Articles

Youth Schools

European Youth Schools

These two-week, generally bilingual English-French summer schools for leaders of progressive youth organizations have become a regular annual event. They offer a short but intensive introduction to social theory, applied to discussions of issues in e.g. European anti-racist organizing.

On changing the world

There is every reason for alternative educational facilities for young people like the ones we provide at the IIRE. Mainstream educational systems are hardly focussed on critical intellectual stimulation, let alone on learning and thinking about strategies to change the world. Moreover, the involvement of young activists in all our discussions is crucial if we want to grasp the enormous pace at which social and political change happens.

That is why the IIRE, after a one-year gap, organized another Youth School, a nine-day seminar for young activists from Europe and indeed the world. This particular school, held in August 2004, is part of a tradition we started ten years ago when we decided we needed to do more to help young activists learn from other generations, as well as the other way around. The end of 'really existing socialism' in the Soviet Union and its satellites had triggered new discussions about the viability of alternatives for capitalism; the dominance of neoliberalism seemed unending; and all the different currents and tendencies of the left found themselves in crisis. The situation posed new questions, not only for young activists, but also for all who were concerned with strategies for changing the world.

If the world situation seem particularly difficult for the left in the 1990s, the idea that we should invest in educating young radical activists - since we were not among the people who had concluded that history had come to an end - proved even more urgent when the events during the WTO summit in Seattle in the summer of 1999 proved a turning point in the struggle against neoliberalism and its institutions. The almost completely dominant ideologies of the political right started to be challenged again by a wide variety of activists, many of them very young and all of them extremely determined to change the world.

'Seattle' changed the world political landscape. More and more young activists entered the arena of alternative politics, of the struggle for a world that is ecologically and socially responsible and sustainable and just. Youth Schools are aimed at educating young people so that they can continue leading these struggles, as well as to provide a place where leading young activists can meet each other, discuss and learn from each other in the comfortable setting of our institute.

Europe-Mindanao dialogue

While the school this year focussed as usual on European youth, the presence of three activists from the region of Mindanao in the Philippines was a wonderful enrichment of the school. Their experiences as activists for peace and social justice in Mindanao gave an extra dimension to the exchange of ideas with European fellow activists. A situation very different from their own, the Mindanao experience was both challenging and informative for the European youth present. The 21 Europeans came from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Britain and Belgium - an interesting mix of young people eager to share their different experiences in local and national struggles for another world. Unfortunately we weren't able to have young activists from southern Europe, which we think is of crucial importance. We will make an extra effort to attract participants from that region next year.

Programmatically, the school was strongly focussed on strategies for changing the world. Jean Nanga, an activist from Congo-Brazzaville now living and working in France, discussed the history of social struggle in Africa. He stressed that studying Africans' struggles for social and political change can refute the hegemonic view of Africa as a continent of victims without agency. Unfortunately, Nanga pointed out, forces that have their own elite interests to look after have often hijacked these struggles. As an example he cited the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, culminating in the transition to democracy. As he pointed out, the political situation has certainly changed for the good, but socio-economically many of the poor are worse off than ever. The process of radical transformation never went beyond the political sphere because of the interests of the black elite and their unwillingness to confront the white rich. The report on Latin America by Willem Bos, a Dutch activist and Latin America specialist who lived in Nicaragua for several years during the Sandinista period, focussed on the history of social struggle and upheaval from the Cuban revolution to the Zapatista revolt to the present situation in Lula's Brazil. This report triggered an interesting discussion about the notion of power, a concept discussed worldwide in the global justice movement, bin part because of John Holloway's book Change the World without Taking Power. One participant argued, 'The discussion should not only be about how radicals take power, but about how and when we give it up.' Others in the discussion had a different view, and felt that the present aversion to power stands in the way of building radical social movements. It became clear that 15 years after the collapse of Stalinism its spectre is still with us, even among the young.

The report of IIRE director Peter Drucker focussed on the Middle East and Palestine and on developments in Islam, and had a more analytical than strategic starting point. Drucker pointed out how Western dominance is intimately linked to the devastating problems in the Middle East. Western support for Israel, which he described as a colonial settler state in some ways comparable to apartheid South Africa, is only one obvious example of this fact. Much of the discussion indeed focussed on the issue whether progressive activists should work together with fundamentalists, and if so how and to what extent. Drucker argued that leftists have nothing in common with these people and when leftists who end up in a demonstration with fundamentalists (for example against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or the US presence in Iraq) need to make that completely clear.

Feminist profile

Eva Ferraren from the Philippines, a long-time feminist and peace activist, reported to the youth on the women's movement and the global justice movement. Her focus was on the organic development of the women's movement within broader social movements. As a case study she drew on the experience in the Philippines, on which she is an obvious specialist as she has been active as a feminist in different social movements in Mindanao for the last 20 years. Her report was one of two that were crucial in giving the Youth School a feminist profile.

Other subjects discussed included the history and future of left politics in Europe: Patrick Auzende, an assistant for the United European Left parliamentary group in the European Parliament, focussed in this report on the possibilities for the reconstitution of the European radical left. Jean Nanga opened the week with a report on radical approaches to studying the development of societies; an approach followed by Paul Mepschen in his evening report on sexuality. IIRE Youth Studies director Penelope Duggan rounded off the week with a lecture exploring the many challenges involved in creating new forms of internationalism. She emphasized ways in which the challenges can be tackled by learning lessons both from the past century of labour internationalism and more recent experiences of women's and other social movements.

The Youth School is an important tradition. If we feel the struggle in the global justice movement and peace movement needs direction and politically sophisticated alternatives, we have to educate a new generation of activists to provide them. And if we want to help interest new generations in feminism, socialism, radical democracy, and the ecological movement all over the world, we need the input of young activists. They are changing the world every day, and shaping their own unique perspectives in the process.

Paul Mepschen