitalist system is escalating social maladies it created to unbearable levels, darkening the lives of the working masses day by day. The kind of life offered by capitalism to them is full of anxieties and worries which is in sharp contrast to the world it has decorated with bright lights of technological innovations. Although it is often said that future belongs to the young, there is no happy future for those millions of young people under capitalism.

However it is possible to put an end to this and objective conditions for this task are extremely maturated. The possibility to create a world in which man does not exploit man, in which all kinds of inequalities, repression and malice originating from the existence of classes and class differences are eradicated, lies within our reach. The only thing to realise this possibility is to wake up to this reality, get organised and fight. But the whole bourgeoisie around the world is carrying on an offensive through ideological bombardment against the ideal of socialism and its theoretical weaponry provided by Marxism to reach this ideal. Thus most of the young all over the world who can be won over to the cause of the working class and the fight for revolution lead their lives without noticing that once they get organised to overthrow capitalism they would have a tremendous power. They thrash about in a quagmire of an already rotten social order and this is called “life”!

Likewise Prometheus of mythology who saved man from darkness, hunger and cold by stealing fire from Gods, Marxism has given the proletariat, the most revolutionary class of entire human history, the scientific light, the beacon of communism required to change the world. Prometheus’ act was a symbol of noble struggle for freedom and of creative genius of humankind. Marxism too is the fire required for the working masses in order them to reach a new social order glowing with freedom and social prosperity by putting an end to the conditions of capitalist society, i.e. an unbearable exploitation and oppression. By slandering socialism and stigmatizing those committed to Marxism as dinosaurs, capital attempted to extinguish the fire that illuminates the road to liberation of the working masses. Therefore, the oppressed and the young across the world have been drifted into darkness as if almost a midnight in the century, in such a pessimism that results in almost entirely losing the hope for a better future. As signs of such a dark era there appeared various problems, since particularly 80s, such as degeneration of society and youth, loss of positive values, ascendancy of egotism, decline of the sentiment of social solidarity and sharing, alienation to political struggle.

Although some are carrying these signs to absurd points so as to lose hope for future of humanity or put the blame for social degeneration on the young, we know that all these pessimist approaches are product of either lack of consciousness or insidious ideological attacks. In the final analysis, as similar epochs in history show us, current dark period is no more than a parenthesis in the course of history. Apart from illuminating the road to emancipation of humanity, Marxism, with its historically optimist essence, tells that dark epochs determined by assaults of exploiting classes will end sooner or later. Although we are passing through bad times due to the attacks of the world bourgeoisie, the fire of Marxism will never burn out or be put out unless there is the anger flaring up against social inequality and injustice, and the proletariat which grows day by day.

As part of neo-liberal attacks that began in 1980s the world bourgeoisie pushed for the reign of a moral system of values in which the idea of social emancipation was now out of fashion and that each individual must quarrel selfishly for his/her own liberation was promoted. Bourgeois ideology embarked on annihilating the ideals of the youth over transforming society in order to prevent the young generation of workers from getting equipped with a rebellious world view that would lead them to join the struggle to overthrow capitalism. Capitalist mass media was portraying those young people having ideals as nearly having a mental disorder. The life style recommended to the young generation was to live on a daily basis with a philosophy tuned only to saving their own skins and succeed in getting along in a so-so manner without letting themselves occupied with questions about past and future of human society. Later collapse of the so-called socialist regimes, particularly the Soviet Union, was used as an excuse by capital to proclaim frequently that socialism and Marxism were dead. During this period of offensive that was experienced as a series of shocks, revolutionary consciousness and organisation slid back with a vengeance. The perception of the world of the workers and the young who are supposed to be discontented with capitalist order blurred, they felt as if they fell into a vacuum and became dazed. Oppressed, exploited and sighing under persecution, the workers and the working class youth experienced a temporary eclipse of mind and a dreadful slide of consciousness.

In reality there was no objective ground to abandon hope from struggle for socialism and perceive the new period as a period of shiny capitalist rise. But unfortunately this perception prevailed for a certain period of time. Yet dialectical understanding of history which can be attained through Marxism was pointing to an entirely different reality: whenever a social system carries on a ruthless ideological offensive, that actually implies conditions in which it loses its historical justification and is in decline. On the other hand, such historical periods are eras during which the oppressed and exploited masses at first appear weakest. This is a twilight zone in which they do not carry any more hope for future out of this worn-out social order they are living in, but also waver with utmost bewilderment because the consciousness about how to build the future and the level of organisation is still too weak. Although we are leaving behind the most severe part of such a dark period, its general influence and traces of scars it created continue. However these traces will disappear, the youth of the working class and of revolutionary struggle will inevitably start shaking capitalist system with their new rebellious wave from all sides. In Engels’ words, there is no great historical destruction left uncompensated with a progress.

There is one thing clear for Marxists, which is that today imperialist-capitalist system has started to reveal its true face to broad masses all over the world in a way that is impossible to hide. This system which drives millions of people to hunger, poverty, unemployment, ignorance, degeneration and unjust imperialist war conditions has already deserved to be thrown into the garbage bin of history. Future belongs to socialism, though whole bourgeois of the world get tight-united and shout at the top of their voice that socialism and Marxism are dead, they can never and never change this reality. Finally we are witnessing the beginning of the dawn of a new revolutionary rise. Marxism is calling on the young people full with rage against injustice capitalist order has created to struggle. Revolutionary world view of the working class shows the way out from material and moral enslavement in which all the oppressed till today have suffered. There is no other thing which will make the lives and future of the young more valuable and meaningful than the honour of joining the revolutionary struggle to overthrow this decrepit order.

No liberation on your own!

For the young generation of revolutionary struggle there is much to learn from the lives and struggles of the founders of Marxism and other revolutionary leaders who followed their road. Marx and Engels devoted their lives to providing a theoretical basis for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and equipping this struggle with a scientific ideology. For example, Marx led a hard life devoted to revolutionary struggle with pride and passion, breaking away from the conditions in which he could continue a rich and comfortable life if he wanted. With great passion he jumped into the hard fight against all kinds of reaction, political and social oppression. In fact, it cannot be thought otherwise that a great revolutionary like Marx would choose a comfortable life departing from his ideals.

Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, in her memories, says that the Bolshevik leader who devoted his life to emancipation of the working class was a revolutionary Marxist and collectivist with all his heart. His emotions and thoughts are marked by fighting resolve for the victory of socialism. All kinds of narrow-mindedness, evil, revengefulness, conceit, jealousy, which are peculiar to individualists bound to petty-possession, are alien to Lenin. Years that passed with not only efforts to organise the working class but also with effort of educating himself as a genuine communist, created the revolutionary Lenin who considered becoming a collectivist, a working class fighter an immense source of happiness. A young revolutionary equipped with Marxist world view and tempered in struggle will enjoy life which, thanks to this, is made meaningful, and feel honoured besides carrying on the fight energetically. Such a youngster with passion of becoming a genuine communist will advance with great leaps in succeeding to purify himself/herself from illnesses of petty-bourgeois character such as conceit, jealousy and individualism caused by capitalist society.

In a composition he wrote in his very early youth Marx rebelled against bourgeois ideology that preaches to indulge in narrow selfishness and seek individual self-salvation. And today, while bourgeoisie is endeavouring to blur the consciousness of the young in the same manner, it is on the other hand trying to snatch the flag of rebel which threatens this outrageous order from their hands by declaring Marxism dead.

Marxism demonstrated in the brightest and clearest way that, let alone individual liberation, a young worker deprived of the flag and weapon of struggle can be nothing but a wage slave under the command of capital. Preaching “individual liberation” or “individualisation” may make sense in the world of bourgeois elements and their well-off children. The only “individual liberation” capitalist order can offer to the working class and the youth that will be mostly the workers of the future regardless of their education level, is the “happiness” of finding a job and serve under the command of capital! Yet wage slave can never realise his own individuality under the command of capital, on the contrary negates it. The conditions in which he works and lives produce not satisfaction but discontent.

Young worker cannot improve his mental and physical qualities under capitalism. This system offers him such conditions that erode and destroy his soul and body. He is as if an appendage of capital as long as he works, and he can never sense his individuality. The only chance he has to be himself and feel his own existence is his spare time. Yet, especially nowadays, with capital organising all aspects of life including spare time, this chance has also evaporated and mixed to air. Thus; stuck into blind alley of unconsciousness and unable to take an opposing attitude towards the life style imposed by capitalism, he is transformed into a puppet of capital in every hour of his life. Therefore, contrary to the lie that Marxism is out of date, all youth having contradictions with capitalism need to embrace not the empty word of “individualisation” in order to be themselves but embrace with all their hearts the collectivist and revolutionary ideas of Marxism.

Contrary to deliberate distortions of bourgeois ideology, the individual is self-evidently the social being. Even at times when some doings of life do not appear as social, i.e. in the sense that they are carried out in association with other people, the very existence of the individual is in reality an expression of social life. However, an erroneous understanding that individual emancipation is in conflict with social emancipation has come into existence under class society that ruins the harmony between man and man and between man and nature, and under capitalism that has escalated these contradictions flowing from this to utmost point.

Yet communism, as Marx remarked, is the genuine resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. It is the riddle of history solved. Classless society of future will be a society where irreconcilable conflicts between man and nature, and between man and man are abolished, the feelings of man are humanised in the real sense of the word and harmonised with his social and natural essence. The ill-fated masses trying to lead their lives under the exploitation and oppression of capitalism will only have the chance to sense the blossoming of their personalities and feel the satisfaction of their material and moral needs when they overthrow capitalism and head towards classless society. Classless society will be a social stage where individual and social interests are harmonised, the noblest humane principles are adopted and these values are turned into indispensable parts of life. This is the future that the youth of the working masses must have and current task of this youth should be to set off at once to conquer this future!

The place of youth

It would be a useless effort to try to analyse the place of youth in class struggle in capitalist society, which is divided into two main classes, lumped into one whole. Because juvenility is not a class position on its own, it consists of a section of society crossing all classes according to age groups. If we put aside those elements who do not adopt their own class position and reject it consciously, young sections of every class are in the final analysis conditioned and shaped by social conditions of that class. Today, in all capitalist countries, beside the youth that belong to the bourgeois class, constituting a minority, there is a youth of the working class that grows in parallel with the growth of the working class, constitutes the majority and joins largely the army of the unemployed. At present petty-bourgeoisie occupies a smaller place in comparison with the old times when peasantry and petty ownership were widespread and self-employed people did not yet lose their privileges. Today we can generally see that the proletariat has reached an overwhelming majority in capitalist society when we take into consideration civil servants, who are erroneously regarded as part of petty-bourgeoisie but in reality must be included in the working class, high skilled workers, who are also obliged to maintain their lives by selling their labour power to capital, and sections of rural areas who are long proletarianised.

As the intermediate class in capitalist society the petty-bourgeoisie is still a source of some important problems from the point of revolutionary struggle of the working class. However, the reason for this is not that it constitutes a big part of society objectively as in the old times. Today; this intermediate class position is a matter on its own in that it reflects a widespread and average mentality which penetrates as if into the cells of capitalist social life. This common mentality is like an ocean which covers an overwhelming majority of society from people who belong to petty-bourgeois sections proper to even those bourgeois who, despite having turned into bourgeois, cannot get rid of their petty-bourgeois habits, and to those millions of workers who, due to lack of consciousness, are gripped in a way of life and values which are rightfully described as petty-bourgeois. Since young sections form a big part of this enormous human mass, they are considered a petty-bourgeois section on their own in commonplace views.

What we have said about class nature of youth in capitalist society is in general valid for student youth as well. Besides, the composition of student youth and particularly university youth is changing through years and the impacts of this change are clearly observed among the student movement. When we take into consideration the assault of capital against social gains of the working class, cuts in social expenditure, diminishing wages of the working class, unemployment, constantly increasing fees, it is clear that class structure of university youth has become more bourgeois within years. Subjective reflection of this objective change is regression at the level, range and forms of action of the university youth in comparison with the past. These factors show also the deepening separation between the proletarian and bourgeois elements of youth. Differences between the situation of the university youth in the past when this separation was not so pronounced, and the situation at present are natural as long as they are expressions of the change in social reality.

In order to prevent youth from getting interested in social matters the bourgeoisie is conducting a systematic propaganda activity proclaiming as outdated the values like social awareness, solidarity and sharing. Youth is crumbling away in the vortex of degenerated and empty way of life capitalism seeks to pass off as modern. Thousands of youth who are doomed to unemployment by capitalism, are enslaved by the brainwashing operations of bourgeois media and are dulling their lives instead of utilising their energies and hopes in a revolutionary struggle. Therefore, while ghettos accumulate the powder of revolutionary explosion, at the same time they are home to unemployed youth who lose their class identity by imitating bourgeois way of life and may become the mass base for reactionary and chauvinist political currents like fascism.

Starting from the time when they are freshest, the brains of the student youth are sought to be atrophied in a way to waste them in the blind alleys of struggling for individual survival. A very unpleasant fate awaits the youth unless they become conscious of these insidious and systematic offensive of rotten capitalist system, which became aggravated especially in last decades, and join the revolutionary struggle as the only way to realise in a self-respecting way­ their own existence. Their soul will be taken away in a merciless marathon in which they are compelled to race with each other and thus they will completely become alien to their own selves and they will be transformed into an obedient mass of workforce under capital’s command. This is the bare reality behind the intention of bourgeois ideology of trapping student youth with tales of better education, a bright career in order to keep them away from revolutionary ideas and political struggle. While trying to discredit Marxism as a scientific worldview, which is needed by youth to create a better future, the bourgeoisie is endeavouring to attract young people to its own side with “Science” wrapped almost with a holiness halo.

Science can never be neutral in a society which is dominated by wage slavery. Capitalist system puts all gains of science and technology at the service of the bourgeoisie. Every new invention is used by imperialist-capitalist powers to put oppressed classes under more pressure and control in a subtler way and perfect the imperialist war machines. Under capitalism, science and technology, which will be at the service of society in a world without classes and exploitation, are under slavery of the ruling bourgeoisie. So long as the domination of the bourgeoisie goes on, science and technology will continue to be a means for oppressing the working class and toilers at large. The sole historical action that will rescue science and technology from the shackles of capitalist profit order is the proletarian revolution. Science and technology will be developing freely in the direction of the benefits of all humanity under a workers’ power, i.e. most complete and boundless democracy, and the ruling proletariat will use its technical and intellectual powers for abolishing all kinds of exploitation and putting an end to all wars.

In order to attract young people, bourgeois ideology, in its struggle to keep capitalism alive, makes promises of a false happiness like “a good education, a good future”. It is advised that an educated young person should seek individual success so that he/she can reach an enjoyable position in society. Yet, analysing and exposing the nature of capitalism scientifically, Marxism shows that realities sharply contradict such “glittering” promises. Without ignoring class differentiation among youth in general and students in particular, let us point to an important issue that involves the young to a great extent. In fact capitalism turns human practice into alienated objects. It causes a general alienation of human beings by reducing the relations between them to the level of trade relations based on commodity exchange. By becoming alienated to its own labour, to the product of his labour and to others, man in reality becomes alienated to himself, to his own nature. And thus he becomes chained to live in a sphere of alienation. This situation, which is a product of capitalist society, is a reality that young people usually come to sense in their student days. Moreover, obvious injustices that capitalist system exhibits incite those young people’s feelings not dulled yet by capitalist order. Thus, student youth usually carry more or less rebellious feelings against capitalist social order. However, in the final analysis, class basis plays a fundamental role in taking a really consistent, resolute revolutionary attitude against capitalism as opposed to a mere passing fancy.

What is needed today for a genuine anti-capitalist youth movement to develop is precisely an ideological clarification, and not covering up the ideological differences which reflect class distinctions. For instance, at present, anarchism is promoted as a temporary kind of radicalism and pumped into student movement by bourgeois elements. And bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements who lost themselves at the dead-end streets of a fake anti-imperialism, which is essentially nationalism, serve to make seemingly left and right political currents meet. On the other side a petty-bourgeois leftism which appears as sharp revolutionary isolates itself due to sectarian attitudes among student movement and gets the sympathising young people rapidly tired. Under these conditions it is necessary for the consistent and dynamic elements of the student youth to free themselves from bourgeois and petty-bourgeois kinds of leftism. These young people can create a powerful and lasting youth movement only if they adopt the internationalist revolutionary path of the proletariat which has the potential to change the world. It is a must to carry on a persevering ideological, political and organisational effort to this end and this is not a concern of only the students who have adopted this perspective but at same time and mainly of the revolutionary proletarian movement.

The young have no interest in the continuation of this senile capitalist order, which makes millions of people on earth suffer in pain, and the path to be taken by them in order to win the future is evident. Liberation of the oppressed, exploited, despised and suppressed is only possible through the revolutionary struggle of the working class. As the class distinctions in society become clearer and grasped, the proletariat and young generation of proletarian struggle will in increasing numbers cling to revolutionary class line and bourgeois youth will be ageing in a degenerated culture of life. They will wave higher the flag of rebel raised by the revolutionary proletariat against capitalist society with their fresh minds, jubilant hearts and strong courage. Lines of Communist Manifesto will be the oath of the revolutionary youth: Instead of the age old bourgeois society with its classes and class conflicts, we will build a new society in which free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all.

The path of revolutionary youth is Marxism

Marxism provides guidance to the working class not only for it to defend its own economic interests but to fight against all kinds of oppression, all kinds of exploitation in society. Workers equipped with Marxism, armed with an internationalist communist understanding of struggle and organisation, will join the struggle to defend interests of all toilers, change entire society from top to bottom, building a world in which future generations will live in peace and happiness. Revolutionary youth, only when they adopt this struggle perspective of the working class can make their rebellious feelings against capitalist society really meaningful, and devote their whole faith and energy to creating a massive revolutionary movement. As the revolutionary history of working class shows us, what is needed is a meeting and merging of revolutionary workers’ movement and revolutionary youth movement on the rock solid basis of Marxism in order to beat the monster of capitalism.

Lenin, the leader of the great October Revolution, pointed out the situation of the proletariat torn by the domination of anarchic competition in bourgeois world, oppressed by capital due to bound labour, pushed permanently down to abyss, misery, vagrancy and humiliation. The proletariat could unite millions of toilers as an army of the working class only by strengthening its ideological unity on the basis of the principles of Marxism and by the material unity of organisation, thus becoming an unbeatable force. Indeed the proletariat has no other weapon than its organisation in its fight for power. Unless organised, workers are nothing despite their whole revolutionary historical potential. And likewise, in spite of their all rebellious feelings, audacity and boldness, unorganised youth will be nothing either.

Those left political currents that attach too much importance to individualist heroism, however a noble goal as it may appear to the young, lack the collective struggle capacity of a revolutionary class. Political tendencies that exalt individualist heroism are in reality reflections of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. This kind of tendencies rests on not Marxism but idealism. When Lenin, one of the greatest revolutionists grasped this reality in his young age, embraced Marxism and laid the foundations of the Bolshevik line of the working class by setting apart his path from Narodnism, the petty-bourgeois revolutionism of the old generation.

Lenin demanding proper respect for heroism of the first generation of Narodniks that lit the first revolutionary fire in Russia was reminding young revolutionists on every occasion that revolutionary struggle can be waged by not sentimentality but by scientific faith. It is surely a good thing for the young to have revolutionary ideals. However, if these ideals are not tied to the realities that are manifestations or embodiments of class antagonisms, and to the struggle perspectives of the revolutionary class, they will remain unfounded and lose the chance to be realised. Recounting Lenin’s revolutionary organisational work among Petersburg workers in his youth, Krupskaya says that the point was not to do heroic deeds but to establish firm contacts with the masses, to come closer to them, to learn becoming the means for their finest hopes, to rally them in our ranks and to enliven them.

Youth is characterised by excitement, enthusiasm and sensitivity. Throughout whole history of capitalism and all over the world, the young people who took part in the revolutionary struggle always carried and will carry these positive elements into the battle field. The ranks of revolution would be lifeless and arid should there not be the revolutionary romanticism, boldness and self-sacrifice of the youth. From past to present, young men and women have walked into death with revolutionary faith in their hearts in many countries and in many struggles. Those who fought and fell in the struggles that the oppressed waged against the oppressors all over the world, from Paris Communards to October revolutionaries, to those nameless young heroes fell in barricades, became symbols of a noble fight. In Turkey too, under military regimes, young saplings met with death in torture rooms, gallowses and young people who sacrificed their bodies in hunger strikes, death fasts against fascistic persecutions aimed at destroying revolutionary prisoners, they are all ours. Although their political ideas had not maturated yet, and there are many aspects to criticise about the revolutionary path they followed, there are imprints of them on the red flag of struggle for revolution. And the revolutionary Marxist youth will never allow the bourgeoisie to trample and dirty this red flag waving in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

Marxism demonstrates that history is made by masses and this is exactly the correct approach. Forward moves detached from the working class may look revolutionary, but in the final analysis they are indications of despair. Although the role played by leaders is quite important and big at critical turning points of history, it is, in final analysis, the struggles of the oppressed classes that change the world. While it is correct and necessary to take as examples the lives and struggles of revolutionary leaders in order one to get rid of his/her weaknesses conflicting with a revolutionary life, it is equally wrong and dangerous to create a personality cult so as to overshadow the historical mission of the working class.

It is the business of the bourgeoisie to turn revolutionary characters into idols or put their symbols on the market by making them commodities. Today, the bourgeoisie is very keen on this business in order to banalise revolutionary struggle in the eyes of the young. The bourgeoisie want to transform persons like Deniz Gezmiş, Che Guevara who, with their revolutionary fighting spirits, have rightfully become symbols for the revolutionary youth for long, into dead saints by hollowing out their revolutionary significance and by preventing the young generation from learning from their mistakes. As Lenin said, during their lifetimes great revolutionaries are persecuted by the ruling classes that crackdown on their struggle with the most savage hostility, most furious hatred, and mobilise against them with outrageous lies and slanders. After their death, however, the bourgeoisie try to turn them into harmless idols, so to say, saints. Their names are invested with a certain halo in order to console and dupe the oppressed classes and the bourgeoisie try to make the revolutionary side, the revolutionary spirit of their struggle forgotten.

Personality cult is completely alien to Marxism and revolutionary leaders like Lenin waged an uncompromising struggle against such harmful tendencies during their lifetimes. Anti-Marxist practices such as turning revolutionary figures into lifeless marbles and dead icons were brought into socialist movement by Stalinism which in reality embodies denial of Great October Revolution and of Bolshevism under Lenin. Stalinist personality cult does not represent the values of the revolutionary struggle of the working class and, as history has proved, it does not have any right to claim them in the slightest degree. It is completely antipodal to the correct approach in the following words. Speaking about Marx, F.A. Sorge says: “What Marx did as a scientist and a defender of the working class need neither cast iron monuments nor fiery speeches. Things that express Marx’s acts are not bronze or granite monuments but the ranks formed by countless workers all around the world following Marx’s immortal call of war, “All workers of the world, unite!”

Need for young forces

To gain young and fresh forces is always needed to strengthen the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. Therefore, those who carry on loyal, patient and planned organising work in Bolshevik style among the working class, are full of determination to fill their ranks with young workers and revolutionaries. Any weakness in gaining young forces would be a fatal danger. It is not justified to worry a lot and hesitate in the face of the lack of education and experience of young people. It is justified to lose hope for those who cannot see their faults, and who do not try to correct them in spite of so many years left behind. But as far as the young are concerned, a more patient and tolerant approach must be taken for the young to correct their mistakes.

We must be more tolerant for the mistakes of young revolutionaries. But in order them to be educated and tempered, we must never toady to the youth. Chance must be given them in order to let them correct their mistakes in the course of struggle and they must be helped. It is a fundamental task to educate youth especially of the working class in the culture and traditions of the internationalist communist struggle of the revolutionary proletariat, of the conviction of socialism, and equip them with class consciousness. If both the youth of the working class and other youth who have united their lives and struggle with the working class are educated and organised on correct principles, they can correct their mistakes in a short time and bring the dynamism of youth to the ranks of the struggle.

Imperialist capitalist system with its most recent lust for an unbridled exploitation and aggressiveness, has started rising the anger of all the young who do not put their hearts and brains up for sale in the bourgeois market. Those young people trying to show their reactions in anti-capitalist demonstrations and anti-war rallies in many countries are concrete signs for this situation. However, young people need to be organised and take a genuine revolutionary political position to overthrow capitalism. The Historical struggle of the revolutionary proletariat determined to go beyond capitalism and advance on the road to a society without classes makes the call: “Become enlightened with Marxism! Cling to organised revolutionary struggle!”