Youth in the Struggle for Liberation

20 May

Brief: Climate Vanguard, 20 May 2024

Introduction

The ongoing student protests for Palestinian liberation have demonstrated the power of youth organising. Indeed, young people have, throughout history, been at the forefront of struggles for social and political transformation.

This brief explores the political nature of youth, their role in historical struggles, the conditions facing youth today, and the prospects of developing a revolutionary youth subject.

“La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la voie.”
[The barricade blocks the street but opens the way.]
— May 1968 student protest

The political nature of youth

Youth are people transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Youthhood relates to biology, denoting the physiological development during this age period, but crucially, it is also a social category made up of the people undergoing this transition [1]. Though by no means homogenous, members of this group often have common social behaviours and perspectives based on shared lived experiences and material realities [2].

Because youth is a social concept, it is intrinsically political.

Youth as a terrain of struggle

Youth are, quite literally, the future of society. They, therefore, represent a critical terrain of political struggle. As Vladimir Lenin once said, “he who has the youth, has the future.”

This political terrain is shaped by certain youthful qualities; namely that youthhood is a stage of energetic experimentation, learning, and growth. As such, youth are often especially open to questioning the status quo, politicisation, and struggling for change [3]. While these qualities are highly relevant to a society in desperate need of transformation, they are equally threatening to the ruling classes [4].

Youth as an oppressed group

In an attempt to forcibly integrate youth into the dominant economic, political, social, and cultural systems, youth face particular forms of oppression.

Institutions – primarily schools, but also the military — are key mechanisms of taming and containing youth. These institutions impart capitalist ideology and the skills necessary to carry out specialised wage labour and, in the case of soldiers, to defend imperialism. Without their consent, youth are moulded into disciplined workers, conditioned to reproduce the status quo [5].

More generally, our societies are characterised by adult supremacy. This is a form of social hierarchy that privileges adults over youth, subordinating the latter and systematically treating them as the private property of their adult guardians [6]. Young people are made to be both legally and financially dependent on adults, often without a meaningful say over their bodies (e.g. in medical care), how they spend their time, or the future of society [7].

This systematic denial of economic, political, and social rights is often justified by youth’s inexperience, immaturity, and irrationality. By dismissing youth’s capacity to learn and take on responsibility, this argument rejects young people’s agency [8].

Youth as agents of change

Liberal politicians and commentators claim to love when young people take political initiative – that is, so long as it lies within their framework of social acceptability. They applaud “peaceful” youth protestors as bold and determined, heroes and changemakers. However, when youth expose, question, and rebel against the oppressive nature of the system itself (for example, universities’ investment in genocide and imperialism), they are swiftly and violently repressed.

Nevertheless, youth prove themselves time and time again to be instrumental to social and political struggle. Youth movements, especially student movements, have often acted as a bellwether, indicating the direction of broader societal change [9]. By exercising their political agency, youth can and do change the world.

An incomplete history of youth in social and political struggle

Throughout the history of social and political struggle, youth have been a key agent, often playing a vanguard role. This is seen in many radical movements, socialist revolutionary movements, and national liberation movements.

Radical movements and popular uprisings

The uprisings of 1968 were fundamentally a youth rebellion. Sparked by student protests, huge mobilisations erupted around the world, including in Western Europe, the United States, Pakistan, Tunisia, Mexico, Brazil, and Japan. As an expression of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, and anti-state oppression, 1968 was an ideological and cultural revolution which “was born within the youth, but spread rapidly throughout society” [10].

Youth, again, showed their mobilising capacity in the so-called ‘Arab Spring,’ where a series of spontaneous uprisings contributed to the overthrow of governments in Tunisia and Egypt [11]. While power was ultimately consolidated by opportunists in the post-revolution period – largely due to the leaderless nature of the protests — this marked “the first time a youth uprising had overthrown autocratic Arab leaders” [12].

More recently, in 2019, the youth climate strikes mobilised 14 million students in over 150 countries, thrusting climate breakdown into the social and political limelight [13].

Socialist revolutions and revolutionary parties

The Bolsheviks – the leading force of the Russian Revolution – had a significant youth base. In 1907, 75% of Bolshevik members were under 30 years old – a demographic composition that was significant in “freeing” the party from conservative tendencies [14]. During the 1917 Russian Revolution, thousands of young people fought for the Red Army. And by 1926, Kosmol – the dedicated youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – reached 1.75 million members [15].

The Black Panther Party (BPP), although not an explicitly youth organisation, was also largely composed of young people, from base membership to top leadership. Huey Newton was 24 years old when he co-founded the BPP with 29-year-old Bobby Seale, and their first recruit was 16-year-old Bobby Hutton [16]. Legendary Panther leader, Fred Hampton, was just 21 years young when he was murdered by police.

Many other revolutionaries were young when they assumed leadership roles. For example, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Camilo Cienfuegos founded their revolutionary organisation in 1955 when they were 27, 29, and 23 years old, respectively. They set out from Mexico the following year to overthrow the Batista regime in Cuba.

National liberation struggles

In 1925, a young Ho Chi Minh established the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League, a Marxist-Leninist organisation dedicated to educating and training committed revolutionaries [17]. Ultimately, members of the Youth League became the core of the Indochinese Communist Party – the leading force of the Vietnamese anti-colonial struggle [18].

In South Africa, youth were “the main anti-apartheid change agent,” acting as a guiding force for the national liberation movement [19]. From the African National Youth League in the 1940s and 1950s, to Black Consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s, to the United Democratic Front in the 1980s and 1990s, youth relentlessly organised and reorganised themselves to ensure the movement’s direction of travel [20].

Another example is the Kurdish movement, which regards youth as having “set the direction in all revolutions” [21]. As such, Rojava (Western Kurdistan) has been structurally designed to reflect this, with youth not only having their own autonomous councils, but also having designated representation and decision-making power in population-wide councils [22].

Youth have also long played a vanguard role in the Palestinian liberation movement. George Habash was in his mid-twenties when he co-founded the Arab Nationalist Movement [23]. In addition, the Palestinian Youth Movement has, for years, been leading the liberation struggle internationally – one taken forward by the ongoing student encampments [24].

This brief (and incomplete) review shows the central and often leading role of youth in social and political struggle. Crucially, in most of the listed examples, young people are organised under an explicit ‘youth’ banner, showing the power of youth consciousness when it is mobilised as such.

Conditions of the youth today

To assess the potential formation of a revolutionary youth subject, we must first understand the conditions in which “Gen Z” (a generation of people born between 1997 and 2012) is operating. To do this, we begin with an analysis of the previous millennial generation (those born between 1981 and 1996).

The Millennial Legacy

Many millennials entered or were in the process of entering the job market around the time of the 2007-2008 Great Financial Crisis (GFC). The GFC disproportionately impacted millennials, with youth unemployment skyrocketing to 20.9% in 2009 (up from 14.5% in the 2005 - 2007 period) [25].

This jolt of economic hardship, calcified by subsequent years of austerity, was a form of unexpected downward mobility for highly educated millennials – a substantial bloc within the generation [26]. Instead of professional managerial jobs, these millennials had to settle for precarious labour, trapping them in an under-waged employment arc [27]. This stunted access to traditional forms of wealth accumulation, such as home ownership [28]. While millennial employment rates did eventually recover, their earnings never did [29].

Frustrated economic prospects, in turn, helped seed the polarising conditions for the mass protests (e.g. Occupy Wall Street), progressive political projects (e.g. Corbyn, Sanders, Podemos, Syriza), and far-right politics (e.g. Trump, Boris) typical of the 2010s.

This is the world in which Gen Z is coming of age, one caught in compounding cycles of crisis, precarity, and polarisation far stronger than what their generational predecessor endured.

The Gen Z Experience

Gen Z’s GFC moment came in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-related school closures impacted 1.6 billion students, while youth who were not in employment, education, or training increased 1.5% (a 15-year high) [30]. Gen Z has also lived through major socio- political turmoil, from the rise of the far-right to the popular uprising against white-supremacist police violence and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, not to mention an accelerated trajectory towards irreversible ecological collapse.

These crises have, in turn, deepened socio-material precarity for Gen Z. Housing is a good example. With home ownership a distant possibility, the majority of people between the ages of 20 and 29 in most OECD countries have opted to live with their parents, while those who rent privately are confronted with sky-high costs for notoriously poor quality housing [31].

Equally significant is the youth mental health crisis. The rise of social media, positive insofar that it has diluted the power of corporate media, has negatively impacted Gen Z through the intensification of social comparison [32]. Intractable crises have fomented a general pessimism towards the future – the hallmark of a troubled generation [33].

It is within this context that Gen Z has experienced polarisation to both the left and right. Numerous studies have shown that Gen Z is more inclined to support socialism over capitalism than older generations [34]. For example, 67% of people in the UK aged 16-34 want to live in a socialist economy [35].

This stands in direct contrast to the alarming rise in youth support for far-right parties. For example, islamophobe Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) won the youth vote in the Netherlands’ 2023 parliamentary elections, echoing the trend set by Fratelli d’Italia in Italy [36]. Equally problematic is the rise in reactionary social views. For example, 16% of Gen Z males in the UK believe feminism has done more harm than good, eclipsing those above the age of 60 – a rare phenomenon of generational regression [37].

All this contextualises the actions of the young people building barricades and fighting cops for a free Palestine. Their struggle is not plucked from thin air, but planted in concrete conditions. With this in mind, we turn our attention to the future.

Towards a revolutionary youth subject

Becoming a collective revolutionary subject requires consciousness and action.

For youth, this first means seeing themselves as an oppressed group – a form of oppression that will only intensify as political, economic, social, and ecological crises worsen. Organisers in the Global North must also understand their position within the uneven world system and centre anti-imperialism in their actions and demands. Second, it necessitates that youth exercise their agency to bring about radical transformation.

We can observe an emergent revolutionary youth subject in the ongoing student protests for Palestinian liberation.

Revolutionary youth consciousness

Young people are not engaged in militant protest because it’s in their immediate material interest. In fact, it’s directly contrary to it, with many youth organisers facing expensive court proceedings and disciplinary action from their university. Rather, youth are protesting genocide with the consciousness that it is a symptom of Zionist settler colonialism and the broader capitalist world system.

With this consciousness comes an understanding that the fight for a liberated Palestine is integral to the fight for liberation at home. As Oxford Palestine Action said in its encampment communique: “we look to the Palestinian struggle, it will free us all.” From anti-imperialist resistance, a youth movement for eco-socialist liberation can grow.

Revolutionary youth action

The student encampments also demonstrate youth taking their agency seriously. Organisers have assessed their terrain of struggle, identified intervention points where they can win material concessions, and designed strategic actions which learn from past uprisings.

In many ways, these encampments are more organised than past protest movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and the Black Lives Matter. For example, they have clearly defined roles (e.g. spokespeople, wellbeing teams, legal observers) and strategies for mitigating counter- protests. They are delivering concrete demands around which they can negotiate with administrators, and they are pushing for them in an escalatory manner to avoid cooptation or pacification [38].

This is how a collective revolutionary subject can emerge, through a process of integrated study, organisation, action, and reflection. And it is precisely this – a politically conscious youth, united in disciplined anti- capitalist struggle – which the ruling classes fear most.

Conclusion

Given the deep contradictions within capitalism and imperialism, crises will continue to compound and accelerate. In their wake, the conditions for a revolutionary subject will expand.

Therefore, we must reflect on the lessons from this moment and determine how they can strengthen the broader struggle for international eco-socialist liberation. Here, we put forward a set of propositions:

1. Escalate

In the short-term, our actions and demands must focus on maximising pressure on local and national leaders, governments, institutions, and corporations to end the Zionist carnage in Palestine.

We must keep pushing the struggle forward, resisting both liberal attempts to de-escalate and fascist attempts to scare us away (be they from state repression or Zionist counter-protesters). Accordingly, we must protect each other and stand in radical solidarity with those who have faced repression and violence.

Occupy, escalate, liberate!

2. Extend the struggle

Driven by imperialism, Zionist settler colonialism and the genocide in Gaza are intimately connected to the exploitation and oppression of people around the world. We must actively extend our resistance to integrate communities of the working and oppressed beyond youth. We have common enemies: bosses, landlords, the capitalist state, police, corporate media, and bourgeois politicians and parties.

To win collective liberation, we – youth, workers, carers, growers, elderly, all those yearning for another world – must unite against our common oppressors!

3. Get organised

Student encampments have imparted valuable political lessons of collective struggle, from developing effective communication strategies to bootstrapping barricades and defying police kettles.

This real-life revolutionary experimentation cannot be squandered. Rather, it must be consolidated into proven organisational forms with the strategy and structure to advance liberation on turbulent terrain.

Join an organisation — the struggle continues!

4. Educate yourself and others

While our struggle must continually evolve to best confront the conditions we are facing, we do not have to reinvent the wheel of resistance. We can learn from the rich revolutionary history and theory that have been intentionally hidden from us.

Read Ghassan Kanafani and Lenin with your comrades; listen to podcasts about the Panthers with your siblings; and, bump Macklemore with your parents!