CENTRAL NEWS
Another important element of youth is its being in a constant quest. This has to do with the future-oriented-ness of youth, which has often little to gain from the status quo of the present. The youth’s conflict of interest with the gerontocratic, oppressive system, their distance from power, their open-mindedness render them prone to having revolutionary, socialist personalities. That is why it is often said that “Young people are leftists”. Youth question the existing structures and therefore favour change that could better their conditions and secure their futures. The precondition for this is an embracement of freedom.
These features very much resonate with qualities of militants of socialism, equality and freedom. In the past, due to dominant statist, class-reductionist paradigms, youth movements often did not adequately find their space in revolutionary movements. This is due to a pre-occupation with the leadership role of the proletariat in the revolutionary process, a mission that was attributed overwhelmingly more space than other social dynamics. Women and youth were seen as supplementary to the proletarian-led struggle. This understanding lies at the heart of the flawed statist, modernist logic of real-socialism.
The real-socialist movements that have been based on a fetishization of the working class and on a statist paradigm, have traditionally pursued narrow and economistically motivated goals of seizing power. Many of them ended up settling for less than their original utopias of equality and justice and turned into syndicalist movements.
With his radical democratic, ecological and women’s liberationist paradigm, Abdullah Öcalan contributed new definitions to revolutionary democratic and socialist movements. In his definition, utopia exists in the movement of youth. Youth is above all a symbol of utopia, the longing and hope of the future. The same goes for women’s liberation. More than a material aspect, it embodies the desire to render social life balanced, ordered, peaceful and democratic. It embodies freedom and equality. Neither the women’s liberation movement, nor the youth movement possess approaches to equality that are based on narrow, mechanic and material notions, as traditional real-socialism envisioned for the role of the proletariat. Our movement defines this fixation as the “petty-bourgeois tendency”. Without a doubt, this tendency has to do with an ideological approach. The essence of the women’s liberation movement is its ability to emancipate freedom utopias from narrow profit-driven notions and to adjust them to fundamental societal needs. This means the deepening of socialism. A similar analysis can be made regarding the role of the youth movement.
We can thus say that the era of youth is the one that is closest to socialism, filled with ideals of freedom and equality, an era of mutual aid, sharing and standing in solidarity. Youth is an era that has not yet been co-opted by interest or profit and therefore does not resort to tricks and deceptions. It is a pure and plain era. This is what distinguishes youth from other times. The youth movement in turn is one that mobilizes these features within it to generate a transformative force in society. It is therefore not to be reduced to a simple, narrow or temporary movement.
We must not detach or decontextualize youth from social life by romanticizing or idealizing it too much, nor mustn’t we pathologize the condition of youth as a difficult phase of life. At the same time, we ought not hesitate to define and share with society the meaning of youth and the fundamental dimensions that keep it alive. To help the advancement of meaningful change in society, we must have a greater appreciation for the meaning and role of the youth by way of its revolutionary potential. We can call those societies with weak dynamics for transformation “aged” or “elderly societies”, a term that applies most concretely to societies under advanced capitalism.
The most powerful and precious value of any society is its ability to keep alive attributes of the youth, which represent transformation potentiality. To the extent to which this youth spirit is internalized, a society has the potential to be revolutionary.
The gender struggle became an important site especially in the 21st century, due to its ability to accelerate social change. In terms of society’s transformation dynamic, the youth however plays a different essential role.
