The Youth for Socialist Action held its first introductory and educational forum at IU Southeast in University Center North, room 122. Its purpose is to inform, educate and find students who are interested in their cause to join and build the IUS chapter.
YSA is a youth affiliate of Socialist Action, which is a Trotskyist political party that advocates Leon Trotsky’s theory of Marxism.
For now, the YSA is a study group. However, Christian Litsey, English sophomore and one of the founding members of YSA, said their main focus is to educate people on the theories of Marxism with the hope to come together and form a cohesive disciplined youth organization that can help lead the working class revolution.
Litsey said the organization is one of many socialist movements that are essential for the socialist revolution to exist.
“[Socialists] want a true equality for all people,” Litsey said. “It’s not everyone making the same. Equality is everybody getting what they need.”
The YSA also stands for full liberation of workers and oppressed people, opposition to any discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation and jobs for all by advocating a labor party based on the unions.
“So, we want to organize the working class and the creation of worker states worldwide,” Litsey said, “By doing that, we seek to build socialism and then on the path to a communism society.”
During the YSA presentation, Levi Groenewold, history sophomore and founding member of YSA, said they are trying to build a revolutionary Socialist youth organization. This idea is based on Vladimir Lenin’s Marxist theory, which says, “Without revolutionary theory there would be no revolutionary practice.”
“You can go out and take some kind of direct action — standing up against the capitalist system — but because you don’t have a plan or an organized method of resistance, it’s just kind of doomed to just be a heroless act,” Groenewold said. “At the same time, if you have a revolutionary theory, such as Marxism, and you don’t implement it, then there is really no point to that theory, and you won’t be able to change society for the better unless you have action.”
Groenewold said they must be able to put these Marxist theories into action through activism.
Bronson Rozier, organizer for Socialist Action in Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky, has been an active member of the socialist movement for 47 years. Rozier said he attended the forum to support his comrades.
“In a socialist society, there will be some differences, but it won’t be like this where 2 percent of the country owns 80 percent of the wealth,” Rozier said. “It’s going to be the majority that is in control of it all.”
The majority includes the 84 percent of the working class population, which is defined as the ones who sell their labor to the capitalist elite.
“There are very well-paid working class people,” Groenewold said, “but the difference is [in a Socialist society] that profit — the production of capital — will no longer be the private property of a small minority of people, but instead, that capital will be owned and controlled by the society as a whole.”
By STEVE NICHOLS
Staff
stevnich@ius.edu
