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FIST invites youth to WWP conference

Published Nov 9, 2007 12:39 AM

The youth group FIST (Fight Imperialism-Stand Together) calls for all youth interested in building a better world and for socialism to attend the Workers World Party National Conference on Fighting Racism and War for a Socialist Future in New York on the weekend of Nov. 16-18.


FIST organizer Larry Hales, left, at New York’s
City College, discussing support for Katrina
survivors with Easter Wood, managing editor
of the CCNY undergraduate weekly.
WW photo: John Catalinotto

The events will start on Friday afternoon with an outdoor FIST presentation on “Che’s Living Legacy of Internationalism: A Guide for the Anti-War Movement,” at Washington Square Park from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.

The WWP Conference begins the next morning at 9 a.m. and goes to 7 p.m., then reconvenes on Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Youth face an uncertain world in which socialism and a planned economy are increasingly necessary to bring about social justice, and that need will only grow. But history has shown that workers, in order to overthrow the dictatorship of capital, need a struggle organization, led by the most oppressed, that can wade through the deceptions and confusion propagated by the rulers in capitalist society.

Scientific socialism was first formulated by Karl Marx, who began his study of capital by explaining the commodity, the “cell” of the capitalist mode of production. A commodity is a thing extracted, picked or manufactured by human labor not just to be used but to be sold at a profit, and thus commodity production leads inevitably to all the horrors of capitalism. The idea of a vanguard party to combat capitalism and fight for socialism was espoused by the leader of the first workers’ revolution, Vladimir Lenin.

Imperialist war, be it against Iraq, Vietnam or anywhere else, happens because of the anarchic nature of capitalism, which produces and produces and goes through periods of boom or bust, but constantly needs markets, cheaper labor and/or cheaper access to resources.

Already, there has been a wave of de-industrialization in the United States that has crippled inner city areas, from upstate New York to the Midwest to Los Angeles, in favor of more exploitable labor abroad. This is connected to the capitalist mode of production, because as workers here fought over years for a better standard of living, the capitalists sought out cheaper labor elsewhere.

This irreconcilable relationship, where the laborers strive for comfortable lives but need to sell their labor power to the bosses, who pay them far less than the value of what they produce, is at the heart of capitalist crisis and the drive for war.

So, as the capitalists think globally, so must workers, and see their struggle as an international one. Workers World Party is an organization built in the Leninist model, dedicated to being on the ground wherever workers are, to fight racism and the rulers, to be in solidarity with the world struggle for freedom from exploitation and war and to overthrow the capitalist system.

Join us at our conference. The alternative for youth—that doesn’t include war, racism and the destruction of our planet—is socialism, and for that you need a vanguard revolutionary party.