What We Believe

We believe, in the words still said throughout the world: “Workers of the world unite. We have nothing to lose but our chains, and a world to win.” The Young Communist League joins with all the youth worker movements around the world in affirming our opposition to imperialism and racism, and in the need to build a fighting youth organization here in the United States. A better world is possible. A better world is necessary.

The Young Communist League, as the youth league of the CPUSA, is a Marxist-Leninist organization. As such, we affirm as Lenin said “the special need to organize youth in the struggle.” Today our future is being threatened by environmental catastrophe brought about by big business monopolies. The dream of the youth of color today is being crushed under an oppressive and ever-violent racist system of policing that seeks to protect property and the interests of capital at the expense of human lives. Working class youth today are facing an increasingly blighted future, with few job prospects and a crushing environment of social despair and alienation, brought about by decades of neoliberal austerity and war.

In such an environment, all the ever-present social contradictions of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia are only increased as the ruling class seeks to divide working class youth. We young Communists affirm the need to fight all forms of social oppression in order to build unity amongst ourselves as the working class youth of America. We need to fight to rebuild our communities against the scourge of gentrification. Being young and working class should not be a death sentence in the United States of America. To save our communities from social despair, police violence, and disinvestment, we must engage our communities in collective struggle.

The covid crisis has exposed once again these deep rifts in society. Youth in rural New York face a climate of underemployment and a culture of despair as manifested in the opioid addiction crisis. Youth in the cities of New York, from Buffalo and Rochester to New York City, face joblessness on the one hand and gentrification enforced by violent racist policing on the other. In New York City, the threat of privatization of public housing and of public education is an ever-increasing threat to access the basic resources needed to thrive and live in our society.

We as young Communists know that only a militant, engaged, and organized working class youth can begin to address these problems. We must organize in every sphere of our community, in every area of our lives. And we must lead in the fight back against violent racist policing, against fascist violence, against gentrification, against joblessness, against privatization of resources.

The only way to fight back is to organize. And only through the strength and vision of organization can we bring about a just future which increasingly is necessary for the survival of human life on this planet. A society organized for the many not the few. A society run by working people.

Join the Fight Back. Join the YCL.