Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
126. V.I. Lenin, "The State:A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University July 11, 1919," in The Lenin Internet Archive
.
127. William Rust, The Case for the YCL (London: YCLGB, 1927), 7.
128. In a 1995 interview with David Holzel, Harvey Klehr noted that one of the greatest legacies of Lenin upon the development
of the socialist movement was the transformation of traditional socialist language. Klehr stated, "Lenin really transformed
the language of socialism into a very military language. To Lenin, the Bolshevik party was a military-style
operation. He was building an organization to fight czarism. It had to be underground. He argued that an open Party, like
most socialist parties had been until that time, would be unable to fight the kind of battles that were necessary. That you
needed professional revolutionaries. Shock forces. Cadres. Those are military kinds of terms. Of course all communist parties
around the world mimicked that organizational structure, and that language. It's very stilted, tough kind of language."
See "Harvey Klehr: Life of the Party," in Jewish Angle .
129. ECYCI, From Third to Fourth, 40.
130. In his studies of German communism, Eric Weitz has argued that political movements do not function and arise under
conditions of their own choosing, but must mature and develop within the social and historical context with which they are
provided. See the introductory arguments of Eric Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests
to Socialist State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)
131. Quoted in Steven White, "Ideological Hegemony and Political Control: The Sociology of Anti-Bolshevism in Britain
1918-20," Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society, no.9 (June, 1975): 3.
132. Nan Milton, John MacLean (London: Pluto Press, 1973), 190.
133. Harry McShane and Joan Smith, Harry McShane: No Mean Fighter (London: Pluto Press, 1978), 107-108.
134. David Childs, The Two Red Flags: European Social Democracy and Soviet Communism Since 1945 (London: Routledge,
2000), 1.
135. See Arthur McIvor, Organized Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Arthur McIvor, “A Crusade
for Capitalism: The Economic League, 1919-1939," Journal of Contemporary History 23, no.4 (October, 1988): 631-655.
136. J.M. Winter, "Arthur Henderson, the Russian Revolution, and the Reconstruction of the Labour Party," The Historical
Journal 15, no.4 (December, 1972): 753.
137. Tom Forester, The Labour Party and the Working Class (London: Heinemann, 1976), 44.
138. See Zig Layton-Henry, "Labour's Lost Youth," Journal of Contemporary History 11 (July, 1976): 275-308.
139. Kevin Morgan, "Communists and British Society, 1920-1991: People of a Special Mould," 7.
140. Waite, 38.
141. Britain's socialist youth traditions centred on the Socialist Sunday Schools. The Socialist Sunday Schools were established
during the 1890's by the Social Democratic Federation and spread quickly throughout Britain, inspiring similar initiatives
in the United States. See Kenneth Teitelbaum and William J. Reese, "American Socialist Pedagogy and Experimentation
in the Progressive Era: The Socialist Sunday School," History of Education Quarterly 23, no.4 (Winter, 1983): 429-454.
142. Quoted in John Moss, "The British Youth Movement," (July, 1953),1.: CP/CENT/YOUTH/02/12.
143. N/A, "The History of the British Youth Movement," (194), 1: CP/CENT/YOUTH/02/02.
144. YCLGB, Ammendments and Resolutions to be Submitted to the First Annual Conference, 5 th & 6 th of August 1922 (London:
YCLGB, 1922), 4.
145. YCLGB, The Young Workers and the General Strike (London: YCLGB, 1926), 17.
146. L.J. MacFarlane, The British Communist Party (London: Macgibbon and Kee, 1966), 173.
147. Waite, 64-65.
148. YCLGB, Report of the Fifth National Congress of the Young Communist League of Great Britain (London: YCLGB,
1928), 11.
149. The irony of British socialist-youth movements during the twenties is that while the highly political character of the YCL
stunted its development, the aggressively non-political and cultural initiatives of socialist youth in turn retarded their
growth. See Zig Layton-Henry, 276.
150. Discussion of the overlapping campaigns of the YCL and other socialist youth movements will be further explored in
Chapters three and five.
151. Quoted in Michelle Webb, "The Rise and Fall of the Labour League of Youth," Socialist History: Youth Culture and Politics
26, (2004): 51.
152. James Klugmann asserts that this situation occurred because "unlike Social Democracy, Communism had no fear of youth
rebellion." See James Klugmann, Vol. I, 226.
153. Arthur Marwick, "Youth in Britain, 1920-1960: Detachment and Commitment," Journal of Contemporary History 5, no.1,
(1970): 38.
154. Cohen and Morgan contend that one of the important transitions enabling the Popular Front era was the disbandment of
the Lenin School which allowed Communist Parties and YCL a greater national flexibility. See Gidon Cohen and Kevin
Morgan, "Stalin's Sausage Machine," 327-355.
155. Matthew Worley, Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain Between the Wars (London: I.B. Tauras,
2002),138.
156. Quoted in Noreen Branson, History of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1927-1941 (London: Lawrence and Wishart,
1985),46.
157. YCLGB, Where Shall We Start (London: YCLGB, 1930), 8,10.
158. MacFarlane, 219.
159. Thomas F. Neblet, "Youth Movements in the United States," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 194, (November, 1937): 143.
160. Dumas Malone and Basil Rauch, War and Troubled Peace: 1917-1939 (New York: Meredith Publishing, 1960),43.
161. Ibid, 69.
162. Thomas Ricento, "The Discursive Construction of Americanism," Discourse and Society 14, no.5 (2003): 614.
163. Seymour M. Lipset and Gary Marks, It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (New York: W.W.
Norton, 2000),237.
164. This move towards traditionalism was a conservative rejection of both internationalism and the burgeoning modern youth
culture of the "roaring twenties." See Lynn Dumenil and Eric Foner, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society
in the 1920s (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995).
165. This trend towards organizing in immigrant communities was a product of the splits that occurred within the Socialist
Party where most of the various language federations joined native comrades in founding the American communist
160