Youth

Since the start of the academic year, comrades of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) have been raising the red flag on campuses worldwide. We have documented much of this excellent work and the eager reception Marxist ideas have received under the hashtag #CommunismOnCampus. We include many of those reports here.

The Marxist Student Federation (MSF) in Britain has now hit all the fresher's fairs at universities where we have established a Marxist Society, spoken to thousands of people about the ideas of Marxism and shown them how to fight against capitalism. This has been a highly inspiring period for us. We have seen the thirst for communist ideas which exists amongst students.

The International Marxist Tendency is out in force as new academic terms begin all around the world. Thousands of students will be signing up to our Marxist discussion groups and societies at universities and colleges from London to Lahore, Texas to Toronto. We will be sharing reports and social media posts of all these activities in the coming weeks: find us with the hashtag #CommunismOnCampus.

The 2022 national camp of Alziamo la Testa (“Let's raise our heads”), the first held by the youth organisation of the Italian Marxists, was a big success. We are particularly proud of what we have achieved in the last few years, and our progress was attested to at the event, which was attended by young revolutionaries from more than 26 cities, who were all thrilled to finally meet all the new comrades face-to-face after two years of the pandemic.

A two-day Marxist School was held in Rawlakot, Kashmir on 6-7 August. It was the most successful Marxist School ever organised by the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA), with more than 200 students, youth, workers and political activists participating from Karachi to Peshawar, and Baluchistan to Kashmir.

In the past few months, discontent among Chinese youth is increasingly bursting to the surface, both online and on campuses, in defiance of state censorship and repression. A widespread proliferation of anti-capitalist memes and open dissent against the regime online speak to a general undercurrent of rage and resentment, which has also seen university students launching struggles across two provinces.

Throughout March, a mass struggle in Greece (led by the youth) has been waged against police violence and the reactionary, authoritarian New Democracy (ND) government. The main left organisations have scandalously distanced themselves from and refused to join forces in support of this militant movement. Nevertheless, the masses have emerged from a period of paralysis willing to fight. The movement against police repression has temporarily subsided for now, due to the emergency conditions imposed by the present spike of the pandemic. But what is clear is that a new chapter of the Greek class struggle has begun. Note: this article was initially drafted in March.

The Marxist Student Federation in Britain invites you to the online MSF Conference 2021 this Saturday! The past six months have seen enormous students struggles emerge, with the biggest University rent strike movement in forty years foremost amongst them. We have also seen the government's attempt to write anti-capitalism out of schools, which the MSF answered with its Tell the Truth campaign. All this and more will be discussed. Buy your ticket now!

On 30 January, big demonstrations against the Global Security Bill, the so-called Separatism Bill and for the reopening of cultural institutions took place in Paris, and all over France. These demonstrations were led by thousands of youth, who are increasingly radicalised given the seemingly endless pandemic (which means campuses are closed), and are determined to oppose the rotten Macron government.

A wave of student protests against on-campus exams has been sweeping across the country since last week. Social media for the last few weeks has been abuzz with the students’ demand “#StudentsRejectOnCampusExams”, which has also been a top trend on Twitter for the last two weeks.